[jats-list] ANNOUNCEMENT: JATS 2.0 Under Consideration

["Jeff Beck beck.jeff@xxxxxxxxx" <jats-list-service@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Yesterday at JATS-Con I made the announcement on behalf of the JATS
Standing Committee of our intention to start working on a 2.0 version that
most likely will not be backward compatible with existing JATS models.

We will not release a backward-incompatible version before 2021 and will
continue to work on the 1.X line until then.

Details are in the announcement below.

Thank you
Jeff

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ANNOUNCEMENT: JATS 2.0 Under Consideration April 2019, from the JATS
Standing Committee

The JATS Standing Committee is considering development of a
non-backwards-compatible version of the JATS Standard and all of the JATS
tag sets.

When: The new version, to be called JATS 2.0, will be published as a
standard no sooner than 2021.

Why: JATS is in continuous maintenance. The JATS Standing Committee
responds to requests for enhancements and changes several times a year, and
new (backwards-compatible) versions of JATS have been released about once a
year. JATS is continually expanding to accommodate the changing environment
of journal article publishing and to meet the needs of a growing user
community. As we consider requests for enhancements, the JATS Standing
Committee sometimes finds that design decisions that seemed appropriate in
the past are non-optimal given new requirements. In the normal maintenance
mode, we find ourselves making compromises in the design of the tag sets in
order to meet new requirements and while maintaining
backwards-compatibility. We believe that there are enough of these
compromises in JATS 1.2 that it is time to consider a non-backwards-
compatible version in which structures that have been deprecated are
removed, redundant models are consolidated, and the structures are tidied
up to strengthen JATS for the future.

What Does That Mean: It means that there will be changes to some of the
models such that some documents that were valid to previous versions of
JATS (the 1.X versions) may not be valid to JATS 2.0. For example, the
<nlm-citation> element was introduced in the first version of the NLM DTDs
on which JATS was based. It was retained through all the versions of the
NLM DTDs, and also retained in JATS up to version 1.2 (although marked as
deprecated) to maintain backward compatibility with the NLM DTDs. However,
<nlm-citation> will not be supported in JATS

2.0. While JATS 2.0 will be a major maintenance release of JATS; it will
not be a totally new vocabulary, it will be a cleaned-up version of the
JATS.

What Happens in the Meantime: The JATS Standing Committee will continue to
support the 1.X versions of JATS until version 2.0 is published as an
ANSI/NISO Standard. That means that we will continue to review comments as
they come in from the user community and may issue committee drafts and new
(backwards-compatible) releases of JATS (1.3, 1.4, etc.) as appropriate.

As we work on JATS 2.0, we will release committee drafts of version 2.0 for
comment, as has been the usual practice of the JATS Standing Committee. Any
additions made to JATS 1.X will be considered during the development of
JATS 2.0.

Seeking Comments: The JATS Standing Committee is seeking comments on this
plan, and on any particulars in JATS that users believe should be improved.
Please submit any comments and suggestions on JATS 1.2 to:
https://groups.niso.org/apps/group_public/add_comment.php?document_id=20934