XML and HTML for scholarly communications

Birkbeck. 27th March 2017.

A book

Professor Martin Paul Eve, Birkbeck, University of London

Three general formats used in scholarly journals

  • XML (JATS)
  • HTML
  • PDF (variety of approaches: InDesign etc.)

Journal Article Tag Suite (JATS) XML

  • Journal-specific metadata
  • Widely-used format
  • Tools for automatic production very expensive
  • Manual creation tricky
  • Automatically converted to HTML by platforms

HTML

  • Not semantically rich
  • But: works anywhere
  • WYSIWYG tools can produce bad markup, though

Effort/Labour Levels:

  • JATS: High
  • HTML: High/Moderate
  • PDF: Minimal (Word export)

File format examples

Creating Basic HTML

Creating JATS

  • A plain-text editor
  • Use the online HTML editor to create a basic framework, then adapt the tags
  • Decide whether to used mixed-citation or element-citation mode

The End

Thank you!

Presentation licensed under a CC BY-SA 3.0 license. All institutional images excluded from CC license. Available to view online at http://meve.io/HTML2017.