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GlossaryPublic records, privacy, and data quality

Publication date

Publication date tells when information was released. Learn why it differs from the period covered, the event date, and a later revision date.

Publication date is the date a particular document, dataset, or release became publicly available. It describes the release of information, not necessarily the date of the events or measurements inside it. A report published this year can describe activity from last year or an earlier period.

A date belongs to a particular object

The Dublin Core metadata vocabulary distinguishes a resource's formal issuance date from its modification date. That distinction helps separate the first release of a publication from later changes to it. Dublin Core date terms.

For an online dataset, identify whether the date belongs to the catalog entry, a particular downloadable file, or a later edition. A portal's original creation date can remain unchanged while its records are updated many times afterward.

Example

Hypothetical: A department releases its 2025 annual report on March 15, 2026. On April 2, it publishes a corrected version of one table.

March 15 is the initial publication date. The activity period is 2025. April 2 is a revision date for the corrected release. Describing the report as “March 2026 incidents” would confuse the release date with the year measured by its contents.

Common confusion

Publication date differs from occurrence date, which concerns when an event happened, and report date, which concerns when information was reported or filed. The three can be weeks or months apart without referring to different events.

Publication date also differs from the date a reader accessed the material. A citation's access date helps identify when the source was consulted; it does not establish when the source first became public.

A missing publication date should remain unknown unless another reliable source establishes it. A file download time or search-engine crawl date is not an automatic substitute.

Citing and comparing releases

When quoting a statistic, retain both the publication date and the period represented. Add the version or revision date when the source has changed. That lets another reader locate the same release and understand why a newer page may show a different value.

For a continually updated feed, the first publication date may be less useful than the source-update and retrieval dates. The appropriate label depends on whether the reader is looking at a fixed report or a changing dataset.

A clear note might read, “2025 activity; report released March 15, 2026; table revised April 2.” The dates then explain separate milestones instead of creating the impression that a newly published number describes a newly occurring event.

Sources