[WEB4LIB] XML for E-Journals Examples

[Eric Hellman]

Gerry,

I'm happy to report that use of XML is widespread in e-journal 
production processes, but is mostly used in the back end, where it is 
not exposed to the user. This is because xml handling in user agents, 
such as web browsers, is not yet up to the task of dealing with the 
complex markup often found in scientific and scholarly manuscripts. 
Even when xml is transformed to html via XSLT, it is more reliable to 
do that server-side rather than client side.

One company that has advertised its use of xml in producing 
e-journals is Catchword. Last I looked they were hosting more than a 
thousand e-journals. Their use of xml is probably not hugely 
different from our use of eFirst xml, and is probably not very 
different from what you'll see at other technologically advanced 
publishers.

Publishers were using SGML in production even before the web. There 
are public SGML DTD's such as "docbook" and "iso 12083" which were 
developed with print journals in mind, and they have XML descendents 
and can be used to generate electronic presentations.

I think eFirst xml was one of the first xml dtd's developed 
specifically for e-journals on the Web.
Another publicly available xml dtd for e-journals is from ICAAP. 
http://www.icaap.org

Use of XML for data interchange is also very widespread. When 
aggregators such as Ovid, ingenta, proquest etc get full text from 
publishers, it often is delivered as xml or in xml wrappers.

So xml is well on its way to being a *current* generation framework 
for electronic journal publication, at least on the back end.

Eric

At 8:37 AM -0800 2/17/02, Gerry Mckiernan wrote:
>                                _XML for E-Journals Examples_
>
>       I am greatly interested in e-journals that have implemented the use of
>XML for markup, display, and navigation. As many are aware, XML is 
>envisioned as the Next Generation framework for electronic journal 
>publication. Yet, while there are literally *hundreds* of books on 
>the topic, I am not cognizant of the  e-journals (or e-journal 
>publishers) that have actually *applied* this technology.
>
>I am aware of one example and  listed in it EJI(sm), my registry of 
>Innovative E-Journal  Features, Functionalities, and Content:
>
>         [ http://www.public.iastate.edu/~CYBERSTACKS/EJI.htm ]   
>
>   [  http://www.public.iastate.edu/~CYBERSTACKS/EJI2.htm#XML ]
>
>[Actually I've just learned of another _MRS Internet Journal of 
>Nitride Semiconductor Research_ that makes use of eFirst XML, a 
>version developed and made available by Openly Informatics, Inc.]
>
>                              [  http://www.openly.com/efirst/]
>
>  In addition to XML use in general, I am also interested in 
>e-journals that employ specific XML based application specifications 
>(e.g., MathML
>[ http://www.w3.org/Math/]
>
>    As Always and All contributions, candidates, suggestions, 
>comments, queries, Scientific Secrets, Cosmic Insights, Etc. Etc. 
>Etc. are Most Welcome!
>
>    Regards,
>
>/Gerry McKiernan
>Marked-Up Librarian
>Iowa State University
>Ames IA 50011
>
>gerrymck at iastate.edu
>
>BTW:  There are a *number* of excellent XML resources including
>
>    XML.com  [ http://xml.com/ ]
>    XML Cover Pages [ http://www.oasis-open.org/cover/sgml-xml.html ]
>
>and of course
>
>  Extensible Markup Language (XML)
>    
>     [http://www.w3.org/XML/ ]

-- 
Eric Hellman

Openly Informatics, Inc.
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