Io Tables Figures

---
name: io-tables-figures
description: Use when building tables and figures for an International Organization (IO) manuscript so exhibits are self-contained, accessible, reproducible, and count toward the word budget correctly. IO word limits include tables, figures, and notes (but exclude the bibliography), and exhibits must survive IO's pre-publication result verification. Designs exhibits; it does not run the analysis.
---

# Tables & Figures (io-tables-figures)

Exhibits are where an expert IR reviewer checks whether the result is real — and where IO's editorial
staff will later confirm the numbers reproduce. At IO they also **cost words**: the word limit
**includes tables, figures, and notes** (it excludes the bibliography). So every exhibit must pull its
weight, and every value must match the deposited code.

## When to trigger

- Designing the main results table/figure or a key descriptive/measurement exhibit
- Deciding what belongs in the article vs. the supplementary material (which should rarely exceed ~20 pp)
- A reviewer found an exhibit unclear, mislabeled, or non-self-contained
- Trimming to the word cap by moving exhibits to supplementary material

## Principles

1. **State the level explicitly.** IR exhibits are misread when the unit is implicit. Put the
   **unit of analysis** (state-year, directed-dyad-year, IGO, crisis) in the title or note, with the
   sample, N, time span, and what the quantity is. A dyadic coefficient and a monadic one look identical
   on a plot but mean different things.
2. **Plot effects; tabulate sparingly.** For the headline international effect, a coefficient/forest
   plot, a marginal-effects or predicted-probability plot, or an event-study/RD plot conveys magnitude
   and uncertainty better than columns of coefficients. Always show the interval.
3. **Survive print and color limits.** Use colorblind-safe palettes that stay legible in grayscale; drop
   3D, chartjunk, and decorative color. A referee skimming the PDF must read it in seconds.
4. **Decide article vs. supplementary by argument weight.** Keep only the exhibits that carry the IR
   claim in the article; relegate balance tables, full specifications, robustness grids, and
   proof-supporting tables to **supplementary material** (which **should rarely exceed twenty pages**,
   especially at first submission). Because the word count counts exhibits, this is also how you land
   under 14,000 / 8,000 / 10,000 words.
5. **Tie every number to the driver script.** Each exhibit is regenerated by the analysis pipeline and
   matches the deposited package — **IO staff re-run it before final acceptance** (see
   `io-transparency-and-data-policy`).

## IR-specific exhibits
- Maps for geographic/spatial variation (conflict locations, alliance/trade ties); network diagrams for
  alliance, trade, or IGO-membership structure where structure is the point.
- Dyad-level coefficient plots; conjoint AMCE plots and foreign-policy survey-experiment effect plots.
- For qualitative IR work: timelines of crises/negotiations, causal-process diagrams, evidence tables
  linking claims to archival/interview sources.

## Anti-patterns

- Leaving the unit/level implicit so a dyadic estimate reads like a monadic one
- An exhibit only intelligible after reading the prose around it
- Significance stars with no effect size or interval
- Pushing every robustness grid into the main text (it costs words; the SI also has a ~20-page norm)
- Color-only encoding that collapses in grayscale or for colorblind readers
- Printed values that diverge from the deposited code output (the IO re-run will flag it)

## Output format

```
【Main exhibit】what it shows + why a figure/table
【Self-contained?】title + labels + note + N/units/level/time present? [Y/N]
【Accessible?】grayscale-legible + colorblind-safe? [Y/N]
【Article vs supplementary】split decided, word-budget + ~20-page SI noted
【Reproducible?】generated by master script, matches package for IO verification? [Y/N]
【Next】io-writing-style
```

## Supplementary resources

- [`../../resources/external_tools.md`](../../resources/external_tools.md) — plotting/mapping/network packages for IR data
- [`../../resources/official-source-map.md`](../../resources/official-source-map.md) — word-count inclusion rule and supplementary-material guidance