A New Tool for Authors – the IEEE LaTeX Analyzer, Powered by Overleaf

8th February 2018

| Katy Alexander

A new tool for authors – the IEEE LaTeX Analyzer, powered by Overleaf – helps speed up the publishing process by allowing authors to upload articles and validate their article’s LaTeX files prior to submission to the IEEE.

Authors simply upload their articles via an IEEE web interface which connects to the Overleaf LaTeX compilers to build the manuscript. By making use of Overleaf’s robust and proven compile servers – which have compiled over 15 billion pages since 2013 – the manuscript can be automatically compiled in just a few seconds.

The tool helps authors and editorial offices avoid submission delays or inaccuracies which are often encountered when authors and editors have different versions of LaTeX installed; submitted manuscripts contain missing files; or out-of-date LaTeX packages cause conflicts in the build process. When the author uploads their LaTeX files they receive detailed analysis results, along with the option for correcting any LaTeX issues via the Overleaf platform or a LaTeX editor of their choosing.

Marilyn Catis, Associate Director, Author Engagement Tools & Support, IEEE Publications says:

“IEEE is committed to creating a simple and intuitive publishing experience. The new IEEE LaTeX Analyzer tool is a natural extension to the suite of existing IEEE Author Tools. It helps us serve our authors and editors through potential pain-points, providing insight to LaTeX-related errors for faster compilation and submission times. We are excited to collaborate with Overleaf on this effort and to make it available to our community of authors and editors.”

John Hammersley, CoFounder and CEO of Overleaf says:

“It has been fantastic to work with the IEEE, who have provided very helpful and focused feedback throughout this project, and we’re all excited to see the IEEE LaTeX Analyzer now live and available to the community. It’s a natural extension of Overleaf to make our LaTeX technology accessible via an API, to help power services such as the IEEE LaTeX Analyzer. We hope that this will continue to lower the barriers to getting started with LaTeX for new authors and will help reduce the frustrations experienced authors can sometimes face when transferring files from system to system. We very much look forward to feedback from the IEEE community on this new service, and are excited to be broadening the use of Overleaf in this way.”

This IEEE LaTeX Analyzer tool is available now for use by authors and editors for all IEEE journals and can be found via the IEEE Author Center webpage.

Additional details

The validation service accepts LaTeX and supporting files for compilation. It then compiles the manuscript and returns the resulting PDF if the compile was successful. If compilation was unsuccessful, the tool will return the status of the compilation, and if there was a compilation error, return the error messages. It then provides an “Open in Overleaf” button option for the author/editor to be able to use the user-friendly Overleaf interface to immediately find and fix errors in the document and resubmit through the validation service.

Visit https://www.overleaf.com/ and follow @overleaf on Twitter.