JATS Superhighway

Abstract

Tag sets change over time. Tag set designers manage a complex system where everything is connected to everything else and new user requirements continue to surface. Tag set users manage complex systems to create, manage, and archive documents. Users strongly resist backward-incompatible change, so as JATS has grown we have made compromises in the design to meet new requirements while maintaining backward-compatability. We think it is time to consolidate redundant models, remove deprecated items, and generally reduce confusion. Can we guide users towards a new, backwards incompatible version in a way that they'll find palatable? We have a plan. We're going to extend the JATS 1.x schema so that it contains the new, 2.0 models in addition to the old models. Then we'll make an "Onramp" subset of 1.x that has the deprecated items removed. Documents valid against the onramp subset of 1.x will also be valid against 2.0.