At BioMed Central, we encourage authors to submit additional files such as movies and datasets, and we continue to look for ways to use web technology to make these files more useful and accessible.

We have recently updated our Instructions for Authors, adding an additional file quick reference guide, which provides advice, recommendations and examples for the preparation of various types of additional file. The guide also describes what we currently do to present each type of additional file in a readily accessible way. Examples range from interactive images to enhanced 3D PDFs, chemical structures and cut-and-paste-enabled mathematical formulae. We hope the guide will encourage authors to take full advantage of the data-sharing opportunities offered by the BioMed Central publishing platform, in line with our policy of promoting transparency of access to underlying data to aid reproducibility in research.

We have plans for many further improvement in our additional file handling and visualization, including full text search additional file content, CSV/Excel download of all tabular data, integrating data across multiple domains using standards such as ISA-TAB (already in extensive use by BioMed Central journals such as GigaScience), improved video support including on mobile platforms, and embedded visualization for many additional file formats.

If you have any suggestions for further additional file formats for which we should provide enhanced support, please get in touch.