Supplemental Journal Article Materials

摘要

With the migration of journals from print to online environments over the last 15 years, many disciplines have seen an increase in content that is stored outside of the context of the traditional article. In the print world, the rationale for supplemental material was related to technical reasons (certain content could not be rendered in print) or economic reasons (the cost of processing or printing the content was prohibitive). In the digital world, it was assumed that the technical and economic reasons were, or would soon be, resolved. It was also assumed that there was value in including more data with an article in order to enable readers to fully understand the science. As journals saw increasing contributions of supplemental material, editors, reviewers, publishers, and readers experienced an impact from handling, reviewing, or reading the additional materials. NISO and NFAIS convened an exploratory group of publishers that led to the formation of a Working Group to develop best practice recommendations for publishing supplemental materials. While supplemental materials may contain primary research data, they also can contain much more. Accordingly, the NISO/NFAIS focus is broader than primary data.