Minimalist LaTeX Template for Academic Papers

This repository contains a minimalist template to write academic papers with LaTeX.

Template documentation

The template's documentation is available at https://pascalmichaillat.org/d2/.

Template features

• The font for text, roman math, and numbers is Source Serif Pro.
• The font for Greek and calligraphic math is Euler.
• No colors are used in the text to reduce distraction and to guarantee quality printing.
• Margins, spacing, and font size are set for comfortable reading.
• Headings are designed for easy scanning.
• Formatting is also specified for figures, tables, appendix, and a separate online appendix.

Repository content

• paper.tex – LaTeX file containing the skeleton of the paper.
• paper.pdf – PDF file produced by compiling paper.tex with pdfTeX.
• paper.sty – LaTeX style file collecting all the formatting commands.
• figures.pdf – PDF file with all the figures included in the paper.
• bibliography.bib – BibTeX file with all the references included in the paper.
• bibliography.bst – BibTeX style file to format the references. This style file is based on econ.bst, which was created by Shiro Takeda and is available on GitHub.
• appendix.tex – LaTeX file containing the skeleton of an online appendix.
• appendix.pdf – PDF file produced by compiling appendix.tex with pdfTeX.
• appendix.sty – LaTeX style file collecting additional formatting commands for an online appendix.

Template usage

• Fill out paper.tex with the content of your paper. Compile the file with pdfTeX.
• paper.sty must be included in the same folder as paper.tex. It can be modified to alter the paper's format.
• bibliography.bst must be included in the same folder as paper.tex. It can be modified to alter the bibliography's format.
• Replace the figures in figures.pdf with your own figures—one per page.
• Replace the references in bibliography.bib with your own references.
• paper.pdf is not required to use the template. It only illustrate the output of the template, and will be overridden once paper.tex is compiled.
• The template was developed with the MacTeX-2021 distribution but should hopefully also work with more recent distributions.

Online appendix

The repository also includes files to produce an online appendix—in case the paper's appendix must be carved out into a separate, online appendix upon publication. An online appendix can be produced as follows:

• Fill out appendix.tex with the content of your online appendix. Compile it with pdfTeX. The equation and section labels from paper.tex can be used in appendix.tex. This requires the following:
  • appendix.tex is in the same folder as paper.tex.
  • paper.tex is compiled first.
  • The auxiliary file paper.aux is available when appendix.tex is compiled.
• appendix.sty must be included in the same folder as appendix.tex. It can be modified to alter the format of the online appendix. It works in conjunction with paper.sty, which must also be included in the folder.
• appendix.pdf is not required to use the template. It only illustrate the output of the template, and will be overridden once appendix.tex is compiled.

Related resources

• This LaTeX template produces academic presentations following the same principles, and with a similar appearance, as this paper template.
• These LaTeX commands make it easy to write mathematical expressions. They can be used in combination with this paper template.

License

The content of this repository is licensed under the terms of the MIT License.