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

To write a research paper in LaTeX, you need three things: a document class, structured content, and a bibliography. Here's the complete setup.

1. Document structure

\documentclass[12pt, a4paper]{article}
\usepackage[utf8]{inputenc}
\usepackage{amsmath, amssymb}   % math
\usepackage{graphicx}            % figures
\usepackage{hyperref}            % clickable links
\usepackage[style=ieee]{biblatex}
\addbibresource{refs.bib}

\title{Your Paper Title}
\author{Author Name \\ Institution}
\date{\today}

\begin{document}
\maketitle
\begin{abstract}
  Your 150–250 word abstract here.
\end{abstract}

\section{Introduction}
\section{Related Work}
\section{Method}
\section{Experiments}
\section{Conclusion}

\printbibliography
\end{document}

2. Citations with BibLaTeX

Create refs.bib:

@article{vaswani2017attention,
  title   = {Attention Is All You Need},
  author  = {Vaswani, Ashish and others},
  journal = {Advances in Neural Information Processing Systems},
  year    = {2017}
}

Cite in text: \cite{vaswani2017attention} → renders as [1] (IEEE style) or (Vaswani et al., 2017) (APA).

3. Math and figures

Inline math: $E = mc^2$. Display math:

\begin{equation}
  \nabla \cdot \mathbf{E} = \frac{\rho}{\varepsilon_0}
  \label{eq:gauss}
\end{equation}

Reference it as \eqref{eq:gauss} → renders (1).

4. Compile without installing LaTeX

Paste this structure into LetX — it compiles to PDF in your browser with no TeX install. Supports real-time collaboration with co-authors.

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Next: How to Add Citations in LaTeX →

Written by Shihab Shahriar Antor · Shahriar Labs