Appendices

[fred-atherden]

Description

Appendices are additional sections of article content considered to be supporting for the main text, but not essential to the flow of the main article. They are usually methods focused, providing details that the authors feel would be be distracting in the main article but would be required by anyone attempting to reproduce their work.

User Stories

Author

• As an author I want to be able to add one or more appendix sections to my article so that I can include text to supplement the main body of the article.
• As an author, I want to be able to remove an appendix section from the manuscript so that I eliminate anything that has been incorrectly supplied.
• As an author, I want to be able to edit figures, tables, and equations in an appendix so that I can correct any errors before publishing.
• As an author, I want to be able to add, edit and remove asset citations, reference citations, code blocks and equations in an appendix so that I can correct errors.
• As an author, I want to be able to cite assets from the appendices in the main body of an article so that I can create links between the two sections.
• As an author, I want to be able to add sections and subsections to an appendix so that I can organise the content.

Production staff

• As production staff, I want to be able to add and remove figures and tables in the appendix section so that I can correct errors on behalf of the authors.

But what if . . . ?

Considerations

• In the XML, each appendix is contained in an <app>; <app> elements are contained in an <app-group> element.
• References cited in an appendix should be contained in the main reference list; appendices should not have their own reference lists.
• Appendices can contain figures, tables and videos (e.g. all the main assets of main text). For ease of citation, these have a specific naming scheme:
  • Appendix 1—figure 1
  • Appendix 1—figure 1—source data 1
  • Appendix 1—figure 1—figure supplement 1
    • Appendix 1—figure 1—figure supplement 1—source data 1
  • Appendix 1—table 1
  • Appendix 1—table 1—source data 1
  • Appendix 1—video 1
  • Appendix 1—video 1—source data 1
• Equations in an appendix MAY be labelled differently from the main text. The author may, for example, want to restart the equation numbering in the appendices, or use a different labelling scheme e.g. A.1, A.2 etc. However, this is not consistent. We'd be willing to consider more strict labelling conventions but have to be conscious of author push-back.
• Appendixes should otherwise work in the same way as main text.
• Each appendix should have an overall label (e.g. Appendix 1, Appendix 2 etc). Currently, eLife has been putting this in a <title> element but it might be more properly placed in a <label> element.

XML requirements

Appendices should be captured as app elements, placed in an app-group, which in turn is placed after the ref-list in the back.

<back>
        ...
        <ref-list>...</ref-list>
        <app-group>
                <app id="appendix-1">
                        <title>Appendix 1</title>
                        <p>...</p>
                        <sec>...</sec>
                        ...
                </app>
        </app-group>
</back>

Numerous appendices example:

<back>
        ...
        <ref-list>...</ref-list>
        <app-group>
                <app id="appendix-1">
                        <title>Appendix 1</title>
                        ...
                </app>
                <app id="appendix-2">
                        <title>Appendix 2</title>
                        ...
                </app>
                <app id="appendix-3">
                        <title>Appendix 3</title>
                        ...
                </app>
        </app-group>
</back>

Appendices can contain the same content as main text. For example, eLife has captured the following elements in as children of app:

• p
• boxed-text
• sec
• fig-group
• fig
• table-wrap
• media

Mock ups

Proposal