Journal templates, and the specification behind each one

ORBIT applies 7 templates — IEEE, ACM, Elsevier, Springer, APA, MLA and Chicago — to your own document. Every number each one uses is published below, along with whether it has been checked against the publisher's own source.

What each template applies

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How your document survives the change

ORBIT edits your own document rather than rebuilding it from extracted text. It unzips the .docx, rewrites word/document.xml and word/styles.xml, and re-zips. Everything it does not touch survives byte for byte, which is why figures, tables, embedded equations, footnotes, numbering and inline formatting come through unchanged.

Formatting is a deterministic transformation of your file, not a generative one. No language model is involved and your manuscript text is never sent to a third-party AI service.

Questions people ask about the templates

Where do these template specifications come from?

IEEE, ACM and Springer were transcribed by hand from the publisher's own author template or class file, and every one of the three turned out to be wrong before it was corrected — margins, type sizes and column gutters that had been inherited rather than checked. Elsevier states no strict formatting requirements at submission, so there is nothing to verify against. APA, MLA and Chicago keep page layout behind a bot block or a paid manual. Every template carries a link to the document its rules came from, or to the publisher's page where nobody has been able to read one.

How do I know a template's numbers are right?

Every template card says which of the two is true, in one line, without opening anything: checked against the publisher's own document, or not confirmed against it. Where it is not confirmed, nobody has been able to verify that template's layout against a source we can point you at — the publisher either states no layout requirement, blocks automated reading of its guidelines, or keeps them in a paid manual. An unconfirmed template still formats your paper exactly as specified. It has simply never been checked against the publisher, and we would rather say so than show a tick we have not earned.

Will my figures, tables and equations survive?

Yes. ORBIT restyles your existing document rather than rebuilding it, so figures, tables, equations, footnotes, lists and inline formatting are carried through as you wrote them. Only formatting changes — not a word of your content is altered.

What if my journal isn't listed?

Upload the journal's own .docx template and ORBIT reads the page layout, fonts, columns and styles out of it, then applies them to your paper. Before converting you get a report of what was read from your template and what had to be assumed, so a template it could not fully parse is an honest message rather than a silent wrong result.

Is a formatted paper guaranteed to be accepted?

No, and any tool claiming otherwise is overselling. Formatting is one thing a desk editor checks; scope, novelty and quality are not something software can judge. Run a readiness check against your target journal to see what else it states, and do a final visual review before you submit.