Journal Article Tag Suite (ANSI/NISO Z39.96): an XML vocabulary for describing the textual content and metadata of scholarly journal articles, comprising tag sets for archival (Green), publishing (Blue), and authoring (Pumpkin) use cases.

ByCASRAI Editorial Board

· Last updated 10 Jul 2026

Examples

Worked examples

Is an instance
A PMC-deposited article supplied as JATS XML by a publisher.
Is an instance
An Erudit-hosted Canadian humanities journal article in JATS XML.

Counter-examples

Looks similar, but isn't

Not an instance
A bibliographic record in CSL JSON is not JATS — it has no full-text body.
Not an instance
A PDF rendition of an article is not JATS.

Editorial commentary

JATS evolved from the NLM Journal Archiving and Interchange DTD (2003-onwards) and was standardised as ANSI/NISO Z39.96 in 2012, with subsequent revisions. Publishers, PMC, repositories, and CRIS systems exchange JATS XML to represent full-text articles in a tractable structured form (front matter with metadata, body with structural elements, back matter with references). JATS underpins PubMed Central, Europe PMC, and Erudit’s full-text infrastructure. Sister standards include BITS (book chapters) and STS (technical standards).

References

ANSI/NISO Z39.96-2019, JATS: Journal Article Tag Suite.
Mullen L., 'JATS for Reuse' (jats4r.niso.org).

Also known as

Journal Article Tag Suite · ANSI/NISO Z39.96

Machine-readable encodings

Use in your systems

JATS XML <role> element

xml

<role vocab="credit"
      vocab-identifier="https://casrai.org/dictionary/"
      vocab-term="JATS XML"
      vocab-term-identifier="https://casrai.org/dictionary/term/jats-xml" />

Schema.org DefinedTerm (JSON-LD)

json

{
  "@context": "https://schema.org",
  "@type": "DefinedTerm",
  "@id": "https://casrai.org/dictionary/term/jats-xml",
  "name": "JATS XML",
  "identifier": "https://casrai.org/dictionary/term/jats-xml",
  "description": "Journal Article Tag Suite (ANSI/NISO Z39.96): an XML vocabulary for describing the textual content and metadata of scholarly journal articles, comprising tag sets for archival (Green), publishing (Blue), and authoring (Pumpkin) use cases.",
  "inDefinedTermSet": "https://casrai.org/dictionary/domain/research-info-systems#set",
  "url": "https://casrai.org/dictionary/term/jats-xml",
  "sameAs": [
    "Journal Article Tag Suite",
    "ANSI/NISO Z39.96"
  ],
  "license": "https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/",
  "publisher": {
    "@id": "https://casrai.org/#organization"
  },
  "dateModified": "2026-07-10T02:06:20",
  "inLanguage": "en"
}

Referenced across the research world

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