person-group-type Type of People in the Person Group

Role of the person(s) being named in the <person-group> element (for example, author, editor, curator).

Usage/Remarks

The @person-group-type attribute was designed to name the role of the contributor or group of contributors in a citation and was also designed to accept any text as its value. Values may be terms from a controlled vocabulary such as CRediT (“Data Curation”), natural language words such as such as “author” or “deep sea diver”, or terms previously used in the JATS Tag Sets for the @person-group-type attribute (“allauthors”, “assignee”, “compiler”, “director”, etc.).

Semantic Roles Best Practice

When a contributor role is described by a controlled vocabulary, such as the NISO CRediT (Contributor Roles Taxonomy), Best Practice is not to use the @person-group-type attribute to name the formal contributor role. (The attribute may still be useful for informal groupings such as “editors”.)
Best Practice is to use the <role> element inside <person-group> to indicate that all members of the group perform the same function. The vocabulary attributes on <role> should then point directly to the appropriate CRediT term, allowing the content of the <role> element to take any useful display value, while still preserving the CRediT semantics.
The major advantages of using <role> instead of @person-group-type are:
  • the ability to tie the content of the role to a formal vocabulary using the four JATS vocabulary attributes, and
  • the ability for a contributor to play more than one role in the creation of an article.
Of course, even when not using a controlled vocabulary, it is always possible to substitute the element <role> for the attribute @person-group-type.
Values from previous set list
In the pre-CRediT days, the @person-group-type value had the following suggested values, which JATS users not choosing to align with CRediT may prefer instead, and which will certainly be seen in older documents:
allauthors
Used to identify a complete list of authors when a subset of the author group is used elsewhere in the citation. This may occur, for example, when a citation identifies both a book and a chapter within the book.
assignee
Persons to whom a patent is awarded
author
Content creators
compiler
Persons who put together a composite work from multiple sources
curator
Person or group responsible for data curation or archival curation
director
Directors
editor
Content editors
guest-editor
Content editors who have been invited to edit all or part of a work
illustrator
Creator of the pictures, drawings, or other illustrations (includes photographer)
inventor
Idea, software, or machine creators
research-assistant
Assisted with the scientific research that is the basis for a work
transed
Editors of a translated version of a work
translator
Persons who translated the work from one language into another
Custom values for tag set compatibility
The value “custom” is used in versions of JATS that have a static list of values for the @person-group-type attribute. To add a value to such a list, the @person-group-type is given as “custom” and a separate @custom-type attribute provides the typing value. There is no need for this mechanism in Archiving, since there are no restrictions on the value of @person-group-type, but “custom” and @custom-type have both been included in Archiving so that documents valid to a stricter version of the JATS Tag Set will also be valid to Archiving.
OPTIONAL on element: <person-group>
Value Meaning
Text, numbers, or special characters The role played by the person group in the creation/production of the article, for example, “editor” or “research-assistant”.
Restriction @person-group-type is an optional attribute; there is no default.
Tagged Samples
@person-group-type identifies contributor groups
...
<person-group person-group-type="author">
 <name><surname>Lawrence</surname>
  <given-names>Ruth A</given-names></name>
</person-group>
...
Using both @person-group-type and <role>
<role> can describe the function of a contributor using CRediT taxonomy terms.
...
<ref>
 <mixed-citation publisher-type="gov">
  <person-group person-group-type="author">
  <string-name><surname>Norman</surname>, 
  <given-names>John C</given-names></string-name>
  (<role vocab="CRediT" 
  vocab-identifier="http://credit.niso.org/"
  vocab-term="Writing &#8212; original draft"
  vocab-term-identifier=
    "http://credit.niso.org/contributor-roles/writing-original-draft/"
  >sole author</role>), <aff>Texas Heart Institute, 
  Houston, TX</aff></person-group>.
  <gov>Report No.: NIH-N01-HV-5-3006-4-VI. Contract No.
  N01-HV-5-3006</gov>. <source>ALVAD: 1980. A 
  comprehensive final report to NHLI</source>.
  Vol. <volume>1</volume>. ...</mixed-citation>
</ref>
...