Science Advances Formatting Requirements: Complete Author Guide

Science Advances uses an unstructured abstract with a strict 200-word cap.

• Word limit: 200 words maximum
• Structure: Single paragraph, no subheadings
• Citations: Not allowed in the abstract
• Keywords: Not required in the abstract or frontmatter. Science Advances doesn't use author-supplied keywords for indexing.

The abstract should summarize the problem, approach, and main findings in a way that's accessible to scientists outside your specialty. This matters more at Science Advances than at discipline-specific journals because the readership spans all fields.

Don't start your abstract with a generic statement about the importance of your field. Readers of Science Advances come from every discipline. Instead, open with the specific question or gap your work addresses.

One formatting note: the abstract must be on its own page, separate from the main text. This seems minor but gets flagged during technical checks.

Science Advances requires a one-sentence teaser (sometimes called the "one-liner") that will appear in the table of contents and on the article's landing page. This is separate from the abstract.

• Length: One sentence, ideally under 125 characters
• Purpose: Hook readers browsing the table of contents
• Tone: Accessible, specific, and interesting

The teaser is more important than most authors realize. It's the first thing readers see on the journal's website. A good teaser communicates the paper's core finding in plain language. A bad teaser is vague or too technical.

Good: "A new class of synthetic antibodies neutralizes all known variants of respiratory syncytial virus."

Weak: "This study advances our understanding of antibody engineering."

Science Advances doesn't enforce a hard cap on the number of main figures, which is unusual for a high-impact journal. In practice, most Research Articles contain 4-8 main figures.

Figure specifications:

Table requirements:

• Tables should be created in the manuscript file, not as separate image files
• Every column must have a header
• Use minimal horizontal lines (top, bottom, below headers)
• No vertical rules
• Large datasets should go in Supplementary Materials as Excel files

Color figures: Science Advances is online-only, so all figures are published in color at no additional cost. There's no need to worry about grayscale reproduction.

Science Advances is strict about one thing that many authors overlook: figure quality at submission. Unlike some journals that accept low-resolution figures for initial review, Science Advances expects publication-quality figures from the start. Blurry or low-resolution submissions can delay the technical review process.

Science Advances uses a numbered citation system, consistent with the Science family of journals.

In-text citations: Superscript numbers in parentheses, e.g., "as shown previously (1, 2)." Note that Science Advances uses italic numbers in parentheses in the typeset version, but for manuscript submission, standard superscript numbers are fine.

Reference list format:

1. A. B. Smith, C. D. Jones, E. F. Williams, Title of article in sentence case. Sci. Adv. 10, eabc1234 (2024).

Key formatting details:

• Author names: Initials first, then last name (e.g., "A. B. Smith"). This is the opposite of many biomedical journals.
• List all authors up to 10. For 11 or more, list the first 10 followed by "et al."
• Journal names follow standard abbreviations
• Volume number is bolded in the typeset version
• No issue numbers
• Page numbers or article IDs in parentheses with the year
• DOIs are not required in the reference list but should be included in the metadata

The initials-first format is the most common error authors make when formatting references for Science Advances. If you're using a reference manager, make sure it's set to "Science" style, not "Vancouver" or "AMA."

There's no hard reference cap. Most Research Articles have 40-70 references. Reviews can have 100+. But as with word count, more isn't better. Cite what's necessary.

Science Advances actively encourages Supplementary Materials (SM), and there's no strict limit on the amount you can include. This is a major advantage of the journal's format.

Supplementary Materials should be organized as:

1. Supplementary Text: Extended methods, derivations, theoretical details
2. Supplementary Figures (fig. S1, fig. S2, etc.): Additional data, controls, replicates
3. Supplementary Tables (table S1, table S2, etc.): Data tables, patient demographics, parameter lists
4. Movies: Numbered as movie S1, movie S2, etc.
5. Data files: Raw data, code, or other supporting files

All Supplementary Materials are peer-reviewed. This is important because some journals treat supplements as unreviewed appendices. At Science Advances, reviewers are expected to evaluate the supplementary data as part of their assessment.

Formatting note: Supplementary Materials must be compiled into a single PDF for review. Individual source files (movies, large datasets) are uploaded separately. The PDF should have its own title page reading "Supplementary Materials for [article title]."

Data and code availability: Science Advances requires a Data and Materials Availability statement at the end of the main text. All data needed to evaluate the conclusions must be either in the paper, in the Supplementary Materials, or deposited in a public repository with accession numbers provided.

For large datasets, deposition in field-appropriate repositories is required: GEO for genomics, PDB for structures, EMDB for cryo-EM maps, and so on.

Title page requirements:

• Full title (no strict character limit, but concise titles under 100 characters are preferred)
• One-sentence teaser (described above)
• Author names and affiliations
• Corresponding author email
• Word count
• Number of figures and tables

Cover letter should include:

• A brief description of the paper's significance
• Why the work fits Science Advances' multidisciplinary scope
• Confirmation that the work hasn't been published or submitted elsewhere
• Suggested and excluded reviewers (optional but recommended)

Science Advances covers a wider range of disciplines than most journals. Your cover letter should make the case for broad scientific interest, not just field-specific significance. If your paper is primarily of interest to specialists in one subfield, it might be better suited to a discipline-specific journal.

These details separate experienced Science Advances authors from first-timers:

IMRAD structure is expected but flexible. Research Articles should follow Introduction, Results, Discussion, Materials and Methods order. However, Science Advances allows some flexibility. Results and Discussion can be combined if it makes the narrative clearer. Materials and Methods typically appear at the end of the main text, before references.

No "Introduction" label for the opening section. Similar to Science, the opening paragraphs of a Research Article don't get a formal "Introduction" heading. You start directly with text. The first section heading is typically the first Results subheading.

Structured abstracts aren't used. Despite being a multidisciplinary journal, Science Advances sticks with unstructured abstracts. Don't add Background/Methods/Results/Conclusions subheadings.

ORCID iDs. The corresponding author must provide an ORCID iD at submission. Co-authors are encouraged to do so.

Author contributions. Required for all articles. Listed at the end of the manuscript using free text or CRediT taxonomy. Both formats are acceptable.

Competing interests statement. Mandatory. Must be included even when there are no conflicts to disclose.

Funding information. Must list all funding sources with grant numbers and the names of the funded authors.

Acknowledgments. Placed before the references, after the Author Contributions and Competing Interests sections.

Preprints. Science Advances allows and even encourages posting preprints on servers like bioRxiv and arXiv before or during review. You must disclose the preprint DOI in the cover letter and manuscript.

Science Advances is fully open-access under a Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY) license. All articles require an article processing charge (APC).

As of 2026, the APC for Science Advances is approximately $5,450 for Research Articles. This is on the higher end for open-access journals but comparable to other high-impact multidisciplinary options like Nature Communications.

Fee waivers are available for authors from low-income countries or those without institutional funding. The waiver request is handled during submission and doesn't affect editorial decisions.

This is relevant to formatting because some authors don't realize until after acceptance that there's a substantial APC. Factor this into your journal selection decision before investing time in formatting.

1. One-liner teaser is mandatory. Many authors skip this because it's not common at other journals. Your submission will be returned if it's missing.

1. Figure citations in text must be sequential. Figures must be cited in numerical order in the text. You can't cite Figure 3 before Figure 2.

1. Supplementary Materials reference format. In the main text, cite supplementary items as "fig. S1" (lowercase "fig.") and "table S1" (lowercase "table"). This is different from main figures ("Fig. 1" with a capital F).

1. Line numbers. Required for the submission manuscript. Use continuous line numbering.

1. Double spacing. The manuscript must be double-spaced for review.

1. Equations. Number equations sequentially. Use MathType in Word or standard LaTeX math environments.

1. Gene and species names. Gene names are italicized. Species names follow standard binomial nomenclature in italics.

In our pre-submission review work on Science Advances-targeted manuscripts, three patterns consistently predict formatting desk-screen failure at Science Advances. The patterns below are the same ones Holden Thorp and outside reviewers flag at first-pass triage.

Scope-fit ambiguity in the abstract. Science Advances editors move fastest on manuscripts whose contribution is obviously aligned with broad-impact methodological advance. The named failure pattern: manuscripts framed for materials-chemistry specialty subfield rather than the journal's broader audience get longer revision rounds. Check whether your abstract reads to Science Advances's scope

Methods package incomplete for the journal's reviewer pool. Science Advances reviewers expect specific methodological detail. The aaas editorial culture expects the contribution to be visible at the abstract level. Check if your methods package is reviewer-complete

Reference-list and clean-citation failure mode. Editorial team at Science Advances screens reference lists for retracted-paper inclusion. Recent retractions in the Science Advances corpus we audit include 10.1126/sciadv.abf0188, 10.1126/sciadv.aaw7726, and 10.1126/sciadv.adi8460. Citing any of these without a retraction-notice acknowledgment is an automatic desk-screen flag. Check whether your reference list is clean against Crossref + Retraction Watch

Manusights submission-corpus signal for Science Advances. Of the manuscripts our team screened before submission to Science Advances and peer venues in 2025, the editorial-culture mismatch most consistent across the cohort is aaas bes prioritize cross-disciplinary readability over deep within-field framing. In our analysis of anonymized Science Advances-targeted submissions, Recent retractions in the Science Advances corpus include 10.1126/sciadv.abf0188, 10.1126/sciadv.aaw7726, and 10.1126/sciadv.adi8460.

In our pre-submission review work with manuscripts targeting Science Advances, four patterns generate the most consistent desk-rejection outcomes.

Significance framing does not meet the cross-disciplinary "substantial advance" standard. Science Advances describes its scope as publishing "multidisciplinary research of substantial importance." Editors evaluate whether the advance would be recognized as important by researchers in at least two or three different scientific disciplines, not just within the immediate specialty. Manuscripts where the Introduction addresses only specialists without explaining the broader significance fail this test at the desk-review stage. Unlike Science, Science Advances does not require a discovery to be "surprising," but it must be substantively important across fields.

Abstract or manuscript does not include structured summary suitable for AAAS press office use. Science Advances encourages authors to submit a Science Summary paragraph written for a general scientific audience (approximately 150 words). While not strictly mandatory, editors note that manuscripts without a clear non-specialist summary are harder to process and evaluate for significance at the desk level. The Summary should explain what was done, why it matters, and what broader impact it enables, without jargon.

Data and code availability not committed at submission. As an AAAS journal, Science Advances follows the same data and code availability policies as Science. All data and custom code supporting the manuscript's conclusions must be deposited in a publicly accessible repository (Zenodo, GitHub, figshare, Dryad) with accession numbers or DOIs provided in the manuscript text at submission. "Data available from the corresponding author" is not accepted. Manuscripts with incomplete data availability sections are returned for correction before processing.

Figure quality insufficient for Science Advances production standards. Science Advances applies the same figure quality standards as Science: minimum 300 dpi for photographs, 600 dpi for line art, PDF or EPS for vector figures. A common issue is submitting composite multi-panel figures as flattened JPEG or PNG files at screen resolution (72 dpi). These are flagged during editorial processing and require authors to resubmit high-resolution files or vector originals.

A Science Advances formatting and readiness check evaluates manuscript structure, cross-disciplinary significance, and data availability compliance against these desk-rejection patterns before you submit.