Minimalist LaTeX Template for Academic Papers

This repository contains a LaTeX template to create an academic paper. The template follows typographical best practices and has a minimalist design. The template is particularly well suited for research papers. It is designed so papers are comfortable to read and easy to scan, both in print and on screen.

Documentation

The template is documented at https://pascalmichaillat.org/a/.

Illustration

• The paper produced by the template can be viewed at https://pascalmichaillat.org/a.pdf.
• The online appendix produced by the template can be viewed at https://pascalmichaillat.org/aa.pdf.

Usage

• Clone the repository to your local machine.
• Start editing the LaTeX file paper.tex to replace the boilerplate content with the content of your paper.
• Replace the figures in the PDF file figures.pdf with the figures to be included in your paper (one figure per page).
• Replace the references in the BibTeX file paper.bib with the references to be included in your paper.
• Compile paper.tex with pdfTeX. This will generate a PDF file of your paper named paper.pdf.

A few files in the repository are required to use the paper template but do not need to be modified. These files must be remain in the same folder as paper.tex:

• The LaTeX style file paper.sty formats the paper.
• The BibTeX style file paper.bst formats the bibliography.

A few files in the repository are not required to use the paper template but are useful for other purposes:

• The file paper.pdf illustrates the output of the template. It will be overwritten when paper.tex is compiled.
• The file paper.bbl illustrates the bibliography produced by the template. It will be overwritten when paper.tex is compiled.
• The file paper.aux is necessary to produce the online appendix out of the box. It will be overwritten when paper.tex is compiled.

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:

• Start editing the LaTeX file appendix.tex to replace the boilerplate content with the content of your online appendix.
• The equation and section labels from paper.tex can be used in appendix.tex. This requires the following:
  • The file appendix.tex is in the same folder as paper.tex.
  • The file paper.tex is compiled first, to create the auxiliary file paper.aux.
  • The file paper.aux is available when appendix.tex is compiled.
• Compile appendix.tex with pdfTeX. This generates a PDF file of your appendix named appendix.pdf.

A few files in the repository are required to use the appendix template but do not need to be modified. These files must be remain in the same folder as appendix.tex:

• The LaTeX style files paper.sty and appendix.sty format the appendix.
• The BibTeX style file paper.bst formats the bibliography.

A few files are not required to use the appendix template but are useful for other purposes:

• The file appendix.pdf illustrates the output of the template. It will be overwritten when appendix.tex is compiled.
• The file appendix.bbl illustrates the bibliography produced by the template. It will be overwritten when appendix.tex is compiled.
• The file appendix.aux illustrates the references and links underlying the appendix. It will be overwritten when appendix.tex is compiled.

Submission to arXiv

The template is compatible with arXiv. After being compiled with pdfTeX, a paper based on the template can be submitted to arXiv in three steps:

• Collect the required files into a folder. There should be only 4 files:

  1. the source file paper.tex
  2. the style file paper.sty
  3. the bibliography file paper.bbl
  4. the figure file figures.pdf

• Adjust the preamble of paper.tex. On line 3, replace \bibliographystyle{paper} by \pdfoutput=1.

• Zip the folder and upload the zipped folder to arXiv.

Here are a few things to note:

• The paper.bib and paper.bst files should not be included in your submission as arXiv will use paper.bbl to produce the bibliography.
• The command \bibliographystyle{paper} is not needed in paper.tex because arXiv produces the bibliography directly from the paper.bbl file. In fact that command would produce an error since the style file paper.bst is not included in the submission.
• The command \pdfoutput=1 is required in paper.tex because the paper is compiled with pdfTeX.

Software

• The template was developed with TeX Live 2023 on macOS.
• Other LaTeX distributions and operating systems may require minor adjustments. Please report any issues to help improve compatibility.

License

This repository is licensed under the MIT License.

Real-world implementations

• Recession Detection Using Classifiers on the Anticipation-Precision Frontier (source code)
• Has the Recession Started? (source code)
• Beveridgean Phillips Curve (source code)
• Modeling Migration-Induced Unemployment (source code)
• Critical Values Robust to P-hacking (source code)

Related resources

• latex-book - This LaTeX template produces academic books that follow the same typographic principles as the paper template.
• latex-presentation - This LaTeX template produces academic presentations that follow the same typographic principles as the paper template.
• latex-math - These LaTeX commands simplify writing mathematical expressions. They can be used in combination with the paper template.
• matlab-figures - This MATLAB template produces minimalist scientific figures that can be inserted into your paper.