When I schedule a submission for an issue that is already published, the submission will be published immediately, no matter which date I choose in the box below (“published”) and if the issue is unpublished the date doesn’t have any effect as well and is not visible to anyone but the editors that look it up where it was entered. Did I miss something? What is it for?
The “Date Published” is used for metadata – e.g. Google Scholar, Dublin Core, and other types of data exposed to other systems. In journal publishing it’s an important piece of metadata.
Thanks for answering my question!