Skills Soft Skills Structuring Technical Papers and Appendices

Structuring Technical Papers and Appendices

v20260724
asplos-supplementary
This guide provides best practices for organizing supplementary material and appendices in major conference submissions. It teaches authors how to maintain the core 11-page body's self-contained integrity while including necessary details (like full configurations, extended result grids, and full proofs) in appendices, ensuring the work remains robust even if reviewers do not read the supplemental content.
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Overview

ASPLOS Supplementary Material

ASPLOS 2027 lets appendices and supplemental material ride in the submission file with no page limit — under two conditions that define this entire skill: the 11-page body must be self-contained, and reviewers are neither required nor encouraged to read anything past it (CFP, checked 2026-07-08). Supplementary material is therefore not extra space; it is a different medium with a different reader contract.

The reader-contract test

For every block of content, ask: what happens if no reviewer ever reads this?

If unread, the paper... Verdict Destination
...loses a claim's only support Body — the claim is otherwise unsupported Compress into the 11 pages or cut the claim
...still stands; the block deepens confidence Legitimate appendix Appendix, with a forward pointer from the body
...still stands; the block enables re-implementation Appendix or artifact Appendix now; artifact package later
...still stands; nobody would miss it Cut Nowhere

The self-containment rule has teeth: the CFP frames appendices explicitly as not a way to circumvent the page limit. A proof sketch, key config table, or summary sensitivity plot that a claim depends on belongs inside the 11 pages, however tight that makes them.

What ASPLOS appendices are actually good for

  • Full configuration dumps — simulator configs, kernel settings, tuning values whose summary appears in the evaluation section.
  • Extended result grids — every workload × platform cell, where the body shows the representative subset and states the selection rule.
  • Interface specifications — the full ISA-extension encoding or API surface the body describes functionally.
  • Proof details for any formal claims, with theorem statements kept in-body.
  • Reproduction detail that previews the Artifact Appendix (asplos-artifact-evaluation) without depending on it.

The anonymized-supplement mechanism (ASPLOS-specific)

The 2027 double-blind rules include a mechanism siblings lack: when your own prior or concurrent work cannot be cited in the third person without breaking anonymity — a workshop paper being extended, a related manuscript under review elsewhere — it is uploaded and cited as anonymized supplemental material. Checklist for using it:

  1. Strip the supplement itself: author block, acknowledgments, PDF metadata, repository URLs, venue headers/footers.
  2. Cite it in the body as anonymous supplemental material, not with a placeholder like "removed for review" (the placeholder wording is disallowed).
  3. Include enough of the prior work that a reviewer can judge the delta — the point of the mechanism is to make "how much is new here?" answerable.

Pointer discipline

Every appendix section earns a one-line, promise-shaped pointer in the body:

Good: "Appendix B lists the full gem5 configuration; §6.1 states the
       parameters that materially affect the results."
Bad:  "Due to space constraints, details are in the appendix."
       (names no content, admits the body is incomplete)
Bad:  "See Appendix C for why this is safe."
       (a safety argument is claim-support; it must live in the body)

Staging across the cycle

  • Submission: appendices frozen with the body; they share the PDF and the deadline (September 9, 2026 for the live gate).
  • Response window: you may point reviewers to specific appendix content that answers their question — this is the one moment unread appendices get read, and precise pointers (asplos-author-response) are what make it happen.
  • Major Revision: appendix deltas count as part of the revision; log them in the change note like body changes.
  • Camera-ready/AE: decide what migrates from appendix to the archived artifact, where it gains versioning and badges instead of page count.

Appendix architecture

Unlimited length is not license for a junk drawer. Conventions that keep the appendix navigable for the two audiences who might read it (a response-window reviewer following your pointer, and a future artifact evaluator):

  • One appendix per purpose, lettered and titled by content ("Appendix B: Full gem5 configurations"), never "Additional results."
  • Order by likelihood of being pointed to during the response window: extended results and configurations first, proofs and encodings later.
  • Each appendix opens with a two-line scope note: what it contains and which body section it backs — orphan appendices with no body pointer get cut.
  • Keep appendix figures compilable from the same scripts as body figures; a supplement that contradicts the body (stale plot, different config) is worse than no supplement, because it is the kind of inconsistency that surfaces during revision re-review.

What never belongs in any supplement

  • Content that breaks anonymity (author-identifying configs, lab hostnames, grant boilerplate) — appendices are swept by the same double-blind rules as the body.
  • The only statement of a limitation. Burying a known weakness in an appendix reads as concealment when a reviewer finds it — and one usually does.
  • Results that contradict the body's claims without discussion; if the extended grid shows losing cases, the body's claim must already be scoped to survive them.
  • Anything you are not prepared to defend in the response window — appendices are in the reviewed record even when unread by default.

Interaction with the 11-page budget

The appendix is the pressure-relief valve that makes the figure-inclusive 11-page limit workable — but only content that passes the reader-contract test may flow through it. When asplos-writing-style's compression pass moves a result grid out of the body, the body must retain the summary statistic and the selection rule, so the claim remains supported by in-limit content alone. The test after every move: re-read the body claim and ask whether a reviewer who stops at page 11 still has grounds to believe it.

Output format

[Self-containment] claims supported only by appendix content: none / list
[Contract test] blocks re-classified body/appendix/artifact/cut: N moved
[Anonymized supplements] needed for: <own-work items> · stripped + cited correctly: Y/N
[Pointers] promise-shaped, content-naming: Y/N per appendix
[Staging] response-window pointer list drafted · artifact-migration list drafted
Info
Category Soft Skills
Name asplos-supplementary
Version v20260724
Size 6.71KB
Updated At 2026-07-28
Language