Author, publisher and publication metadata

Metadata relating to author, publisher and other publication details for a publication or a topic are stored in author, publisher, copyright, and prodinfo elements in the ditamap topicmeta section or the topic prolog section.

Publications, and individual topics, can have publication metadata associated with them. This metadata includes:
  • the name of the author (or authors)
  • the name of the publisher
  • the name of the copyright holder
  • the product the information relates to

This metadata is stored in a number of elements within the topicmeta section of a ditamap, and in the equivalent prolog section of a topic.

The author element contains the name of the document or topic author, and can be used as many times as required. It stores additional information about the author in the following attributes:
href
contains the URL of the author's e-mail address or Web site, or the address of a DITA topic in the collection containing information about the author
type
allows the role of the author to be specified, with values of creator (primary author) and contributor (for contributing author).
The publisher element contains the name of the document publisher, and is only allowed to be used once. It stores additional information about the publisher in the following attribute:
href
contains the URL of the publisher's e-mail address or Web site, or the address of a DITA topic in the collection containing information about the publisher

The copyright element doesn't contain text; it only stores information in nested elements and attributes. The copyright element can be used as many times as required (to cater for joint copyright ownership of a work). If there is more than one copyright holder, the type attribute can be used to nominate whether the holder is the primary holder or the secondary holder. The copyright element has two nested elements: copyryear (which is mandatory) and copyrholder.

The copyryear element doesn't contain text, and only contains one year attribute. You should enter the year of copyright in this attribute, in YYYY format. More than one copyryear element can be included within a copyright element if the copyright extends over more than one year.

The copyrholder element simply contains the legal name of the copyright holder.

The prodinfo element contains information about the product (or products) that are the subject matter of the publication or topic. The prodinfo element doesn't contain text; instead, it contains the following elements:
prodname element
the name of the product that is the subject matter
vrmlist element
itself contains a series of vrm elements that contain the version, release and modification information about the product
brand element
the manufacturer or brand associated with the product
series element
the product series that the product belongs to
platform element
if the product is a software product, the platform or operating system that the product runs on
prognum element
the product code, program number, order number or other identifying number used for the product
featnum element
most relevant to the topic prolog, rather than map topicmeta, this is the internal feature number or other identifier
component element
the component of the product that this topic relates to

An example of a topicmeta section containing some of these elements is: 

<topicmeta>
  <author href="mailto:leo@smiggins.com">Leo Smiggins</author>
  <publisher>FJ Heavy Industries</publisher>
  <copyright>
    <copyryear year="2009"></copyryear>
    <copyrholder>Supara Australia</copyrholder>
  </copyright>
  <prodinfo>
    <prodname>Impress XRW</prodname>
    <brand>Supara</brand>
    <series>Impress</series>	
  </prodinfo>
</topicmeta>