thedixitjain NSDI Supplementary Material
NSDI gives authors four containers with different review status. Misfiling content — a load-bearing baseline in an appendix, revision evidence missing from the auxiliary packet — costs more than any phrasing error. Rules below are the NSDI '27 CFP as rendered on 2026-07-08.
The four containers
| Container | '27 rule | Review status |
|---|---|---|
| Body | 12 pages incl. footnotes, figures, tables | The paper; judged in full |
| References | extra pages, no stated cap | Checked, uncounted |
| Appendices | extra pages after references permitted | Available context; assume optional reading (obligation 待核实) |
| Auxiliary material (HotCRP form) | for online content critical to the paper; alternative is contacting the co-chairs | Consulted at reviewer discretion; mandatory vehicle for revision packets |
Two contrasts worth internalizing. Against sibling venues that ban submission-time appendices outright, NSDI permits them — the trap here is overuse, not existence. And the auxiliary-material slot is not a junk drawer: the CFP frames it for content critical to the paper that lives online, plus the structured revision documents below.
The placement rule
Ask of every artifact of content: would a reviewer who skipped this be unable to judge a claim?
- Yes → body. Key workload description, baseline identity and tuning, the
mechanism a headline number depends on, the failure regimes. If it does not fit,
the paper is over-claiming for its budget — cut claims, not their evidence
(
nsdi-writing-style). - Supports but does not carry → appendix. Full parameter tables, additional workload results consistent with in-body trends, protocol message formats, extended proofs of secondary properties.
- Lives online and matters → auxiliary material, anonymized. A demo, a dataset
sample, an interactive visualization. Never a raw GitHub link in the text — repo
URLs identify authors (
nsdi-submission).
Self-containment is a hard constraint in both directions: the 12 pages must stand alone if every appendix page is ignored, and no appendix may quietly introduce a new claim the body never made.
Appendix design, when used
- Order appendices by likely reviewer interest; a skeptical reviewer goes to the appendix to check one specific thing, not to read linearly.
- Give each appendix a one-line pointer from the body ("full per-workload results: App. B") so their existence is discoverable inside the reviewed pages.
- Regenerate appendix tables from the same run ledger as body figures
(
nsdi-reproducibility); internal contradictions between body and appendix are a reviewer's fastest route to distrust. - Anonymize appendices to the same standard as the body — leaks hide in config listings, hostnames, and dataset paths.
The one-shot revision packet
NSDI's most distinctive supplementary requirement. A resubmitted one-shot revision must include auxiliary material containing:
- a version of the paper highlighting all changes made, and
- a high-level explanation of the major changes.
Build both as living documents during the revision, not as a deadline-night diff:
# Maintain the highlighted version continuously with latexdiff
latexdiff submitted/main.tex revised/main.tex > diff/main-diff.tex
pdflatex -output-directory diff diff/main-diff.tex
# Change memo skeleton: one block per required issue
# R2.3 (baseline tuning): re-ran §6.2 with vendor-recommended config;
# deltas now 2.1-2.9x (was 2.1-3.4x); text + Fig 7 updated. [diff pp. 8-9]
The same reviewers re-read the packet against their issue list; a memo that maps
issue → change → diff location does their verification for them. A revision whose
packet obscures what changed — or that ignores a required issue — is rejected with no
further revision option (nsdi-author-response).
Triage drill for an overfull draft
When the draft runs to 13.5 pages, resist moving the overflow wholesale to an appendix — demote by evidence role:
- List every figure/table with the claim it supports; anything supporting no in-body claim leaves the paper entirely.
- Secondary workloads whose trend matches the primary: one summarizing sentence in the body + full table in the appendix.
- Mechanism details needed to reimplement but not to judge (message formats, tuning constants): appendix.
- Anything a skeptical reviewer needs to believe a number: stays in-body, and a claim gets cut instead if space still lacks.
Pre-upload sweep
- Body stands alone with all appendices deleted.
- No load-bearing evidence outside the 12 pages.
- Every appendix pointed to from the body; no orphan claims.
- Auxiliary uploads anonymized (metadata, paths, owners) and actually critical.
- Revision packets: highlighted PDF + change memo present, issue-complete.
- Combined upload sizes within whatever HotCRP enforces this cycle (check the form; caps 待核实).
Cross-container consistency
The containers are read at different times by different people — reviewers now, revision reviewers months later, artifact evaluators after acceptance — so consistency is a supply-chain property: numbers quoted in the body match the appendix tables they summarize; the auxiliary demo shows the same system version the paper measures; and the revision packet's diff derives from the exact PDF the reviewers previously read, not an intermediate draft.
Output format
[Placement audit] item -> body / references / appendix / auxiliary (+ moves needed)
[Self-containment] body survives appendix deletion? orphan claims?
[Appendix hygiene] pointers present / regenerated from ledger / anonymized
[Revision packet] highlighted PDF ok? memo maps all required issues?
[Blocking issues] <ordered before upload>
Source: brycewang-stanford/Awesome-Journal-Skills → NSDI-Skills/skills/nsdi-supplementary/SKILL.md