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<sec> Section

Headed group of material; the basic structural unit of the body of a document.

A very short article, or a simple article such as an editorial or an obituary, may contain nothing but paragraphs and other paragraph-level elements such as figures and tables. But most journal articles are divided into sections, each with a title that describes the content of the section, such as “Introduction”, “Methodology”, or “Conclusions”.

Sections are recursive, that is, various levels of sections are indicated by containment, not by different names for the subsections. A <sec> element may contain lower level sections that are also tagged using the <sec> element, not tagged explicitly as <sec2>, <sec3>, or <subsec1>, etc.

Untitled Sections

In previous versions of this Tag Set, a <title> element was required on each section. A title was considered to be the basic requirement for producing an automated Table of Contents for online viewing of an article, so a title was required. However, as nice as it would be to keep that requirement, this is a conversion target Tag Set, and there are at least two circumstances that lead to “title-less” sections. Conversion experience has shown that some publishers allow loose paragraphs between sections, and the most logical way to handle these paragraphs is as the content of untitled sections. Tagged documents have also been seen in which an article has been made to “look right” by creating the look of a heading using <bold> inside an otherwise empty paragraph, rather than using a real title or heading element. So, in this Tag Set, the model for section (<sec>) has been redefined to make the elements <label> (for example, “4.1.1”) and <title> (for example, “Temperature Inversions”) both optional. It should be noted that without true section-level headings it will be difficult to create automatic Tables of Contents and high-quality web and print displays.

The <sec> element can be used within <back> to tag material that has not been explicitly named as one of the other back matter components, that is, it is not named as an appendix, an acknowledgment, a glossary, etc. For example, tables are frequently placed in the back matter, with no other designation than a label such as “Table 6”, or a title such as “Epochs of Geologic Time”.

May be contained in

The following, in order:

<sec-meta> Section Metadata, zero or one
<label> Label (of an Equation, Figure, Reference, etc.), zero or one
<title> Title, zero or one
Any combination of:
<sec> Section, zero or more
Any combination of:

<!ELEMENT  sec          %sec-model;                                  >

<article dtd-version="1.4d1">
 ...
 <body>
  <sec sec-type="intro">
   <title>Introduction</title>
   <p>Geriatric day hospitals developed rapidly in the United Kingdom
    in the 1960s as an important component of care provision. The model
    has since been widely applied in several Western countries. Day
    hospitals provide multidisciplinary assessment and rehabilitation
    in an outpatient setting and have a pivotal position between hospital
    and home based services. ... We therefore undertook a systematic
    review of the randomized trials of day hospital care.</p>
  </sec>
  <sec sec-type="methods">
   <title>Methods</title>
   <p>The primary question addressed was ...</p>
   <sec>
    <title>Inclusion criteria</title>
    <p>We set out to identify all ...</p>
   </sec>
   <sec>
    <title>Search strategy</title>
    <p>We searched for ...</p>
   </sec>
   ...
  </sec>
  ...
 </body>
 <back>...</back>
</article>

<article dtd-version="1.4d1">
 <front>
  <article-meta>
   ...
   <permissions>
    <copyright-statement>Copyright © 1999, British
     Medical Journal</copyright-statement>
    <copyright-year>1999</copyright-year>
   </permissions>
   <abstract abstract-type="section">
    <sec>
     <title>Objective</title>
     <p>To examine the effectiveness of day hospital 
      attendance in prolonging independent living for 
      elderly people.</p>
    </sec>
    <sec>
     <title>Design</title>
     <p>Systematic review of 12 controlled clinical 
      trials (available by January 1997) comparing day 
      hospital care with comprehensive care (five trials), 
      domiciliary care (four trials), or no comprehensive 
      care (three trials).</p>
    </sec>
    <sec>
     <title>Subjects</title>
     <p>2867 elderly people.</p>
    </sec>
    <sec>
     <title>Main outcome measures</title>
     <p>Death, institutionalisation, disability, global 
      “poor outcome,” and use of resources.</p>
    </sec>
    <sec>
     <title>Results</title>
     <p>Overall, there was no significant difference between 
      day hospitals and alternative services ...</p>
    </sec>
    <sec>
     <title>Conclusions</title>
     <p>Day hospital care seems to be an effective service for 
      elderly people ...</p>
     <p><boxed-text position="float">
      <sec>
       <title>Key messages</title>
       <p>...</p>
      </sec>
     </boxed-text></p>
    </sec>
   </abstract>
  </article-meta>
 </front>
 ...
</article>

...
<sec id="s0005" xml:lang="en" lang-group="s0005"
  lang-variant="translation" lang-source="translator"
  lang-focus="secondary">
 <title>Method</title>
 ...
</sec>

<sec id="s0011">...</sec>

<sec id="s0013" xml:lang="es" lang-group="s0005"
  lang-variant="original" lang-source="author"
  lang-focus="primary">
 <title>Método</title>
 ...
</sec>
...

Related Resources

See: Hierarchy diagram - Section

Journal Archiving and Interchange Tag Library Committee Draft version 1.4d1

<sec> Section

Usage/Remarks

Common Practice

Multi-lang Attributes

Base Attributes