What access date should I use in my bibliography for R&R manuscript?

[Santommaso]

A year ago I submitted a manuscript to a journal, and following the MLA style guidelines my list of references includes an accessed date for websites. Should I update the accessed dates, or should I keep the old dates? Keeping the old dates (1) shows how long my manuscript was held up by the journal, and (2) shows I was on this topic earlier, since some new literature has come up in the last year. Perhaps I am overthinking. Grateful for suggestions.

[dr_codex]

A year ago I submitted a manuscript to a journal, and following the MLA style guidelines my list of references includes an accessed date for websites. Should I update the accessed dates, or should I keep the old dates? Keeping the old dates (1) shows how long my manuscript was held up by the journal, and (2) shows I was on this topic earlier, since some new literature has come up in the last year. Perhaps I am overthinking. Grateful for suggestions.

My advice would be to do what I tell my students: cite what you actually read, when you read it. That way, if somebody subsequently makes edits, deletions, etc., you've still accurately represented what you used. If new stuff has come up since, you'll probably need to include it as part of the "revise" process.

[traductio]

During the R&R process, I usually recheck all my links and update my "accessed" dates accordingly. I figure the point (at least for journal articles where the content isn't going to change) is to be clear about when the link worked. With things that might change (newspaper articles, for instance, or blog entries), I leave the date of the version I'm citing.

Truth be told, I think it's not a terribly useful convention, especially for things where the content is not going to change. So I've been known to change all the dates to, say, my wedding anniversary, or my kids' birthdays, as long as the site was as I describe it on those dates.