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I'm currently preparing a paper for a conference and I'm struggling a bit to stay within the page limit imposed by the Latex layout of this conference. I'm trying to make some extra space for my content without having to use any Latex related tricks (like reducing margin sizes, font sizes, etc...) as this would probably just annoy the reviewers.

Instead, I'm trying to reduce the size of the references by removing unnecessary contents. However, the question is: What is actually unnecessary?

I consider the following to be essential:

• Name(s) of the author(s)


• Title of publication


• Date of publication


• Journal or conference of the publication


• Page number if the publication was published in a book or proceedings volumes

But what about additional information like DOIs, keywords, abstracts, etc...? Could I safely remove those items to save space?

Thank you very much for your input.

What information is mandatory depends on the applied reference style, e.g. APA6 oder Chicago Style. The reference style even sets the number of authors listed maximum in the reference. Most of the times, the journal/conference sets the reference style you have to apply.

Usually, the mandatory information for journal/conference papers includes:

• Author(s) name(s)


• Title


• Year


• Journal/Conference name


• Page number


• DOI

The only real option to shorten anything is to use the abbreviations of journals/conferences. But the applied reference style might even prevent this trick.

Does the venue impose a particular bibliography format? If not: I'd consider DOIs useful but not obligatory, and I've never seen a plain bibliography with abstracts and keywords (that would be an annotated bibliography).

Many journals/conferences impose style requirements on in-text citations and reference lists. If left to your own style, the standard goal is for the in-text citations to uniquely refer to a single item in the reference list. You might be able to save a couple of characters if the in-text citation refers to a group of items, but don't do this. Numeric in-text citations tend to take up less space than author-year and label based styles.

For the reference list, the goal is for each reference to refer uniquely to a single published item. The DOI alone would accomplish this, but might be more characters than the journal, volume, and page number. The authors, title and year, are almost always redundant and require more characters than the journal, volume and page number. It is important to realize that most people want a little more than the minimum and like to see the author and title.

1. Use a smaller font for the references (if not already doing that). But I appreciate your not lowering the font of the main text.




2. Use ISI journal title abbreviations. See here: https://www.library.caltech.edu/journal-title-abbreviations




3. Omit the title of journal articles.




4. Use "et al." if more than 2 authors.




5. Deh-fuh-nitely avoid DOI or other reference cruft.




6. I don't understand why you would EVER list keywords or abstracts of CITED articles. However, if you are talking about your own keywords and abstract...no keep them, they are huge information content. But just be very efficient in how much you write.

Note: for 2 and 3, my preference if you are unlimited in space is to include them as they are a significant aid to readers, especially 3. However, they are not really needed to find the content. AND it is normal in ACS, APS, etc. journals to go with the terser format. (This was normal when journals were printed because of the need for higher information density. You are in a somewhat similar situation here. Another context would be if you have a 2 page memo to submit for a grant.) As for 5, I actually dislike the modern emphasis on various computer databases ISBN, etc. In any case, if you are pressed for space, it is one more reason to cut them.