MIME Type / Media Type
Table of Contents
MIME Type, also known as Media Type, identifies the format of files on the internet using a standardized list that is maintained by the Internet Assigned Numbers Authority (IANA). Web browsers may use a MIME Type, rather than a file extension, to determine how to process a file. In JATS, the @mimetype attribute should identify the format of a file being referenced using a MIME Type value from the list of official IANA Media Types. The @mimetype attribute should be used for Supplementary Material and Media files.
The @mimetype attribute should hold a MIME Type that identifies the format of a file being referenced in the @xlink:href attribute on the same element.
For example, if a file is a plain text file, the MIME Type for plain text is “text/plain” and the usual file name extension for a plain text file is “txt”. The @mimetype attribute that identifies the file format is used with the @xlink:href attribute that points to the file.
<supplementary-material mimetype="text/plain" xlink:href="filename.txt"/>
In some cases, an optional parameter may be included. For example, if a plain text file is UTF-8 the MIME Type can identify the character encoding using the charset parameter: text/plain;charset=UTF-8.
Currently, the @mimetype and @mime-subtype attributes should be used together as shown in the next section. Our Schematron validation rules will be updated to allow using @mimetype without @mime-subtype.
A MIME Type has two parts, a type and subtype separated by a slash: type/subtype. These two parts can be tagged separately using the @mimetype attribute together with the @mime-subtype attribute. For example:
<supplementary-material mimetype="text" mime-subtype="plain" xlink:href="filename.txt"/>
Starting with JATS version 1.4 using the @mime-subtype attribute is discouraged. Instead, the @mimetype attribute should hold a complete MIME Type.
The table below lists the MIME Types for commonly used file formats. If a file format or file name extension is not on this list, consult the complete list of official IANA Media Types or this list of Common MIME types to find the correct MIME Type.
Our preferred file format for video is mp4.
Our preferred file format for audio is mp3.
Note that some file formats may have more than one official MIME Type or more than one commonly used file name extension.
| Description | Extension | @mimetype | @mime-subtype |
|---|---|---|---|
| Advanced Audio Coding | aac | audio | aac |
| Audio Video Interleave | avi | video | x-msvideo |
| BMP image | bmp | image | bmp |
| Comma Separated Values (CSV) | csv | text | csv |
| Microsoft Word .doc | doc | application | msword |
| Microsoft Word .docx | docx | application | vnd.openxmlformats-officedocument.wordprocessingml.document |
| Flash | flv | video | x-flv |
| GIF image | gif | image | gif |
| JPEG image | jpg | image | jpeg |
| QuickTime video | mov | video | quicktime |
| MP3 audio | mp3 | audio | mpeg |
| MPEG-4 Video | mp4 | video | mp4 |
| MPEG Video | mpg | video | mpeg |
| Portable Document Format (PDF) | application | ||
| PNG image | png | image | png |
| Microsoft Powerpoint .ppt | ppt | application | vnd.ms-powerpoint |
| Microsoft Powerpoint .pptx | pptx | application | vnd.openxmlformats-officedocument.presentationml.presentation |
| SVG image | svg | image | svg+xml |
| TIFF (Tag Image File Format) | tif | image | tiff |
| Text | txt | text | plain |
| Waveform Audio Format | wav | audio | wav |
| WEBM audio | weba | audio | webm |
| WEBM video | webm | video | webm |
| Windows Media Audio | wma | audio | x-ms-wma |
| Windows Media Video | wmv | video | x-ms-wmv |
| Microsoft Excel .xls | xls | application | vnd.ms-excel |
| Microsoft Excel .xlsx | xlsx | application | vnd.openxmlformats-officedocument.spreadsheetml.sheet |
| XML file | xml | application | xml |
| Zip Compressed File | zip | application | zip |