SUPPLEMENTARY MATERIALS IN GEOSCIENCE JOURNALS

The growing trend to include online supplementary materials in journals has provided opportunities for authors to add enhancements, such as data sets, color photos, or multimedia objects to their articles, which could not be included in printed journal pages. The addition of these supplementary materials has created new challenges for librarians, publishers, reviewers, and researchers in terms of access, peer review, citation, and data preservation.

To better understand the current status of supplementary materials in geoscience journals, this study focused on a small sample of high impact, peer-reviewed journals representing a range of geoscience publishers. We examined author guidelines and publisher policies for each journal to find information on size limits, format restrictions, peer review, citation, and archival practices. Also, we documented the publication frequency and different types of supplementary materials included in these geoscience journals. Finally, we investigated the ease of access, navigation, and linking options that publishers have provided for these materials. This talk will present our findings and recommendations for making supplementary materials easier for users to locate and access.