Journal Archiving and Interchange Tag Library NISO JATS Draft Version 1.1d2

General Introduction

This “Tag Library” is provided as a service to users of ANSI/NISO Z39.96-2011, JATS: Journal Article Tag Suite; the Tag Library is not part of NISO Z39.96. It contains non-normative information that is intended to be helpful to users of NISO Z39.96, including:
  • Remarks on usage and relationships among elements and attributes;
  • Structural Diagrams, showing the element hierarchy;
  • Tagging examples;
  • Best practice recommendations;
  • Implementation advice;
  • Discussion of accessibility and the Tag Suite; and
  • Pointers to (non-normative) downloadable versions of DTDs, XSDs, and RNGs that implement the NISO JATS Tag Sets.
The intent of the Journal Article Tag Suite is to provide a common format in which publishers and archives can exchange journal content. The Suite provides a set of XML schema modules that define elements and attributes for describing the textual and graphical content of journal articles as well as some non-article material such as letters, editorials, and book and product reviews.

Introduction to the Journal Archiving Tag Set

Rationale

The Journal Archiving and Interchange Tag Set (“Journal Archiving Tag Set”) defines elements and attributes that describe the content and metadata of journal articles, including research and non-research articles, letters, editorials, and book and product reviews. This Tag Set allows for descriptions of the full article content or just the article header metadata.
The intent of the Archiving Tag Set is to preserve the intellectual content of journals independent of the form in which that content was originally delivered. This Tag Set enables an archive to capture structural and semantic components of existing material without modeling any particular sequence or textual format.
It was planned that Archiving could be used for conversion from a variety of journal source Tag Sets, with the intent of providing a single format:
  • in which publishers could deliver their content to a wide range of archives, and
  • into which archives could conveniently translate content from many publishers.
In order to enable description of the content used by the wide array of publishers, repositories, aggregators, etc., this Tag Set uses many loose structures, including some elements with nearly all content structures optional. Many attribute values in the Tag Set are data character values, accommodating any source values. Because some article components are prescriptive in nature, article metadata (<article-meta>) for example, the Archiving Tag Set includes a few completely generic structures for capturing semantic tagging that is not available natively in this Tag Set. Although the original publisher’s publication order cannot always be preserved, particularly within the journal and article metadata, the Archiving Tag Set works harder than any of the other Tag Sets in this Suite to allow almost any publication arrangement and to allow re-tagging as renaming without rearrangement during conversion.
The Archiving Tag Set has a distinct focus on conversion from multiple sources. That focus has made this Tag Set a large and inclusive one. Many elements have been created explicitly so that information tagged by publishers would not be discarded when they converted material from another Tag Set to this one (or one created from this Suite). Care has also been taken to provide several mechanisms (frequently, information classing attributes) to preserve the intellectual content of a document structure when that structure is converted from another Tag Set or schema to this one, even when there is no exact element equivalent of the structure.
The exact replication of the look and feel of any particular journal has not been a consideration. Therefore, many purely formatting mechanisms have not been included. At the same time, Archiving is intended to preserve observed content, without resorting to stylesheets or generation of textual elements. For that reason, labels, numbers, and symbols of tables, figures, sidebars, and the like can be recorded as elements, as can the punctuation and spaces inside bibliographic references and lists.

Scope

By design, this is a model for journal articles, such as the typical research article found in an STM journal, and not a model for complete journals. This Tag Set does not include an overarching model for a collection of articles. In addition, the following journal material is not described by this Tag Set:
  • Company, product, or service display advertising
  • Job search or classified advertising
  • Calendars, meeting schedules, and conference announcements (except as these can be tagged as ordinary articles, sub-articles, or sections within articles)
  • Material specific to an individual journal, such as Author Guidelines, Policy and Scope statements, editorial or advisory boards, detailed indicia, etc.

Structural Overview

The Journal Archiving and Interchange Tag Set defines a document that is a top-level component of a journal such as an article, a book or product review, or a letter to the editor. Each such document is composed of one or more parts; if there is more than one part, they must appear in the following order:
  • Front matter (required). The article front matter contains the metadata for the article (also called article header information), for example, the article title, the journal in which it appears, the date and issue of publication for that issue of that journal, a copyright statement, etc. Both article-level and issue-level metadata (in the element <article-meta>) and journal-level metadata (in the element <journal-meta>) may be captured.
    This JATS front matter is not textual front matter as appears in books, rather this is bibliographic information about the article and the journal in which it was published.
  • Body of the article (optional). The body of the article is the main textual and graphic content of the article. This usually consists of paragraphs and sections, which may themselves contain figures, tables, sidebars (boxed text), etc. The body of the article is optional to accommodate those repositories that just keep article header information and do not tag the textual content.
  • Back matter for the article (optional). If present, the article back matter contains information that is ancillary to the main text, such as a glossary, appendix, or list of cited references.
  • Floating Material (optional). A publisher may choose to place all the floating objects in an article and its back matter (such as tables, figures, boxed text sidebars, etc.) into a separate container element outside the narrative flow for convenience of processing.
  • Following the front, body, back, and floating material, there may be either one or more responses to the article or one or more subordinate articles:
    • Response. A response is a commentary on the article itself, for example, an opinion from an editor on the importance of the article or a reply from the original author to a letter concerning his article.
    • Sub-article. A sub-article is a small article that is completely contained inside another article.

Tag Sets Developed from the Suite

XML schemas (DTDs, XSDs, and RNGs) are provided for 4 different variations of the Archiving Tag Set:
  • Archiving Tag Set using XHTML tables and MathML 2.0
  • Archiving Tag Set using XHTML tables and MathML 3.0
  • Archiving Tag Set using both XHTML tables and OASIS Exchange CALS tables with MathML 2.0
  • Archiving Tag Set using both XHTML tables and OASIS Exchange CALS tables with MathML 3.0
There is a separate Tag Library describing the OASIS Exchange CALS Table model which is available at: jats.nlm.nih.gov/options/OASIS/tag-library/19990315/index.html
This Archiving Tag Set is one of several created from the Suite. Information about the other Tag Sets may be found at the following site: //jats.nlm.nih.gov.

How to Read This Tag Library

Terms and Definitions

Element
Elements are nouns, like “speech” and “speaker”, that represent components of journal articles, the articles themselves, and accompanying metadata.

Attribute
Attributes hold facts about an element, such as which type of list (e.g., numbered, bulleted, or plain) is being requested when using the List (<list>) tag, or the name of a pointer to an external file that contains an image. Each attribute has both a name (e.g., @list-type) and a value (e.g., “bullet”).

Metadata
Data about the data, for example, bibliographic information. The distinction is between metadata elements which describe an article (such as the name of the journal in which an article was published or the article title) versus elements which contain the textual and graphical content of the article.

How To Start Using This Tag Library

How you use the documentation will depend on what you need to learn about the modules and this Tag Set.

Learn this Tag Set

If you want to learn about the elements and the attributes in this Tag Set so you can tag documents or learn how the journal article model is constructed, here is a good way to start.
  • Read the Tag Library General Introduction, taking particular note of the next section that describes the parts of the Tag Library so you will know what resources are available.
  • Next, if you do not know the symbols used in the Document Hierarchy diagrams, read the “Key to the Near & Far® Diagrams”.
  • Scan the Document Hierarchy diagrams to get a good sense of the top-level elements and their contents. (Find what is inside an <article>, now what is inside each of the four large pieces of an article, keep working your way down.)
  • Pick an element from one of the diagrams. Look up the element in the Elements Section to find the full name of the element, its definition, usage notes, content allowed, and any attributes. Look up one of the attributes to find its full name, usage notes, and potential values.
Finally, if you are interested in conversion from a particular source:
  • Look at an article in a printed or online journal or look at the DTD/schema for the other journal.
    • Can all the information you want to store from an article fit into the models shown in the diagrams?
    • Do you have, or know how to get, all the information the models require? Will that information always be available for documents that are complete and correct?
    • How difficult will it be to identify the parts of the information using the elements and attributes described in these models? Would changes to one or more models make this easier?
  • Now look at some non-article content, such as a news column, a book review, or some letters to the editor. Are there tags to handle all these article types and all their components?

Structure of This Tag Library

This Tag Library contains the following sections:

How To Use (Read Me First)
How to make best use of this Tag Library to reference XML tags, become familiar with the Archiving Tag Set as a whole, or see examples of recommended usage.

Root Element
Naming the <article> element as the root of this XML schema (DTD, XSD, RNG).

General Introduction
This introduction to the contents of this Tag Library, to the design philosophy and intended usage of the JATS DTD Suite, and to the Journal Archiving Tag Set.

Selecting a Model & Schema
Describing the variant Archiving schemas and how to choose the right one for your implementation.

Elements Section
Descriptions of the elements used in the Journal Archiving Tag Set and the parts of the JATS DTD Suite used in this Tag Set. The element descriptions are listed in alphabetical order by tag name.
[Note: Each element has two names: a “tag name” (formally called an element-type name) that is used in tagged documents, in the DTDs/schemas, and by XML software; and an “element name” (usually longer) that provides a fuller, more descriptive name for the benefit of human readers. For example, a tag name might be <disp-quote> with the corresponding element name Quote, Displayed, or a tag name might be <verse-group> with the corresponding element name Verse Form for Poetry.]

Attributes Section
Descriptions of the attributes in the Journal Archiving Tag Set. Like elements, attributes also have two names: the shorter machine-readable one and a (usually longer) human-readable one. Attributes are listed in order by the shorter, machine-readable names. For example, the attribute short name @list-type instead of the more informal, easier to read: Type of List.

Parameter Entity Section
Names (with occasional descriptions) and contents of the parameter entities in this Tag Set modules.

Document Hierarchy Diagrams
Tree-like graphical representations of the content of many elements. This can be a fast, visual way to determine the structure of an article or of any element within an article.

Common Tagging Practice
Tips, tricks, hints, and examples of how (and why) to tag certain structures using this Tag Set.

Accessibility
Brief description of how NISO JATS approaches the 508 and WCAG 2.0 Accessibility issues.

Implementing This Tag Set
Implementor’s instructions for using this Tag Set, customizing this Tag Set, or making derivative tag sets based on this one.

Version 1.1d2 Change Report
Pointer to the description of the changes made in response to the public comments on the ANSI/NISO JATS 1.1d1 prior to October 2014, that resulted in this Committee Draft NISO JATS 1.1d2 Tag Set.

Context Table
A listing of where each element may be used. All elements in this Tag Set are given in a single alphabetical list.
The Context Table is formatted in two columns. The first column (“This Element”) names an element, with the name shown in pointy brackets. In the second column (“May Be Contained In”) for each element is an alphabetical list of all the elements in which the first column element may occur. For example, if the first column contains the element <front> and the second column contains only the <article> element, this means that the <front> element may only be used directly inside an <article>. Most elements may be used inside more than one other element. For example, the element <def> (a definition) may be used inside the <abbrev> and the <def-item> elements.
The Context Table contains the same information that is found on each element page under the heading “This element may be contained in:”.

Index
Where to find elements, tags, and terms used in this Tag Library. Includes synonyms (terms not used in this Tag Set) that direct the reader to elements used in this Tag Library, for example, “author” is paired with Contributor <contrib>.

Supporting Documentation Home
The Journal Archiving Tag Set is available in three forms: an XML Document Type Definition (DTD); a W3C XML Schema (XSD); and a RELAX NG Schema (RNG). Each of these formats is available in two forms: a zipped file containing a downloadable version of the schema (often in multiple files), and a readable/browsable version in which the internal markup has been escaped.

Tag Library Typographic Conventions

<alt-text> The tag name of an element (written in lower case with the entire name surrounded by “< >”)
Alternate Text Name (for a figure, etc.) The element name (long descriptive name of an element) or the descriptive name of an attribute (written in title case, with important words capitalized, and the words separated by spaces)
@name The “@” sign before a name indicates an attribute name.
must not Emphasis to stress a point

Acknowledgments

We thank bmj.com, Molecular Biology of the Cell, and The Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the U.S.A. for providing many of the sample articles used in this Tag Library.

Journal Archiving and Interchange Tag Library NISO JATS Draft Version 1.1d2

Version of December 2014

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