What is supporting information?

Supporting information enables authors an option to provide and archive additional information that is critical to the manuscript such as the methods, figures, video files, or animations.

Supporting information:

• Supplements the main scientific conclusions of the paper but are not essential to the conclusions or are in formats that cannot be incorporated in the text (e.g., animations);
• Does not include discussion, key analysis, or data;
• is likely to be usable or used by other scientists working in the field;
• is described with sufficient precision that other scientists can understand them, and
• must not contain .exe, .mov, or .xlsx files with macros.
• is not copyedited during the proofing process, so please ensure that the submitted version is final.

What kinds of files are allowed?

AGU journals accept supporting information in most file formats.

Text, graphics, figures, summary tables, animations/movies, and sound files are all accepted. Use of the standard zip compression is permitted. Contact journal staff to discuss formats queries and concerns.

We encourage rich media such as movies, sound clips, animations, interactive components, and so on. Specific information required to embed multimedia content during the post-acceptance production & proofing process can be found on Wiley's Embedded Rich Media page.

Supporting information text, figures, and all captions should be included in one PDF file. Animations, videos, and sound files should be uploaded separately in their native format. Data and software should not be included in the supporting information. Additional information can be found in the AGU Data & Software for Authors guidance.

How to submit supporting information

Authors should use our Supporting Information template, available in Microsoft Word and LaTeX on our checklists and templates. Supporting information files should be submitted to AGU using the GEMS system at the time of manuscript submission. Please upload the final PDF, not the original source version (Word or LaTeX), when submitting your template file (PDF sample of a completed template).

The Supporting Information template should be used for text, captions, and figures which are converted to a PDF file in GEMS. Other related files (such as movies, animations, calculation worksheets, and three-dimensional models) must be uploaded separately, but referred to in the table of contents, and captions added to the template file.

References in supporting information should also be included in a separate reference list below the main text references under the heading "References From the Supporting Information" so that they will be discovered, linked, and indexed. A separate reference list within the supporting information is not necessary. Reference text does not count toward length limits.

If you are unable to upload your files to GEMS, email the journal editorial office for advice and/or FTP instructions.

Please note that all supporting information will be peer reviewed with your manuscript. Please remember that all publishing policies, including plagiarism and dual and prior publication, apply to supporting information.

Supporting information naming protocol

Authors are encouraged to follow this guide to name supporting files and to give the files the proper object title assignment in GEMS. The file names that the author uses at submission will appear online with the published article. Authors are encouraged to name files in a way that identify the supporting information with the paper. AGU encourages authors to name files with either the GEMS number (if available) or author names. The file should also include a naming convention in which xx is the number (e.g., 01, 02). For example, your file might be authorname-ds01.doc if you do not have a paper number assigned.