Sometimes I read something I'm just like "what the literal fuck could you possibly be talking about?!" Of course the date of publication is a standard part of any journal article. I mean, a lot of them get into the weeds about it: date of submission, date of acceptance, date of early online publication, date of press.

Then I went back to this particular PDF and notice that indeed, it doesn't have the date of publication.

Then I re-read your sentence.

"I think the most annoying omission from the standard academic paper format is the year of publication." is subtly ambiguous.

"Sometimes authors omit elements required by the standard academic paper format, and of those omissions, omitting the date of publication is the most annoying."