Citation Attributes

“Type” of Cited Work

Many tag sets have different models for different types of citations: journals, books, patents, standards, etc. This Tag Suite has only two models, both of which are independent of citation type. The semantic information describing the type of citation is captured using the @publication-type attribute. This Suite does not prescribe a list of values, so this attribute can be used to record that a cited work is a journal article, a book, a personal communication, a dataset, a newspaper, etc.:
<element-citation publication-type="journal">
<mixed-citation   publication-type="book">
<element-citation publication-type="report">
<mixed-citation   publication-type="webpage">
<element-citation publication-type="commun"
<mixed-citation   publication-type="newspaper">
<element-citation publication-type="conf-paper">
<mixed-citation   publication-type="poster-session">
<element-citation publication-type="discussion">
<mixed-citation   publication-type="wiki">
<element-citation publication-type="blog">
<mixed-citation   publication-type="data">
<element-citation publication-type="thesis">
<mixed-citation   publication-type="patent">
<mixed-citation   publication-type="std">

Format or Media of Cited Work

The format or media type of the cited material can also be preserved using the @publication-format attribute. This allows, for example, an online reference to a publication to be distinguished from a citation to the same source material in print. This attributes does not take a controlled set of values or formal types such as mime types; it takes a text value that can be used to preserve almost anything a publisher has named as a format or media.
Here are the same sample publication types that were just given, this time with the publication format added as well:
<element-citation publication-type="journal" publication-format="print">
<mixed-citation   publication-type="journal" publication-format="web">

<element-citation publication-type="book" publication-format="print">
<mixed-citation   publication-type="book" publication-format="web">
<mixed-citation   publication-type="book" publication-format="online">
<element-citation publication-type="book" publication-format="dvd">
<mixed-citation   publication-type="book" publication-format="videocassette">
<element-citation publication-type="book" publication-format="cd-rom">
<mixed-citation   publication-type="book" publication-format="ebook">
<element-citation publication-type="book" publication-format="audiocassette">
<mixed-citation   publication-type="book" publication-format="slide"
   publisher-type="gov">

<mixed-citation   publication-type="webpage">
<element-citation publication-type="wiki" publication-format="web">
<mixed-citation   publication-type="blog" publication-format="web">

<element-citation publication-type="conf-paper">
<mixed-citation   publication-type="poster-session">

<element-citation publication-type="commun" publication-format="email">
<mixed-citation   publication-type="discussion" publication-format="list">

<mixed-citation   publication-type="newspaper" publication-format="print">

 
<element-citation publication-type="data" publication-format="cd-rom">
<mixed-citation   publication-type="data" publication-format="dvd">
<element-citation publication-type="data" publication-format="web">

<element-citation publication-type="report" publisher-type="gov"
   publication-format="print">

<element-citation publication-type="thesis" publication-format="print">
<mixed-citation   publication-type="dissertation" publication-format="print">

<element-citation publication-type="patent" publication-format="print">
<mixed-citation   publication-type="std" publication-format="pdf">

<mixed-citation   publication-format="spreadsheet">

Publisher

The type of the publisher (government, non-profit, individual) may be named using the @publisher-type attribute. This attribute is not as frequently used as the other two; the most common values are “gov” for a government document such as a report and “stds-body” for a standard published by a national or international standards organization.

Attribute @citation-type Conversion

The three attributes just described replace the attribute “@citation-type” that was used in prior versions of this Tag Suite. The @citation-type attribute was too broad and provided no clear way to distinguish these different notions. After examination of many uses of the @citation-type attribute, the Tag Suite Working Group decided that the most useful information was the type of cited material, the format, and the type of publisher.
Conversion from the old @citation-type to the new attributes and values is mostly straight-forward. The Working Group’s experience has been that a brief examination of existing tagged data will reveal the obvious conversions (@citation-type="journal" becomes @publication-type="journal"), and a short list of these can be made that will handle most cases. The few remaining odd things can typically be listed as publication types, since this is still a fairly loose categorization.