There is no default namespace required for the elements and attributes in JATS. This has been done for two reasons:

1. The majority of the publishing consumers of JATS are not using namespaces except for included vocabularies; and
2. Introducing a default namespace would not be backward compatible and would break the majority of existing JATS applications.

Although a default namespace is not required for JATS, some users may wish to namespace JATS elements and attributes in their application of the standard.

If a namespace is to be applied, the namespace URI should be “http://jats.nlm.nih.gov”, and the namespace prefix may be “jats”.

Using a namespace with JATS will require a certain level of namespace and general XML sophistication. If it is done, it should be done in a manner that best facilitates interchange. The following items should be considered:

• The MathML namespace (and the OASIS Exchange table model namespace if appropriate) should be retained.
• When making HTML from JATS, the JATS table elements will need to be either stripped of the JATS namespace or given their own HTML namespace. JATS does not incorporate the XHTML 1.1 table model; it uses elements, attributes, and models inspired by and based on the XHTML 1.1 table model.