Enhancing your article with supplementary material

Supplementary material is relevant material that is additional to the main article. It can be anything from tables to presentations, to video and audio files.

These supplementary materials add another dimension to your article, and help with increasing its online reach and broadening the scope of its impact within your discipline.

Research shows that articles with supplementary material are downloaded and cited more often than those without. By including data and supporting materials to your article, researchers can access your work more easily. Funders are also able to identify clear links to data, making sure you meet your certain funding requirements.

Get familiar with instructions for authors

Be prepared, speed up your submission, and make sure nothing is forgotten by understanding a journal’s individual requirements.

Types of supplementary material

  • Infographics
    You can summarize your findings and attract readers to your article by including an infographic, alongside your article.

  • Tables and charts
    Include the full range of data and statistics from your research without over-cluttering your article.

  • Video
    Engage your audience and deliver the main points of your article across to your audience with multimedia.

  • Audio
    Consider adding relevant audio files to enhance your readers’ understanding and engagement with your research.

What should you consider before submitting your supplementary material?

When you know what types of supplementary material you want to submit alongside your main article, check through the points below.

  1. Supplementary material should be relevant to (or support) your article.

  2. The material/s will not be modified by Taylor & Francis, even though they must be submitted alongside your article. You will not receive proofs for your supplementary material.

  3. Extensive supplementary material (analyses rather than data) should ideally be subject to peer review.

  4. Where appropriate, your supplementary material/s should carry a disclaimer – please discuss with Taylor & Francis if you think this is relevant.

  5. Any podcasts or vodcasts will need to have a Taylor & Francis license, which must be signed by the author/s.

  6. Warranties regarding the originality, validity, and legality of your supplementary material/s online are covered by the article publishing agreement.

  7. Any tables submitted as part of your article will be available for users to download in CSV format. Figures, audio, and video will not be downloadable, in order to protect copyright of these materials.

Additional resources to support your article’s supplementary material

ScholeXplorer logo

Taylor & Francis Online fully supports ScholeXplorer data linking – making it much easier for you to establish a permanent link between your published article and its associated data.

ScholeXplorer helps researchers find, access, and reuse data. Authors are increasingly opting to submit their supporting data to a repository, and in many cases are required to do so as a condition of their funding.

If you deposit your data in a ScholeXplorer recognized repository, a link to your data will automatically appear on Taylor & Francis Online when your associated article is published. This enables readers to easily navigate between your published article and the associated data set.

If you’re publishing an article with us, and you have data you would like to link to, please follow the steps in the dropdown below.

1. Use the free search tools provided by the registry of research data repositories (re3data) to find a suitable data repository. ScholeXplorer functionality will only work if your selected data repository supports persistent identifiers. These can be identified easily on re3data by looking for the blue ‘pi’ icon.

2. Deposit your data following the submission instructions provided by your chosen data repository. Make sure that you associate your article DOI (Digital Object Identifier) with your data during your submission. Doing this allows ScholeXplorer to link your article with the repository record for its data.

3. On publication of your article we will link your article’s DOI with your data, working with ScholeXplorer to create linking from the repository page to the article on Taylor & Francis Online and back again.
Figshare logo

Taylor & Francis Online hosts articles’ supplementary material on Figshare, making it easy to find via search engines. And, instantly viewable on Taylor & Francis Online via the Figshare widget, when readers select the supplemental tab on the article abstract.

What do I need to do, to make sure my supplementary material uses the Figshare widget?

  • Include your files at the same time as you submit your manuscript – your files will be uploaded to Figshare.

  • There are no size limits for your files.

  • Every file will be easily citable (with a DOI allocated at the point of publication) and will be stored under a Creative Commons license.

When the supplementary material is discovered by users via a search engine, links to the relevant article are available. This can help increase the article’s usage and impact. Authors can also share this material more easily and track usage through Figshare’s metric functions.

.3gp, .ab1, .ai, .avi, .bmp, .csv, .doc, .docx, .eps, .fits, .flv, .gexf, .gif, .iso, .jpg, .m4v, .mkv, .mov, .mp4, .mpeg, .mpg .odp, .ods, .odt, .pdb, .pdf, .png, .ppt, .pptx, .ps, .psd, .rar, .rtf, .sav, .svg, .tar, .txt, .tiff, .vcf, .webm, .xls, .xlsx, .xps, .zip

Infographic services

We can create custom infographics to accompany any article published in our journals, to help increase understanding and drive engagement.

Video services

Work with multimedia professionals to create a video showcasing your article content and findings, to attract a wide audience.

More services…

Explore more research communication services that help you to increase your research visibility, and communicate with peers, funders and the media.