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

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

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

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

Using a namespace with BITS 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 BITS, the JATS table elements will need to be either stripped of the JATS/BITS namespace or given their own HTML namespace. BITS 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.