In case you do not know, I find Google Scholar to be pretty useful for finding dates and other information about the paper - e.g. in this case https://scholar.g

In case you do not know, I find Google Scholar to be pretty useful for finding dates and other information about the paper - e.g. in this case https://scholar.google.com/scholar?hl=en&as_sdt=0%2C14&q=New+Approximation+Algorithms+for+Graph+Coloring&btnG= https://scholar.google.com/scholar?hl=en&as_sdt=0%2C14&q=New... I work with papers in CS/math and have been able to find dates and metadata like DOI pretty quick. There are complications when there are really multiple versions of a paper, like one in a conference that is only an extended abstract and one in a journal, but you would need to figure out which version you want to read in that situation anyway. I agree it's annoying, but coupled with reference manager software like Zotero it's hardly an issue for me.