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 is not a controlled set of values or formal types such as mime types; this attribute 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 being “gov” for a government document such as a report and “stds-body” for standard published by a national or international standards organization.

Citation Type Conversion

The three attributes just described replace the “citation-type” attribute used in prior versions of this Tag Suite. The citation-type attribute was broad and provided no clear way to distinguish these different notions. After examination of many uses of the 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.