JATS Compatibility

The NISO STS Working Group tried (to the extent possible) to make NISO STS a JATS-Compatible tag suite, as described in the The JATS Compatibility Meta-Model (published as a draft “JATS Compatibility Model Description Draft 0.7” for comment by NISO at http://www.niso.org/apps/group_public/download.php/16764/JATS-Compatibility-Model-v0- 7.pdf.). The Meta-Model document provides guidance on how to create JATS-based tag sets that will interoperate in expected ways with other JATS-based documents in databases, display systems, and similar applications.

This compatibility for NISO STS is only “to the extent possible” because ISO STS was developed before the Meta-Model guidelines were written, and there are places where ISO STS violates the guidelines. After significant discussion, the Technical Committee decided that backward compatibility with ISO STS was more important than JATS compatibility whenever a conflict was identified.

Organizations with mixed NISO STS/JATS databases will need to be aware of these differences.

Elements where the ISO STS interpretation prevailed in designing NISO STS, and that are therefore unlike JATS, include:

<version> — Which has two different contexts with two different meanings. (See <version> Remarks section.)
<std> — Which has differences in where used, content, and in how the title of a cited standard should be tagged. (See <std> Remarks section.)
<array> — Which may take a full <table> inside it in NISO STS, but not in JATS. (See <array> Remarks: Best Practice Content of an Array.)
<pub-date> — The JATS element <pub-date> is an element content model; the ISO STS element <pub-date> is a mixed-content model. Because this situation can raise compatibility issues going forward, Best Practice for new documents is to tag the date published as <release-date> rather then as <pub-date>. In the future, the element <pub-date> should not be used as part of a standards document’s metadata.