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Organizing Supporting Information W
ith technology from the American Chemical Society, Analytical Chemistry provides authors a vast appendix section for their research papers, which is called Supporting Information (SI). SI is published electronically and is available without additional charge to all who can access http://pubs. acs.org/ac. SI provides a venue for the publication of a wide variety of materials, including video clips; figures; and tables of experimental, theoretical, and computational modeling results that reinforce data in the primary research article (PRA). SI is also a place for extensive tables, such as those with data for important figures in the PRA or databases for comparative or theoretical studies; figures detailing analytical and spectral characterization of new compounds; and detailed instrument and circuit diagrams. More liberal use of color figures can be made in SI than is economically feasible in the PRA. These materials serve to buttress the scientific case of the PRA— preserving data in the spirit of the scientific method (describe the work in sufficient detail that others can repeat it)—and provide the reader with an expanded picture of the authors’ work. The SI section can accomplish these goals while providing readers of the PRA with a more concise and readable description of the work. This editorial describes new recommendations to authors of ways to exploit and organize SI materials that will benefit readers. Two changes in the SI, discussed and approved by the Analytical Chemistry Editorial Advisory Board, are outlined here and are found on the Web in the journal’s Instructions to Authors. First, SI materials are most effective when explicit references are made to them in the PRA. Because pages, figures, and so on in SI are numbered S-#, one might, for example, add in the caption of Figure 4 in the PRA: “Further examples of this result can be found in Figure S-3.” Likewise, in the SI section, Figure 4 of the PRA can be back-cited in the caption of Figure S-3: “This figure provides further examples of the
behavior shown in Figure 4.” Such cross-referencing guides the reader through the authors’ observations and discussions. The second recommendation is to provide authors with a “preferred organization” for the SI section, which has not heretofore been given. The SI should begin with a header page (page S-1), giving the authors’ names, affiliations, and the title of the primary article. This is followed by a) either an abstract, which describes the nature of the materials therein, and/or a table of contents. Then, as needed, there should be b) any further discussion germane to the PRA or novel SI material, such as video clips or other imagery; c) any expanded description of experimental procedures; d) any supplementary experimental or theoretical results, given as Figures or Tables with legends and captions that contain the same level of detail as the manuscript and that convey the significance of the result; and e) any supplementary references for either the PRA or the SI materials. All of the SI should be provided in a form suitable for immediate reproduction, because no galley proofing is done. The current statement about SI at the end of the PRA will still be provided: “Supplementary Material Available: A listing (describe concisely what is in the material and state the number of pages) is available as Supporting Information.” Last, it is vital to remember that SI is subject to peer review, just as with the PRA. And, just as with the PRA, a central question for the SI material will be “Is it right?” The case for the significance of the work will continue to fall on the presentation in the PRA. The Editor and Editorial Advisory Board hope that these new recommendations will benefit the authors, readers, and science of Analytical Chemistry.
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