TEI: Licensing and Citation

How to Cite the TEI Guidelines

The canonical release of the TEI Guidelines is the version found at the TEI web site, which is kept up to date as new versions are released. A print version of the Guidelines may also be produced, but typically only one print version will be published for each major release of the Guidelines (P3, P4, P5, and so forth). For citation purposes, the question of which version to cite will depend on the purpose of the citation. If the goal is to provide a reference to the most current version, the online version is preferable. Using the version numbers and (if necessary) the date of last update, you can indicate with some precision which state of the Guidelines is being cited; however, casual readers may not be able to get access to the precise state you cite, if it has been superseded by newer releases. (All previous versions can be recovered from the repository maintained at the TEI SourceForge site.) For purposes where a stable reference to specific words is crucial, citing the print version (if any) may be preferable, with the recognition that it may be out of date with respect to the most current online release.

Below are the recommended forms of citation for the TEI Guidelines and its component parts, following the recommendations of the Columbia Guide to Online Style. The version number indicates the major release and version (e.g. P5, version 1.0), and can be found on the title page for the TEI Guidelines. The ‘last modified date’ is the date on which the Guidelines were last updated and can also be found on the title page for the Guidelines; this includes any change that affects the text or substance of the Guidelines. The ‘date of access’ is the date on which the author of the citation accessed the page in question.
To cite P5 in its entirety, long (preferred) version
TEI Consortium, eds. TEI P5: Guidelines for Electronic Text Encoding and Interchange. [Version number]. [Last modified date]. TEI Consortium. http://www.tei-c.org/Guidelines/P5/ ([Date of access]).
To cite P5 in its entirety, abbreviated version:
TEI Consortium, eds. Guidelines for Electronic Text Encoding and Interchange. [last modified date]. http://www.tei-c.org/P5/.
To cite a chapter or section, long (preferred) version:
TEI Consortium, eds. "4.3.2 Floating Texts." TEI P5: Guidelines for Electronic Text Encoding and Interchange. [Version number]. [Last modified date]. TEI Consortium. http://www.tei-c.org/release/doc/tei-p5-doc/html/DS.html#DSFLT ([Date of access])
To cite a chapter or section, abbreviated version:
TEI Consortium, eds. "Floating Texts." Guidelines for Electronic Text Encoding and Interchange. [Last modified date]. http://www.tei-c.org/release/doc/tei-p5-doc/html/DS.html#DSFLT ([Date of access]).
To cite a particular release's chapter or section, abbreviated version:
TEI Consortium, eds. "Floating Texts." Guidelines for Electronic Text Encoding and Interchange. 1.7.0. [Last modified date]. http://www.tei-c.org/Vault/P5/1.7.0/doc/tei-p5-doc/en/html/DS.html#DSFLT ([Date of access]).
To cite a chapter or section using <bibl> :
<bibl> <editor><orgName>TEI Consortium</orgName></editor> <title level="a" n="4.3.2">Floating Texts</title> <title level="m" type="sub">TEI P5:</title> <title level="m" type="main">Guidelines for Electronic Text Encoding and Interchange</title> <edition>$$$$$</edition> <date type="generated" when="2007-09-12T13:36:42Z"/> <ptr target="http://www.tei-c.org/release/doc/tei-p5-doc/html/DS.html#DSFLT/"/> <date type="accessed" when="2007-09-12"/> </bibl>

License Terms

Most TEI Consortium materials, including the TEI Guidelines, are copyrighted by the Text Encoding Initiative Consortium, and are made available under the terms and conditions of both Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Unported License and a BSD 2-Clause license.

You may choose the license that is most appropriate for the use you intend to make of the TEI material. Hence it is made available under both the CC+BY and BSD-2 licences. The CC+BY licence is generally appropriate for usages which treat TEI content as data or documentation. The BSD-2 licence is generally appropriate for usage of TEI content in a software environment. For further information or clarification, please contact the TEI Consortium.

This license permits a wide range of uses, as long as attribution is preserved, including the following:
  • Users may make copies of TEI materials, whether the XML source or the derived products (XHTML, PDF, DTD, RELAX NG, etc.) either digitally, with a photocopier, by audio recording, or by any other means.
  • Users may distribute copies of the TEI materials, either for free or for a fee.
  • Users may make changes to TEI materials and distribute the modified version provided that they provide attribution of the TEI Consortium as the source.
The following activities are all allowed and encouraged:
  • Downloading a copy of the HTML version of the TEI Guidelines
  • Giving a copy of the HTML version of the TEI Guidelines to a friend.
  • Downloading or giving to others the source of the TEI materials.
  • Distributing copies of the TEI materials (source or derived) on CDs or from websites.
  • Making derived software that uses the TEI materials as a source
But make sure to provide reasonable attribution back to the TEI Consortium, for example by citing this website.

BSD 2-Clause

If you choose to use the BSD 2-Clause license, these conditions require including the following:

Copyright 2011 TEI Consortium. All rights reserved. Redistribution and use in source and binary forms, with or without modification, are permitted provided that the following conditions are met: * Redistributions of source code must retain the above copyright notice, this list of conditions and the following disclaimer. * Redistributions in binary form must reproduce the above copyright notice, this list of conditions and the following disclaimer in the documentation and/or other materials provided with the distribution. This software is provided by the copyright holders and contributors "as is" and any express or implied warranties, including, but not limited to, the implied warranties of merchantability and fitness for a particular purpose are disclaimed. In no event shall the copyright holder or contributors be liable for any direct, indirect, incidental, special, exemplary, or consequential damages (including, but not limited to, procurement of substitute goods or services; loss of use, data, or profits; or business interruption) however caused and on any theory of liability, whether in contract, strict liability, or tort (including negligence or otherwise) arising in any way out of the use of this software, even if advised of the possibility of such damage.