Referencing documents - alex-strobel/DPP-LabManual GitHub Wiki

When writing something (e.g., a manuscript), it will often become necessary to link to some external resource, be it a preregistration, a supplemental material, or a methods or data paper or any else kind of additional information. In such cases, it is essential that readers can easily find the information we reference to.

Sometimes, the external source will be a single file as in the case of a preregistration or a supplemental material. It is then of utmost importance (not only for that purpose) to number pages (and possible even lines) in every document we create and also to appropriately number external tables and figures so that we can reference to the appropriate page/table/figure where some information is given. It is not appropriate to state in a manuscript something like "Further information is given in the supplemental material.". Rather, we write "Further information is given in the supplemental material [link], Table S1 on p. 3.".

Given that you created an OSF project with multiple files containing information relevant to your manuscript, we not simply link to this OSF project (e.g., "Further information on power calculation can be found at https://osf.io/abdce/), but give a detailed reference to the file, section title and page number where the referenced information is given (e.g., "Further information on power calculation can be found at https://osf.io/abdce/, document "Sample_Description.pdf", section "Power Calculation" on p. 3)".

That way, not only readers will be able to easily find all relevant information, but also our future selves will be able to easily assess where (and ideally also why) we stated something in some scientific text.