itcs-artifact-evaluation

ITCS Artifact Evaluation

ITCS has no artifact-evaluation track. There are no ACM/IEEE artifact badges, no

Available/Functional/Reusable/Reproduced tiers, no code submission, and no evaluation committee

inspecting a package. It is a pure-theory venue: the thing that must be independently

verifiable is the mathematics. This skill exists because authors arriving from empirical CS

(where "artifact evaluation" is a real post-acceptance track) need to know what plays that role at

ITCS — and what does not apply.

The ITCS "artifact" is the proof

The artifact that a reviewer inspects is the argument itself. Making it "evaluatable" means:

• Complete proofs of every central claim, inside the submitted PDF (body sketch + appendix

full proof). This is the single most important "artifact" obligation and it is enforced at

submission, not post-acceptance (see [itcs-submission](../itcs-submission/SKILL.md) and

[itcs-reproducibility](../itcs-reproducibility/SKILL.md)).

• Self-contained definitions so the claims can be verified without your other papers open.
• Pinned dependencies — every borrowed theorem cited to a precise statement, so a reviewer can

audit what you assume versus prove.

There is nothing to "install," nothing to "run," and no badge to earn. The equivalent of a

reproduced result is a reviewer following the proof to the end and agreeing.

The public full version as the durable, verifiable record

The closest thing ITCS has to an "available artifact" is the **full version on arXiv / ECCC /

IACR ePrint**, which authors are encouraged to post under lightweight double-blind:

• It is the permanent open record of the complete argument — the analogue of an archived,

DOI-bearing artifact, except it is the paper itself, open access, mirrored by LIPIcs on

acceptance.

• It does not substitute for proofs in the submitted PDF. During review the PC judges the

submission; a central proof that lives only in the preprint counts as absent (see

[itcs-supplementary](../itcs-supplementary/SKILL.md)).

• Keep the preprint and submission in sync so the "artifact" a later reader verifies matches

the one the PC accepted.

When a paper does have computational content

Occasionally an ITCS paper leans on a small computation — a search that found a gadget, a solver

certifying a finite separation. Make that checkable, in the spirit of an artifact but without a

track to submit it to:

• Include the finite object (the graph, code, certificate) so verification is a static check,

not a re-run. A reviewer confirming that a supplied 12-vertex graph has the claimed property is

the theory analogue of "reproduced."

• State the search space and the tool/version so the computation is auditable in principle.
• Do not host it on a personal repository during review — that is a lightweight-double-blind

leak; fold small objects into an appendix (see [itcs-experiments](../itcs-experiments/SKILL.md)).

What does NOT transfer from empirical-CS artifact tracks

| Empirical-CS artifact concept | ITCS reality |

|---|---|

| Available / Functional / Reusable / Reproduced badges | None — no badges exist at ITCS |

| A separate artifact-evaluation committee & deadline | None — the PC judges the proofs at review time |

| Docker image / build script / environment pinning | Irrelevant — there is no code to build |

| "Reproduce the numbers" | Replaced by "follow the proof and agree" |

| Post-acceptance artifact submission | The post-acceptance task is the LIPIcs camera-ready (see itcs-camera-ready) |

Verifiability checklist (the ITCS "artifact" pass)

[Proofs-in-PDF]   every central claim fully proved inside the submitted PDF? yes/no
[Self-contained]  claims verifiable without the authors' other papers? yes/no
[Dependencies]    borrowed results pinned to precise statements? yes/no
[Full version]    posted (arXiv/ECCC/ePrint) and consistent with the submission? yes/no
[Compute objects] any finite computational witness included and statically checkable? yes/no/NA
[Anonymity]       no personal-repo link exposing identity during review? yes/no

Output format

[ITCS verifiability status] independently-checkable / gaps
[Proof artifact] central claims proved in-PDF? self-contained? dependencies pinned? (yes/no)
[Durable record] full version posted and in sync? yes/no
[Computational witness] finite object included & checkable? yes/no/NA
[Note] there is no badge/track — the deliverable is a checkable proof, not a package
[Fix queue] <ordered; unproved central claims first>