Publication Date

• Required
• Publication Date shall be entered using the information listed below, in the order shown from top to bottom, with "Official Date of Publication" holding primacy.

1. Official Date of Publication
   • The date of publication that appears on the item, primarily in the indicia of a periodical or in the publication data of a book.
   • If there is no date of publication in the indicia/publication data, an official date of publication may be found in other places on the item such as the table of contents.
   • If there is no date of publication in the indicia/publication data or elsewhere on the item, then a cover date is considered the date of publication.
   • If there is no date of publication in the indicia/publication data or on the cover, then a copyright is considered the date of publication.
2. Unofficial Date of Publication
   • If the item does not contain a complete (i.e., month-year or month-day-year) date of publication, an unofficial date of publication can be determined (as indicated in the following point) from an outside source, such as distributor catalogs, publisher shipping lists, or ads in other comics.
   • An unofficial date of publication should match the common official date of publication of items published at the same time from the same publisher.
   • When entering an unofficial date of publication, the information obtained from outside the item itself should be recorded in brackets (to indicate that information is not on the item) and a note entered in the Notes field to indicate the source of the information. A question mark should be added to an uncertain unofficial date of publication.
   • If the unofficial date of publication conflicts with the copyright date, enter the copyright date followed by the entire unofficial date of publication in brackets.
   • If a contemporary official date of publication cannot be determined, the month-year portion of the copyright date should be reported in the publication date field in brackets, with the full date entered in the on-sale date field, and a note entered in the Notes field. Information for dates from the U.S. Copyright Office is linked to from Copyright Records.
3. Incorrect dates
   • If the official date of publication is obviously wrong (for example, the same date is listed in the indicia two issues in a row or the indicia lists the wrong year), the official date should be entered with the correct, but unofficial date of publication, in brackets following, and an explanatory note entered in the Notes field.
   • Exception: if the official date of publication is obviously wrong, but the cover date is correct, enter the cover date as the official date of publication and put a note in the Notes field about the incorrect indicia date.
4. Style
   • Spell out months or seasons in full.
   • Give years in the full 4-digit form.
   • Enter month-year dates without punctuation. Enter month-day-year dates in the standard order and punctuation of the country of publication.
   • Capitalize all words in date, such as Late, Early, etc.
   • Enter dates associated with the end of one year and the beginning of the next year (such as Winter, Holiday, December-January, etc.) as printed, though with month and year(s) written in full.
5. Notes
   • The publication date should match the keydate. If an unofficial date of publication is used, the keydate should reflect it.
   • The year of publication of the first issue should match the series date. If an unofficial date of publication is used for the first issue, the series date should reflect it.

Examples
1945
January 1945
January 7, 1945
7 Gennaio 1945
Late January 1945
January-February 1945
December 1945-January 1946
Spring 1945
Winter 1945-1946
Holiday 1945-1946
[1945]
[January 1945]
[January 7, 1945]
[January] 1945
2005 [February 2006]
[1945?]
March 9007 [March 2007]

(End of definition)

---

Policy Votes Affecting This Topic

• Ballot 307: Update to Publication Dates Formatting Rule - 2017-02-14

---

See also On-sale Date.

Back to the Formatting Documentation