elsarticle.cls – A better way to format your document

Elsevier Ltd

1 Introduction

elsarticle.cls is a thoroughly re-written document class for formatting L A TeX submissions to Elsevier journals. The class uses the environments and commands defined in L A TeX kernel without any change in the signature so that clashes with other contributed L A TeX packages such as hyperref.sty, preview-latex.sty, etc., will be minimal. elsarticle.cls is primarily built upon the default article.cls. This class depends on the following packages for its proper functioning:

1.

pifont.sty for openstar in the title footnotes;
2.

natbib.sty for citation processing;
3.

geometry.sty for margin settings;
4.

fleqn.clo for left aligned equations;
5.

graphicx.sty for graphics inclusion;
6.

txfonts.sty optional font package, if the document is to be formatted with Times and compatible math fonts;
7.

hyperref.sty optional packages if hyperlinking is required in the document.

All the above packages are part of any standard L A TeX installation. Therefore, the users need not be bothered about downloading any extra packages. Furthermore, users are free to make use of ams math packages such as amsmath.sty, amsthm.sty, amssymb.sty, amsfonts.sty, etc., if they want to. All these packages work in tandem with elsarticle.cls without any problems.

2 Major Differences

Following are the major differences between elsarticle.cls and its predecessor package, elsart.cls:

[•]
1.

elsarticle.cls is built upon article.cls while elsart.cls is not. elsart.cls redefines many of the commands in the L A TeX classes/kernel, which can possibly cause surprising clashes with other contributed L A TeX packages;
2.

provides preprint document formatting by default, and optionally formats the document as per the final style of models $1+$ , $3+$ and $5+$ of Elsevier journals;
3.

some easier ways for formatting list and theorem environments are provided while people can still use amsthm.sty package;
4.

natbib.sty is the main citation processing package which can comprehensively handle all kinds of citations and works perfectly with hyperref.sty in combination with hypernat.sty;
5.

long title pages are processed correctly in preprint and final formats.

3 Installation

The package is available at author resources page at Elsevier (\urlhttp://www.elsevier.com/locate/latex). It can also be found in any of the nodes of the Comprehensive TeX Archive Network (ctan), one of the primary nodes being \urlhttp://www.ctan.org/tex-archive/macros/latex/contrib/elsevier/. Please download the elsarticle.dtx which is a composite class with documentation and elsarticle.ins which is the L A TeX installer file. When we compile the elsarticle.ins with L A TeX it provides the class file, elsarticle.cls by stripping off all the documentation from the *.dtx file. The class may be moved or copied to a place, usually, $TEXMF/tex/latex/elsevier/, or a folder which will be read by L A TeX during document compilation. The TeX file database needs updation after moving/copying class file. Usually, we use commands like mktexlsr or texhash depending upon the distribution and operating system.

4 Usage

The class should be loaded with the command:

 where the options can be the following:


 preprint


default option which format the
document for submission to Elsevier journals.


 review


similar to the preprint option, but
increases the baselineskip to facilitate easier review process.


 1p


formats the article to the look and feel of the final
format of model 1+ journals. This is always single column style.


 3p


formats the article to the look and feel of the final
format of model 3+ journals. If the journal is a two column
model, use twocolumn option in combination.


 5p


formats for model 5+ journals. This is always
of two column style.


 authoryear


author-year citation style of
natbib.sty. If you want to add extra options of
natbib.sty, you may use the options as comma delimited
strings as arguments to \biboptions command. An example
would be:



 

 number


numbered citation style. Extra options
can be loaded with\biboptions command.


 sort&compress


sorts and compresses the
numbered citations. For example, citation [1,2,3] will become [1–3].


 longtitle


if front matter is unusually long, use
this option to split the title page across pages with the correct
placement of title and author footnotes in the first page.


 times


loads txfonts.sty, if available in
the system to use Times and compatible math fonts.





All options of article.cls can be used with this
document class.





The default options loaded are a4paper, 10pt,
oneside, onecolumn and preprint.






5 Frontmatter


There are two types of frontmatter coding:




[(1)]



1. 

each author is
connected to an affiliation with a footnote marker; hence all
authors are grouped together and affiliations follow;



2. 

authors of same affiliations are grouped together and the
relevant affiliation follows this group. An example coding of the first
type is provided below.





   The output of the above TeX source is given in Clips 5 and
5. The header portion or title area is given in Clip 5 and
the footer area is given in Clip 5.



 




 


Most of the commands such as \title, \author,
\address are self explanatory. Various components are
linked to each other by a label–reference mechanism; for
instance, title footnote is linked to the title with a footnote
mark generated by referring to the \label string of
the \tnotetext. We have used similar commands
such as \tnoteref (to link title note to title);
\corref (to link corresponding author text to
corresponding author); \fnref (to link footnote text to
the relevant author names). TeX needs two compilations to
resolve the footnote marks in the preamble part.
Given below are the syntax of various note marks and note texts.
 where <label(s)> can be either one or more comma
delimited label strings. The optional arguments to the
\author command holds the ref label(s) of the address(es)
to which the author is affiliated while each \address
command can have an optional argument of a label. In the same
manner, \tnotetext, \fntext, \cortext will
have optional arguments as their respective labels and note text
as their mandatory argument.
The following example code provides the markup of the second type
of author-affiliation.
    The output of the above TeX source is given in Clip 5.



 


The frontmatter part has further environments such as abstracts and
keywords. These can be marked up in the following
manner:
  Each keyword shall be separated by a \sep command.
pacs and msc classifications shall be provided in
the keyword environment with the commands \PACS and
\MSC respectively. \MSC accepts an optional
argument to accommodate future revisions.
eg., \MSC[2008]. The default is 2000.


6 Floats


Figures may be included using the command, \includegraphics in
combination with or without its several options to further control
graphic. \includegraphics is provided by graphic[s,x].sty
which is part of any standard L

A
TeX distribution.
graphicx.sty is loaded by default. L

A
TeX accepts figures in
the postscript format while pdfL

A
TeX accepts *.pdf,
*.mps (metapost), *.jpg and *.png formats.
pdfL

A
TeX does not accept graphic files in the postscript format.


The table environment is handy for marking up tabular
material. If users want to use multirow.sty,
array.sty, etc., to fine control/enhance the tables, they
are welcome to load any package of their choice and
elsarticle.cls will work in combination with all loaded
packages.



7 Theorem and theorem like environments


elsarticle.cls provides a few shortcuts to format theorems and
theorem-like environments with ease. In all commands the options that
are used with the \newtheorem command will work exactly in the same
manner. elsarticle.cls provides three commands to format theorem or
theorem-like environments:


 The \newtheorem command formats a
theorem in L

A
TeX’s default style with italicized font, bold font
for theorem heading and theorem number at the right hand side of the
theorem heading. It also optionally accepts an argument which
will be printed as an extra heading in parentheses.
 Clip 7 will show you how some text enclosed between the
above code looks like:



 


The \newdefinition command is the same in
all respects as its\newtheorem counterpart except that
the font shape is roman instead of italic. Both
\newdefinition and \newtheorem commands
automatically define counters for the environments defined.



 


The \newproof command defines proof environments with
upright font shape. No counters are defined.



 


Users can also make use of amsthm.sty which will override
all the default definitions described above.



8 Enumerated and Itemized Lists


elsarticle.cls provides an extended list processing macros
which makes the usage a bit more user friendly than the default
L

A
TeX list macros. With an optional argument to the
\begin{enumerate} command, you can change the list counter
type and its attributes.


 


 


Further, the enhanced list environment allows one to prefix a
string like ‘step’ to all the item numbers. Take a look at the
example below:
 

 






9 Cross-references


In electronic publications, articles may be internally
hyperlinked. Hyperlinks are generated from proper
cross-references in the article. For example, the words
Fig. 1 will never be more than simple text,
whereas the proper cross-reference \ref{tiger} may be
turned into a hyperlink to the figure itself:
Fig. 1. In the same way,
the words Ref. [1] will fail to turn into a
hyperlink; the proper cross-reference is \cite{Knuth96}.
Cross-referencing is possible in L

A
TeX for sections,
subsections, formulae, figures, tables, and literature
references.



10 Mathematical symbols and formulae


Many physical/mathematical sciences authors require more
mathematical symbols than the few that are provided in standard
L

A
TeX. A useful package for additional symbols is the
amssymb package, developed by the American Mathematical
Society. This package includes such oft-used symbols as
 $\lesssim$  (\lesssim),  $\gtrsim$  (\gtrsim) or
 $\hbar$  (\hbar). Note that your TeX
system should have the msam and msbm fonts installed. If
you need only a few symbols, such as  $\Box$  (\Box), you might try the
package latexsym.


Another point which would require authors’ attention is the
breaking up of long equations. When you use
elsarticle.cls for formatting your submissions in the
preprint mode, the document is formatted in single column
style with a text width of 384pt or 5.3in. When this document is
formatted for final print and if the journal happens to be a double column
journal, the text width will be reduced to 224pt at for 3+
double column and 5+ journals respectively. All the nifty
fine-tuning in equation breaking done by the author goes to waste in
such cases. Therefore, authors are requested to check this
problem by typesetting their submissions in final format as well
just to see if their equations are broken at appropriate places,
by changing appropriate options in the document class loading
command, which is explained in section 4,
\namerefsec:usage. This allows authors to fix any equation breaking
problem before submission for publication.
elsarticle.cls supports formatting the author submission
in different types of final format. This is further discussed in
section 12, \namerefsec:final.



11 Bibliography


Three bibliographic style files (*.bst) are provided —
elsarticle-num.bst, elsarticle-num-names.bst and
elsarticle-harv.bst — the first one for the numbered scheme, the
second for the numbered with new options of natbib.sty and the
last one for the author year scheme.


In L

A
TeX literature, references are listed in the
thebibliography environment. Each reference is a
\bibitem and each \bibitem is identified by a label,
by which it can be cited in the text:


\bibitem[Elson et al.(1996)]{ESG96} is cited as
\citet{ESG96}.


In connection with cross-referencing and
possible future hyperlinking it is not a good idea to collect
more that one literature item in one \bibitem. The
so-called Harvard or author-year style of referencing is enabled
by the L

A
TeX package natbib. With this package the
literature can be cited as follows:






[•]



1. 

Parenthetical: \citep{WB96} produces (Wettig & Brown, 1996).



2. 

Textual: \citet{ESG96} produces Elson et al. (1996).



3. 

An affix and part of a reference:
\citep[e.g.][Ch. 2]{Gea97} produces (e.g. Governato et
al., 1997, Ch. 2).





In the numbered scheme of citation, \cite{<label>} is used,
since \citep or \citet has no relevance in the numbered
scheme. natbib package is loaded by elsarticle with
numbers as default option. You can change this to author-year
or harvard scheme by adding option authoryear in the class
loading command. If you want to use more options of the natbib
package, you can do so with the \biboptions command, which is
described in the section 4, \namerefsec:usage. For
details of various options of the natbib package, please take a
look at the natbib documentation, which is part of any standard
L

A
TeX installation.


Displayed equations and double column journals


Many Elsevier journals print their text in two columns. Since
the preprint layout uses a larger line width than such columns,
the formulae are too wide for the line width in print. Here is an
example of an equation (see equation 6) which is perfect in a
single column preprint format:









When this document is typeset for publication in a
model 3+ journal with double columns, the equation will overlap
the second column text matter if the equation is not broken at
the appropriate location.






The typesetter will try to break the equation which
need not necessarily be to the liking of the author or as it
happens, typesetter’s break point may be semantically incorrect.
Therefore, authors may check their submissions for the incidence
of such long equations and break the equations at the correct
places so that the final typeset copy will be as they wish.



12 Final print


The authors can format their submission to the page size and margins
of their preferred journal. elsarticle provides four
class options for the same. But it does not mean that using these
options you can emulate the exact page layout of the final print copy.

1p:


 $1+$  journals with a text area of
384pt  $\times$  562pt or 13.5cm  $\times$  19.75cm or 5.3in  $\times$ 
7.78in, single column style only.


3p:


 $3+$  journals with a text area of 468pt
 $\times$  622pt or 16.45cm  $\times$  21.9cm or 6.5in  $\times$ 
8.6in, single column style.


twocolumn:


should be used along with 3p option if the
journal is  $3+$  with the same text area as above, but double column
style.


5p:


 $5+$  with text area of 522pt  $\times$ 
682pt or 18.35cm  $\times$  24cm or 7.22in  $\times$  9.45in,
double column style only.





Following pages have the clippings of different parts of
the title page of different journal models typeset in final
format.


Model  $1+$  and  $3+$  will have the same look and
feel in the typeset copy when presented in this document. That is
also the case with the double column  $3+$  and  $5+$  journal article
pages. The only difference will be wider text width of
higher models. Therefore we will look at the
different portions of a typical single column journal page and
that of a double column article in the final format.



\hypertarget
bsc
\hyperlinksc
[Specimen single column article – Click here]
\hypertarget
bsc
\hyperlinkdc
[Specimen double column article – Click here]




\hypertarget
sc

\hyperlinkbsc






\hypertarget
dc

\hyperlinkbsc