thedixitjain NDSS Supplementary Material
NDSS 2027's limit is 13 pages — but the boundary is unusual: the Ethics Considerations section, references, and appendices are all excluded from the count (CFP, checked 2026-07-08). That exclusion is an invitation to structure, not a loophole to exploit. The governing rule: the 13 pages must contain everything the accept/reject decision rests on, because nothing obliges a reviewer to read past them.
What goes where
| Content | Placement | Reasoning |
|---|---|---|
| Threat model, design/attack, headline evaluation | Body | Decision-critical; must survive the Round-1 fast read |
| Disclosure timeline, harm analysis, IRB/ERB detail | Ethics Considerations (before references) | Uncounted, but the signal still needs a page-one sentence and method-level mentions |
| Proofs of stated theorems, protocol message formats | Appendix | Verification material — reviewers check it if inclined |
| Full config matrices, extra target versions, per-vantage breakdowns | Appendix | Robustness depth backing an in-body summary row |
| Additional case studies repeating the in-body pattern | Appendix (or cut) | Repetition earns no Round-2 points |
| Artifact description | 2-page appendix added at camera-ready if AE passed | Defined by the Call for Artifacts; not part of submission |
The dependency test
For each appendix, ask: if a reviewer never opens this, does the body still justify acceptance?
- Yes → correctly placed. The body carries a self-contained summary (one sentence or one table row) with a forward pointer.
- No → decision-critical content has leaked out of the body. Promote the load-bearing part, demote something decorative instead.
The most common leak in security drafts: the only evidence that a defense survives adaptive attack sits in an appendix table. Round 2's discussion phase will treat unread appendix evidence as missing evidence.
Anti-patterns with the exclusions
- Ethics-section stuffing — parking methodology or results in the uncounted ethics section. Reviewers and the Ethics Review Board read it for ethics; off-topic content there signals gaming and invites scrutiny of everything else.
- The 40-page appendix — bulk unedited output dumped after the references. Appendices are written documents with headings and topic sentences, or they are noise.
- Ghost pointers — "see Appendix F" where F does not exist or answers a different
question. Every pointer gets checked during the anonymity/format pass (
ndss-submission). - Anonymity decay — appendices and supplementary files are inside double-blind scope: screenshots with usernames, configs with institutional hostnames, and dataset paths leak identity exactly as body text would.
Suggested skeleton
p.1-13 BODY
1 Introduction (first-page contract — see ndss-writing-style)
2 Threat model & background
3 Attack / system design
4 Evaluation (headline results incl. adaptive-adversary summary)
5 Discussion & limitations
6 Related work
7 Conclusion
uncounted
Ethics Considerations (immediately before references, per CFP)
References
A Proofs / protocol details
B Full experimental matrix (body shows the summary row)
C Additional case studies
[camera-ready only] Artifact Appendix (2 pp., per Call for Artifacts)
Working the split during writing
- Draft body-first; open an appendix only when a section exceeds its page budget and the overflow fails the dependency test.
- Give every appendix a one-line contract at its top: what question it answers for which body claim.
- At each freeze, re-run the dependency test — content drifts appendix-ward under page pressure, and load-bearing tables get pushed out silently.
- Keep supplementary code/data links anonymized at submission (anonymous hosting; no
institutional URLs); the de-anonymized versions return at camera-ready
(
ndss-camera-ready).
Output format
[Body self-sufficiency] pass/fail — decision-critical items found outside body
[Ethics section] scope-clean? content that belongs elsewhere
[Appendix inventory] per appendix: contract line + dependency-test verdict
[Pointer audit] dangling or mismatched forward references
[Anonymity sweep] identity leaks found in appendices/supplements
Source: brycewang-stanford/Awesome-Journal-Skills → NDSS-Skills/skills/ndss-supplementary/SKILL.md