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is being cited; however, casual readers may not be able to get access to the precise state you cite, if it has been superseded by newer releases.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to specific words is crucial, citing the print version (if any) may be preferable, with the recognition that it may be out of date with respect to the most current online release.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 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

The TEI Guidelines are copyrighted by the Text Encoding Initiative Consortium, and are made available under the terms and conditions of the GNU General Public License (version 2). This license permits a wide range of uses, including the following:

Users may make copies of the Guidelines, either 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 Guidelines, either for free or for a fee, provided that they
- include the relevent information that the Guidelines are available under the terms and conditions of the GNU General Public License;
- either distribute the source or a pointer to the source along with any derived versions.
Users may make changes to the Guidelines and distribute the modified version provided that they
- include the relevent information that the modified version of the Guidelines are available under the terms and conditions of the GNU General Public License;
- either distribute the source or a pointer to the source along with any derived versions;
- put a prominent notice stating that a change has been made, and including the date of any change into each file that has been modified.

Because the names "Text Encoding Initiative" and "TEI" are registered trademarks, modified guidelines may only use these names in modified form that makes clear their difference from the original TEI: for instance, "A Modified Text Encoding Initative" or "AMTEI". Using these names without such qualification requires written permission from the TEI Consortium.

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, so long as you include the front page, as it has the necessary information: the fact that the Guidelines, including the copy you are giving away, are licensed under the GPL, and an indication of where the source files can be found. (If you don't include the front page, you would be responsible for ensuring that this information was included somehow.)
Downloading or giving to others the source of the TEI Guidelines (they already include the GPL and source information).
Distributing copies of the TEI Guidelines (source or derived) on CDs or from websites, so long as the GPL and an indication of where to locate the source are included.