Skills Productivity Controlling Paper Scope and Supplementary Material

Controlling Paper Scope and Supplementary Material

v20260724
vldb-supplementary
A comprehensive guide for authors submitting to academic conferences, addressing strict page limitations where appendices count against the core budget. It details best practices for distributing supplementary evidence across three external homes: the main paper, dedicated arXiv technical reports, and artifact repositories. The guide emphasizes maintaining self-containment, managing version discipline, and strategically cutting content to ensure the core claims are reviewable.
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Overview

VLDB Supplementary

Use this when the paper is overflowing its category budget. PVLDB's constraint is unusual: references are free, but appendices are not — every page of appendix, acknowledgement, or extra table counts inside the 12 (or 8, or 6) page limit. There is no separate supplementary upload lane to hide length in, so "supplementary material" at this venue means things that live outside the PDF entirely.

The three external homes

Home Best for Constraint
Extended technical report (arXiv or institutional) Full proofs, extra experiments, parameter sweeps, tuning details Cite it from the paper by version; single-blind review makes this uncomplicated
Artifact repository Configs, raw results, additional plots, per-workload breakdowns Must be tagged so cited numbers stay stable
The paper itself Anything a reviewer needs to judge the claims The only place reviewers are obliged to look

Because PVLDB review is single-blind, posting the extended report under your own names is normal practice, not an anonymity hazard — the inverse of the double-anonymous venues in this collection. (Reconfirm the current identity policy on the live volume guidelines; see the source map.)

The self-containment test

Reviewers commit to the PDF, not to your links. Before exporting content:

  • Every claim in the abstract must be substantiated inside the paper — a headline result whose only evidence is "see the TR" is unreviewable.
  • Keep one representative experiment per claim in the body; export the sensitivity grid, not the flagship curve.
  • Keep algorithm pseudocode for the core mechanism; export correctness proofs if long, but keep the theorem statement and a two-line argument sketch.
  • Never export the competitor-fairness details (versions, tuning); reviewers check those during, not after, review.

Cut order when 14 pages must become 12

1. Redundant transitions and roadmap prose        (~0.5 pp, free)
2. Sensitivity sweeps -> TR, keep one sentence each (~1 pp)
3. Secondary workload's full plots -> TR, keep summary table (~0.5-1 pp)
4. Long proofs -> TR, keep statements + sketches   (~0.5 pp)
5. NEVER: experimental setup, baseline tuning disclosure,
   limitations, or the one experiment behind each claim

Version discipline for external material

  • Freeze the TR version you cite (arXiv vN, not the bare identifier) at submission time; updating the TR mid-review silently changes what reviewers read.
  • If a revision verdict arrives, the new experiments belong in the paper first — the required-changes list is judged on the PDF, and exporting a demanded result to the TR reads as evasion.
  • Sync the repository tag whenever the TR gains results, so the three artifacts (paper, TR, repo) never disagree on a number.

Failure patterns

  • The two-body problem: paper and TR drift until a reviewer finds a contradicting number — instant credibility loss.
  • Link-dependence: a body that reads like an index into external material.
  • Budget denial: planning "we'll appendix it" at a venue where the appendix eats the same 12 pages.

Output format

[Budget state] <pages used / category limit>
[Export plan] <item -> TR / repo, estimated savings>
[Self-containment] passes / claims relying on external evidence listed
[Version pins] TR version, repo tag, consistency check
[Kept in body] <setup, fairness ledger, per-claim evidence — confirmed>
Info
Category Productivity
Name vldb-supplementary
Version v20260724
Size 3.78KB
Updated At 2026-07-29
Language