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Dear colleagues, I could not agree more about the need to upgrade the quality control process relating to online supplementary material. That would indeed be a prerequisite for what I suggested. Admittedly, I am also intrigued when journals declare that they do not edit supplementary materials, while in some cases almost half of the paper can be found in the online supplementary sections! Nonetheless, I have recently had papers for which the reviewers commented with equal rigor both on the main text and the supplentary sections. I do the same when I review manuscripts. So in the end it may come down to good reviewing practices. I think we have a consensus that both NCS journals (Nature, Cell, Science) and non-NCS journals in general discourage the kind of material I proposed in my original message from appearing in the main body of a paper. Interestingly, we often use such information in our rebuttal letters to defend our manuscripts but this material very rarely makes it to the printed article. Space restraints have primarily been the reason for this selection, but the potential of deviating from the biological message of the paper also plays a big role. However, the means to expand publication space are now becoming available, and that may well be a realistic option to alleviate some of the frustrations that we are faced with both when reading a paper with minimal crystallographic information and when we write it ourselves. with best regards, Savvas Quoting Ethan Merritt <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>: > *** For details on how to be removed from this list visit the *** > *** CCP4 home page http://www.ccp4.ac.uk *** > > > On Monday 17 April 2006 03:39 pm, afyfe wrote: > > > > >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.... > > > > > > > > Perhaps the "un-reviewed, un-indexed, and un-citable sections of a > > research paper" are not of general interest. However, they may well be > > invaluable to anyone attempting to build on the results presented. > > Yes, that is the whole point. These potentially invaluable details > should be subjected to the same level of scrutiny during the > review process as the main text, and should be just as findable > through citation searches as the main text, and should be just as > diligent in making citations of their own as the main text. > > > As a grad student who wastes a frustrating amount of time trying to track > > down structure factor data, program sources, refinement conditions, etc. > > I can only hope the liberal use of "supplementary materials" gains more > > acceptance over time. > > Let us suppose, for example, that you were interested in tracking > down recent structure determinations which have benefited from > crystal dehydration. In the "old days", armed with a list of key > papers that introduced the technique, you could do this by > searching for recent papers that cited the seminal papers. > You can't do that any more, because such details are relegated > to the supplemental material, where they may or may not cite the > original literature. And even if the supplementary material > itself does contain such citations, these are not harvested by > the bibliographic indexing services so you cannot find them from > the outside. > > Do you see the problem? The information you say want is exactly > the information that has become hard to find because it has been > relegated to second-class status. > > -- > Ethan A Merritt > Biomolecular Structure Center > University of Washington, Seattle WA > --
