Skills Data Science Structuring Supplementary Material For Research Papers

Structuring Supplementary Material For Research Papers

v20260724
recsys-supplementary
This guide details the strategic placement of supplementary evidence (e.g., tuning grids, ablation studies, code) for academic submissions, particularly in conference formats like RecSys. It clarifies the difference between material belonging in the main body, the page-counted appendix, and the anonymous repository, ensuring that critical findings are visible and adhere to strict page budget constraints.
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Overview

RecSys Supplementary

Use this when deciding where each piece of supporting material goes. RecSys is unusual: it does not invite a separate anonymous supplement file the way OpenReview venues do. Instead the appendix counts inside the content-page budget, and executable or bulky material lives in the anonymous repository linked from the paper. That constraint drives every placement decision.

The three-bucket decision

Bucket What belongs here Constraint
Main body (8 / 4 pages) The recommendation claim, method, headline offline table, the offline-online bridge, key ablation Must stand alone; a reviewer should grasp the contribution without the appendix
Appendix (inside the budget) Proof of any bound, dataset details, tuning grids, extra ablations, per-dataset breakdowns Every page here is a page not spent on the body — include only what changes belief
Anonymous repository Code, configs, checkpoints, logged propensities, raw run outputs, seeds Reviewers may not open it; nothing decision-critical can live only here

The sharpest RecSys-specific edge: because the appendix eats your page budget, authors are tempted to push essential evidence (like the equal-budget tuning grid) into the repository — but that is exactly the evidence a skeptical reviewer wants to see stated, so summarize it in the appendix and keep the full grid in the repository.

What to keep in the body no matter what

  • The method and its assumption (e.g., positivity for an off-policy estimator).
  • The headline ranking table with tuned baselines and reported variance.
  • The one ablation that isolates the mechanism.
  • One sentence stating the split protocol and whether metrics are full-ranking.

What gets read, and how carefully

Item Inspection likelihood Practical implication
Headline offline table High Belongs in the body, not the appendix
Tuning grid summary Medium-high Summarize in the appendix; reviewers check for equal budget
Extra datasets / ablations Medium Reference each from the body or it is invisible
Code repository Variable (reviewer discretion) README must orient a reader in one minute
Raw run logs Low Repository only; never rely on them for a claim

Vignette: splitting an off-policy ranking paper

A submission proposing an exposure-corrected ranker: the body keeps the estimator, its positivity assumption, the tuned headline table, and the simulator bridge figure; the appendix holds the propensity-model details, the equal-budget tuning grid summary, and per-dataset breakdowns; the repository carries the seeded runner, checkpoints, and logged propensities. Nothing decision- critical lives only in the repository, because repository inspection is discretionary.

Cross-reference discipline

Body Table 1  --cites-->  App. B (tuning grid)  --mirrors-->  repo/configs/*.yaml
Body Fig. 1   --cites-->  App. C (simulator setup)  --mirrors-->  repo/sim/run.sh

Orphaned appendix material — a table no body sentence points to — wastes budget and is effectively invisible under reviewer discretion.

Output format

[Placement status] Ready / Needs fixes / Not ready
[Body-only items] <method / assumption / headline table / key ablation / split statement>
[Appendix items] <proofs / tuning-grid summary / extra datasets — inside the budget>
[Repository items] <code / configs / checkpoints / propensities / logs>
[Main-paper dependency] <what breaks if the appendix or repo is ignored>
Info
Category Data Science
Name recsys-supplementary
Version v20260724
Size 3.86KB
Updated At 2026-07-29
Language