NISO Announces Publication of Updated Journal Article Tag Suite—Version 1.3
The National Information Standards Organization (NISO) today publishes the latest update to the JATS: Journal Article Tag Suite standard (ANSI/NISO Z39.96-2021), Version 1.3. JATS provides a common XML format in which publishers and archives can exchange journal content—both articles (text and graphics) and non-article material such as letters, editorials, and book and product reviews. The Tag Suite is the complete set of elements and attributes described in the standard. Along with these descriptions, the standard includes three implementations of the suite, called Tag Sets, which are intended to provide models for archiving, publishing, and authoring journal article content.
Version 1.3 of the standard incorporates public comments made through October 2020. The main update is the inclusion of metadata to describe the XML artifact (as opposed to the content of the article). Other changes to the standard include the addition of models for new information types, questions and answers (adopted from the Book Interchange Tag Set—BITS), new ways of describing awards and grants, and more. All changes are backward compatible with JATS 1.0.
“In broad use by publishers and production firms worldwide, JATS has always been a community-driven standard. The Standing Committee has adopted an ANSI-approved continuous maintenance process to keep it up-to-date, and we appreciate the ongoing feedback and suggestions we receive from individuals and organizations, which help ensure its continuous improvement and practical value for its users,” said JATS Standing Committee Co-Chair, Jeffrey Beck of National Center for Biotechnology Information (NCBI), at the National Library of Medicine.
“We are also very grateful to the members of the JATS Standing Committee for their hard work evaluating and incorporating the suggestions and requests into the latest version of the standard,” added fellow Co-Chair, Tommie Usdin of Mulberry Technologies. “The ANSI/NISO formalization process ensures that the standard will be stable and ready for implementation.”
“The information community stands to benefit even further from the JATS standard, thanks to this updated version, made possible by the dedication and commitment of Jeff, Tommie, and the other members of the Standing Committee,” said Todd Carpenter, NISO’s Executive Director.
The published ANSI/NISO JATS: Journal Article Tag Suite Version 1.3 is freely available at https://www.niso.org/publications/z3996-2021-jats. Non-normative and supporting materials, including schemas and Tag Library documents, may be found at https://jats.nlm.nih.gov.
About NISO
Based in Baltimore, MD, NISO’s mission is to build knowledge, foster discussion, and advance authoritative standards development through collaboration among the cultural, scholarly, scientific, and professional communities. To fulfill this mission, NISO engages with libraries, publishers, information aggregators, and other organizations that support learning, research, and scholarship through the creation, organization, management, and curation of knowledge. NISO works with intersecting communities of interest and across the entire lifecycle of information standards. NISO is a not-for-profit association accredited by the American National Standards Institute (ANSI). For more information, visit the NISO website (https://niso.org) or contact us at nisohq@niso.org.
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