isr-tables-figures

Tables, Figures & the Electronic Companion (isr-tables-figures)

When to trigger

• The main text is over the page budget and you must decide what moves to the companion
• Exhibits are cluttered, not self-contained, or off INFORMS house style
• You have proofs, lemmas, or full measurement items competing for space in the body
• A reviewer says "Table X is unreadable" or "the model is hard to follow"

Budget exhibits against ISR's hard page cap

ISR caps manuscripts at 32 pages of text and no more than 38 pages including all material (references, appendixes, tables, figures). This discipline is tighter than many peer journals, so exhibits must earn their place. Treat the electronic companion / online appendix (published if accepted) as the home for everything that supports but does not carry the argument: full proofs and lemmas, complete measurement items and scale sources, additional robustness, and large auxiliary tables. Keep in the body only the exhibits a reader needs to follow the core claim.

Genre-specific exhibits

• Behavioral/empirical. A descriptives/correlation table with reliabilities on the diagonal; a measurement table (loadings, AVE, discriminant validity); a results table with effect sizes; interaction plots with simple slopes; the theoretical model as a path diagram.
• Analytical/economic. A clean timeline/game-tree figure of the model; a notation/assumptions table; comparative-statics figures or tables showing how the equilibrium shifts with key parameters. Push full proofs to the companion; keep only the load-bearing result and its intuition in the body.
• Design science. An artifact architecture figure; a design-objectives-to-features mapping table; an evaluation table benchmarking the artifact against baselines on objective-linked metrics.

House style and self-containment

Follow INFORMS exhibit conventions; every table and figure must be self-contained (title, units, N, significance notes, and what the reader should conclude) so it reads without the prose. Number consistently and ensure every exhibit is referenced and interpreted in the text — no orphan tables.

Checklist

• Body exhibits limited to those that carry the core claim
• Proofs, full items, extra robustness routed to the electronic companion
• Page budget (32 text / 38 total) verified after exhibit placement
• Each exhibit self-contained and INFORMS-styled
• Model/equilibrium or path diagram present and legible
• Every exhibit referenced and interpreted in text

Anti-patterns

• Kitchen-sink tables dumping every coefficient into the body.
• Proofs in the main text crowding out the argument.
• Orphan exhibits never discussed in prose.
• Non-self-contained tables that require the text to be intelligible.

Exhibit pass for Information Systems Research

Run this as a concrete capability pass. First lock the digital artifact or system, user/firm behavior, identification or design evidence, and IS-theory contribution; then test whether the manuscript addresses IS reviewers who expect digital-technology theory, empirical or design leverage, and implications for organizations or markets.

• Primary move: For every table or figure, state the object, sample/case base, uncertainty display, and one sentence the exhibit proves for this venue.
• Decision ledger: return claim / evidence / blocker / next edit rows so the next pass can patch the manuscript directly.
• Sibling comparison: compare against MIS Quarterly for broader IS theory, Management Science for OR/MS generality, Journal of Management Information Systems for applied IS systems; if the neighboring outlet has the stronger audience claim, recommend re-routing before polishing.
• Verification floor: before submission-ready advice, re-open resources/official-source-map.md for volatile rules and name the one unresolved fact that could change the recommendation.

Output format

【Genre exhibits】[...]
【Body vs companion split】[...]
【Page budget】32 text / 38 total: ok? [...]
【Self-containment】[...]
【House style】INFORMS conventions: pass/fix
【Next step】isr-writing-style