A Template for Academic Writing Projects

The repository contains a template for writing NLP/ML papers (using latex). By no mean one could write great articles by filling a template, but we hope this project could help less experienced researchers to grasp key aspects of an academic paper.

In the template, we try to give a detailed todo list for each paper section (see texts in docs/antnlp-tawp.pdf), a workflow for a new writing project, and a flavor of using latex.

Files and Directories

Suppose your project's name is "antnlp-tawp".

• antnlp-tawp/docs: your latex source files. We use \input commands in the main tex file antnlp-tawp.tex to facilitate collaborative writing.
• antnlp-tawp/images: the images (prefer pdf format) used in your project. You may have nested directories if some images are generated by other programs (e.g., source codes of matplotlib).
• antnlp-tawp/supplementary: your latex source files for the supplementary.

Instead of "fig1.pdf, fig2.pdf, paper.tex, my-paper.tex", we suggest naming files with clear meaning (e.g., "pr-curve.pdf", "inorder-dep-parsing.tex").

A Workflow

When you start a new paper, we suggest going with the following steps

1. list the motivations (e.g., problem importance/challenges) in the introduction section. It helps you to build a complete picture of your paper.
2. list experiments.
3. draw the key figures of your model. It helps you to organize the approach section.
4. the approach section.
5. the introduction section and the abstract.
6. the experiments section.
7. the related work section.
8. the conclusion.

The workflow should starts at least 1 month before your deadline.

Other Suggestions

• latex software: texlive. To be friendly to unicodes, we recommend compiling with xelatex.
• use git
• latex source files
  • add a line break for each sentence (or clauses and long phrases). Don't worry about the formatting, unless you adding an empty line, latex will automatically wrap them into one paragraph in the compiled pdf. Short sentences are prefered both for experssing your idea and reviewing.
• latex packages
  • equations: IEEEeqnarray package
  • tables: avoid vertical lines. Usually, \toprule, \midrule and \bottomrule are enough.
• figures
  • make sure to include vector graphics (pdf(recommended), eps, svg) in your final paper, rather than jpg, png, bmp.
  • to crop blank margin of a pdf, try pdfcrop in texlive.
  • figures with latex symbols and equations
    • Mac: keynote + LaTeXiT
    • Windows: ppt + kLatexFormula
    • Linux: wps+images/latex2emf.py (a linux version of kLatexFormula is available. However, the current version of linux wps can not directly import emf file from clipboard. We still need to do the importing job manually.)
  • or you can try matplotlib (be sure that ticklabels, annotations, legend, etc are in proper font size (the default setting is usually too small))
  • even tikz (use additional .tkz file to place your tikz figure source file, rather than in the main tex)