JATS and NISO - the value of community standardization
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Carpenter, Todd
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.
 So before I begin, I would like to first thank a few people. First of all, our friends at the National Library of Medicine and in particular the team at NCBI for all of their work, their terrific work that they have done in developing services for the community as well as technical standards for the community and the information distribution. They approach the problems of sharing and distribution from a unique perspective as a National Library and having to gather and ingest information from a variety of sources. Like few others, they are in a position to see and understand the very messiness of raw publisher data. We can all appreciate the work that they are trying to do and have done over the past more than decade in developing structures and systems like JATS to accomplish that activity. I'd also like to call out in particular the contributions of three people. The first is Jeff for his tireless work in leading the JATS working group, his involvement in the development of the NLM DTD for many years, his continued leadership as the head of the maintenance group or co-chair of that maintenance group as well as his organization of this series of JATS-CONS meetings which have been a tremendous success. I often say that post-standardization efforts are the real key to whether or not a standard will become a success or not. And in this respect, Jeff and the team involved in the JATS community has done a terrific job in that respect in gathering and maintaining the energy in order to advance JATS outside of the core constituency that have participated in it. There are two people who I'd also like to call out for their contributions since the very beginning days of JATS. Those two people are Bruce Rosenblum and Tommy Usdon. Both are members of the working group. Both were present at the creation. Both have the honor of serving on the NISO board. Bruce having served, I believe it was nine years on the NISO board of directors in two terms as treasurer. And Tommy who's joined the board about two years ago. So many thanks to both of that. How many of you are familiar with NISO? This would, excellent. Oh, I love this. I love it when I walk into a room and everyone raises their hands. Therefore I can skip the next several pages of text. So it's flying back from the Middle East this weekend. And I spent a few of the 13 hours on the plane watching the recent Steve Jobs movie. And I sometimes wish that NISO created actual physical technology so that I could stand up in front of a room of people and say in a Steve Jobs kind of way that this thing will blow your mind. It is the most amazing thing that you have ever seen. Unfortunately I'm no Steve Jobs. And the things that we develop are less sexy, let's say. However, I would say that they're equally as impressive as being able to store a thousand songs in your pocket. Few people think of the infrastructure elements necessary to distribute information. The work that it takes to digitize and distribute content using structures like Jats that we have collectively created in an environment where much of the world's scholarly literature is online. It's discoverable, it's retrievable, and accessible from nearly anywhere, as well as preservable for future generations. So at its heart, the Journal Article Tag Suite is more than a system of production tools. It's a way of meaningfully communicating digital structures. It's a vocabulary for building digital content. We need to reflect, though, about where we are going with the distribution of digital content and how things and structures like Jats need to extend in an increasingly digital world. If more and more of our world is going to be mediated by machines and more of the content that we access, the world's literature, be it scientific, scholarly, or even creative, is going to be mediated through electronic displays, devices of some kind, what will we require in terms of technologies and vocabularies to make that happen? What sort of structures and exchange mechanisms are we going to need as we move into more advanced types of distribution, such as data? The work that was begun by NLM more than a decade ago is seen widespread adoption and application not just within its core community of medicine, but also in a wide range of applications. Now last month, there was a great deal of hoopla, about the 25th anniversary of Tim Berners-Leaves paper that described the implementation of the World Wide Web. It's important to reflect on the many accomplishments that have taken place in the time since that paper was released. But if we reflect on the many decades that it took from the creation of Gutenberg's press to the invention of things like page numbers, I posit that we are at the beginning of this process. And we are just beginning to deal with a myriad of issues related to digital distribution and new forms of scholarly communication. So what are the implications and the systems needs and the publishing systems that need to be developed when we're in distributing not only text, but other forms of digital objects such as audio, video, molecular structure models? And how do the publication distribution and preservation systems need to adapt for things like data, visualization tools and software, even geolocated virtual reality experiences? What models to publishers and discovery services providers, libraries and preservation services need to provide to develop the interoperability necessary to advance that ecosystem? So I'm very pleased that you all are engaged in this conversation. And I realize that the ability of any volunteer community is really tied essentially to the volunteer and the energy of the volunteers that participate. And in that I reflect positively on the fact that when this meeting was canceled in October, more than 100 of you showed up. I don't know of many communities who in the case of a meeting being canceled would say, hell, we'll get together anyway. So I know a few. So with that, in terms of an organization that organizes volunteer efforts, I turn to the JATS community for leadership as we explore some of these more complicated issues about supplemental materials, about advancing a variety of digital distribution forms. So I salute you and your contributions to this collective effort. And I look forward to a fantastic meeting and many thanks to all of you for participating in making the JATS project a success. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.
 So before I begin, I would like to first thank a few people.  First of all, our friends at the National Library of Medicine and in particular the  team at NCBI for all of their work, their terrific work that they have done in developing  services for the community as well as technical standards for the community and the information  distribution.  They approach the problems of sharing and distribution from a unique perspective as  a National Library and having to gather and ingest information from a variety of sources.  Like few others, they are in a position to see and understand the very messiness of raw  publisher data.  We can all appreciate the work that they are trying to do and have done over the past more  than decade in developing structures and systems like JATS to accomplish that activity.  I'd also like to call out in particular the contributions of three people.  The first is Jeff for his tireless work in leading the JATS working group, his involvement  in the development of the NLM DTD for many years, his continued leadership as the head  of the maintenance group or co-chair of that maintenance group as well as his organization  of this series of JATS-CONS meetings which have been a tremendous success.  I often say that post-standardization efforts are the real key to whether or not a standard  will become a success or not.  And in this respect, Jeff and the team involved in the JATS community has done a terrific  job in that respect in gathering and maintaining the energy in order to advance JATS outside  of the core constituency that have participated in it.  There are two people who I'd also like to call out for their contributions since the  very beginning days of JATS.  Those two people are Bruce Rosenblum and Tommy Usdon.  Both are members of the working group.  Both were present at the creation.  Both have the honor of serving on the NISO board.  Bruce having served, I believe it was nine years on the NISO board of directors in two  terms as treasurer.  And Tommy who's joined the board about two years ago.  So many thanks to both of that.  How many of you are familiar with NISO?  This would, excellent.  Oh, I love this.  I love it when I walk into a room and everyone raises their hands.  Therefore I can skip the next several pages of text.  So it's flying back from the Middle East this weekend.  And I spent a few of the 13 hours on the plane watching the recent Steve Jobs movie.  And I sometimes wish that NISO created actual physical technology so that I could stand up  in front of a room of people and say in a Steve Jobs kind of way that this thing will  blow your mind.  It is the most amazing thing that you have ever seen.  Unfortunately I'm no Steve Jobs.  And the things that we develop are less sexy, let's say.  However, I would say that they're equally as impressive as being able to store a thousand  songs in your pocket.  Few people think of the infrastructure elements necessary to distribute information.  The work that it takes to digitize and distribute content using structures like Jats that we  have collectively created in an environment where much of the world's scholarly literature  is online.  It's discoverable, it's retrievable, and accessible from nearly anywhere, as well as  preservable for future generations.  So at its heart, the Journal Article Tag Suite is more than a system of production tools.  It's a way of meaningfully communicating digital structures.  It's a vocabulary for building digital content.  We need to reflect, though, about where we are going with the distribution of digital  content and how things and structures like Jats need to extend in an increasingly digital  world.  If more and more of our world is going to be mediated by machines and more of the content  that we access, the world's literature, be it scientific, scholarly, or even creative,  is going to be mediated through electronic displays, devices of some kind, what will  we require in terms of technologies and vocabularies to make that happen?  What sort of structures and exchange mechanisms are we going to need as we move into more  advanced types of distribution, such as data?  The work that was begun by NLM more than a decade ago is seen widespread adoption and  application not just within its core community of medicine, but also in a wide range of applications.  Now last month, there was a great deal of hoopla, about the 25th anniversary of Tim  Berners-Leaves paper that described the implementation of the World Wide Web.  It's important to reflect on the many accomplishments that have taken place in the time since that  paper was released.  But if we reflect on the many decades that it took from the creation of Gutenberg's  press to the invention of things like page numbers, I posit that we are at the beginning  of this process.  And we are just beginning to deal with a myriad of issues related to digital distribution  and new forms of scholarly communication.  So what are the implications and the systems needs and the publishing systems that need  to be developed when we're in distributing not only text, but other forms of digital  objects such as audio, video, molecular structure models?  And how do the publication distribution and preservation systems need to adapt for things  like data, visualization tools and software, even geolocated virtual reality experiences?  What models to publishers and discovery services providers, libraries and preservation services  need to provide to develop the interoperability necessary to advance that ecosystem?  So I'm very pleased that you all are engaged in this conversation.  And I realize that the ability of any volunteer community is really tied essentially to the  volunteer and the energy of the volunteers that participate.  And in that I reflect positively on the fact that when this meeting was canceled in October,  more than 100 of you showed up.  I don't know of many communities who in the case of a meeting being canceled would say,  hell, we'll get together anyway.  So I know a few.  So with that, in terms of an organization that organizes volunteer efforts, I turn  to the JATS community for leadership as we explore some of these more complicated issues  about supplemental materials, about advancing a variety of digital distribution forms.  So I salute you and your contributions to this collective effort.  And I look forward to a fantastic meeting and many thanks to all of you for participating  in making the JATS project a success.  Thank you.  Thank you.  Thank you.  Thank you.  Thank you.  Thank you.
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