ISO 690 governs bibliographic references to published material in both print and non-print documents.
[3] The current version of the standard was published in 2021 and covers all kinds of information resources, including monographs, serials, contributions, patents, cartographic materials, electronic information resources (including computer software and databases), music, recorded sound, prints, photographs, graphic and audiovisual works, and moving images.
ISO 690 prescribes a referencing scheme with a fixed order of bibliographic elements in which the publication date appears after the "production information" of place and publisher, but it allows an exception for the Harvard system, in which the date appears after the creator name(s).
[8] The second edition, published in 1987, includes elements specific to patent citations, rendering obsolete the ISO 3388:1977 standard devoted to them.
In 2010, these two documents were revised and merged into a single work, constituting the third edition of the standard.