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Ethan,
I'm not sure that I agree with your views/comments on supplementary
material.
Perhaps you are referring to specific information that we need to judge
the quality of
structural information or to repeat experiments (hmmm.....how often is
this done?).
The latter can be obtained from the authors, or should be, as is true
for your comment
on information needed for capitalizing on innovation.
If you look at, for example, the two recent papers on the yeast
interactome ( Gavin et al, and Krogan et al,
Nature v440 p631 and p637 ) there is a wealth of information in the
supplementary text that would be difficult
to put into the main body of a paper. For information such as this, I
believe online sites with links in the paper
or a database are best....this is essentially what the journal
supplementary material does....and it can be
updated to reflect improvements and additions. Those papers are not
structural papers, but, not to bring up the
long-running and provocative thread from a few weeks back, papers
describing interesting science,
not merely reporting on structures, are the goal. I feel that the
comments from your last paragraph are
addressable by the journals doing a better job.
We're getting further from the original point, but I felt that this
categorical comment needed
an alternative perspective.
- Th
Thomas Earnest
Physical Biosciences Division
MS 64R0121
Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory
Berkeley CA 94720
[EMAIL PROTECTED]
510 486 4603
Ethan Merritt wrote:
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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.
