Pods Supplementary

PODS Supplementary

Use this when assembling PODS supplementary material. The governing rule is specific to PODS: the appendix is incorporated with the submission and there are no online or external appendices, so "supplementary" means the appendix inside the same PDF — nothing lives off-paper. The body must be readable as a self-contained mathematical narrative, and the appendix must contain every proof the body defers.

What goes where

If a reviewer would have to trust an unproved step to accept the paper, it is mis-partitioned — the full proof must be in the appendix, because at PODS the appendix ships with the submission and is expected to be checked.

The acmsmall page-budget discipline

PODS 2026's budget is 15 pages excluding references in \documentclass[acmsmall,review,anonymous]{acmart}, plus unlimited references and the at-submission appendix of unlimited length. Consequences:

• The body must stand alone: a reader should understand the model, the results, and why they hold from the 15 pages, with the appendix supplying verification detail.
• Proofs that do not fit go to the appendix behind explicit forward references ("full proof in Appendix B") — never dropped or deferred to an external document.
• Do not smuggle a result into the appendix that the body needs to make its case: the body carries the argument; the appendix carries the verification. Reviewers read the body in full and consult the appendix to check.
• References are unlimited and outside the page count, so there is no reason to trim the bibliography to save space.

No external appendix — the PODS-specific rule

[One PDF]        body + references + appendix in a single submitted file; no separate archive, no URL
[No online host]  a link to proofs "on a website" is not allowed and breaks anonymity — do not use one
[Complete]        every deferred proof is present in the appendix, self-contained and cite-correct
[Reviewer path]   the body forward-references each appendix proof so a reviewer can find it fast

Double-anonymous supplementary hygiene

[No identity]   no authors, affiliations, acknowledgements, funding, or a named system anywhere in the
                body or the appendix
[Third person]  self-citations phrased in the third person, in the body and the appendix alike
[No revealing link] no arXiv/homepage/repository link that discloses authorship; withhold or anonymize
[Clean PDF]     scrub PDF metadata (author/producer) before upload

Appendix architecture

• Order appendix sections to mirror the body's theorem order; reviewers navigate by theorem number, not page.
• Keep each appendix proof referenced from the body at least once — an orphaned proof is invisible.
• Make each appendix proof self-contained: restate the theorem, state assumptions, and cite the exact prior lemmas used, so a reviewer can check it without reconstructing context.

Vignette: splitting a two-bound paper

A paper with an upper-bound algorithm and a lower-bound reduction: the body keeps the model, both theorem statements, the algorithm with its invariant and complexity accounting, and the crux of the reduction; the appendix holds the full correctness proof, the complete gadget construction, and the secondary corollaries — each forward-referenced from the body, all inside the one submitted PDF, with no external link and no identity leak.

Output format

[Supplement status] ready / needs fixes / not ready
[Partition check] any unproved decision-critical step? <none / move full proof to appendix: what>
[Single-PDF check] all proofs in the submitted file? no external/online appendix? yes/no
[Page budget] body within 15 pp (excl. refs)? appendix forward-referenced? yes/no
[Anonymity] body + appendix clean of identity + metadata? passed/issues

Source: brycewang-stanford/Awesome-Journal-Skills → PODS-Skills/skills/pods-supplementary/SKILL.md