/ccs-supplementary

name: ccs-supplementary
description: Use when preparing ACM CCS appendices and supplementary material, including the ethics considerations appendix, protocol transcripts, formal proofs, measurement tables, and anonymized supporting material under the 12-page body limit, anonymity, and reviewer-discretion constraints for a security paper.

CCS Supplementary

Use this when assembling CCS appendices and supplementary material. At CCS the main 12-page body must let reviewers judge novelty and soundness on its own; appendices support it but the committee is not obligated to read them.

Supplement structure

• Put formal proofs, full protocol transcripts, extra measurements, and additional evaluation

tables in well-marked appendices after the bibliography.

• Place the ethics considerations content where the CFP directs it. CCS 2026 required a

dedicated ethics section as an appendix after the 12-page body and the bibliography for work touching human subjects, user data, or real-world vulnerabilities.

• Keep every supplementary file double-blind: no authors, institutions, acknowledgements,

private paths, repository owners, or identifying metadata, including in code and datasets.

• Do not hide the core threat model, the main attack description, the headline defense, or the

primary evidence in an appendix; a paper whose contribution is only legible with the appendix reads as unreviewable within the page limit.

• Verify archives open on a clean machine and carry no credentials, cache directories, or OS

metadata that leaks identity.

Appendix architecture for a security paper

• Order appendix sections to mirror the body: threat model details, then proofs, then extended

attack variants, then measurement tables, then the ethics section where required.

• Restate each theorem or protocol step before its full derivation so the appendix reads

standalone without flipping back to the two-column body.

• Cross-reference every appendix table and proof from the body at least once; orphaned

material is invisible under reviewer discretion.

• Keep the ethics section self-contained: disclosure timeline, harm-minimization steps, IRB or

ERB status, and the reasoning, so the ethics reviewer can grade it without hunting.

What gets opened first

| Supplement item | Inspection likelihood | Practical implication | |---|---|---| | Ethics considerations section | High for sensitive work | Write it to stand alone and answer the obvious concern | | Proof of the headline security guarantee | High for crypto/formal papers | Polish it to main-text standard | | Extended attack variants and measurements | Medium | Reference each one from the body | | Code and data archive | Variable, reviewer discretion | The README must orient a reader in one minute |

Vignette: splitting a protocol-security paper

A submission proving a key-exchange protocol secure, plus an implementation and overhead plots: the body keeps the threat model, the protocol, the main security theorem with a sketch, and the overhead figure; the appendix holds the full proof, the message-level transcript, and the ethics note on the disclosed implementation bug; the archive carries the reference implementation and test vectors. Nothing decision-critical lives only in the archive, because archive inspection is discretionary.

Output format

[Supplement status] Ready / Needs fixes / Not ready
[Files] <appendix / proofs / ethics section / code / data>
[Ethics section] present / required-and-missing / not-applicable
[Anonymity checks] passed / issues
[Main-paper dependency] <what breaks if the appendix is ignored>