Submission requirements are not arbitrary, and they are not interchangeable. The differences below are structural — they change how a manuscript has to be built, not merely how it looks.
Author guidelines change, and individual journals within a publisher frequently differ from one another. Treat this page as orientation, and the current author guidelines of your target journal as authoritative.
| Specification | Typical field | Citation system | Reference ordering |
|---|---|---|---|
| IEEE | Engineering, computer science | Numbered, bracketed — [1], [2] | Ordered by first appearance in the text |
| Nature Portfolio | Multidisciplinary science | Numbered, superscript | Ordered by first appearance in the text |
| Elsevier | Broad, journal-dependent | Varies by journal — numbered or author–date | Depends on the citation system in use |
| APA (7th edition) | Psychology, social sciences, education | Author–date — (Author, 2024) | Reference list alphabetical by author surname |
Conference papers and Transactions articles are commonly set in two columns, using the publisher’s own template rather than a generic layout.
An abstract is typically accompanied by index terms — a controlled set of keywords rather than free-text ones.
Because references are numbered by order of appearance, inserting a single new citation renumbers everything after it. This is the classic argument for handling references structurally rather than by hand.
Article types are distinguished from one another — and the type you are writing determines length conventions and how much detail belongs in the main text versus supplementary material.
Methods are frequently handled as a separate section rather than woven into the narrative, which affects how the manuscript is structured from the outset.
Limits on display items — figures and tables — are a common constraint, so what counts as a display item matters.
Many Elsevier journals operate a free-format initial submission policy: your first submission does not have to match the journal’s layout, and strict formatting is required only once the paper is invited for revision.
That policy removes formatting work at submission but does not remove it — it defers it to revision, usually under a deadline.
Reference style is set per journal rather than across the publisher, so two Elsevier titles can want different things.
The 7th edition dropped the running head requirement for student papers, and sets out different title page formats for student and professional work.
Because citations are author–date rather than numbered, adding a reference does not renumber the document — but it does have to land in the right alphabetical position.
APA governs a great deal beyond references: heading levels, table and figure construction, and bias-free language guidance.
A desk rejection is a decision made by an editor before the manuscript reaches peer review. Some causes are about the science. Others are entirely mechanical.
The single most common reason a manuscript is returned without review. No amount of formatting fixes a paper sent to the wrong journal.
Missing required sections, wrong reference style, exceeding length or display-item limits. Avoidable, and entirely structural.
Absent ethics statements, conflict-of-interest declarations, data availability statements or author contribution details.
The second and third causes above are structural. Those are the ones a formatting platform can remove from your critical path.
See the method