| name | stoc-supplementary |
| description | Use when architecting everything beyond the first twelve pages of a STOC (ACM Symposium on Theory of Computing) submission — the discretionary-read appendix, the reviewed table of contents, theorem-to-proof pointer discipline, and the division of labor between the submission appendix and the arXiv/ECCC full version. |
STOC Supplementary
STOC has no supplementary-upload channel, no ZIP, and no page cap. One PDF
carries everything, and the 2026 CFP draws the line inside that PDF: the
abstract, the table of contents, and the first twelve pages are read;
material beyond that is read at the committee's discretion (checked 2026-07-08).
So "supplementary material" at STOC means the discretionary region of your own
submission — and designing it is a first-class writing task, because reviewers
enter it selectively, through the pointers you leave.
The table of contents is part of the supplement's interface
Uniquely among major venues, STOC names the ToC as guaranteed-read material.
Treat it as the map reviewers use to decide which discretionary pages to open:
\tableofcontents % after the abstract, before Section 1
% Section titles should narrate the argument, not label boilerplate:
% 4 Reducing multi-commodity routing to tree embeddings
% 5 The potential-function analysis (proof of Theorem 1.2)
% A Deferred proofs from Section 4
% B The lower-bound construction (proof of Theorem 1.4)
% C Extension to weighted instances
A ToC whose appendix entries name the theorem each section proves lets a
reviewer verify exactly the claim they doubt. "Appendix A: Omitted proofs" is a
map with no street names.
Placement decision table
| Content | First 12 pages | Discretionary appendix | Full version only |
|---|
| Every theorem/corollary statement | Required | Restated with proof | Mirror |
| Technical overview of the main proof | Required | — | Mirror |
| Complete proof of the main theorem | Idea + hardest step | Yes, in full | Yes |
| Routine lemma proofs | No | Yes | Yes |
| Secondary results and extensions | One-sentence pointers | Statements + proofs | Yes |
| Long definitions/preliminaries variants | Compressed | Full generality | Full generality |
| Illustration figures, search procedures | No | Brief procedure note | Complete detail |
| Anything the paper's acceptance depends on | Must be at least stated here | Cannot live only here | Cannot live only here |
The invariant behind every row: a committee member who stops at page twelve must
still be able to state your contribution correctly and believe it is probably
true; a reviewer who continues must find every belief redeemable.
Pointer discipline
Deferred proofs are only as good as their forward and backward links:
- At each in-body statement:
\emph{Proof in Appendix~\ref{app:lb}.} — one
pointer, exact target, never "proofs appear in the appendix" globally.
- At each appendix proof: restate the theorem before proving it (the
thmtools/\restatable mechanism keeps restatements literally identical),
so the discretionary reader does not page-flip to reconstruct the claim.
- Order appendix sections by the body's order of claims, not by proof
dependency; a reviewer chasing Theorem 1.4 should not wade through the
machinery of Theorem 1.2 to find it.
- Give the appendix its own two-or-three-sentence opening paragraph stating
dependency structure ("Appendix B is self-contained; Appendix C uses
Lemma A.3").
What the appendix is not for
- Not an overflow valve for a bloated body. Twelve pages that read like a
compressed twenty signal that the writing pass never happened; cutting
secondary material entirely (into the full version) usually beats squeezing
everything in.
- Not a second paper. Extensions that would each need their own referee
("we also resolve the directed case") dilute the committee's confidence
budget; state one, defer the rest to the full version, or split the work.
- Not a hiding place. Burying a known limitation on page 47 while the body
implies generality is the kind of asymmetry that turns a positive review
negative when discovered — and assigned theory reviewers do discover it.
Appendix smells and their repairs
- The monolith: one 30-page "Appendix A: Proofs" with no internal
structure. Repair: one appendix section per body section or per major
theorem, each named for what it proves.
- The dependency maze: Appendix C's lemma silently requires Appendix B's
notation established twenty pages earlier. Repair: per-section dependency
sentences and local notation reminders at first reuse.
- The duplicate drift: the appendix restatement of Theorem 1.2 differs by
one quantifier from the body statement. Repair:
\restatable or shared
statement files — never retype (stoc-reproducibility).
- The dangling pointer: the body promises "Appendix D" and the appendix
ends at C. Repair: a pre-upload pass compiling with
\refcheck or grepping
every Appendix~\ref target.
- The kitchen sink: half-finished generalizations kept "for completeness."
Repair: cut to the full version; the submission appendix is a verification
surface, not a notebook.
Relationship to the full version
The submission appendix and the eventual arXiv/ECCC full version usually share
sources but serve different masters: the appendix is optimized for selective
verification during review; the full version for linear reading forever.
Before camera-ready, the full version typically re-expands what the appendix
compressed, restores the general statements, and becomes the canonical document
(stoc-camera-ready and stoc-reproducibility handle that transition and its
drift risks). During review, though, the single submitted PDF must stand alone:
STOC 2026 was double-blind, and a reviewer following an external link to your
named preprint is an anonymity event you caused.
Cycle-volatility warnings
- The guaranteed-read wording (abstract + ToC + 12 pages) is 2026 CFP text;
earlier cycles used a 10-page window, so re-read the live CFP each fall
before budgeting pages (待核实 per cycle).
- Font/margin specifics (11-point, 1-inch, letter) are also restated annually.
Output format
[Appendix architecture] navigable / needs restructuring
[ToC audit] narrates argument / boilerplate labels <- rewrite
[Placement violations] <decision-critical content outside guaranteed pages>
[Pointer check] statement->proof links complete? restatements identical?
[Deferral plan] <what moves to full version entirely>
