A neutron walks into a bar and says, “How much for a gin and tonic?” The bartender looks at him and says “for you, no charge!” I love physics jokes, even when they are corny. The other thing that has no charge associated with it is supplementary material that accompanies your Applied Optics papers. Guidelines for supplementary material associated with OSA journals can be found at https://www.osapublishing.org/submit/style/multimedia.cfm.

From the guidelines, “Most OSA journals allow authors to include supplementary materials as integral parts of a manuscript. Such materials are subject to peer-review procedures along with the rest of the paper and should be uploaded and described using OSA’s Prism manuscript system.” The types of acceptable supplementary materials are visualization materials and small data files as well as links to large data sets and source code. Visualizations can be two-dimensional, three-dimensional, and video visualizations. Data files can be data that form plots, figures, or any file that helps readers and researchers understand, reproduce, or extend a body of work.

I have worked with data sets in the past, which have been extremely useful when they were made available to the broader community. Examples are automatic target identification data sets, facial recognition data sets, and clutter data sets. Such data are extremely expensive to acquire and making them available to other researchers can be a gratifying contribution. In fact, some data sets have become more well-known than journal papers and have been cited extensively. Supplementary materials also can be computer code such as MATLAB files, Code V files, Zemax files, C++ files, etc.

For video files, the guidelines provide a recommended file size, resolution, and other parameters essential for optimized delivery of video support for papers, techniques, methods, etc. Animations that describe important aspects of a paper are encouraged. For data that are used in plots and graphs, comma separated files (CSV) are recommended, as these files are easily ingested into spreadsheet programs such as Excel. Finally, the guidelines detail the appropriate citation requirements for the supplementary material so that authors can accurately provide them in their publications.

I encourage authors to provide supplementary material when it enhances their paper and allows readers to gain a better understanding of the great work that is published in Applied Optics. Visualizations, supporting data, and code are all welcome.

So, two atoms were walking across the street when one of them said to the other, “I think I lost an electron.” “Really?” said the other, “Are you sure?” “Yes, I am absolutely positive!” I am positive that supplementary material will enhance Applied Optics and the other OSA journals. Please review OSA’s guidelines and consider submitting supplementary material when it is appropriate.