IEEE Access Formatting Requirements: Complete Author Guide

IEEE Access is unusual among major journals because it doesn't enforce a hard word or page limit for regular articles. That said, conciseness still matters. The editorial team expects the length of your paper to match the weight of its contribution. A 25-page paper on a minor incremental improvement will raise flags.

IEEE Access strongly recommends keeping the page count under 20 pages and says additional content can be added as supplementary material. If your regular article is pushing past 20 pages, consider whether some material would be better placed in supplementary files.

One thing authors don't always realize: IEEE Access requires the manuscript to be prepared in a double-column, single-spaced format using its template, and the Word or LaTeX file and the PDF must match exactly. Plan your figures and tables accordingly because they consume column and page space quickly.

The journal's open access model means there's no print edition to constrain page counts, which is partly why the limit is flexible. But editors still value tight writing. Papers that repeat themselves or pad the introduction with unnecessary background will get reviewer criticism regardless of the formal policy.

IEEE Access requires a single, unstructured paragraph abstract. No subheadings, no structured sections.

• Word limit: 150 to 250 words

• Structure: Unstructured (single paragraph)

• Citations: Not allowed in the abstract

• Index terms: Listed immediately after the abstract in the template (IEEE uses "Index Terms" rather than "Keywords"); the submission system separately requires 3 to 10 keywords

The abstract should cover the problem, the proposed approach, and the principal results or contributions. The template asks for a concise yet comprehensive abstract. Instead of "significant improvement," provide the actual performance numbers ("12.3% improvement in F1 score over the baseline").

Index Terms follow the abstract. The template asks for key words or phrases in alphabetical order, separated by commas, and suggests using the IEEE Thesaurus to find standardized keywords. The submission system requires between 3 and 10 manuscript keywords.

Keep the abstract itself a single paragraph with no displayed equations or tabular material, as the template instructs.

IEEE Access follows the standard IEEE figure formatting guidelines in its template and does not state a limit on the number of display items.

Figure specifications:

Table formatting: Tables use the standard IEEE format; vertical lines are optional, per the template. Table titles go above the table (unlike figure captions, which go below the figure). This is a universal IEEE convention, but authors from non-IEEE backgrounds frequently get it wrong.

According to the IEEE Access template, color figures can be published on IEEE Xplore at no charge, and the extra expense it mentions applies to color in print versions. IEEE Access is an online-only journal.

Multi-part figures should use (a), (b), (c) labeling. Each sub-figure needs to be referenced explicitly in the figure caption. Don't submit a multi-panel figure with no explanation of what each panel shows.

IEEE Access uses the standard IEEE citation style. If you've published in any IEEE journal or conference before, the format is identical.

In-text citations: Numbered in square brackets, assigned in order of first appearance. For example: "The method was first proposed in [1] and later extended in [2], [3]." Multiple citations are separated by commas within brackets or listed as a range: [1]-[3].

Reference list format:

[1] A. B. Author, C. D. Author, and E. F. Author, "Title of the article," J. Abbrev., vol. XX, no. YY, pp. ZZ-ZZ, Mon. Year, doi: 10.xxxx/xxxxx.

Key formatting details:

• Author names: First initial(s), then last name (e.g., "J. K. Smith").

• Use "and" before the last author in the reference list.

• Journal names are abbreviated, as in the template's reference examples.

• Volume and issue numbers use "vol." and "no." abbreviations.

• Include the DOI for journal articles where available, in the form shown in the template's reference examples.

• For conference papers: follow the template's format (abbreviated conference name, city, state if given, country, year, and pages).

• For online sources: include the access date.

IEEE Access does not state a cap on the number of references, but its submission guidelines say not to include references that are not relevant to your work, and reviewers are asked to flag references that are not appropriate. Survey papers naturally carry heavier reference lists.

A common mistake: authors using BibTeX with the wrong style file. For IEEE Access in LaTeX, use the IEEE reference style (the template's reference examples show the format) rather than a generic bibliography style.

IEEE Access stands out from many journals by actively supporting multimedia supplements. This isn't just an afterthought; multimedia content is integrated directly into the IEEE Xplore platform.

Supplemental material IEEE Access supports:

• Video files (.mp4, .mov, or .avi; the file should not exceed 100 MB)

• Datasets (IEEE DataPort accepts all types of datasets, including big data up to 2TB, at no cost for standard uploads)

• Code (Code Ocean, a cloud-based reproducibility platform integrated with IEEE Xplore; code may be uploaded at submission, revision, or after acceptance)

IEEE Access says a video should provide a brief synopsis of the article's content, be in English, and be appropriate for journal publication. During file upload, submit it as "Supplementary Material for Review"; any video published with an article automatically becomes its graphical abstract.

Supplementary documents: Supplemental material (code, data, and similar files) can be submitted with the article and is posted on IEEE Xplore under the media tab with the published article. IEEE Access also says additional content can be added as supplementary material to keep an article under 20 pages.

One practical note: if you're submitting video demonstrations of a system or simulation results, keep videos under 5 minutes when possible; reviewers are unlikely to watch longer demonstrations in their entirety.

For source code, IEEE Access offers Code Ocean and runs a reproducibility initiative, but sharing code is not required for submission. If reproducibility is central to your paper's contribution, including working code will strengthen the submission.

These are the details that regular IEEE Access authors know but that summary guides skip:

Creative Commons license. Authors select either CC BY or CC BY-NC-ND when they complete the electronic copyright form after acceptance, so check your funder's requirements before choosing.

Author photos and bios. IEEE Access requires short biographies for all authors, placed directly within the article below the references. Photographs are inserted only if you provide them, and the template says author photographs should be at least 300 dpi (final printed size 1 inch wide by 1.25 inches tall). Prepare the biographies before you submit.

Section numbering. IEEE Access uses Roman numerals for top-level sections (I. INTRODUCTION, II. RELATED WORK, etc.) and uppercase letters for subsections (A. Subsection Title). This is standard IEEE formatting but differs from most non-IEEE journals that use Arabic numerals.

Acknowledgments placement. The Acknowledgments section appears before the references, not after them. This is opposite to the convention in many non-IEEE journals. The section heading isn't numbered.

Funding information. The template puts support and sponsor acknowledgments in the first-page footnote, and IEEE production edits funding information to read "This work was supported by...".

Page layout. The manuscript must be prepared in a double-column, single-spaced format using a required IEEE Access template, and the Word or LaTeX file and the PDF must match exactly. Do not change font sizes or line spacing to squeeze more text into a limited number of pages.

1. Index Terms and keywords. Many authors skip the Index Terms or use free-form keywords. The template asks for key words or phrases in alphabetical order and suggests the IEEE Thesaurus, and the submission system requires 3 to 10 keywords.

1. Equation numbering. All equations must be numbered sequentially, right-justified. In LaTeX, use the equation environment, not inline $...$ for display equations.

1. Acronyms. Define at first use in the body text, even if already defined in the abstract (the template asks for an abstract without abbreviations). Don't assume the reader knows what CNN, IoT, or MIMO stands for, even in a specialized field.

1. First-page footnotes. Author affiliations, email addresses, and corresponding author designation go in first-page footnotes, not in the main text. The template handles this, but manual formatting often gets it wrong.

1. SI units. The template says SI units are strongly encouraged: use SI or CGS as primary units, and English units may appear as secondary units in parentheses.

For manuscripts targeting IEEE Access, four patterns generate the most consistent desk-rejection outcomes.

IEEE manuscript template not used. IEEE Access requires the IEEE two-column journal template. Submissions formatted in one-column layout, or using templates from other publishers (Elsevier elsarticle, Springer, ACM), are returned before peer review. The IEEE Access template is available as a Word document and as a LaTeX file from the IEEE Access Preparing Your Article page.

Contribution is not clearly in scope or a clear advance. IEEE Access covers all IEEE fields of interest, and its scope and quality check requires a clear advance over the state of the art; articles that fall short are desk rejected without detailed reviewer feedback. In our experience, papers with a very narrow application domain, a single use-case evaluation, or incremental extensions to existing algorithms without generalization across domains are at risk here. The cover letter should state the contribution and the IEEE field it belongs to.

Ethics and authorship checks. IEEE Access peer reviews articles in accordance with the IEEE PSPB Operations Manual, scans every submission for plagiarism (including similarity to your own work), and screens for duplicate submission and the IEEE Prohibited Participant List; problems found are rejected immediately and may be investigated further. Settle the author list before submission, and make sure the submitting author has a public, populated ORCID. The electronic copyright form is completed after acceptance, when you submit final files.

System performance claims lack reproducibility infrastructure. The publication principles in the IEEE Access template say a paper must provide sufficient information to allow readers to perform similar experiments or calculations. Code sharing is encouraged, not required, and the journal's reproducibility badges are awarded after publication. In our experience, papers reporting simulation or experimental results without implementation detail such as code, dataset identifiers, hardware configuration, and software versions are at risk with reviewers.

A IEEE Access submission readiness check evaluates manuscript scope, IEEE template compliance, and reproducibility documentation against these desk-rejection patterns.