I am at a difficult position. I work in a major software/telecommunications company, and pursue a doctoral degree at the same time. The company has strict policies against competing behavior. I have implemented a lot of core Internet component code at my free time, but the company would consider releasing those under an open source license as competing behavior. I won't consider changing the employer, as the salary is acceptable, the job is extremely interesting and I frequently get good extra payments for all of the inventions I have made.
However, I have managed to obtain publication permission for several articles given that main algorithms are only explained as pseudocode. Because my core Internet component is over 20 000 lines of code, I of course cannot explain all as pseudocode.
I would like to submit articles related to this to major IEEE computer society and communications society journals. I would like the reviewers have ability to assess that all experiments have been performed correctly, and thus see the source code for the experiments made in the articles. But I cannot according to the company policy publish the source code to all readers.
Now, what I would like to have is review-only supplemental material. Supplemental material that only the reviewers can assess, and that the journal can store for their private use (e.g. for verification of results if there's a suspicion of scientific misconduct), but not available publicly for all readers.
Is this kind of review-only supplemental material in general possible? I wouldn't be surprised to find if the answer was "no", as it makes it impossible for regular readers to work as unsolicited reviewers, publishing their own commentary on the results in the process.
Of course the answer can depend on the circumstances and the journal, so perhaps asking the editor would be a good option. But I believe this question may have more general value, and thus, I am asking it here as well.
