Wheeler West NISO STS An XML Standard for Standards

NISO STS:
An XML Standard for Standards
Robert Wheeler
Director of Publishing Technologies, ASME
& co-chair of NISO working group on Standard Tag Suite (STS)
Lesley West
Director of Product Development, ASTM International

Agenda
• Who we are
• A Standard For Standards / It’s What We Do
• Why
• JATS & Standing on the Shoulders of Giants
• Our Experience
– ASTM
– ASME
• Conclusions
• Questions

Standards Producers
• Standards producers are part of a small but significant group which
serve the public through the creation of standards that promote
reliability, interoperability, and quality, thus bringing economic and
other societal benefits.
• Missions & Credos
– ASTM: Helping our world work better.
– ASME: Setting the Standard… to improve the quality of life…
for solutions that benefit humankind.
– ISO: Great things happen when the world agrees.
– Dell: Our mission is to be the most successful IT systems company in the
world by delivering the best customer experience in all markets we serve.

A Standard for Standards?
• Standards developers have published independently of each
other for years with little “standardization.”
• Existing document standards are not sufficient for Standards
– Metadata
– Updates/Versioning
– Committee Authoring/Revising/Continuous Maintenance
– Adoptions
• NISO STS provides a framework for increasing value and reducing
costs for more standards bodies and industry while benefiting
the entire standards ecosystem, from authoring to end use.

Standardization & Interchange
(or, take our own advice)
• Standards increase
– Interoperability
– Economic opportunity
• A standard for standards will
– Aid production
– Facilitate interchange
– Promote interoperability
– Create new opportunities for dissemination & utility

Why NISO STS?
• ISOSTS has been:
– Successful for ISO and NSBs
– Pioneering but limited for broader standards use
• NISO STS will further provide:
– A stable standard for most standards publishers
– Greater simplicity for tool and conversion vendors
– A common format for sharing
• Metadata
• Full text
– Common XML foundation across standards, journals,
and books
* Lower barrier to entry for XML publication

STS Benefits: New Workflows
• Streamline production workflows
– Greater automation
– Pre-publication content validation
• Reduce time to publish
• Improved tools
– more innovative tools available because of increased
market size
– less customization needed from publishing vendors
* Lower costs of production

The Virtuous Cycle
Committee
Work &
Balloting
To
Production
&
Copyediting
Transform
to NISO STS
Multiple
Transforms
Publish /
Distribution
Channels
Committee
Word
• Automation & production tools
can support unique standards’
needs, desired outcomes,
and workflows.

STS Benefits: New Products & Customer-
Driven Product Development
• Easier production of HTML, ePub, Mobile
• Develop new and more dynamic products
• Aids multiple-standard use across an enterprise or
for a single project
• Co-published standards
• Interchange with distributor partners
• Inter-standard linking
– Click-through linking
– Digital Object Identifiers (DOIs)

STS Benefits: Innovation & Utility
• Open standards serve as building blocks for new products
and services
• They spark innovation & can open the playing field to
newcomers
• End-user tools & functionality
– tools built to work with the common XML language & semantics
• Encourage adoption with industry producing internal
standards
• Customer-driven development… standards publishers can
be more responsive to customer ideas

STS Benefits: Discovery
• Consistent metadata delivery to distribution
partners
• Site-crawling indexers benefit from consistencies
• Encourage adoption with industry users that are
publishing internal standards
• Improve end-user information discovery
– Consistent metadata aids library discovery
– Improved library management

Original NISO STS Goals
• Expand for SDO and other use beyond
ISO & NSBs (e.g., industry specifications)
• Improve interoperability between standards producers
• Further enable standards discovery and dissemination
• Align with JATS 1.1 standard, and future versions
• Support additional structures
– Indexes
– OASIS/CALS tables
• Maintain ISOSTS backwards compatibility for existing users

Why We Started With JATS?
• A few standards producers had separately begun projects to extend
JATS for standards use
• Standards & journal articles share structures
– Sections
– Tables
– Figures
– Equations
– Bibliography/references
• Well-developed and well-tested model
• Easily modifiable for Standards use
• Strong third party support

Retaining Connection with JATS
Wide range of STEM content better associated into
the future
– Scholarly articles
– Conference proceedings
– Supporting research
– Commentary
– Standards/Normative documents
– Codes
– Addendums/Annexes
– Redlines
– Errata

It’s All In The Family
NLM
JATS 1.1 (NISO
Z39.96-2015)
ISO STS
BITS
NISO STS

JATS Release History
• NLM 1.0: released April 2003
• NLM 2.0: released December 2004
• NLM 2.3: released March 2007
• NLM 3.0: released November 2008
• Moved to NISO, renamed JATS: July 2009
• First JATS-Con: November 2010
• ANSI NISO Z39.96 JATS 1.0: released August 2012
• ANSI NISO Z39.96 JATS 1.1: released January 2016

Why Set Suite?
• Separate models will be available with
MathML2 and MathML3 for compatibility
• Separate models will be available with XHTML
tables, and with XHTML and CALS tables
– “Interchange” — XHTML-only
– “Production” — XHTML and CALS
XHTML+MathML2 (Interchange) XHTML+CALS+MathML2 (Extended)
XHTML+MathML3 (Interchange) XHTML+CALS+MathML3 (Extended)

NISO STS Steering Committee
Kim Breitfelder, IEEE
Jo Collins, NEN
Laurent Galichet, ISO
Debbie Lapeyre, Mulberry Technologies, Inc.
Eamonn Neylon, Signal Arc
Gareth Oakes, Global Publishing Solutions
Evan Owens, Cenveo Publisher Services
Markus Plessel, IEEE
Tim Preuss, Silverchair Information Systems
Antti Saari, Finnish Standards Association (SFS)
Ivan Salcedo, BSI
Al Sanders, Boeing,
Greg Saunders, Office of the Asst. Sec. of Defense
for Research & Engineering (OASD-R&E)
Brian Trombley, DCL
B. Tommie Usdin, Mulberry Technologies, Inc.
Mike Visser, Techstreet, Clarivate
Lesley West, ASTM
Cord Wischhöfer, DIN
Elizabeth Wolf, Copyright Clearance Center
Hong Xu, CEN
Wei Zhao, Ontario Council of University Libraries
Observers:
Anja Bielfeld
Electronic Publishing Specialist, IEC
(International Electrotechnical Commission)
Laurent Gombert, AFNOR Groupe
George Gulla, ANSI
Bob Hager, ANSI
Co-chairs
Bruce Rosenblum, Inera Inc.
Robert Wheeler, ASME
Working Group Members

NISO STS Technical Committee
Heather Flanagan, RFC Editor
Laurent Galichet, ISO
Howard Gilson, ASTM
Frans Gooskens, NEN
Vinay Gupta, Edaptive Technologies LLC
Bob Hollowell, ASME
Gerrit Imsieke, le-tex Publishing Services
* JATS & BITS Working Group Members
Serge Juillerat, ISO
Debbie Lapeyre, Mulberry Technologies, Inc.*
Nikos Markantonatos, Atypon Systems Inc.*
Mary McRae, IQ Solutions
Ken Rawson, IEEE
B. Tommie Usdin, Mulberry Technologies, Inc.*
David Winchell, XSB Inc.
Observer:
Bob Dreyfuss, Consultant
Co-chairs
Bruce Rosenblum, Inera Inc.*
Robert Wheeler, ASME
Working Group Members

Sub-Groups STS (1)
• SDO Metadata
– SDO-specific metadata
– Co-developed or Co-published standards
• Citing Standards
– Normative references
– Inline citations
– DOI links
• Terms and Definitions
– TBX
– Other models

Sub-Groups STS (2)
• Translations
– Metadata
– Marking added or removed text
• Section types
– Standard attributes to define standard sections
– e.g. foreword, intro, scope, terms

NISO STS Timeline
• What we’ve been up to lately
– Committee Review (1 month workgroup comment followed
by 3 months working through those comments)
– 30-Day Public Review: April-May 2017
– Respond to Public Comments & Finalize: May-June 2017
– STS Committee Vote & NISO Topic Committee Vote: July 2017
– NISO Voting Member Vote: August-September 2017
– Response to “Negatives” & ANSI Review: September 2017
– ANSI Approval & Formal Published Standard: October 2017
* Future
– Continuous Maintenance/Standing Committee

ASTM and XML
• In the 1990s, ASTM International converted its standards set SGML using
Arbortext and the now Contenta CMS.
• Built a full customized digital path based on XML.
25 Years of XML

ASTM and XML
• At ASTM, our internal presentations typically
show XML as a solid brick foundation that our
products are built on.
• ASTM is always looking to improve its XML
foundation, and we saw the value of the NISO
STS option.
• We are already building new products that
capitalize on the benefits of NISO STS.

ASME’s Story
• In 2013, ASME published our most important Code/Standard from XML (based
on DocBook), the culmination of a project that had begun 6 years earlier.
First Edition from 1914 – 147 pp.
2013 Edition – 31 products, 17,000 pp.

ASME’s Story
• The BPVC (incomplete) XML environment was highly
customized, and thus, fragile, and thus, unsustainable in
the long run, and for our other standards.
• Following the 2013 publication, we looked to see what we
could learn, what we could salvage, and what would have
the greatest positive impact if changed.
• We heard that ISO was considering work on the ISOSTS, to
couple it with JATS under NISO, and make the a formal
standard for standards…. And we thought, if there’s going
to be a standard, we certainly want to be part of that!

ASME’s Story
• In May 2015, ASTM and ASME submitted a
NISO work item proposal and sponsorship for
the NISO STS project.
• At ASME, we began work with a draft version
of (N)ISO STS and iteratively developed an in-
house editing & composition environment at a
fraction of the cost that was spent on BPVC
XML.

How STS Can Impact Your Business?
• That’s up to you
• STS provides an enabling technology
• STS does not drive your business decisions
– Business requirements drive technology decisions;
not vice versa

Conclusions
• ISOSTS has been successfully received
• NISO STS expands STS for broader needs
• Benefits of using a standard XML model
– Production efficiencies
– New product opportunities & innovation
– Easier interchange with development and
distribution partners

Contact Us
• Lesley West
lwest@astm.org
• Robert Wheeler
WheelerR@asme.org

Wheeler West NISO STS An XML Standard for Standards

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Editor's Notes