Structured publishing is simply the publishing, in any form, of logically organised information produced or used by any company for any purpose.

Today much of any organisation's vital information is stored electronically. This information is often stored on distributed servers, connected by networks in multi-platform environments. Given the variety of systems that create and store this information, the process of accessing, transferring and manipulating it can be time-consuming and error-prone.

Adding structure to information allows its reuse in a wide range of publications. It also allows "intelligent" electronic documents to be produced with relative ease, which permits searching and sorting. Thus, some of the major benefits of adding structure to information include:

• Re-usability
• Output appearance easily changed
• Ease of storage and retrieval
• Ease of maintenance and updating
• Ease of data manipulation
• Longevity
• Portability across systems
• Low distribution costs

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