FAQ - How do I estimate the length of my paper?

What are the page limits for Automatica papers?

Papers that have been acccepted for publication in Automatica are subject to these page limits:

  • Regular Paper: 10 printed pages (10000 words)
  • Brief Paper: 6 printed pages (6000 words)
  • Technical Communique: 4 printed pages (4000 words)
  • Correspondence item: 2 printed pages (2000 words)

The Editor who handles your paper has little leeway to make exceptions. There is no way to buy more space by paying page charges.

The "printed pages" that are referred to are the printed pages in Journal. Because each new paper starts on an odd-numbered page the size is always an even number of pages − the last two pages may be partly blank.

The best way to estimate the length of your paper is to estimate the number of words. One printed page in the Journal has about 1000 words. The word count should of course include the space needed for equations and figures so a bare word count is not enough. The space needed for the authors' biographies and photos should also be counted.

Remember that the number of pages needs to be rounded up to the next even number. Therefore, if your estimate is 8.1 pages then the printed version may well amount to 10 pages.

What is the word count of my paper?

The simplest way to estimate the (equivalent) number of words is to count the actual number of words in, say, four lines of clear text of your document. After counting the number of lines on a page that does not contain equations, figures or tables it is now easy to determine the number of words per page of your document. Multiply this by the number of pages of your document (including all equations, figures, tables, appendices, etc.) to find the estimated length of the paper.

You can also complete the page count form that is used in the Editor-in-Chief's office.

Warning: If your document is in single-column format and has many short displayed equations then this procedure will result in an over-estimate of the length of the printed version. The reason is that the printed Automatica paper is in two-column format, where short displayed equations take up half the space needed in one-column format.

How can I estimate the size of the paper from my elsart or autart preprint?

If you prepare the final version of your paper as a LaTeX document based on the (unmodified) elsart style file then it is quite simple to estimate the size of the printed version. 

Suppose that the preprint (including all figures, biliography, tables, etc.) has n pages. Then a reasonably reliable estimate of the length of the printed Journal version is n/2 pages. Again, remember. that the number of pages needs to be rounded up to the next even number. Hence, if your estimate is 8.1 pages then the printed version may well amount to 10 pages.

You will obtain an even better estimate of the length of your paper if you use the autart style file, which produces output in two-column format similar to the printed style. The length of the preprint is a good estimate of the length of the printed version.