Application Notes: Namespace JATS Elements

There is no default namespace required for the elements and attributes in the Journal Article Tag Suite. 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: