How to Write a Research Paper in LaTeX (2026 Guide)

\documentclass[11pt]{article}

% --- Preamble: packages ---
\usepackage[utf8]{inputenc}
\usepackage{amsmath, amssymb}   % math
\usepackage{graphicx}           % figures
\usepackage{booktabs}           % clean tables
\usepackage{hyperref}           % links (load last)

% --- Title metadata ---
\title{Your Paper Title}
\author{First Author \\ Affiliation \and Second Author}
\date{\today}

\begin{document}
\maketitle

\begin{abstract}
A concise 150--250 word summary of the problem,
method, and key result.
\end{abstract}

\section{Introduction}
Motivate the problem and state your contributions.
We build on prior work \cite{knuth1984}.

\section{Method}
Describe your approach. Equations are easy:
\begin{equation}
  \mathcal{L} = -\sum_{i} y_i \log \hat{y}_i
\end{equation}

\section{Results}
See Table~\ref{tab:results} and Figure~\ref{fig:plot}.

\begin{table}[ht]
  \centering
  \begin{tabular}{lcc}
    \toprule
    Model & Accuracy & F1 \\
    \midrule
    Baseline & 0.81 & 0.79 \\
    Ours & 0.92 & 0.91 \\
    \bottomrule
  \end{tabular}
  \caption{Main results.}
  \label{tab:results}
\end{table}

\section{Conclusion}
Summarize findings and future directions.

\bibliographystyle{plain}
\bibliography{references}
\end{document}

@book{knuth1984,
  author    = {Donald E. Knuth},
  title     = {The TeXbook},
  publisher = {Addison-Wesley},
  year      = {1984}
}