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On Monday 17 April 2006 01:50 pm, Yoder, Marilyn wrote: > I read Savvas comments (below) with interest. > As I've been trying to write a couple of manuscripts with > colleagues, the 'online supplementary material' has been > a focus of attention on my plate. > I must say I don't like the concept. Indeed. I think the concept of online supplementary material should be quashed as quickly and thoroughly as possible. Not that I have much hope of convincing the journals.... I have noticed A) The proof-reading or fact-checking in supplementary material is often very poor. You point out that few readers may track it down; I worry that even few referees will do so. B) The citation engines (e.g. ISI) do not capture citations in the supplementary material. To the extent that materials and methods are being relegated to the supplement, it is no longer possible to track the use of specific techniques, methods, programs, etc, through their citations. C) Ditto for search engines, although this must vary with the policies of individual journals as to whether supplementary material is placed where a search engine can see it. > I guess my concern is that important information to judge > the quality of the data and the validity of a model are > relegated to such unimportant status that they don't merit ink. Or the information that would be necessary to repeat the experiment, or capitalize on innovative techniques. > Frankly, I don't think a lot of readers will take additional > effort to track down supplementary material, and online access > to many journals is not a trival matter. Well there I must part ways. So far in my experience, journals offer online access to supplementary material with no restriction. So if you are already have a copy of the paper itself, access to the supplement is not a problem. > Am I simply old-fashioned, or do others have similar concerns? The issue I see is not so much the "online" aspect, but the idea of un-reviewed, un-indexed, and un-citable sections of a research paper. Online publication is probably inevitable, but we should strive to make it of high quality. -- Ethan A Merritt Biomolecular Structure Center University of Washington, Seattle WA
