Table 2.

A summary of the exclusion criteria applied to the results of our Web of Science search results. Each criterion for exclusion is given in the order they are applied. For each criterion, the publications that are still included, and those that are excluded, when the criteria are applied, are summarized. Also summarized here are the papers excluded from our analysis of emissivity reporting after the thermography methods assessment.

order	exclusion criterion	included in assessment	excluded on this criterion
excluded from thermography methods assessment
1	not thermography	Publications that carry out thermography or images collected by infrared thermography.	Publications that do not use thermography in any way also excluded are theoretical studies on applications of thermography if studies do not make thermal imaging measurements.
2	not biological	Thermography is applied to a biological research application.	Thermography is applied to a non-biological application.
3	isolated abstract	Publications that are not isolated abstracts from conferences. Conference reports are retained if they have a methods section.	Isolated abstracts from conferences which have no featured section for reporting methods.
4	retracted article	Publications that have not been retracted by the publishing body at time of last search.	Articles that had been retracted by the publishing body for any reason at time of last search.
5	review	Article is a primary research paper.	Publication is a secondary research paper reporting or providing commentary on the findings of previous work (these publications are filed separately in electronic supplementary material, S2 for ease of reference).
excluded from statistical analysis after thermography assessment completed
6	quantitative–qualitative	Paper presents temperature measurements dependent on thermography or data that required thermographic temperature measurements for its calculation. Thus, should report thermography parameter information.	Paper uses thermal imaging in an application that does not involve measuring temperature and is dependent wholly on apparent temperature. Thus, reporting of thermography parameter information is not required to assess accuracy or repeat methods.