REF Year of publication

[lwwar]

REF defines 'Year of publication' as the full 4-digit year in which the output first entered the public domain. Is 'date' value standardised to be first available date/first publicly available across EPrints installations, or does it push through the final in print date/year if available ('official date')?

$ref{year} = substr($eprint->value( "date" ),0,4);

It seems that EPrints pushes the official final date into export if entered?

This causes national system validation alerts when volume/issue/print copy of output comes out in 2021, but was first available / online in 2020 and meets the end of 2020 census date and is a valid submission. Thus, a COVID exception IS NOT required.