Elsevier is one of the world’s major providers of scientific, technical and medical information products and services. It publishes many academic journals, databases, and books, and is especially known for its medical and life science content. When submitting a research paper to an Elsevier journal, authors need to follow specific formatting guidelines to ensure their manuscript is prepared correctly. Formatting guidelines help ensure consistency across published articles and make papers easier for editors and readers to navigate and understand. This article provides an in-depth overview of Elsevier’s standard research paper format requirements.
Title, Authors and Affiliations
The title page should include the title of the paper, authors’ names and their affiliations. Affiliations are usually in the footnote section of the title page and include authors’ department, institution, city and country. The title should be specific and informative but relatively short, with a maximum length of 15 words. It is important to avoid complicated terminology, formulae or abbreviations in the title. Contact details including email addresses for the corresponding author should also be included on the title page.
Abstract
The abstract is a short summary of your paper, allowing readers to quickly understand the main points and purpose of the work. For research articles, Elsevier requires a structured abstract of 150-250 words containing headings of Purpose, Methods, Results, and Conclusions. The abstract should not contain any undefined abbreviations or references.
Keywords
Authors need to provide 5-10 relevant keywords that capture the main topics of the paper and will help researchers find it. These should be specific to the article, yet general enough to bring in a potential audience. Keywords are commonly used for indexing and search/discovery purposes.
Introduction
The introduction should clearly state the objective or purpose of the work and provide relevant background information and context for the research without extensive literature review. It should be focused and concise while motivating the need for the study. The specific research question, hypothesis or problem statement to be addressed should be explicitly stated at the end of the introduction.
Methods
The methods section should describe the research methodology and techniques used in enough detail that other researchers can reproduce the study. This includes descriptions of the materials, tools, tests and procedures involved. The selection of study participants as well as data collection and analysis techniques employed should be clearly explained. Information that is essential for interpreting and evaluating the results should be included, while excluding methodological details that are not important or do not influence the results.
Results
In this section, the key results obtained from analyses are presented, interpreted and discussed clearly and concisely. The aim is to show the findings rather than interpret them at length. Data should be displayed through clearly labeled tables and figures so that the most important results are highlighted. All results stated must be supported by data shown or described in the results section. Statistical methods must be identified and justified, and units of measurement specified. Repetitive or non-significant findings should be omitted.
Discussion
The discussion section is where research findings can be interpreted and their significance discussed. Results are compared to previous work and theoretical concepts to derive conclusions. Both supporting and opposing views can be addressed. The limitations of the study should also be acknowledged along with suggestions for potential future work or improvements to the current research. Speculation should be kept to a minimum and conclusions must only be made where supported by the presented results.
Conclusions
The conclusion should concisely restate the principal conclusions and outcomes of the study without redundant information. It may also discuss the implications and relevance of the findings as well as any recommendations stemming from the research. New results, interpretations or discussion of future work are inappropriate in the conclusion.
References
References must follow Elsevier’s prescribed Vancouver style, be formatted correctly and consistently throughout. In-text citations are superscript numbers matched to their full citation details listed in order of appearance on a separate References page. Journal titles should not be abbreviated. Electronic resource identifiers like DOIs or URLs provide stable links and may be included where available. Authors are responsible for reference accuracy and currency.
Tables and Figures
Tables and figures are powerful tools to clearly present key data or complex relationships efficiently. Captions and labels should allow each table/figure to stand alone without reader reliance on the main text. All tables/figures must be cited in the text in consecutive numerical order and provided at the appropriate placement within the article. High resolution graphics formats like TIFF or JPEG are preferable.
Supplementary Materials
Supporting data sets, additional tables/figures, audio/video files or other relevant materials too large to include in the main text can optionally be uploaded as supplementary files. These will be published online as part of the article if they are essential to its understanding or credibility.
This covers the key elements of research paper formatting guidelines set by Elsevier. Adhering to these standards helps structure papers so they are clear and easy for readers to navigate while also leaving space for authors’ own analysis and perspectives. Consistent format makes publications coherent across different topics and aids the peer-review process.
Andrew Stroud