July 15, 2009 -- In June 2009, the National Library of Medicine submitted a proposal to create a standard based on its Journal Archiving and Interchange Tag Suite. NLM has asked the National Information Standards Organization (external link) to use the Tag Suite as the basis for a Standardized Markup Language.
The Tag Suite provides a common format in which publishers and archives can exchange journal content. This is important to preserve the intellectual content of journals independent of the form in which it was originally delivered.
In 2006, to help ensure long-term access to electronic journals, the Library of Congress and the British Library agreed to support the migration of electronic content based on the NLM format, where practicable. An advisory committee consisting of representatives from commercial and society publishers, tagging vendors, markup consultants, and journal archives provides input on changes and expansions to the format.
The Tag Suite was created with input and support from Harvard University Libraries, as well as support from The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation. Inera, Inc., and Mulberry Technologies, Inc., also collaborated in the effort.
