Preparing your manuscript
Supplemental material - guidelines for authors
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.
For information on the specific handling and hosting of research data files, and Sage’s open research data policies, see Research data sharing policies
Sage can host approved supplemental material on Sage Journals, alongside the full-text article.
As you can see above, files will display in a downloadable list that users may download.
Authors should consult the submission guidelines for the individual journals to see whether supplemental material is accepted. Supplemental material files are subjected to peer-review alongside the main article. Decisions about whether to include supplemental material files will be made by the editorial team as part of the article acceptance process.
Supplemental material files will be uploaded online as supplied. Please ensure they are “print ready,” as 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. For a fee, we do offer Sage Author Services for assistance with infographics, video abstracts, and artwork preparation.
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 – “[Filename] - 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 will aid in the discoverability of the supplemental material online.
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 | avi, mov, mp4, mpeg |
| 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.
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) http://www.apple.com/quicktime/download/win.html. 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 in supplemental material depends on the source of that material.
If it is the author’s own content, by signing the Contributor License, the author is usually asked to grant a non-exclusive license to the journal owner but in some cases the supplemental material may be published under a Creative Commons license. Authors should check the Sage license they are asked to sign on acceptance.
Sage will only publish supplemental material 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, see Copyright and Permissions Help and FAQs.
Please note that supplemental material and data supplements are permanent records just like the articles themselves – i.e. they may not be altered after they have gone live (been published) on Sage Journals.
