JATS and JATS4R: Its Importance in Publishing Workflows and the Dissemination of Information in the Scholarly Ecosystem

In a traditional journal publishing process an author submits a manuscript to a journal and if the article is accepted for publication (after peer review and revision) it goes to production where it can be copy edited, quality controlled, and converted to different formats for publication. On publication, the article will be hosted on the journal website, and details about the article (ie, metadata) can be posted to a number of different locations (eg, PubMed, Scopus, Web of Science, Crossref) to help promote the article to readers far and wide.

Many publishers are experimenting with different forms of publication and peer review (for example, eLife, where I work, only reviews articles that have been posted as preprints). With these changes going on, having structured content and metadata in XML becomes even more useful.

One of the traditional outputs of journal article publication, which many authors still see as a stamp of verification or point of pride, is the production of a typeset PDF in the style of the journal. However, this product is just one of the many outputs from the process, and XML can be used (along with a template) to produce this PDF easily, with the added advantage of making all the information available in a machine-readable format too.