apsr-tables-figures

Tables & Figures (apsr-tables-figures)

Exhibits are where an expert reviewer checks whether the result is real. At APSR they also cost words: the word count "includes tables, figures, and footnotes that appear in the published text" (it excludes the reference list and online appendices). So every exhibit must pull its weight.

When to trigger

• Designing the main results table/figure or a key descriptive exhibit
• Deciding what belongs in the article vs. the online appendix
• A reviewer found an exhibit unclear, mislabeled, or non-self-contained
• Trimming to the word cap by moving exhibits to the appendix

Principles

1. Self-contained. A reader should understand each exhibit from its title, axis/column labels, and note alone — without hunting through the text. State units, sample, N, and what the estimate is.
2. Figures over dense tables for effects. Coefficient/forest plots, marginal-effects and predicted-probability plots, event-study and RD plots communicate magnitude and uncertainty better than a wall of coefficients. Show intervals.
3. Accessible. Colorblind-safe palettes; legible in grayscale; no chartjunk, no 3D, no needless color. Reviewers and readers must parse it quickly.
4. Main text vs. appendix. Keep the few exhibits that carry the argument in the article; move balance tables, full specifications, and robustness grids to the online appendix (excluded from the word count). This is also how you fit under ~11,000 / ~7,000 words.
5. Reproducible. Each exhibit is generated by the master script; numbers match the deposited reproducibility package exactly (the editors re-run it — see apsr-transparency-and-data-policy).

Discipline-specific exhibits

• Maps for geographic/spatial variation; network diagrams where structure is the point.
• Conjoint AMCE plots; survey-experiment treatment-effect plots.
• For qualitative work: timelines, causal-process diagrams, evidence tables linking claims to sources.

Anti-patterns

• Tables that require the prose to be intelligible (not self-contained)
• Reporting significance stars with no effect size or interval
• Cramming every robustness check into the main text (blows the word budget — use the appendix)
• Color-only encoding that fails in grayscale or for colorblind readers
• Exhibit numbers/values that don't match the deposited code output

Output format

【Main exhibit】what it shows + why a figure/table
【Self-contained?】title + labels + note + N/units present? [Y/N]
【Accessible?】grayscale-legible + colorblind-safe? [Y/N]
【Article vs appendix】split decided, word-budget impact noted
【Reproducible?】generated by master script, matches package? [Y/N]
【Next】apsr-writing-style

Supplementary resources

• ../../resources/external_tools.md — plotting/mapping/network packages
• ../../resources/official-source-map.md — word-count rule (includes tables/figures/footnotes)