Why not supplemental materials?

Open Data
Author

Esther Plomp

Published

February 27, 2023

Why not supplemental materials?

Data control: cannot be updated, unlike materials available at data repositories.

Interoperability: If publishers only allow text and PDF formats it hampers data sharing and it will be difficult to reuse the data

Availability: Difficult to access if the article is behind the paywall (supplemental materials are not included in the DOI and therefore the links can also break!)

Not FAIR: Data/Software available in supplemental materials is not considered to be FAIR (Findable, Accessible, Interoperable, Resuable) - since they do not have a DOI assigned to them specifically (see also the Availability point above).

Impact: Data should be a primary research output

Publisher requirements: Some publishers recommend using a data repository instead

Size limits: There may be size limits in place of how large or how many supplementary materials can be shared.

Links to supplemental materials may also break, as demonstrated in the example below:

Screenshot of an article where they mention that there are supplemental materials available on a link that is broken.

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