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Considerations for TeX Submissions


Submissions are automatically processed

Your (La)TeX, AMS(La)TeX, or PDFLaTeX submission will be processed automatically by our AutoTeX software.

This is a complex task, and the processing does not always lead to the desired or expected results. It is important for you, the author/submitter, to carefully check and verify the resulting PDF. You will be required to view the PDF during the submission process before you will be able to complete your submission.

You can submit a collection of TeX input/include files, e.g. separate chapters, foreword, appendix, etc, and custom macros (see below) packaged in a (possibly compressed) .tar or .zip file. AutoTeX will generally figure out how to properly process multi-part submissions, and you don't need to adhere to special packaging rules or naming conventions for your tex files. However, there are certain caveats. Naming your primary (or toplevel) file ms.tex will cause AutoTeX to always process that file first. Otherwise, tex files will be processed in alphanumeric order.

That said, it is important that you do not include extraneous files (including unused figure files), leftover files, backup files, anything which does not belong to the paper you are submitting or is not needed for processing. Do not include journal templates, referee letters, or man pages. Tidy your submission before you pack it up.

You must submit any figures that go along with your paper. We recommend that you use appropriate TeX commands to include the figures inline with your paper (see below), as this is more readable than separate or appended figures.

Note: In the past, it was possible to include a generic arXiv identifier in the TeX source that the processor would automatically translate into the identifier of the current submission. This practice is no longer necessary, nor supported. All TeX-type submissions receive the arXiv watermark, including the canonical identifier, version number, primary classification, and a link back to the correct version on the arXiv site. Again, arch-ive/yymmnnn (and, by extension, yymm.nnnnn) will not be translated to the correct identifier for your submission.

Considerations for (La)TeX submissions

By default, LaTeX files are processed using LaTeX2e (the current version of LaTeX). Although there is a LaTeX2.09 compatibility mode, it is highly recommended that you use LaTeX2e whenever possible, to take advantage of all its features and improvements and to avoid complications which may arise in compatibility mode (note that LaTeX2e has been the default latex version for many years).

If you have a file named foo.tex, then do not include any associated auxiliary file or intermediate or resulting output file, e.g. foo.ps (or foo.aux, foo.log, foo.toc, foo.lot, foo.lof, foo.dvi, foo.pdf) in your submission. These will be automatically removed to allow the creation of an output file from your TeX file. Index (.ind) and processed bibtex (.bbl) files are an exception, see below.

Figure inclusion in LaTeX submissions

Note that TeX/LaTeX can only include (encapsulated) PostScript (.ps or .eps), figures directly. Other formats are not supported in native (La)TeX. See Useful Software for figure conversion tools. If you are making use of PDFLaTeX you may embed your .pdf, .png, .jpg figures using the same mechanisms.

The most flexible and robust figure inclusion is provided by the graphics and graphicx packages and the \includegraphics command defined therein. We highly recommend you use them for your figure inclusion. arXiv does not provide the psfig package any longer. You must include your own psfig.sty if you use it. In general, if things go wrong or don't look as desired you may have to include your version of older macros.

Note that some software will permit you to include a mix of PostScript and PDFLaTeX-comptible figures and will perform the conversions to the appropriate format for you on the fly. arXiv does not permit such software to run during the AutoTeX processing. Why? It is possible for conversion issues to arise that can alter the scientific meaning or interpretation of your figure. Rather than invite such possibilities, we require that you use a unified figure format.

Separate figures with LaTeX submissions

Figures in jpeg, png, or gif format may be submitted alongside native (La)TeX submissions provided that they are not included in the source file.. PDF or other formats not listed above are not permitted with (La)TeX submission; use PDFLaTeX instead for PDF, jpeg, or png figures.

Figures which are not incorporated in the main body of the paper will be listed separately. They should be given names of the form figure<number><optional letter>.ext, e.g. figure1.jpg, figure2a.gif, figure2b.png, so that they can be automatically sorted into the correct order for the "combined figures" link.

Figure inclusion in plain TeX

For plain TeX submissions, use the plain tex interface to the graphics package (graphicx.tex) or a macro package like epsf or epsfig.

arXiv does not presently support PDFTeX.

Considerations for PDFLaTeX submissions

arXiv fully supports and auotmatically recognizes PDFLaTeX. You can ensure pdflatex processing by setting the flag \pdfoutput=1 within the first 5 lines of the preamble of the main .tex file. You should not need any other special flag.

We probably have your style files or macros

You probably do not need to submit any style files since we have copies of all the common scientific style files. Try submitting without style files. If you find that this does not work because we do not have the style file you need, then you can include the necessary style file in your submission and resubmit.

Note: A&A, pstricks, elsart, and by now to a lesser degree AMSLaTeX, iopart, and revtex4 users, you may need to include your own version of those style/class files with your submission. arXiv can process standard zip and tar files. Simply bundle the necessary files together with your (La-)TeX file(s) in the same directory (or do a less convenient multi-file submission).

Do not ask us to update those particular style and class files in our installation. They are not backwards compatible.

Do not submit in double-spaced "referee" mode

Avoid inadvertently submitting your paper in double-spaced referee mode, since it wastes paper on a global scale. Readers prefer to have a compact single-spaced version, as it would appear in a printed journal.

Prepare the references carefully

We strongly encourage you to include arXiv's YYMM.NNNNN, identifiers in your reference list for both published and unpublished papers. Note also that many publishers allow e-print identifiers to appear in the references of papers submitted.

If you use standard identifiers of the form 1510.00322, arXiv:1510.00322, 0901.0512, arXiv:0901.0512, hep-ph/9409201 or arXiv:hep-ph/9409201, they can be easily harvested by automatic software. For example,

\bedim{upsilon}
C.T.H. Davies {\em et al.}, Phys. Rev {\bf D} 50 (1994) 6963, hep-lat/9406017.

Do not include extraneous font commands, spaces, tildes, braces or line-breaks within the e-print identifier: this will cause your references to be missed by automated extraction software. See also notes about references to and in arXiv documents and collection of references at INSPIRE. Use of e-print identifiers is a significant aid to the INSPIRE database. It also facilitates automatic network hyperlinks of references from within papers.

If you use BibTeX there are some BibTeX styles which support e-print identifiers (see https://arxiv.org/hypertex/bibstyles).

If you are submitting a group of .tex files, automated reference extraction by INSPIRE and others will be more accurate and faster if your references are all in one file. This file should have the \begin{thebibliography} or similar command within it, and should be called foo.bbl to correspond to a given foo.tex source file.

Include .bbl files if you use BibTeX

We do not run BibTeX in the auto-TeXing procedure. If you use it, include in your submission the .bbl file that BibTeX produces on your own machine; otherwise your references will not come out correctly. We do not run BibTeX because the .bib database files can be quite large, and the only thing necessary to resolve the references for a given paper is the .bbl file. You may still include them if you wish, but they must also match your .tex file name.

The name of the .bbl file must match the name of the main .tex file for the system to process the references correctly.

Include .ind files if you use makeindex

We do not run makeindex in the auto-TeXing procedure. If you use it, include in your submission the .ind file that makeindex produces on your own machine; otherwise your index will not appear.

It is difficult to automatically perform makeindex processing to the authors' expectations because of the multiple optional arguments and optional style selections. Therefore arXiv asks authors to provide their pre-processed .ind file(s) along with their (La)TeX source file(s).

Include your .gls if you use a glossary

Similar to index files, we do not process .glo into the resultant .gls files. You must provide these files if you have any special nomenclature in your document.

How to include supplemental material

We highly recommend that if you plan to include any non-TeX files with your source package that you include them as ancillary files inside their own /anc directory off your document's root. For additional information please see that help page. For legacy reasons, we still support individual file inclusion, as follows.

If your submission includes any plain text files which should not be processed (e.g. Fortran source code, data files), and you don't want them availalbe for seperate download as ancillary files then make the first line of those files

%auto-ignore

This ensures that they will be ignored by the auto-postscript generator.

Avoid mistakes in the text

Common mistakes can be avoided by following some simple guidelines. If your submission does not TeX properly, you will receive the log from our auto-TeXing script at the Process step. The information contained in this complete log should be sufficient to identify the problem, so examine it carefully; check the end of the log for TeX errors.

Problems with special TeX characters in hyperlinks (URLs) -- in particular JHEP3.cls

If hyperlinks for URLs containing '#' appear as '\#' in arXiv generated PDF, the macro package being used to generate these hyperlinks does not properly escape special characters in pdf strings. Either use the hyperref package or define the URLs with the following workaround:
instead of e.g.:

\href{http://example.com/some-page.html\#destination}{destination}
use:
\href{http://example.com/some-page.html\string#destination}{destination}

If you use macros like:
\newcommand{\link}[2]{\href{http://example.com/some-page.html\##1}{#2}
define:
\bgroup\catcode`\#=12\gdef\hash{#}\egroup \newcommand{\link}[2]{\href{http://example.com/some-page.html\hash #1}{#2}
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