Practices, Policies, and Persistence: A Study of Supplementary Materials in Crop Science Journals

This study compared practices and policies of 24 crop science journals to selected National Information Standards Organization/National Federation of Advanced Information Services (NISO/NFAIS) recommendations for online supplemental journal article materials. The studied recommendations include the display of supplementary materials, digital object identifiers (DOIs) for supplementary materials, and clear preservation statements regarding supplementary materials. This study also investigated missing supplementary materials on 18 of the journal websites. The findings reveal some potential roles for librarians and libraries, especially those with institutional repositories, which could better facilitate long-term access, data citation, and data reuse.