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 bibliography.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.
• The LaTeX style file paper.sty formats the paper. It must be included in the same folder as paper.tex. It can be modified to alter the paper's format.
• The BibTeX style file bibliography.bst formats the bibliography. It must be included in the same folder as paper.tex. It can be modified to alter the bibliography's format. The style file is based on econ.bst, which was created by Shiro Takeda and is available on GitHub.

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

• The file paper.pdf is not required, but it illustrates the output of the template. It will be overwritten when paper.tex is compiled.
• The file paper.bbl is not required, but it illustrates the bibliography produced by the template. It will be overwritten when paper.tex is compiled. A copy of that file is also included in the arxiv folder.
• The file paper.aux is not required for the paper template, but it is necessary to produce the online appendix out of the box, so I keep it in the repository. 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.
• The LaTeX style file appendix.sty formats the online appendix, in conjunction with paper.sty. Both style files must be included in the same folder as appendix.tex.

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

• The file appendix.pdf is not required, but it illustrates the output of the template. It will be overwritten when appendix.tex is compiled.
• The file appendix.bbl is not required, but it illustrates the bibliography produced by the template. It will be overwritten when appendix.tex is compiled.
• The file appendix.aux is not required, but it illustrates the references and links underlying the appendix. It will be overwritten when appendix.tex is compiled.

Submission to arXiv

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

1. Collect the required files into a folder. There should be four files: the source file paper.tex, the bibliography file paper.bbl, the style file paper.sty, and the figure file figures.pdf. The file bibliography.bib should not be included as arXiv will use paper.bbl to produce the bibliography.
2. Adjust the preamble of paper.tex. On line 3, replace \bibliographystyle{bibliography} by \pdfoutput=1. The \bibliographystyle{bibliography} command is not needed because arXiv produces the bibliography from the paper.bbl file. The \pdfoutput=1 is required because the paper is compiled with pdfTeX.
3. Zip the folder and upload the zipped folder to arXiv.

The arXiv folder illustrates how the template should be prepared for submission to arXiv. The folder contains the four required files: paper.tex, paper.bbl, paper.sty, and figures.pdf. Furthermore, the preamble of paper.tex is adjusted appropriately. After being zipped, the folder could be uploaded to arXiv and would compile properly.

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

• 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-presentation - This LaTeX template produces academic presentations following the same typographic principles and with a similar appearance as this paper template.
• latex-math - These LaTeX commands simplify writing mathematical expressions. They can be used in combination with this paper template.