Schematron
Schematron is a convenient tool for applying rules to automatically detect problems appearing in the content of an XML file. Schematron works in tandem with a DTD or XML Schema. A DTD or XML Schema provides a vocabulary that defines the names of XML elements and attributes and controls the structure of a document. Schematron provides rules that can control or surface specific things within a document.
Schematron is used to check all JATS files that are delivered to Taylor & Francis as part of the online validation service. The same Schematron is also available to download and use locally. One example of how this Schematron can be used locally is that oXygen XML Editor can be configured to run Schematron automatically while editing an XML file. Schematron can also be incorporated into quality control and reporting tools.
Detailed information about the validation rules that are contained within the JATS Schematron schema is available in the Schematron Rules Documentation.
Release packages for all versions are available on the Download page. The latest version of the JATS Schematron schema is available at these static links:
This Schematron schema contains different phases that are to be used in different workflow scenarios. Each Schematron phase includes a certain set of the validation rules that are relevant to the phase, while other validation rules that are not relevant are excluded from the phase. The phases are as follows:
current_content- Used for current journal content in production.scanned_content- Used for retrodigitization projects where XML is created from PDF or hard copy source materials.converted_content- Used for content that has been converted to JATS from pre-existing digital files in a different format.uplift- Used internally for validating archive content that is processed using the JATS Uplift transformation service.
The validation messages produced by Schematron are classified by different severity levels.
| Severity Level (Role) | Meaning | Validation Result |
|---|---|---|
| Error | The problem described by the message must be corrected. | Fail |
| Warning | An alert to a possible problem that was detected in the file, or a problem that should be corrected but is not severe enough to stop the file from publishing. | Pass |
| Info | An informational alert | Pass |
The following files are available for each version on the Download page:
- Release notes
- jats-schematron-{version}.zip - Zip package containing the Schematron and pre-compiled XSLT for each phase
- jats-schematron-{version}.xar - XQuery module containing the Schematron and pre-compiled XSLT for each phase
It is possible to explicitly reference the Schematron schema at the start of the XML document by placing this xml-model instruction next to the DOCTYPE declaration and before the root element, and including the phase name, although this is generally not required because Schematron validation is applied automatically in our systems. For example:
<?xml-model href="https://jats.taylorandfrancis.com/releases/jats-schematron/jats-schematron.sch" type="application/xml" schematypens="http://purl.oclc.org/dsdl/schematron" phase="current_content"?>
Please note that we are asking for feedback to improve the validation rules. New versions of this Schematron will be made available as and when required.