Skills Soft Skills Managing Content Tiers for Academic Papers

Managing Content Tiers for Academic Papers

v20260724
conext-supplementary
This guide outlines the strategic allocation of content—such as results, methods, and limitations—into the main body, appendix, or artifact for academic submissions. The core principle is 'decision-criticality': any information a reviewer must read to accept the paper must reside in the main body, ensuring key findings are not hidden in supplementary materials or repositories.
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Overview

CoNEXT Supplementary

Decide where each piece of content lives: the reviewed body, the appendix budget, or the artifact. The governing rule at CoNEXT is decision-criticality — anything a reviewer must read to be convinced the paper should be accepted belongs in the body, not in an appendix a reviewer may skip or an artifact they may not open. CoNEXT's appendix budget is small (long papers ≤4 pages, short papers ≤2), so this is a real allocation problem, not a dumping ground.

The three tiers

Tier Belongs in Test
Decision-critical Main body (≤16 / ≤10 pages) Would a reviewer's accept/reject flip without it? -> body
Supporting Appendix (≤4 / ≤2 pages) Strengthens or reassures but does not decide -> appendix
Reproducibility / bulk Artifact Needed to reproduce but not to judge -> artifact

What must stay in the body

  • The central claims and the measurements that back them — a headline result relegated to an appendix reads as hidden weakness.
  • The key baseline comparison and how baselines were tuned.
  • The central limitation and how you bound it (argue it where the result lives).
  • The evaluation platform description sufficient to trust the numbers (topology, hardware, scale).

Reviewers are not required to read appendices or run artifacts to reach a decision; if acceptance hinges on it, it is body content.

What the appendix is for

  • Extra results that reinforce a body claim (additional paths, parameter sweeps, secondary metrics).
  • Detailed protocol/algorithm listings, proofs, or derivations that support but do not carry the contribution.
  • Extended methodology detail (full trace-extraction steps, additional testbed configurations).

Keep it within the acmart appendix budget and clearly cross-referenced from the body; an appendix the body never points to is wasted.

What the artifact is for

  • Full traces, configs, testbed scripts, and the raw-to-figure pipeline (see conext-reproducibility).
  • Large tables, per-run logs, and anything whose purpose is reproduction rather than judgment.
  • Interactive or bulky material that cannot fit the page budget.

The artifact supports reproducibility and (if you opted in) badging; it is not a place to smuggle decision-critical evidence past the page limit.

Common misallocations

Misallocation Why it hurts Fix
Headline result only in the artifact Reviewers may not open it; reads as hidden Bring the result into the body
Central limitation buried in an appendix Misses the chance to pre-empt the objection Argue it in the body where the result lives
Key baseline tuning only in a repo README Soundness cannot be judged from the paper Summarize the tuning in the body
Appendix overflowing the budget acmart non-compliance / desk risk Move bulk to the artifact, keep supporting material
Body padded with material that belongs in the artifact Wastes pages you need for evidence Push reproduction bulk to the artifact

Double-anonymity across tiers

Every tier is a leak surface: an appendix figure showing an internal hostname, or an artifact with commit metadata, breaks anonymity as surely as the body. Run the anonymity sweep (see conext-submission) across the body, appendix, and artifact together.

Output format

[Allocation] body / appendix / artifact for each major piece of content
[Decision-critical check] anything acceptance depends on living outside the body? -> move it in
[Budget] appendix pages used vs. limit (long ≤4 / short ≤2); acmart compliant?
[Cross-refs] appendix + artifact pointed to from the body? yes/no
[Anonymity] body + appendix + artifact swept together? yes/no
Info
Category Soft Skills
Name conext-supplementary
Version v20260724
Size 4.13KB
Updated At 2026-07-28
Language