Podc supplementary

PODC Supplementary

PODC's content-placement problem is unusual: the submission has no page limit, but only the abstract and the first 10 pages after the title page are guaranteed to be read. Everything else — including most of your proofs — is read at the committee's discretion. So the split is not "paper vs. appendix" but "decision-critical (must be in 10 pages) vs. verification-detail (may be deferred)." Get it wrong and a reviewer decides against a paper whose key idea sat on page 15.

The placement rule

Anything that decides ACCEPTANCE  -> first 10 pages after the title page (guaranteed read)
Anything that only VERIFIES it    -> full version / appendix (read at the committee's discretion)

Decision-critical means: the model box, the theorem statements, the delta over prior work, and enough of the proof to convince a reviewer the full proof exists (the key lemma or the proof idea). Verification-detail means: routine calculations, standard-lemma proofs, symmetric cases, and the long technical core once its idea has been conveyed.

What must live in the first 10 pages

Element	Why it cannot be deferred
The model box	A reviewer cannot judge a theorem whose model they must reconstruct from page 14
Theorem statements (all main results)	The contribution is the theorems; they anchor the whole review
Positioning / delta over prior bounds	Novelty is judged here; a buried comparison reads as none
The key idea / hardest proof step (at least a sketch)	The reviewer must believe the proof closes; a sketch of the crux earns that belief
Any matching lower bound's statement and idea	Optimality is a headline claim; its idea belongs up front

What may be deferred to the full version / appendix

• Full proofs of lemmas whose role and idea are already stated in the body.
• Routine or symmetric cases, provided the body says which cases are routine.
• Extended related-work discussion beyond the closest results.
• Optional simulation details (parameters, seeds, extra plots).
• Auxiliary constructions that support but do not constitute the main result.

Deferred does not mean absent: every deferred proof must be present in the submitted full version and reachable by an exact cross-reference. "Proof omitted" with no full version is a soundness red flag, not a space-saving move (see podc-reproducibility).

Regular paper vs. Brief Announcement — a content decision

The most consequential supplementary decision is the track:

You have...	Choose	Content shape
A complete result with full proofs	Regular paper	10-page merits case + full version with all proofs
A result whose full version is/will be published elsewhere, or work in progress, or a small contribution	Brief Announcement	≤5-page self-contained submission; published ≤3 pages

A Brief Announcement is not a place to dump an incomplete regular paper — it is a complete, small statement of a result (or an announcement of one proved in full elsewhere). If your proof will not close by the deadline, a Brief Announcement timestamps the idea honestly and leaves a full paper open for a later venue; a regular paper with a gap is simply rejected. See podc-submission and podc-workflow for the timing.

Structuring the full version

• Mirror the body's numbering so "Lemma 3.2" is the same statement in both.
• Put the complete proofs in the order the body introduces their lemmas.
• Keep a single shared notation table.
• If posting to arXiv, the arXiv full version and the submitted full version should be the same document (modulo anonymization) — and after acceptance, keep it in sync with the camera-ready.

Common failures

• Key idea past page 10 — the crux of the proof only appears in the appendix, so the reviewer never sees why the result holds.
• Model box deferred — the theorem is unjudgeable in the first 10 pages.
• "Proof omitted" with no full version — deferral becomes disappearance.
• Incomplete result forced into a regular paper — should have been a Brief Announcement.
• Complete result shrunk into a Brief Announcement — throws away a full-paper slot.
• Body/full-version cross-references that do not line up.

Output format

[Track] regular paper / brief announcement — justified by proof completeness and length
[First-10-pages audit] model box / theorems / delta / key proof idea / lower-bound idea all present?
[Deferred correctly] routine proofs, symmetric cases, extended relwork, sim details in the full version?
[Reachability] every deferred proof present in the full version with an exact cross-reference?
[Fix queue] <content to promote into 10 pages; proofs to restore to the full version>