Java In A Nutshell, 5th Edition

A meta-annotation of this type specifies how long the annotated annotation type should be retained. The value( ) of this annotation type is one of the three RetentionPolicy enumerated constants. See RetentionPolicy for details. If an annotation type does not have an @Retention meta-annotation, its default retention is RetentionPolicy.CLASS .

public @interface Retention { // Public Instance Methods RetentionPolicy value ( ); }