imc-supplementary

IMC Supplementary

Use this when assembling IMC supplementary material. IMC's acmart format gives an **unlimited

appendix, which tempts authors to offload the argument — but the governing rule is strict: the

page-limited body must be self-contained and decision-complete.** Reviewers read the appendix and

the artifact at their discretion; anything the decision depends on lives in the body.

What goes where

| Content | Body (within page limit) | Appendix / released artifact |

|---|---|---|

| The measurement question and the headline finding | Yes | — |

| Vantage-point summary + coverage/representativeness argument | Yes | Full per-vantage-point table |

| Methodology sufficient to judge soundness | Yes | Full configs, seed/target lists |

| Key results, confidence intervals, and their limitations | Yes | Secondary plots, full result tables |

| The Ethics discussion | Yes (section; details may extend to appendix) | IRB form, extended safety analysis |

| Raw/large datasets, logs, scripts | — | Yes (released artifact) |

| Reproduction instructions | A pointer | The README and run scripts |

If a reviewer would need to open the appendix or artifact to know whether to accept, the paper is

mis-partitioned — move that evidence into the body.

The unlimited-appendix trap

IMC's appendix is unlimited but may not be used to abuse the page limit. Consequences:

• Keep the finding, the vantage-point justification, the core methodology, the headline results,

and the limitations in the body — they are decision-critical.

• Per-vantage-point tables, full parameter grids, extra target lists, and additional analyses go to

the appendix with explicit forward references.

• Do not smuggle a load-bearing result into the appendix because the body is full — an argument

that only closes with appendix material reads as unreviewable, and reviewers are entitled to stop

at the body.

The Ethics section is not optional supplementary

Unlike ordinary appendix material, the Ethics treatment is required and must be a clearly

marked section (details may spill to an appendix). Do not relegate the entire ethics argument to an

optional appendix the reviewer might skip — a paper without a visible Ethics section may be

rejected (imc-submission).

Double-blind supplementary rules

[No identity]   no authors, affiliations, acknowledgements, grants, testbed names, AS/probe IDs,
                or lab-domain links anywhere in the appendix or artifact
[Anonymized links] the dataset/tool link points at an anonymizing host, not a personal/lab repo
[Clean archive]  no .git history, credentials, API keys, cluster paths, or huge irrelevant captures
[Opens clean]    the archive unzips and the README orients a reader in a minute on a fresh machine
[Provenance]    vantage-point and timing metadata present but scrubbed of identity

Appendix architecture

• Order appendix sections to mirror the paper's structure (per measurement/RQ), so reviewers

navigate by topic, not page number.

• Reference each appendix section from the body at least once — orphaned material is invisible

under discretionary review.

• Keep the released dataset's schema documentation with the artifact, not buried in the appendix.

Vignette: splitting a multi-vantage-point study

A paper measuring a protocol from many vantage points over months: the body keeps the question, a

summarized vantage-point table with the coverage-bias argument, the core method, the headline

findings with confidence intervals, the limitations, and the Ethics section; the appendix holds the

full per-vantage-point breakdown, the complete target lists with capture dates, and secondary

analyses; the released artifact holds the time-stamped dataset, the schema, and the analysis

scripts. Nothing decision-critical lives only outside the body.

Output format

[Supplement status] ready / needs fixes / not ready
[Partition check] anything decision-critical outside the body? <none / move: what>
[Ethics visibility] Ethics section present in the body? yes/no
[Page limit] body self-contained within limit? appendix not abused? yes/no
[Anonymity] appendix/artifact clean of identity + infrastructure? passed/issues
[Body dependency] <what a reviewer can decide without opening the appendix/artifact>