Word to Latex: Writing papers the right way

LaTeX is a document preparation system for high-quality typesetting. It is most often used for medium-to-large technical or scientific documents, but it can be used for almost any form of publishing.

Prerequisite

• Pandoc: If you need to convert files from one markup format into another, pandoc is your swiss-army knife.

• JabRef: Native BibTeX and BibLaTeX support, perfect for text-based typesetting systems such as LaTeX and Markdown.
  • Endnote
• Latex: MikTex, GhostScript and PDF viewer, and TexStudio

Workflow

Step1. Word2Latex using Pandoc

• Reference in word using Endnote

• Reference in Latex using JabRef

• pandoc [options] [input-file]…
  • -s: standalone
  • –wrap=auto, none, or preserve
  • –extract-media=. : extract figures from the document

Check details in the pandoc manual

pandoc --extract-media=. --wrap=none -s input.docx -t latex –o output.tex

Step2a. Equations, Tables and Figures using Latex

• Equations: Convert to default math function in Word
• Tables: https://www.tablesgenerator.com/

%equation 
\begin{equation}
  \label{eq:eq1}
  x + y = z
\end{equation}

%table 
\begin{table}[H]
  \caption{Table 1\label{tab:tab1}}
  \begin{tabular}{ll}
  \toprule
  Tabe Head
  \midrule
  text
  \bottomrule
  \end{tabular}
\end{table}

%figure
\begin{figure}
  \caption{Figure 1\label{fig:fig1}}
  \includegraphics[width=\linewidth]{Fig.jpg}
\end{figure}

Cite by: \ref{eq:eq1}; \ref{tab:tab1}; \ref{fig:fig1}

Step2b. Reference

• JabRef: Generate Citation keys (e.g., RN1)

%in the preamble
\bibliographystyle{plain}

%Where the bibliography will be printed
\bibliography{name of .bib file}


@book{RN1,
   author = {Gastel, Barbara and Day, Robert A.},
   title = {How to Write and Publisher a Scientific Paper},
   publisher = {Cambridge University Press},
   address = {New York, USA},
   year = {2017},
   type = {Book}
}

Cite by: \cite{RN1}

Step3. Adapting to any required format by journals

• Document class (e.g., elsarticle.cls)
• Bibliography style (e.g., elsarticle-num.bst)

%Default class: article, book, thesis
\documentclass[12pt]{article}
\bibliographystyle{plain}

%Elsevier
\documentclass[review]{elsarticle}
\bibliographystyle{elsarticle-num}

Alternatives

• Support collaborative online editing
  • Overleaf
  • Authorea
• Support fully reproducible document using multiple languages, eg R or Python
  • Rmarkdown