Remarks

Defining Supplementary Material: Supplemental material is used to add detail, background, or context to an article by providing, for example, multimedia objects such as audio clips and applets; additional XML-tagged sections, tables, or figures; raw data in a spreadsheet, or a software application in a repository. Supplementary material includes resources such as the following:

• Voluminous material (such as a genomic database or the multiple data sets behind a work that abstracts the highlights of those datasets) that supports the conclusions of the narrative but can never accompany an article based on sheer mass;
• “Extra” tables that do not display with the work, but that record the measurements on which the article is based, for example, that need to be available so the peer reviewers can check the article content;
• Material added to the work for enhancement purposes, such as a quiz, an instructional video, the 3-minute version of the reaction that was described in the work with narrative and a few still images, a form that can be filled out or copied, or similar material;
• A movie, MP3 file, or other binary material that is not directly part of the content of the article; and
• The last several figures of the work that could not be included as part of the base work for stylistic considerations or space limitations.

An object that cannot be fully represented in print (such as a movie, sound file, or animation) should not automatically be considered supplemental. If the object is necessary for understanding the article (in other words, the object is “integral” as defined by NISO RP-15-2013 discussed below) it should be tagged at the appropriate location in the text using the <media> element.

Contents of the Supplementary Material Element: The <supplementary-material> element does not contain the supplementary object(s); even if the objects are expressed in XML; supplementary objects are external to the XML article rather than part of the XML article. The <supplementary-material> element contains descriptions of the object(s), and it may also, but is not required to, contain a pointer to the objects(s). For example, if the supplementary object is an additional graphic, that graphic is described in the supplementary material but not held there. The <graphic> element that is permissible inside <supplementary-material> is intended for a description of an object, not to hold the object. For example, a <supplementary-material> element could contain a description of an animation, including the first frame of the animation (tagged as a <graphic> element), a caption describing the animation, and a cross-reference made to the external file that held the full animation.

Usage: The element is used in two contexts:

• Inside the article metadata (<article-meta>) as an alert to the existence of supplementary material so that such material can be accessed from the article; and
• As part of the textual narrative flow, where it is similar to a <fig>, in that it may take a caption and can be positioned as a floating or anchored object.
  For this usage, the @position attribute may be used to indicate whether the element must be anchored at its exact location within the text or whether it may float, for example, to the top of the next page, into the next column, to the end of a logical file, or within a separate window.

Typing: The @mimetype attribute may be used to identify a file type for a <supplementary-material> element.

Relationship to NISO Supplemental Material Best Practices NISO RP-15-2013 Recommended Practices for Online Supplemental Journal Article Materials (https://groups.niso.org/higherlogic/ws/public/download/10055) and NISO JATS have identical concepts for “additional” and “integral” material that comprises an article, but slightly different practice concerning whether supplementary material is integral or additional.

Both NISO JATS and NISO RP-15-2013 define

• integral content as 'material that is essential for the full understanding of the work by the general scientist or reader in the journal’s discipline'; and
• additional content as 'supplemental material that provides additional, relevant, and useful expansion of the article in the form of text, tables, figures, multimedia, or data, and that may aid any reader to achieve deeper understanding of the current work through added detail and context. Additional Content ... is not essential to the understanding of the article.'

The two differ in that, for NISO RP-15-2013, “integral content” may be part of an article or it may be part of the supplementary material for the article, that is, NISO RP-15-2013 allows supplementary material to be “integral”. For NISO JATS, which predates NISO RP-15-2013, all integral material is part of the base article (inside the <article> element) and all supplementary material is external to the article.

Relation to Other Journal Tag Sets: The <supplementary-material> element has a similar function to the <audiovisual> element in some XML tag sets and the <unprinted-item> element (used only for electronic files) in other tag sets.

<!ELEMENT  supplementary-material
                        %supplementary-material-model;               >

...
<article-meta>
...
<contrib-group>
<contrib contrib-type="author">
<collab collab-type="committee">Accredited Standards Committee S3, 
Bioacoustics</collab>
</contrib>
</contrib-group>
<fpage seq="1">1</fpage>
<lpage>44</lpage>
<supplementary-material mime-subtype="zip" mimetype="application"
xlink:href="ASASTD.ANSI.ASA.S3.50.supplementary-material.zip"/>
...
</article-meta>
...

<article dtd-version="1.1d1">
<front>...</front>
<body>
<p>...</p>
...
<supplementary-material id="S1" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink"
xlink:title="local_file" xlink:href="1471-2105-1-1-s1.pdf"
mimetype="application/pdf">
<caption>
<p>Supplementary PDF file supplied by authors.</p>
</caption>
</supplementary-material>
<p>RNAPs seem to have arisen twice in evolution
(see the <inline-supplementary-material
xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink"
xlink:title="local_file" xlink:href="timeline">
Timeline</inline-supplementary-material>. A large
family of multisubunit RNAPs includes bacterial
enzymes, archeal enzymes, eukaryotic nuclear RNAPs,
plastid-encoded chloroplast RNAPs, and RNAPs from
some eukaryotic viruses. ...</p>
...
</body>
<back>...</back>
</article>