<month>

Month

Names one of the months of the year, such as “July” or “07”.

Remarks

Used within both article metadata and citations, this element may contain the textual name of a month (“December”), a month-name abbreviation (“Dec”), or a numeric month (“12”). Numeric months are best practice for archives who wish to regularize their data.
Best Practice: For ease in comparisons and searching, many archives prefer that months be converted to numeric value of the following form:
  • 01 = January
  • 02 = February
  • 03 = March
etc.
Related Essay: For a discussion on the use of <month>, see Dates in Citations.

Related Elements

Within citations (<element-citation> and <mixed-citation>), this element is used to name the month of publication. The elements <year>, <date>, <day>, <month>, and <season> may all be used to describe the date a cited resource was published. Other dates inside a citation, such as a copyright date, the date on which the author accessed the resource, or a withdrawal date, should be tagged using <date-in-citation> with the @content-type attribute used to name the type of date (copyright, access-date, time-stamp, etc.).

Attributes

Content Model

<!ELEMENT  month        (#PCDATA)                                    >

Description

Text, numbers, or special characters

This element may be contained in:

Example 1

In article metadata as a lifecycle (<history>) date:
...
<article-meta>...
<contrib-group>
<contrib contrib-type="author">
<collab collab-type="committee">Technical Committee ISO/TC 108, 
Subcommittee SC 2</collab>
</contrib>
</contrib-group>...
<fpage seq="1">1</fpage>
<lpage>23</lpage>
<history>
<date date-type="approved" iso-8601-date="2012-06-01">
<day>01</day>
<month>06</month>
<year>2012</year>
</date>
</history>
...</article-meta>
...

Example 2

In article metadata as part of the publication date and a lifecycle (<history>) date:
...
<article-meta>
<article-id pub-id-type="pmid">...</article-id>
<title-group>...</title-group>
<contrib-group>...</contrib-group>
<aff id="StLukes">...</aff>
<pub-date publication-format="print" date-type="pub" iso-8601-date="1999-03-27">
<day>27</day><month>03</month><year>1999</year>
</pub-date>
<volume>318</volume>
<issue>7187</issue>
<fpage>837</fpage>
<lpage>841</lpage>
<history>
<date date-type="accepted" iso-8601-date="1999-01-29">
<day>29</day>
<month>01</month>
<year>1999</year></date>
</history>
<permissions>
<copyright-statement>Copyright &#x00A9; 1999, British
Medical Journal</copyright-statement>
<copyright-year>1999</copyright-year>
<copyright-holder>British Medical Journal</copyright-holder>
</permissions>
<abstract>
<p>To examine the effectiveness of
day hospital attendance in prolonging independent living for elderly
people.</p>
</abstract>
</article-meta>
...

Example 3

In an element-style bibliographic reference (punctuation and spacing removed):
...
<ref>
<element-citation publication-type="book" publication-format="web">
<source>Fact sheet: AIDS information resources</source>
<comment>[Internet]</comment>
<publisher-loc>Bethesda (MD)</publisher-loc>
<publisher-name>National Library of Medicine
(US)</publisher-name>
<year iso-8601-date="2003-05-02">2003</year>
<month>May</month>
<day>2</day>
<date-in-citation content-type="updated"
iso-8601-date="2005-07-14">updated 2005 Jul 14</date-in-citation>
<date-in-citation content-type="access-date"
iso-8601-date="2006-11-15">cited 2006 Nov 15</date-in-citation>
<size units="screens">[about 3 screens]</size>
<comment>Available from:
<uri>http://www.nlm.nih.gov/pubs/factsheets/aidsinfs.html</uri>
</comment>
</element-citation>
</ref>
...

Example 4

In a mixed-style bibliographic reference (punctuation and spacing preserved):
...
<ref>
<mixed-citation publication-type="book" publication-format="web">
<source>Fact sheet: AIDS information resources</source>
[Internet]. <publisher-loc>Bethesda
(MD)</publisher-loc>: <publisher-name>National
Library of Medicine (US)</publisher-name>;
<year iso-8601-date="2003-05-02">2003</year> <month>May</month>
<day>2</day> [updated <date-in-citation content-type="updated"
iso-8601-date="2005-07-14">2005 Jul 14</date-in-citation>;
cited <date-in-citation content-type="access-date"
iso-8601-date="2006-11-15">2006 Nov 15</date-in-citation>].
<size units="screens">[about 3 screens]</size>.
Available from:
<uri>http://www.nlm.nih.gov/pubs/factsheets/aidsinfs.html</uri>.
</mixed-citation>
</ref>
...