The Journal Article Tag Suite (ANSI/NISO standard [ANSI/NISO JATS Version 1.2 (Z39.96-2019)] establishes elements and attributes from which tag sets for multiple document types can be built. There are three official tag sets in JATS family:
JATS: THE standard for tagging journal articles (worldwide). JATS Article Tag Suite has been developed in three “flavors”: Archiving, Publishing, and Authoring.
STS: Tag set for standards (Standards Tag Suite). STS has been developed in two “flavors”: Interchange and Extended.
BITS: Tag set for books (Book interchange Tag Suite)
Each tag set has its own documentation, sharing software and editorial style, but not content.
JATS has two “official” sets of documentation:
The ANSI/NISO standard [ANSI/NISO JATS Version 1.2 (Z39.96-2019)]
The “non-normative” documentation, which consists of:
XSDs, DTDs, RNGs
Tag Libraries (documentation)
Sample tagged documents
It is very important that the ANSI NISO standard exists, since many organizations can only use tag sets that are national or international standards. That said, not many people read the text of the standard, as it contains only a subset of the information in the Tag Libraries, and is not as well linked or indexed. People read about and find references for JATS through the non-normative documentation. The ANSI/NISO standard and the Tag Libraries are produced from the same XML source, so the information they have in common really is common.
In addition to the official documentation (described in this paper), there is an even greater volume of user-built documentation, guidance, and Best Practice recommendations. Third party user groups and organizations that ingest or process JATS have also produced frameworks, stylecheckers, output transformations, and other automated tools. See the Other Resources to Support JATS Users Section for a very partial list.