nsdi-supplementary

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:

1. a version of the paper highlighting all changes made, and
2. 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:

1. List every figure/table with the claim it supports; anything supporting no

in-body claim leaves the paper entirely.

1. Secondary workloads whose trend matches the primary: one summarizing sentence in

the body + full table in the appendix.

1. Mechanism details needed to reimplement but not to judge (message formats,

tuning constants): appendix.

1. 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>