Choosing an XML Model

Posted by Mary McRae on Mar 24, 2017 10:17:16 AM

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After seeing my infographic above, one of my colleagues asked me why I am so passionate about JATS (Journal Article Tag Suite NISO Z39.96) and its sister tag suite, BITS.  There are two big reasons: first, their suitability for the task, and second, the dedicated team of experts that designed them and continue to develop them.  That doesn’t mean I’m not an advocate for other tag suites.  I am, so long as they serve my passion about XML and using the right vocabulary for the job at hand.

The JATS standard has been developed for the STM (Scientific, Technical, and Medical) journal publishing community and contains the markup necessary for publishers to develop, manage, produce, and deliver research articles.  There are 3 flavors, listed from most to least restrictive:

  • Article Authoring (Orange in the infographic)
  • Journal Publishing(Blue in the infographic)
  • Journal Archiving and Interchange (Green in the infographic)

The vast majority of JATS users work with JATS Blue.  BITS, on the other hand, extends the JATS model for book-like structures and includes tags for front matter, back matter, parts, and chapters.  A third tag suite based on JATS is in use at ISO and is being standardized for use by international standards bodies and SDOs (Standards Development Organizations), which submit their standards to the international bodies for approval.

Which one should I use?

If you’re a journal publisher, any or all of these forms of JATS might be the right tag set for your journals.  It really depends on your particular situation.

Take authoring, for example.  For most journal publishers, content is written by researchers who don’t author in XML, so there’s little need for the JATS Authoring DTD.  These publishers might transform the original content (often supplied in Microsoft Word) to the JATS Journal DTD (Blue) after the content creation process.  Other publishers have found they need to restrict the way their authors create content and require them to use the JATS Authoring DTD (Orange).  Publishers converting an older, print-only back catalog may choose to use the JATS Archiving and Interchange DTD (Green), since its loose structure supports varying styles used over the years and does not require rework.

It’s not uncommon for a publisher to use multiple flavors of JATS and BITS and then to customize them.  What makes the most sense for your team depends on your content, your workflows, and the platforms that host your content; you may have to consider alternatives to JATS.

How do I choose the one DTD that works for everyone in my organization?

Sometimes you don’t choose only one!

It may make business sense to force everyone to use the same model, but it’s certainly not required.  Many of our clients use multiple DTDs effectively for different communities of users within their organizations–the key is how you build your environment.

Start by finding yourself a good consultant

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Contact me at mmcrae@rsicms.com and I can help you find a consultant.
  The best way to find out what you need is to hire a business analyst/content architect.  After he learns about your business objectives and does a thorough analysis of your content, workflows, and processes, he can recommend the best  vocabularies and customizations to be deployed at each stage of the process.  He can help you develop transforms to make your tag sets interoperable and to make it easy to go from your authoring DTD to whatever other publishing and delivery models your organization requires.

Invest in technologies to facilitate your choices

If you publish scientific articles, journals, or related content, there are a number of great tools on the market that support JATS and JATS-based DTDs out-of-the-box.  Others help you to build the transforms needed to maximize your efficiency and create seamless delivery between authoring, publishing, and archiving.  And of course, I can’t finish without pointing out the usefulness of a native-XML publishing automation system like RSuite to bring everything together.

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Useful Resources

Topics: DITA, XML, XML Schema, DTD, JATS, S1000D, BITS

RSuite Adds Integrated Edit and Publish Modules to its Enterprise Information Management Solution

Posted by David M. Turner on Mar 14, 2017 7:49:31 AM

Audubon, Pa.— March 14, 2017— RSI Content Solutions, creators of the RSuite Enterprise Information Management Solution, today announced the release of two new fully-integrated modules, RSuite Edit and RSuite Publish.  Together, these applications enable RSuite customers to further enhance their ability to manage and produce print and digital content in a single enterprise-strength solution.

RSuite Edit provides a simple, user-friendly interface that allows RSuite users to seamlessly create and modify content directly within the publishing solution.  Authors, contributors, editors, and reviewers can produce structured content in an intuitive, browser-based environment.

RSuite Publish provides an automated, template-driven capability to produce print and digital outputs, rather than having to rely on manual design processes.  Publishers can automate the creation of both print-ready PDF and EPUB output with a simple click of a button.

“RSuite enables many organizations to cut the time between authoring and delivery in half,” stated Lisa Bos, CTO/EVP Publishing Solutions at RSI Content Solutions.  “With RSuite, they deliver more and more consistent content through streamlined processes and automation. RSuite Edit and RSuite Publish make it even easier to include more users throughout the enterprise in publishing workflows, without needing special technical expertise."

About RSuite®

RSuite is the MarkLogic-based enterprise information management solution optimized for the creation, management, reuse and delivery of multi-format, multi-channel content. It combines the power of the MarkLogic platform with an enterprise‐strength workflow engine, a fully-integrated authoring and editorial interface, and an automated composition engine to support both print and digital outputs.  For more information, please visit http://www.rsicms.com/rsuite-enterprise-publishing-solution.

About RSI Content Solutions

For over 16 years, RSI Content Solutions has been at the forefront of implementing content agility solutions for publishers, media companies, Fortune 1000 businesses, government organizations, and more.  With headquarters outside Philadelphia, PA, USA, an engineering center of excellence in Chennai, India, and affiliate offices around the world, RSI has helped over 250 global organizations implement appropriate content agility solutions. For more information, please visit www.rsicms.com.

Topics: RSuite Edit, RSuite Publish

RSuite at the 2017 London Book Fair

Posted by Jeff Wood on Mar 10, 2017 7:01:00 AM

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Rob Smilowitz and I are once again gearing up for the annual London Book Fair next week, one of the best events of the year.  We’re in Stand 3B72 and will be giving demos of RSuite, complete with two brand new components we will be announcing the first day of the show!

Contact me at jwood@rsicms.com if you want to connect at the event and we can arrange a time to meet.

Meet Jeff @ LBF Visit our Web Page

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Topics: London Book Fair, #LBF17

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