Journal Manuscript Formatting and Referencing Service

A journal formatting and referencing service converts a finished manuscript to the layout, citation style and file requirements of the journal you have chosen. It suits authors who are submitting for the first time, authors moving a paper to a new journal after a rejection, and teams whose co-authors have each used a different style. Publish With Scopus is a UK-registered consultancy in London. We format and check; we do not change your findings, and we do not guarantee acceptance. For a self-check how-to before paid conversion, see manuscript formatting for journal submission. For the final pre-submission checklist, see our manuscript submission guidance.

Formatting has several layers

• Structure. Required sections, heading levels, the article type, the word limit, the abstract format (structured or not) and the number of keywords.
• Text conventions. Spelling variety, units, abbreviations, how numbers and statistics are written, and what is italicised.
• Tables and figures. Embedded or supplied as separate files, caption style, resolution, colour use and whether tables must be editable.
• Front matter. Title page, anonymised files for blind review, author contributions, declarations, highlights or a graphical abstract.
• References. Citation style, ordering, how authors are listed and whether DOIs are shown.
• Files. Word or LaTeX, the template, line numbers and supplementary material.

Reference styles are families, not single rules

Author-date styles such as APA and Harvard cite the author and year in the text and list references alphabetically. Numbered styles such as Vancouver and IEEE cite by number, usually in the order of first appearance. Note styles, such as Chicago notes and bibliography, put citations in footnotes. Many journals use a house version of a named style, so the same word in the instructions can still differ in the details: how many authors are listed, how journal names are abbreviated, and how DOIs appear.

The reference below is invented and is not a real article. It shows how one entry changes between styles.

• APA: Ahmed, R., & Lindqvist, K. (2022). Community clinics and vaccination uptake. Journal of Example Health Studies, 14(2), 101-118.
• Vancouver: 1. Ahmed R, Lindqvist K. Community clinics and vaccination uptake. J Example Health Stud. 2022;14(2):101-18.
• IEEE: [1] R. Ahmed and K. Lindqvist, “Community clinics and vaccination uptake,” J. Example Health Stud., vol. 14, no. 2, pp. 101-118, 2022.

Converting by hand is slow and errors are easy to make. Converting by software is quick, but the output still needs a human check.

Reference problems we look for

• Citations in the text that are missing from the list, and entries in the list that are never cited
• Two styles mixed after co-authors merged their sections
• Reference-manager entries with empty fields, duplicates or the wrong item type
• A preprint cited when the peer-reviewed version has since appeared
• Cited papers that have been retracted. Check the publisher’s notice and the Retraction Watch database
• References that do not exist. Text generated by AI tools can include invented citations, so every entry should be found and opened by an author

We check form and consistency. We do not check that each source says what you cite it for. That judgement is yours.

Moving a paper to a new journal

After a rejection, the quickest path is rarely a copy of the old file with a new name. A sensible order is:

1. Choose the new journal first. Fit matters more than layout; see journal selection support.
2. Read the author guidelines and note whether the journal accepts a free-format first submission. If it does, spend your effort on the content now and the exact formatting after review.
3. Restructure the abstract and headings, and adjust length to the new article type.
4. Convert the references, using the journal’s style file in your reference manager as a start and a manual check as the finish.
5. Rebuild figures and tables to the new specification from the source files.
6. Remove the previous journal’s name from the text and the cover letter.

Reference managers and LaTeX

Zotero, EndNote and Mendeley can apply thousands of citation styles, but a style file may lag behind a journal’s current instructions, and field codes can break when a document passes between co-authors. Keep one master copy and one person responsible for the library. For LaTeX, start from the publisher’s class file or template, and keep the BibTeX or BibLaTeX file clean, since small mistakes there show up in every output.

What our support includes, and what it does not

We reformat the manuscript to the template and guidelines you give us, convert and tidy the reference list, match in-text citations to the list, prepare an anonymised version for blind review, set up tables and figure files from the source files you supply, and run a checklist against the guidelines. When a detail is missing, such as a page range or a DOI, we flag it for you to supply. We do not invent it.

We do not alter your results or redraw data so that they say something different, we do not guarantee acceptance, and we cannot stop a journal’s production team from asking for further changes. Journals update their rules, so tell us the date you read the guidelines, and check again before you submit. If the language also needs work, see academic English editing for journal submission.

What to send us

Send the manuscript in an editable format, the link or PDF of the author guidelines, your reference library as an RIS or BibTeX export if you have one, the figure source files, and your deadline. We confirm the scope and the price before work begins.

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