Importance of JATS XML For Publishers

What is JATS XML

XML, short for Extensible Markup Language, is a markup language that can encode documents in a format that is:

1. Machine processable and
2. Human readable

There are many XML markup languages. Some commonly used XML in academia include CellML, Chemical Markup Language, MathML, ThML and more. The focus of this article is JATS XML which has rapidly become the standard in?scholarly publishing.

Journal Article Tag Suite or JATS is an XML tag set designed to ‘model’ journal articles. To elaborate, JATS is a collection of XML attributes and elements that define the semantics and structure of one journal article. So, each article in a journal has its own JATS XML file.

There are three JATS models that target three different groups in the publishing lifecycle:

1. Article Authoring Model — for article authors
2. Journal Article Publishing Model — for publishers, used in the production workflow
3. Archiving and Interchange Model — for archives and libraries

When JATS first launched in February 2003, it was meant to provide interoperability of article metadata and content between publishers and archives. So, essentially only the third model listed above was in use. It was expected that entities in the scholarly communication cycle (hosters, publishers, archives, etc.) would have their own XML tag sets and would convert articles to JATS XML only for external sharing and display. But JATS has rapidly become the standard in academic publishing. It is used not just by STEM (Scientific, Technical, Engineer, and Medical) journals — who were the early adopters — but also by journals in economics, sociology, humanities, and other fields.

Benefits of JATS XML for Publishers

JATS is the true standard for journal content. Scholarly communities of small, mid-sized, and large publishers, libraries, public archives like PubMed Central, indexes, hosters and vendors all use JATS XML. They too model their articles to JATS for interchange and deposit. Here’s why many small and mid-sized publishers are creating all their new content in JATS and converting their backfiles too to this markup language:

Production advantages for publishers

JATS XML is declarative and semantic, not behavioral (like HTML). This means that the emphasis is on the structure of the document and content, not on human interaction or styling. Therefore,?articles are way easier to process in JATS.

JATS is designed to be?customizable, so publishers can easily extend or subset it according to their production needs. Additionally, it is very dynamic and versions with modifications and new features are released regularly in response to users’ requests. So, as your journal grows and needs change.

Also, JATS XML enables single source publishing, since a JATS file can be converted to any other output file — PDF, eBook, HTML5, etc. This?reduces costs and saves production time.

Increase Readership, Citations and Impact Factor

This is an extremely important benefit of JATS XML. JATS files are machine-readable and searchable. This means that when publishers publish articles as JATS, these files can be accessed, read and indexed by search engines (including Google Scholar, Yahoo, Bing, Google, etc.). Now, whenever someone searches for a keyword that fits your article’s content, then it will show up in the search results.

This is one of the best ways to gain new?readership?- extremely useful for established publishers and invaluable for new publishers. Also, it is easier for other researchers to find and cite your content.?Higher citations?= higher?impact factor.

Extensive metadata support and record

JATS has the capacity to store rich, extensive metadata with each article. And, this metadata travels with the article to wherever you publish it — your website or repository or when you submit it to indexes or archives. This is great for data mining, context-sensitive searchability and for semantic interchange between publishers, hosters, archives, repositories, and libraries.

Here again, you can see how this is a tremendous readership (and, therefore, citation and IF) advantage for publishers. Users of any commercial or public index or archive or even search engine can search by an author’s name or by specific keywords and find your content.

Metadata supported by JATS includes:

1. Article-level metadata:?This includes data about the article, such as the title, DOI, publisher identifiers, copyrights, arXiv numbers, institution and funder identifiers, keywords, multiple abstracts, detailed information about the research funding, links to resources, etc.
2. Contributor metadata: Contributors to an article include not just the authors and editors, but also photographers, visualizers, curators, specimen collectors, etc. JATS can store unique external identifiers for contributors, their names, alternative names, roles, and affiliations.
3. Bibliographic references: JATS can store detailed bibliographic metadata and supports practically all types and styles of reference tagging. For citations, JATS has specific elements including the title of article and journal, issue number, contributor names, date of publication, DOI, etc.

How to convert to JATS XML

Now that I’ve shared with you what JATS XML is and what its benefits are, let’s look at how publishers convert documents to JATS for publication.

This is the structure of JATS articles:

Front Matter (<front>)

journal-level metadata

article-level metadata

Body Matter (<body>)

Text of the article, including

paragraphs

sections

figures and graphics

tables (both XHTML and CALS)

equations and quotations

Back Matter (<back>)

appendices

bibliographic reference lists with detailed citation metadata

Publishers generally outsource the conversion of articles received from authors to third-party conversion vendors. The rates charged by these vendors vary. New journals usually rely on volunteers to help with the conversions.

Conclusion

Besides being widely accepted and a standard in the scholarly publishing industry, JATS XML is crucial for your journal’s growth. If conversion to this markup language is not already a part of your production workflow, you are missing out on a lot of cost, time and growth benefits.

For further details or conversion of Research, Review, Case Reports, Thesis, Erratum, Conf. Proceedings or any type of manuscript, you can contact:

Website: https://xmlcreators.blogspot.com/

Email: [email protected]

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