The Future Begins Tomorrow: Succession Planning for XML Infrastructure Resources

Abstract

Much of the world’s scholarship, including most of the world’s scientific, technical, engineering, and medical discoveries, are published in journal articles. Journal publishing has changed rapidly and dramatically in the last 25 years. Current journal article publishing (both print and online), archiving, and interchange is done in XML using JATS (the Journal Article Tag Suite). JATS is supported and maintained by a NISO Standing Committee and a group of (aging) volunteers. How long can this work be supported by volunteers on standards committees? New technologies may transform journal modeling and related tasks but will not replace the work of skilled practitioners. I see document modeling work becoming a function of libraries. Libraries should support shared standards and document models, including training, tool creation, and documentation. Just as libraries store and preserve physical journals published when scholarship was ink on paper, their cultural heritage preservation role must expand to support the creation and preservation of XML journal articles.