Balisage Paper: JATS and NISO — the value of community standardization

Abstract

Since its earliest days, the publishing structures that became the Journal Article Tag Suite (JATS) standards have proven themselves valuable as a method for exchanging journal content. Designed by a team with decades of typesetting and markup expertise, the specifications were quickly adopted by preservation communities and as a basis for many of the largest publishers production processes. As digital publishing evolves, the importance of common vocabulary structures like JATS will only increase, because exchanging digital files is a critical component in a functioning digital content ecosystem.

NISO plays a critical role in bringing together content creators, intermediaries, and consumers to develop interoperability standards for the creation, discovery, distribution and preservation of content. With the support and engagement of the National Library of Medicine, NISO has engaged a broader community of participants to the standardization of JATS and it continues to support its ongoing development and expansion of the standard. During this brief talk, Todd will discuss the value of national standardization of JATS, and the future of interoperable content standards in digital publishing.