Science Advances Formatting Requirements: Complete Author Guide

The Information for Authors page sets these rules for the abstract:

• Length: no more than 150 words
• Structure: a single paragraph, written for a general readership
• Citations: none (the template adds: no citations of references, tables or figures)
• Abbreviations: any abbreviation that appears in the title must be defined in the abstract
• Graphics: graphical abstracts are not permitted

AAAS also suggests an order: one sentence introducing the field, one with background specific to the research, a brief statement of objectives and methods, the key results, and a final sentence giving the main conclusions.

At 150 words, that sequence leaves roughly one sentence per element. The common failure is spending three sentences on field background and squeezing the result into a subordinate clause. Draft the results sentence and the conclusion sentence first, then fit the context around them.

• Title: up to 135 characters
• Short title: up to 50 characters

Both are entered in the submission form and appear at the top of the manuscript. Count characters, not words.

You may include up to 10 figures and/or tables combined in the main manuscript. Anything beyond that belongs in the Supplementary Materials.

What the Information for Authors page and the template require:

• Initial submission: figures are embedded in the Word file at first mention, with the legend below, and appear in the combined PDF
• Order: figures and tables are numbered and called out in order. The first mention of any panel of Fig. 3 cannot come before the first mention of Fig. 2
• Panel labels: bold capital letters, (A), (B); subparts as (Aa), (Ab)
• Fonts: use universal fonts such as Times New Roman, because special fonts can change how figure and table files render
• Tables: built with Word's table commands, never pasted as an image; every column needs a heading with units in parentheses. Main-text tables cannot contain separate parts, images, shading or colored text. If a table contains graphics or chemical structures, submit it as a figure
• Table legends and units: legible, and no more than 250 words
• Image integrity: no digital enhancement or manipulation. Composite images must show dividing lines between parts, linear adjustments must apply to the whole image equally, and any nonlinear adjustment must be stated in the legend
• Reused images: if an image appears in two figures, both captions must say so

At revision, captions move to the end of the Word file, figure files are uploaded separately to the submission system, and the files must follow the Science Advances Guide to Preparing Figures. Check resolution, file type and sizing against that guide rather than against another journal's rules.

Science Advances uses numbered references cited in parentheses, not superscripts.

In-text citations: a number in parentheses, (1). Multiple citations are separated by commas, (2, 3), and a run of three or more consecutive references joins the first and last numbers with an en dash. The template sets the number in italics.

Order: references are numbered by first citation, first in the text, then in figure and table captions and text boxes, and finally references cited only in the Supplementary Materials. There is one reference list for everything, appended to the main text.

Reference list format (journal article):

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

Key formatting details:

• List every author. Science Advances uses a complete citation format and does not allow et al. in place of the author list
• Author names are initials first, then surname ("A. B. Smith")
• Include the full article title, the journal abbreviation, volume, first and last page (or article number for online-only journals), and year
• Each reference gets one number; never repeat a reference in the list, and do not use op. cit. or ibid.
• No footnotes or endnotes, and no personal communications. In-press references must be published before your paper is, or they are removed. Preprints and theses are allowed

The complete-author-list rule is the one reference managers most often break. Set yours to the Science citation style and then check the longest author lists by hand.

Use the Science Advances Supplementary Materials template. At initial submission and at revision:

• Supplementary text, figures and tables go in a single PDF of no more than 25 MB, single-spaced
• Supplementary figures and tables are numbered Fig. S1, S2 and Table S1, S2, and cited in numerical order
• Supplementary text cannot develop the argument further than the main text. It is for control experiments, field sites, observations and similar material that bears directly on the main paper
• Extensive tables can be uploaded as Excel files
• Movies, audio and large data files are uploaded separately, up to 10 files and 25 MB combined
• Movies should be .mp4, or .mov with h.264 compression, ideally at 1920 x 1080. Animated GIFs are not accepted
• References cited only in the Supplementary Materials go at the end of the main reference list; there is no separate supplementary reference list

Data, code and materials availability. The statement sits in the Acknowledgments. All data, code and materials used in the analyses must be available to any researcher, with accession numbers or DOIs for deposited data. AAAS recommends a nonprofit repository such as Dryad, Dataverse or Zenodo. Code kept on GitHub must also be archived in a permanent public repository, and that archived version is the one you cite. Restrictions such as a material transfer agreement (MTA) must be stated.

At submission you upload:

1. A cover letter (PDF or .docx)
2. A combined PDF of the manuscript, figures, tables and Supplementary Materials, which editors use for evaluation
3. The manuscript as a .docx file (preferred) or in LaTeX
4. Supplementary Materials as a single PDF, plus any auxiliary files

AAAS provides a Word manuscript template and a Supplementary Materials template on the Information for Authors page.

Equations. Number display equations on their own line. In Word, use the legacy equation editor or MathType; AAAS warns that the native equation editor in Word 2007 and later can produce display errors. If you submit in LaTeX, check that every equation converts correctly to Word and PDF.

At revision, the paper must follow the Science Advances template and the style checklist for your topical area (there are separate checklists for the social and interdisciplinary sciences, neuroscience, earth and environmental sciences, physical and materials sciences, and biomedicine and life sciences). The revised paper is treated as final, so it should be complete as you intend it to appear.

The submission form asks for:

• Article type, title (135 characters) and short title (50 characters)
• One or two field codes describing the manuscript
• Five potential reviewers, with names, affiliations and emails. You may also list up to three excluded reviewers
• ORCID iDs, which are required for first and corresponding authors and strongly encouraged for everyone. Each author links their own ORCID account; the corresponding author cannot add them for co-authors
• All funding sources

The cover letter should include:

• Why the work suits Science Advances: what is new and how it advances the field
• Any related manuscripts under consideration elsewhere
• A statement that the material has not been published and is not under consideration elsewhere
• Potential conflicts of interest
• Consent statements for human studies and animal-care statements, where relevant
• Where the underlying data are, or will be, deposited, and any restrictions such as an MTA
• A suggested Deputy or Section Editor and an Associate Editor from the Science Advances Editorial Board

Because Science Advances spans every discipline, the "why this journal" paragraph has to make a case for readers outside your field. If the paper mainly interests one subfield, a specialist journal may be the better home.

These details come from the template and catch authors who format from memory of Science or another journal:

The Introduction has a heading. Research Articles and Research Resources use five main sections in this order: Introduction, Results, Discussion, Materials and Methods, References. The opening section carries an Introduction heading.

No Conclusion heading. The Discussion carries the conclusions and must include a paragraph on the study's limitations.

Avoid priority claims. The template asks authors not to describe the work as the first, the only or the most important in the field.

Results subheadings. Short descriptive phrases, ideally under 10 words, with no final period.

Methods stay in the main paper. Materials and Methods follow the Discussion. Only an exceptionally long description can move partly into the Supplementary Materials, and a Methods section must remain in the main text. Report N, P and the specific statistical test for each experiment in the figure legend or text.

Acknowledgments follow the References. They contain, in order, any nonauthor acknowledgments, Funding (each source in its own paragraph with grant numbers and recipients' initials), Author contributions (CRediT roles suggested), Competing interests, and Data, code, and materials availability.

AI-tool disclosure. If you used AI tools such as ChatGPT anywhere in the work, including copyediting, follow the AAAS disclosure table referenced in the template. See our Science Advances AI policy guide for details.

Structural data. Papers reporting structures must start wwPDB deposition and supply the validation report with the submission.

Science Advances is online-only and fully open access, funded by article processing charges paid after acceptance. According to the AAAS licensing and charges page:

• The base APC is $5,450 for articles published under either license
• Authors choose CC BY-NC or CC BY. Funders including the Gates Foundation, Wellcome, COAF, UKRI and cOAlition S members require CC BY
• Corresponding authors from Research4Life/Hinari Group A and B countries usually have the entire APC waived
• Active AAAS members receive a 4% discount
• Financial hardship discounts are considered case by case and can be requested at any stage, though they are granted only at acceptance
• Tax is added for authors in Canada and Germany, and payments from mainland China go through SocoPay, which adds 6.18% tax and a 3% transaction fee

Budget for the APC before you invest time in formatting. It is easier to change journals before submission than after acceptance.

1. An abstract over 150 words. The template's 250-word figure is not a safe target. Write to 150.
2. More than 10 figures and tables in the main text. The limit is combined. Move the overflow to the Supplementary Materials.
3. "et al." in the reference list. Every author must be listed.
4. Superscript citations. Science Advances cites (1) in parentheses.
5. Fewer than five suggested reviewers. The form requires five.
6. A missing ORCID for the first author. It is required for first authors as well as corresponding authors.
7. A Conclusion heading, or no limitations paragraph. Conclusions belong in the Discussion, which must address limitations.
8. Code cited only as a GitHub link. Archive the version you used in a permanent repository and cite that.

When we checked the Science Advances instructions for this update, the clearest risk was not a rare rule. It was the gap between AAAS's own documents: an author who formats from the July 2026 template could write a 250-word abstract and a 17,000-word paper, and both would exceed the Information for Authors limits. Format to the stricter page.

Three other patterns are worth checking before upload:

The abstract is written for specialists. The rules ask for an abstract written for a general readership, and at 150 words there is no room for a paragraph of field background. If a scientist from another discipline cannot name your result after reading it, rewrite it. Check whether your abstract reads to Science Advances's scope

The display-item count hides a weak main text. Ten figures and tables is a combined limit. Papers that reach it by moving key controls to the Supplementary Materials leave reviewers asking for them back. Check if your methods package is reviewer-complete

The reference list fails the complete-author rule. Long consortium author lists truncated to et al. by a reference manager are easy to miss. While you are checking authors, check for retracted papers too. Check whether your reference list is clean against Crossref + Retraction Watch

For manuscripts targeting Science Advances, these are the patterns we check first.

The significance case stays inside one field. AAAS describes Research Articles as presenting "a major advance" and asks that the Introduction give enough background for researchers outside the authors' area. Manuscripts whose Introduction addresses only specialists make that case harder to see at the desk. The importance has to be visible beyond the home subfield.

The data availability statement is incomplete. Science Advances requires that all data, code and materials be available to any researcher. A statement that leaves data with the authors, without a repository or a stated restriction such as an MTA, will need to be fixed before publication.

The display items do not carry the argument. With a combined limit of 10 figures and tables, every main-text figure has to earn its place. Papers that spread the central evidence across the Supplementary Materials are harder for a broad editor to judge.

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

Or see example reports before you finalize.