The Relaton Information Model

The Relaton Information Model is a comprehensive data model for bibliographic references and citations. It is the machine-readable implementation of ISO 690:2021, extending the standard to meet the specific needs of standards development organizations and the broader scholarly ecosystem.

Learn about ISO 690 and how Relaton implements it →

Architecture

The model is organized around the BibliographicItem — the central entity that represents any citable document. A BibliographicItem contains:

• Titles — in multiple scripts and languages
• Contributors — persons, organizations, and their roles
• Identifiers — document IDs, DOIs, ISBNs, URIs
• Production information — publisher, place, dates
• Relations — links to other documents (replaces, amends, etc.)
• Classification — document type, keywords, subjects
• Content details — edition, medium, series, numeration

ISO 690 Entity Mapping

ISO 690 defines 14 data element categories. Each maps directly to a Relaton entity:

ISO 690 Area	Relaton Entity	Description
Title	Title	Title types, scripts, and formatting
Creator	Contributor	Person, Organization, Affiliation
Edition	Edition	Edition and versioning
Material Designation	Medium	Content/carrier/size
Production	Production	Place, publisher, dates
Publication Place	Location	Access locations, URIs
Publisher	Production	Publisher within production
Date	Production	Date within production
Series	Series	Series membership
Numeration	Numeration	Extent, pagination, size
Identifiers	Identifiers	Document identifiers and scopes
Relations	Relations	60+ document relation types
Additional Info	Additional Info	Keywords, classification, tags
Resource Type	Bibitem Types	ISO 690 + BibTeX union types

Full ISO 690 mapping and details →

Key Concepts

Flavors

Relaton uses a "flavor" architecture where each standards organization has a dedicated gem that retrieves and formats bibliographic data specific to that organization. There are 27 flavors covering international, regional, national, and identifier bodies.

View all flavors →

Serializations

The model supports five serialization formats, each suited to different workflows:

Format	Use Case
Relaton YAML	Primary interchange; human-readable, editable
Relaton XML	Canonical serialization; schema-validatable
BibTeX	Integration with LaTeX workflows
AsciiBib	Embedding in AsciiDoc documents
JSON-LD	Linked data and web API applications

Serialization details with code examples →

Document Relation Types

The model defines 60+ relation types between documents, including:

• replaces / replacedBy
• amends / amendedBy
• corrigends / corrigendedBy
• hasPart / partOf
• complements / complementOf
• obsoletes / obsoletedBy
• updates / updatedBy
• derives / derivedFrom

View all relation types →

UML Diagrams

Formal UML diagrams of the Relaton data model are available from the relaton-models repository.

View UML diagrams →