---
name: apsr-tables-figures
description: Use when building tables and figures for an American Political Science Review (APSR) manuscript so exhibits are self-contained, accessible, and count toward the word budget correctly. APSR word counts include tables, figures, and printed footnotes, so exhibits must earn their space. Designs exhibits; it does not run the analysis.
---

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