1. XML: What is it and why
do we care?
California Agriculture
University of California
Agriculture and Natural Resources
Communication Services and Internet Technology

2. Or how a mild-mannered journal . . .
JANUARY–MARCH 2011 • VOLUME 65 NUMBER 1
California Agriculture
APRIL–JUNE 2011 • VOLUME 65 NUMBER 2
California Agriculture
Growing bigger, better:
Artisan olive oil comes of age
(the University
California Agriculture
JULY–SEPTEMBER 2011 • VOLUME 65 NUMBER 3
of California’s
peer-reviewed
Food as
medicine journal of
agriculture, and
natural and
University of California | Peer-reviewed Research and News in Agricultural, Natural and Human Resources
Down on the farm:
human
Agritourism on the rise
Also: Free trade, constructed wetlands,
Can what we eat help cure what ails us?
rice nitrogen, smart sprayers, almond irrigation
resources
University of California | Peer-reviewed Research and News in Agricultural, Natural and Human Resources
University of California | Peer-reviewed Research and News in Agricultural, Natural and Human Resources
research) . . .

3. . . . can have superpowers on the Web*
*especially the semantic Web

4. Readers today are problem
solvers
Tunisia, January 2011

5. They seek relevant information,

6. repurpose and recombine it . . .

7. and find a solution. .

8. Readers will go to great lengths
to get the information they need.
As government tried to block
protests, the people went from
YouTube, to Facebook, to Twitter

9. Information wants to be free*
...
Information wants to be
expensive*
*Stewart Brand, Hackers
Convention 1984

10. The tension will not go away
Readers expect more – discoverable,
accessible content that can be viewed on the
"container of choice" – iPhone, Android, Kindle,
iPad, laptop . . .

11. At the same time, faculty
authors need “impact”
as shown
by "metrics"
in both the
the popular

12. and scholarly worlds. Luckily
the Web helps us do both.

13. As land-grant universities,
we have
• quality content,
• some of the best science in the world, and
• a long tradition of open-access information,
both print and Web

14. Our content is free in another
way now . . . it is no longer
restricted to a container

15. Once we have the content in
digital form, we can render it in
various chunks and containers
–books, ebooks, PDFs, blogs, websites,
journals, ezines, even good old print
page turners, presence on databases

16. But with so many formats and
devices -- and readers with
different devices -- how can we
do this?

17. We need a multi-tasking tool to
create content that is
?
Discoverable
Accessible
Actively linked
Flexible -- rendered across platforms and devices
Visible in the scholarly world

18. XML = “extensible markup language”
• a language for documents containing structured
information;
• Including both content and markers, tags
identifying what role that content plays.
• For example:
<title>Huckleberry Finn</title>
<author>Mark Twain</author>

19. Transforms to HTML on the Web

20. XML metadata behind it

21. Active links on the Web
• References
• Adam KL. Community Supported Agriculture 2006. Fayetteville, AR:ATTRA-National Sustainable
Agriculture Information Service. www.attra.org/attra-pub/PDF/csa.pdf
• Altieri MA. Agroecology: The Science of Sustainable Agriculture 1995. Boulder, CO:Westview Pr. 448p.
• Anderson-Wilk M. Does community-supported agriculture support conservation?. J Soil Water Conserv.
2007. 62(6):126-7A.
• DeLind LB. Ferguson AE. Is this a women's movement? The relationship of gender to community-
supported agriculture in Michigan. Hum Organ. 1999. 58(2):190-200.
• Feenstra G. CSAs: The consumer-farmer connection. Cal Ag. 1994. 48(5):8- DOI: 10.3733/ca.v048n05p8
[CrossRef]
• Flora CB. Bregendahl C. The role of collaborative community supported agriculture: Lessons from Iowa.
Leopold Ctr Prog Rep. 2007. 16:44-7.
• Galt RE. Counting and mapping community-supported agriculture in the United States and California:
Contributions from critical cartography/GIS. ACME: Int E-J Crit Geogr. 2011. 10(2):131-62.
• Hinrichs CC. Embeddedness and local food systems: Notes on two types of direct agricultural market. J
Rural Stud. 2000. 16(3):295-303. DOI: 10.1016/S0743-0167(99)00063-7 [CrossRef]
• Klonsky K. Siebert J. Organic agricultural production in California. California Agriculture: Dimensions and
Issues 2004. Berkeley, CA:Giannini Foundation. p. 241-56.

22. XML tagging for one reference
• <ref id="R8"><nlm-citation citation-type="journal">
• <person-group person-group-type="author">
• <name><surname>Hinrichs</surname>
• <given-names>CC</given-names></name></person-group>
• <article-title>Embeddedness and local food systems: Notes on two
types of direct agricultural market</article-title>
• <source>J Rural Stud</source>
• <year>2000</year>
• <volume>16</volume>
• <issue>3</issue>
• <fpage>295</fpage><lpage>303</lpage>
• <pub-id pub-id-type="doi">10.1016/S0743-0167(99)00063-7</pub-
id>
• </nlm-citation></ref>

23. Why is XML so useful?
• Machine readable
• Flat file – no style
• Talks to relational databases – backbone
of semantic Web
• A standard for that can be recognized by
eReaders and mobile devices, databases
and platforms – and poured into different
containers

24. What “flavor” of XML ?
• There are different kinds of XML.
• Each is a DTD or document type
definition, a set of rules defining content
and structure.

25. For maximum functionality:
NLM DTD *
• Established in 2003 by the National Library of
Medicine, the world’s largest biomedical library
• Designed for content posted to Pub Med Central
– a digital archive of biomedical and life sciences
journal literature.
• Provides free access to full text of articles
* Known also as Journal Article Tag Suite (JATS)

26. Now the de facto international
standard of scholarly publication
It is popular among aggregators, and
house style for Atypon and Allen Press,
recommended by HighWire and Public
Library of Science.

27. Flavor?
• Each “flavor” OF XML includes elements,
attributes, and entities, and defines
relationships among them.
• There are code checkers on line that
enable you to test your code for
– proper structure (Is there an end tag for every
start tag?) and
– conformation to the standard.

28. Functionality -- most important
• XML enables content to be channeled into
myriad formats and devices: web sites, digital
edition on laptop, application for smartphone,
reading devices, eReaders, YouTube or Podcast
if video or audio files.
• It enables content to be indexed by scholarly
databases including Thomson ISI Web of
Science

29. Another option: XML metadata +
PDF
• PDFs are true visual
representations of how text
is meant to look
• PDFs are easy to read
because they retain
formatting
• They include vector
graphics that scale cleanly
in any device

30. California Agriculture has posted full text in
XML and PDF format back to our first issue
in 1946.
Beginning in July 2011: California Agriculture
went electronic version of record.

31. We now deliver XML directly to databases. They
display it as soon as we signal new content.

32. One favorable result: Greater visibility for faculty authors
June ‘11: Impact factor for 2010 doubled to .92

33. . . . and continued upward

34. . . . with a favorable long-term trend.

35. We are charting and analyzing popular
metrics

36. Steps to XML
1. Hire a web editor (someone familiar with XML flavors, transforms,
and CSS).
2. Get a friendly, helpful IT programmer to build a database, create
transforms and calls
3. Hire vendor to digitize your backfile (our vendor is Aptara)
4. Learn to maintain and update your site with editorial staff and
designers.
Check out helpful websites:
JATS-Con 2011 PPTs and some videos go to:
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK57252/
NLM DTD and PubMed Central code checker
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/pub/validation/

37. Making your content discoverable to readers and
internet databases, aggregators, browsers . . .
whether in Ghana . . . Or Iowa