Bibliography - Many different input options for "date" and "year": How to use in a correct way?

Question

Let's take a look at one classical bibliography-entry for a online-source:

(I removed the irrelevant options for better visibility...)

@online{ID,
    ALTauthor = {author},
    title = {title},
    date = {date},           % the date of time the document was created (type in this way: 2015)
    OPTdate = {date},        % what is that?
    OPTmonth = {month},      % what is that?
    OPTyear = {year},        % what is that?
    OPTurldate = {urldate},  % the date of time the URL was visited (type in this way: 2015-07-16)
}

Which option do I have to use for which purpose? I am using Biblatex and Biber.

Thank you very much for your help!

BibTeX is flexible on fields: the various OPT... ones are non-standard so will be ignored by most styles. Have these come from a specific source, perhaps with a matching .bst file? — Joseph Wright, Jul 16 '15 at 08:52
Thanks for your answer! I don't think that they come from a specific source - it should be the standard in BibLaTeX I think? — Dave, Jul 16 '15 at 09:02
No, the standard fields for biblatex are just date, year, month, etc. — Joseph Wright, Jul 16 '15 at 09:08
Okay, I didn't know that. But which fields should I use now when using Biber and BibLaTeX? — Dave, Jul 16 '15 at 09:19
I think OPT is sort of comment in a template to indicate the corresponding field is optional. — Bernard, Jul 16 '15 at 10:25
Related: How can I use BibTeX to cite a web page?, Wikipedia: Cite This Page for LaTeX. Biblatex section 2.1.1 indicates that all its types support a url field, and there's an online type for online-only resources that uses author or editor, year or date, title, and url. — Mike Renfro, Jul 16 '15 at 12:41

score 2 · Accepted Answer · answered Jul 18 '15 at 12:28

If you are using Biblatex and Biber - not BibTeX - then

date is the main date the resource was created in YYYY-MM-DD format;
year, month and day are alternative formats for date, provided for backwards compatibility;
urldate is the date you visited the web page in YYYY-MM-DD format.

That's it.

For other sources, there is also

origdate which may be used by some styles for an original date of publication. For example, a translated work might use this for the date the original was published, since date would be the date of publication of the translation.

Bibliography - Many different input options for "date" and "year": How to use in a correct way?

1 Answers1