How do I submit supplemental material?

Modified on Tue, 1 Oct at 10:11 AM

TABLE OF CONTENTS

Overview
How do I submit supplemental material?
What file formats can be accepted?
Copyright for supplemental material

Overview

Supplemental material refers to files relates to a specific article, which authors supply for publication alongside their article. They should generally be additional pieces to the article that could not be included in the issue or print version, such as appendices, tables, and audio and video material that is impossible to produce within the article. There may also be instances, such as certain podcasts and videos, where they are not directly attributable to a specific piece of research.

The following guidelines outline Sage’s general policy for handling supplemental material, but please always refer to individual journal author guidelines to check for any bespoke policies.

How do I submit supplemental material?

Authors should consult the author guidelines for the individual journals to see whether supplemental material is accepted. Supplemental material files will be subjected to peer-review alongside the article. Decisions about whether to include supplemental material files will be made by the relevant Journal Editor (or appointed deputy) as part of the article acceptance process.

Supplemental material files will be uploaded online as supplied. They will not be checked for accuracy, copyedited, typeset or proofread. The responsibility for scientific accuracy and file functionality remains with the authors. A disclaimer will be displayed to this effect with any supplemental material published. Sage does not generally provide technical support for the creation of supplemental material.

Please supply a title and description for all supplemental material items supplied. These can be included in a separate word document upon submission. If a title and description is not supplied the following title and description will be used: Title – “[File name] - Supplemental material for [Article title]”; Description – “Supplemental material, [File name], for [Article Title] by [Author names] in [Journal Title]”. The title and description will appear on Sage Journals and also on the record in Figshare and will aid discoverability of the supplemental material online.

If any supplemental material supplied is already hosted in Figshare, please indicate in the filename as follows: ‘Supplemental material – already loaded to Figshare’.

What file formats can be accepted?

Please see all file types supported by Sage as follows:

Viewer type	Extensions
Archive *please see note below on zip files	tgz, zip*, rar, iso, tar, bz2, gz, xz, txz, 7z
Audio/Podcast	mp3, aac, wma, wav, sphere, timit
Dataset	csv, sav, tsv, xls, xlsb, xlsx
Document	doc, docx, dxf, odp, ods, odt, pages, pdf, rtf, ttf, xps
Image	jpg, jpeg, png, gif, tif, svg, bmp, psd, tiff, ai, lsm
Jupyter	ipynb
Kml	kml
Molecule	cif, pdb, xyz
Presentation	ppt, pptx, pptm
Video *please see additional note below on video submission	quicktime, mpeg, avi
viewer3d	obj, stl, ply
txt/code	1c, accesslog, armasm, arm, avrasm, actionscript, as,apache, apacheconf, applescript, osascript, asciidoc, adoc,aspectj, autohotkey, autoit, axapta, bash, sh, zsh,basic, brainfuck, bf, cs, csharp, cpp, c, cc, h,c++, h++, hpp, cal, cos, cls, cmake, cmake.in , csp,css, capnproto, capnp, clojure, clj, coffeescript,coffee, cson, iced, crmsh, crm, pcmk, crystal, cr, d,dns, zone, bind, dos, bat, cmd, dart, delphi, dpr,dfm, pas, pascal, freepascal, lazarus, lpr, lfm, diff,patch, django, jinja, dockerfile, docker, dts, dust,dst, elixir, elm, erlang, erl, fsharp, fs, fix, f90,fortran, f95, gcode, gams, gms, gauss, gss, go,gherkin, golang, golo, gololang, gradle, groovy, htm,xml, html, xhtml, rss, atom, xsl, plist, http, https,haml, handlebars, hbs, html.hbs, html.handlebars, haskell,hs, haxe, hx, ini, inform7, i7, irpf90, json, js,java, jsp, javascript, jsx, lasso, less, lassoscript,ls, lisp, livecodeserver, livescript, ls, lua, makefile,mk, mak, markdown, md, mkdown, mkd, mathematica, mma,matlab, maxima, mel, mercury, mizar, mojolicious, monkey,nsis, nginx, nginxconf, nimrod, nim, nix, ocaml, ml, objectivec, mm, objc, obj-c, glsl, openscad, scad,ruleslanguage, oxygene, pf, pf.conf, php, php3, php4,php5, php6, parser3, perl, pl, powershell, ps,processing, prolog, protobuf, puppet, pp, python, py,gyp, profile, k, kdb, qml, r, rib, rsl, graph,instances, ruby, rb, gemspec, podspec, thor, irb, rust,rs, scss, sql, p21, step, stp, scala, scheme, scilab,sci, smali, smalltalk, st, stan, stata, stylus, styl,swift, tcl, tk, tex, thrift, tp, twig, craftcms,typescript, ts, vbnet, vb, vbscript, vbs, vhdl, vala,verilog, v, vim, x86asm, xl, tao, xpath, xq, zephir,zep,cc, com, conf, txt, cxx, def, f, for, g, h, hh,idc, jav, list, log, lst, m, mar, pl, sdml, text,test, tst, fasta, fas, r
Gephi	gephi, gexf

Embedded graphics (i.e. a GIF pasted into a Word file) are also acceptable.

*please note zip files should be avoided

File size

File sizes should be kept below 10MB where possible.

Zip files

Zip files should be avoided wherever possible. They can be hosted on the Figshare platform, but they will not display in the Figshare widget which appears on Sage Journals. There will simply be a link to the zip file on Figshare.

Video

All video clips must be created with commonly-used codecs, and the codec used should be noted in the supplemental material legend. Video files should be tested for playback before submission, preferably on computers not used for its creation, to check for any compatibility issues.

Sage will not host codec files, or be responsible for supporting video supplemental material where the codec used is non-standard.

Tip for reducing video file size: H.246 codec

A codec (compression-decompression program) called H.246 comes with the Apple QuickTime Pro upgrade to QuickTime 7 (the Pro upgrade costs $30 but QuickTime 7 itself is free). One journal reported that they created a 2MB video from a 210MB file using the H.246 codec.

Like any codec, this one manages small file sizes through losses in compression (and therefore potentially in image quality). Therefore, if you choose to use the H.264 codec, you should check the settings to make sure you have set the compression at the level you are comfortable with. However, H.246 appears to be quite effective even with HD video.

Copyright for supplemental material

If it is the author’s own content, by signing the Contributor Agreement, the author is usually asked to grant a non-exclusive licence to the journal owner but in some cases the supplemental material may be published under a Creative Commons licence. Authors should check the Sage licence they are asked to sign on acceptance.

Sage will only publish supplemental material and deposit to Figshare subject to full copyright clearance. This means that if the content of the file is not original to the author, then the author will be responsible for clearing (and paying, where necessary) all permissions prior to the publication or posting of any third party content within the article supplemental material. The author will be required to provide copies of permissions and details of the correct copyright acknowledgement.

For advice on how to clear permission for material contained within the article supplemental material, please visit Sage’s Author Gateway Copyright and Permissions FAQs.

Please note that supplemental material are permanent records just like the articles themselves. Please visit Sage's Corrections Policy.