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Use and mis-use of supplementary material in science publications

Supplementary material is a ubiquitous feature of scientific articles, particularly in journals that limit the length of the articles. While the judicious use of supplementary material can improve the readability of scientific articles, its excessive use threatens the scientific review process and b...

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Detalles Bibliográficos
Autores principales: Pop, Mihai, Salzberg, Steven L.
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: BioMed Central 2015
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4630891/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/26525146
http://dx.doi.org/10.1186/s12859-015-0668-z
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author Pop, Mihai
Salzberg, Steven L.
author_facet Pop, Mihai
Salzberg, Steven L.
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description Supplementary material is a ubiquitous feature of scientific articles, particularly in journals that limit the length of the articles. While the judicious use of supplementary material can improve the readability of scientific articles, its excessive use threatens the scientific review process and by extension the integrity of the scientific literature. In many cases supplementary material today is so extensive that it is reviewed superficially or not at all. Furthermore, citations buried within supplementary files rob other scientists of recognition of their contribution to the scientific record. These issues are exacerbated by the lack of guidance on the use of supplementary information from the journals to authors and reviewers. We propose that the removal of artificial length restrictions plus the use of interactive features made possible by modern electronic media can help to alleviate these problems. Many journals, in fact, have already removed article length limitations (as is the case for BMC Bioinformatics and other BioMed Central journals). We hope that the issues raised in our article will encourage publishers and scientists to work together towards a better use of supplementary information in scientific publishing. ELECTRONIC SUPPLEMENTARY MATERIAL: The online version of this article (doi:10.1186/s12859-015-0668-z) contains supplementary material, which is available to authorized users.
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spelling pubmed-46308912015-11-04 Use and mis-use of supplementary material in science publications Pop, Mihai Salzberg, Steven L. BMC Bioinformatics Editorial Supplementary material is a ubiquitous feature of scientific articles, particularly in journals that limit the length of the articles. While the judicious use of supplementary material can improve the readability of scientific articles, its excessive use threatens the scientific review process and by extension the integrity of the scientific literature. In many cases supplementary material today is so extensive that it is reviewed superficially or not at all. Furthermore, citations buried within supplementary files rob other scientists of recognition of their contribution to the scientific record. These issues are exacerbated by the lack of guidance on the use of supplementary information from the journals to authors and reviewers. We propose that the removal of artificial length restrictions plus the use of interactive features made possible by modern electronic media can help to alleviate these problems. Many journals, in fact, have already removed article length limitations (as is the case for BMC Bioinformatics and other BioMed Central journals). We hope that the issues raised in our article will encourage publishers and scientists to work together towards a better use of supplementary information in scientific publishing. ELECTRONIC SUPPLEMENTARY MATERIAL: The online version of this article (doi:10.1186/s12859-015-0668-z) contains supplementary material, which is available to authorized users. BioMed Central 2015-11-03 /pmc/articles/PMC4630891/ /pubmed/26525146 http://dx.doi.org/10.1186/s12859-015-0668-z Text en © Pop and Salzberg. 2015 This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly credited. The Creative Commons Public Domain Dedication waiver (http://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/) applies to the data made available in this article, unless otherwise stated.
spellingShingle Editorial
Pop, Mihai
Salzberg, Steven L.
Use and mis-use of supplementary material in science publications
title Use and mis-use of supplementary material in science publications
title_full Use and mis-use of supplementary material in science publications
title_fullStr Use and mis-use of supplementary material in science publications
title_full_unstemmed Use and mis-use of supplementary material in science publications
title_short Use and mis-use of supplementary material in science publications
title_sort use and mis-use of supplementary material in science publications
topic Editorial
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4630891/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/26525146
http://dx.doi.org/10.1186/s12859-015-0668-z
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