IEEE LaTeX Formatting
for Transactions, Access & Conferences

This is the part where shortcuts get papers desk-rejected at IEEE.

If your paper was written in Word, equations are stored in one of three formats. Modern Word equations are OMML (Office Math Markup Language), an XML format inside document.xml. Older Word documents and papers built with the MathType plugin store equations as OLE objects. Some authors paste equations as images. Each requires different handling.

OMML can be converted to LaTeX with Pandoc as a first pass, but the result usually has wrong delimiters (Pandoc uses \(...\) inline; IEEE conventions expect $...$), missing operator spacing, and broken multi-line alignment. We use Pandoc as a starting point and rewrite every equation against the original.

MathType equations are sometimes extractable through the plugin’s “Convert Equations” feature, but the conversion loses cross-reference numbering and custom macros. For MathType-heavy papers we typically rewrite from scratch.

Image-pasted equations require manual transcription. We use Mathpix as a first pass and verify every output character against the original — Mathpix gets simple algebra right and gets complex tensor expressions, indexed sums, and unusual notation wrong often enough that we don’t trust its output without review.

For papers that already have a partial LaTeX file with broken equations — common when authors start a conversion themselves and get stuck — we work from your file. The equation problems we see most often: \frac inside an inline $...$ instead of \dfrac (gives tiny, unreadable fractions), unmatched delimiters from incomplete copy-paste, eqnarray instead of align or IEEEeqnarray, and missing \label on equations that are referenced later in the text.

This is where the conference-versus-journal split matters most, and where the most common bibliography mistakes happen.

Journals want a .bib file. The bibliography style is \bibliographystyle{IEEEtran} and the citation command is \cite{} with the cite package loaded. The IEEEtran.bst file is bundled with TeX Live, MiKTeX, and Overleaf, and handles IEEE’s specific formatting — initials before surname, journal name abbreviation, volume in bold, page range with en-dash.

Bibliography exports from Mendeley, Zotero, or EndNote work, but they often have gaps. Volume numbers, page ranges, and DOIs are frequently missing or incomplete, and IEEEtran.bst silently drops fields it doesn’t have rather than warning you. The result is a bibliography that compiles cleanly but looks wrong to a reviewer. We fill in the missing fields manually as part of the standard process. Google Scholar BibTeX exports are the worst offender — often missing volume, issue, and page data, and frequently mangling special characters in titles.

Conferences more often want a manual \begin{thebibliography} block with hand-written \bibitem entries. The reason is partly historical (older conference templates predate widespread BibTeX use) and partly practical (conference proceedings have inconsistent reference quality, and manual entry forces uniform formatting). If the conference template uses BibTeX, we do too. If it uses manual entries, we don’t override that. Reviewers and editors notice when papers deviate from the venue’s standard.