MS Word and Libre Office templates for a nicer and more readable #PrePrint manuscript.
Don't forget that you can (allowed by the publisher) usually post preprints and postprints (version of an "Accepted manuscript") even after you have published your paper in a journal. This way you can make it more accessible if it's paywalled, correct typos or make some improvements: for example, colored pictures instead of greyscale ones in the original paper.
These templates aim to create reader-friendly PrePrints.
They are inspired by the BioRxiv preprint template made by the Ilya Finkelstein lab and by another BioRxiv preprint template made by Christian L. Ebbesen. My versions add more manuscript elements and tweaks (compared to the individual templates above), aim for a more universal print layout (for both A4 and Letter paper size) and include more custom font suggestions for different manuscript elements, to provide a better reading experience.
I also include several vector and font-based logo designs: for the general use in #PrePrint manuscripts, for those aimed for BioRxiv, etc. They give a better visual impact and reflect the idea of the OpenScience movement. The two abovementioned MS Word templates with the logos inserted and other slight modifications, to provide a better reading experience, can be seen here: template1 and template2.
The templates will be made for both, Microsoft Office (.docx) and Libre Office (.odt).
Meanwhile, see my two postprints in the LibreOffice format as examples and, if desired, templates for formatting preprints:
- LmiTS 2011: (odt and pdf). This one is made in a two-column format and is overall better than the actual publication in the PEDS journal.
- BSAP 2013: (odt and pdf). This one is kept in a single-column style with Figures placed after the main text.
While MS office is more widely used, Libre Office is actually better in most of the commonly used features (while very similar in its interface, and it's free). The most notorious things with MS Office — which Microsoft is not willing to solve for many many years (!) — that are directly relevant to the PDF file production:
- Poor quality of raster images when PDF is generated by the internal MS Office pdf conversion engine. This is not an issue in the Libre Office, or when PDF is generated by the Adobe Acrobat engine.
- No support for using .otf-file-format fonts when saving your document as PDF. OTF is a more modern file format for fonts (compared to .ttf). But if you save an MS Word file to pdf, with some text set using an .otf font, this text will be converted to a raster (pixel) image (and the text itself will be absent in the PDF, only its image will remain). Meanwhile, LibreOffice fully supports .otf files — and Open Type fonts in general (which can be both, in .otf and .ttf file format). For example, you can set true small caps in the Science Gothic font here (and they are nice!) but in MS Word this open-type feature is not supported, and many other features as well.
You can either:
- Cut and paste into the .docx or .odt files, which is a general recommendation (particularly, if the source document is not already formatted using MS Word styles) OR
- Apply the .dotx template to the source document, if it is already formatted using MS Word styles.