IEEE Paper Format: Structure, Template and Reference Examples

Quick answer

IEEE paper format is a two-column layout used in engineering and computer science. A paper has a title, author names and affiliations, a one-paragraph abstract, Index Terms, sections numbered with Roman numerals (I. Introduction), figures and tables with numbered captions, and a reference list numbered [1], [2] in the order sources are first cited. Download the official Word or LaTeX template from IEEE.

What Is IEEE Paper Format?

IEEE format is the style used by the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers for its journals, magazines and conference proceedings. Most electrical engineering, electronics, computer science and IT courses also ask students to write reports and research papers in IEEE format, so you will see it in final-year projects in India, the Philippines and elsewhere.

IEEE format has two parts:

• Layout: a two-column page made from the official IEEE template (Word or LaTeX), with a fixed order of title, authors, abstract, Index Terms and numbered sections.
• Citation style: numbered references in square brackets, like [1], listed in the order they first appear in the text, not alphabetically.

The rules come from two official IEEE documents: the IEEE Editorial Style Manual for Authors (PDF) and the IEEE Reference Guide (PDF). The template and the specific conference or journal's instructions always take priority over general guides like this one.

Updated October 2026.

IEEE Paper Structure, Part by Part

A typical IEEE research paper follows this structure. The examples are original and illustrative (the paper, authors and university are made up).

1. Title. Centered at the top, in title case. Keep it specific and avoid unexplained abbreviations. Example: "Lightweight Convolutional Neural Network for Rice Leaf Disease Detection on Low-Cost Smartphones."

1. Authors and affiliations. Each author's name, department, institution, city, country and email, under the title. In conference templates, authors are usually placed side by side in blocks.

1. Abstract. One paragraph, usually about 150–250 words, that summarizes the problem, method, main results and conclusion. Do not put citations, footnotes or equations in the abstract. It starts with the word Abstract followed by an em dash.

1. Index Terms. A short list of keywords in alphabetical order right after the abstract, introduced by Index Terms—. Example: "Index Terms—convolutional neural networks, edge computing, image classification, plant disease detection."

1. Numbered sections. Main headings use Roman numerals and capitals (I. INTRODUCTION, II. RELATED WORK, III. PROPOSED METHOD, IV. EXPERIMENTAL RESULTS, V. CONCLUSION). Subsections use capital letters (A. Dataset, B. Network Architecture) and lower levels use numbers.

1. Figures, tables and equations. Figures are labelled "Fig. 1." with the caption below; tables are labelled with Roman numerals (TABLE I) with the caption above. Equations are numbered in parentheses on the right, like (1), and referred to in the text as "(1)" or "Eq. (1)" at the start of a sentence.

1. Acknowledgment (optional, note the IEEE spelling without an "e" after "g"), then References numbered [1], [2], [3]...

1. Author biographies appear in many IEEE journals (Transactions) but usually not in conference papers.

IEEE Format Example: Annotated First Page

Here is how the first page of an IEEE conference paper looks as text. This is an original illustrative example; the authors, university and numbers are made up.

Lightweight Convolutional Neural Network for Rice Leaf Disease Detection on Low-Cost Smartphones

R. Kumar and M. Dela Cruz, Department of Computer Engineering, Example Institute of Technology, Manila, Philippines (email addresses below the names)

Abstract—Rice leaf diseases reduce crop yield, but most detection models are too large for the low-cost phones that farmers use. This paper proposes a compact convolutional neural network that uses depthwise separable convolutions and knowledge distillation. On a public dataset of four disease classes, the model reached 94.1% accuracy with 1.2 million parameters and ran in 38 ms per image on an entry-level smartphone. These results show that accurate disease detection can run offline on inexpensive devices.

Index Terms—convolutional neural networks, edge computing, image classification, plant disease detection.

I. INTRODUCTION

Rice is a staple crop for millions of small farmers, and early detection of leaf diseases helps farmers act before losses spread. Deep residual networks [1] made very deep image classifiers practical, but such models are too large for many phones. Mobile architectures [2], [3] reduce this cost...

Annotations:

• [1] is a real citation (the ResNet paper, see the reference list below); [2] and [3] are illustrative.
• Several citations at one point are written as [2], [3]; a range can be written [2]–[5].
• The citation number goes inside the sentence, before the punctuation.
• Cite a source as "[1]" or "in [1]", not "in reference [1]".

IEEE In-Text Citations: The [1] System

IEEE uses numbered citations in square brackets (IEEE Reference Guide):

• Number sources in the order you first cite them. The first source cited is [1], the next new source [2], and so on.
• Reuse the same number each time you cite the same source again.
• Place the number before punctuation: "...as shown in [4]."
• Several sources: [2], [5], [7] or a range [2]–[5].
• Specific page or figure: you can add it inside the brackets, e.g., [1, p. 7] or [3, Fig. 2].
• The reference list is numbered, not alphabetical, and matches the numbers in the text.

Because numbers depend on order, use a reference manager or BibTeX so the numbering updates automatically when you move text. On Ocean of Papers you can export BibTeX or RIS for one paper or a whole list, then use it with the IEEEtran style in LaTeX or with Zotero or Word in IEEE style.

IEEE Reference Examples: Journal, Conference, Book, Website

The general patterns below follow the IEEE Reference Guide (PDF). Authors are written as initials then surname (A. B. Author). Article and paper titles go in quotation marks in sentence case; journal, conference and book titles are italic and usually abbreviated.

Journal article pattern: A. B. Author, "Title of article," Abbrev. Title of Journal, vol. x, no. x, pp. xxx–xxx, Abbrev. Month Year, doi: xxx.

Conference paper pattern: A. B. Author, "Title of paper," in Abbrev. Name of Conf., (location), year, pp. xxx–xxx, doi: xxx.

Book pattern: A. B. Author, Title of Book, xth ed. City, Country: Publisher, year.

Website pattern: A. B. Author (or organization). "Title of page." Website name. Accessed: Mon. Day, Year. [Online]. Available: URL

Example reference list. Entry [1] is a real, verified paper; entries [2]–[5] are original illustrative entries with made-up authors, titles and DOIs, to show the format only:

1. K. He, X. Zhang, S. Ren, and J. Sun, "Deep residual learning for image recognition," in Proc. IEEE Conf. Comput. Vis. Pattern Recognit. (CVPR), Las Vegas, NV, USA, 2016, pp. 770–778, doi: 10.1109/CVPR.2016.90.
2. P. Sharma and L. Santos, "Compact neural networks for on-device crop monitoring," IEEE Trans. Agric. Electron., vol. 12, no. 3, pp. 210–221, Mar. 2025, doi: 10.0000/example.2025.001. (illustrative journal article)
3. J. Reyes, A. Gupta, and T. Lim, "Knowledge distillation for low-power image classifiers," in Proc. Int. Conf. Example Comput. Syst., Singapore, 2024, pp. 45–50. (illustrative conference paper)
4. S. Rao, Introduction to Edge AI, 2nd ed. Chennai, India: Example Press, 2023. (illustrative book)
5. Example Rice Research Network. "Common rice leaf diseases." Example Network website. Accessed: Oct. 31, 2026. [Online]. Available: https://example.org/rice-diseases (illustrative website)

Annotations:

• Several authors: list them with commas and "and" before the last; check the IEEE Reference Guide for when et al. is allowed for long author lists.
• Abbreviate journal and conference names (Trans., Proc., Conf., Int.) and months (Jan., Feb., Mar.).
• Add the DOI when the work has one.
• In the paper itself, entries are written as [1], [2]... on the left, not as "1." as shown in this numbered list.

Where to Get the Official IEEE Research Paper Template

Always download templates from IEEE itself or from your conference's call for papers. Copies on third-party sites are often outdated.

• Conference papers: IEEE's Manuscript Templates for Conference Proceedings page has the Word templates (US Letter and A4) and the LaTeX template. For LaTeX, the IEEEtran class is used in conference mode.
• Journal and Transactions articles: the IEEE Author Center's Authoring Tools and Templates page has the article templates and also points to Overleaf for writing LaTeX online.
• Conference author tools: the IEEE Author Center for Conferences lists templates and tools for checking references and LaTeX files.

Before you submit, delete all the template's sample text, check the page limit and paper size (US Letter or A4) in the call for papers, and make sure the PDF meets the conference's requirements.

1. Download from IEEE — Word or LaTeX, right paper size
2. Replace all sample text — Keep the styles
3. Number references [1]... — BibTeX + IEEEtran
4. Check the call for papers — Page limit, PDF rules

IEEE vs APA Format: Key Differences

IEEE is used in engineering and computing, where readers want to scan many short citations. APA is used in psychology, education, nursing and social sciences, where the author and year of a study matter in the text. See the full APA research paper example for the APA side. APA rules in the table come from the official APA Style website.

Common IEEE Format Mistakes

1. Alphabetical reference list. IEEE lists references in the order they are first cited.
2. Author–date citations. Do not write (He, 2016) in an IEEE paper; write [1].
3. Citations in the abstract. Keep the abstract free of references and equations.
4. Changing the template. Do not change fonts, margins or column widths to fit the page limit.
5. Leaving template text. Remove every sample sentence from the template.
6. Low-quality figures. Use readable fonts in figures, label axes with units, and refer to every figure in the text as "Fig. 1".
7. Citing only websites. Most reviewers expect peer-reviewed journal and conference papers. Find them with the guides below.

Finding Sources for an IEEE Paper

A good IEEE paper cites recent conference and journal papers in your area. Many engineering and computer science papers have a free version on arXiv. Search your topic on Ocean of Papers, turn on the PDF filter, and sort by most cited to find key papers. Click Build map on a key paper to see its references and the papers that cite it, then export BibTeX for LaTeX.

More guides:

• Download IEEE papers free – legal ways to read IEEE Xplore papers.
• AI and machine learning research papers – landmark papers with free PDFs.
• Research paper samples – real papers to study by field.
• How to write a research paper – the full writing process.
• How to write a literature review – for your Related Work section.

Frequently Asked Questions

What is IEEE paper format?

It is the layout and citation style of the IEEE: a two-column paper with title, authors, abstract, Index Terms, Roman-numeral sections, numbered figures and tables, and references numbered [1], [2] in order of first citation.

Where can I download the IEEE research paper template?

From IEEE's Manuscript Templates for Conference Proceedings page (ieee.org/conferences/publishing/templates.html) for conferences, or the IEEE Author Center's Authoring Tools and Templates page for journals. Both offer Word and LaTeX versions.

Can you show an IEEE format example of a reference?

A conference paper: K. He, X. Zhang, S. Ren, and J. Sun, "Deep residual learning for image recognition," in Proc. IEEE Conf. Comput. Vis. Pattern Recognit. (CVPR), Las Vegas, NV, USA, 2016, pp. 770–778, doi: 10.1109/CVPR.2016.90.

How do I cite in IEEE format in the text?

Put the reference number in square brackets, like [1], before any punctuation. Number sources in the order you first cite them and reuse the same number for the same source.

Is IEEE reference list alphabetical?

No. IEEE references are listed numerically in the order they are first cited in the text.

How long should an IEEE abstract be?

Usually one paragraph of about 150–250 words, but the conference or journal instructions set the exact limit. Do not include citations in it.

What is the difference between IEEE and APA format?

IEEE uses numbered citations [1] and a reference list in citation order; APA uses author–date citations (Author, 2020) and an alphabetical list. IEEE is common in engineering and computing; APA in psychology, education and social sciences.

Can I write an IEEE paper in Word instead of LaTeX?

Yes. IEEE provides Word templates as well as LaTeX. Use whichever the conference or journal accepts, and do not change the template's styles.

Related guides

• APA research paper example (7th edition)
• How to download IEEE papers free (legally)
• Research paper examples (annotated, free PDFs)
• How to write a research paper

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