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I have been looking on tex.stackexchange and Googling but I can't find a decent two column template.

Does anyone know of site or have a template for a two column article style tex file?

That has a bibliography portion as well?

lockstep
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dustin
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    What do you consider "decent"? – Gonzalo Medina Apr 24 '13 at 01:22
  • @GonzaloMedina something along geared for scientific journals – dustin Apr 24 '13 at 01:33
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    The IEEE has the IEEEtran document class. You can see a sample document in the IEEEtran_HOWTO document. Some scientific journals provide their own tailored templates. – Gonzalo Medina Apr 24 '13 at 01:58
  • @GonzaloMedina how to add the file to texlive? I tried adding the resume class to texlive and recompiling mktexslr or whatever it is called but texlive still couldn't load the resume class saying it isn't installed. – dustin Apr 24 '13 at 02:15
  • IEEEtran ships with TeX Live. Do you have the package manager tlmgr? If you need a manual installation, Stefan's answer to http://tex.stackexchange.com/q/1137/3954 can help you with the precess. – Gonzalo Medina Apr 24 '13 at 02:19
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    (If I remember correctly, you use Ubuntu.) You can easily add a class to your personal tree. Copy/move, say, res.cls to ~/texmf/tex/latex/res/ (you can create this folder with mkdir -p ~/texmf/tex/latex/res). As soon as you move it there, you should be able to find it with: kpsewhich res.cls, even without running mktexslr. If it can't be found, you have an unusual problem with your system, and should ask for help. – jon Apr 24 '13 at 02:21
  • @jon so in terminal I just type kpsewhich res.cls? – dustin Apr 24 '13 at 02:53
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    Once it has been copied to where I suggested, kpsewhich res.cs should return /home/<dustin>/texmf/tex/latex/res/res.cls (assuming you are logged in as 'dustin'). If it does, that means the class file should be as usable as any other regular class file. – jon Apr 24 '13 at 03:23
  • @jon I shouldn't put it in /usr/local/texlive/2012/texmf? – dustin Apr 24 '13 at 03:28
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    No. If you put it there, you still want to follow the TDS structure and put it in /usr/local/.../texmf/tex/latex/res/ (best make the directory too while you're at it) as it is a LaTeX thing. But what is the advantage? It is easier to access and keep track of your local texmf, and there is less danger of manually installed classes and style files getting overwritten by system updates (which is probably not a serious concern, but still). – jon Apr 24 '13 at 04:15

2 Answers2

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In www.latextemplates.com there are 3 nice general LaTeX templates for articles. One of these made with the scrartcl class have this layout:

Article template

Another good source is www.sharelatex.com. Among the 76 articles templates for submission to scientific journals or proceedings, several have a two column format. You can download or open and compile in ShareLaTeX.

In any case, as most code of article templates are interchangeable between the standard article class and others general article class (as paper, scrartcl, artikel, etc.) as well as in specific journal class (as svjour3, etc.) you can experiment easily with most classes with the same template replacing the first line (that is, change \docummentclass{article} by \docummentclass{paper} but search in each case in the documentation for specific options to add/remove for each class (for example, paper class have a \smalltableofcontents that you cannot use in the article class, but \tableofcontents work in any class).

Fran
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12

I'm new to LaTeX and I've spent a few days searching for two-column article templates and tried out the ones mentioned in the main answer and a dozen others. I hit various issues and finally landed on this clean and simple template that I think also answers this question (which is the top tex stackexchange search result for "two column") and many newbies like me will find useful (screenshot below):

% test.tex
\title{Article Title\cite{LinkReference1}}

\author{Some Author\cite{Author1}}

\newcommand{\abstractText}{\noindent
Abstract goes here.
}

%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%
% Configuration %
%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%

\documentclass[12pt, a4paper, twocolumn]{article}
\usepackage{xurl}
\usepackage[super,comma,sort&compress]{natbib}
\usepackage{abstract}
\renewcommand{\abstractnamefont}{\normalfont\bfseries}
\renewcommand{\abstracttextfont}{\normalfont\small\itshape}
\usepackage{lipsum}

%%%%%%%%%%%%%%
% References %
%%%%%%%%%%%%%%

% If changing the name of the bib file, change \bibliography{test} at the bottom
\begin{filecontents}{test.bib}

@misc{LinkReference1,
  title        = "Link Title",
  author       = "Link Creator(s)",
  howpublished = "\url{https://example.com/}",
}

@misc{Author1,
  author       = "LastName, FirstName",
  howpublished = "\url{mailto:email@example.com}",
}

@article{ArticleReference1,
  author  = "Lastname1, Firstname1 and Lastname2, Firstname2",
  title   = "Article title",
  year    = "Year",
  journal = "Journal name",
  note    = "\url{https://dx.doi.org/...}",
}

\end{filecontents}

% Any configuration that should be done before the end of the preamble:
\usepackage{hyperref}
\hypersetup{colorlinks=true, urlcolor=blue, linkcolor=blue, citecolor=blue}

\begin{document}

%%%%%%%%%%%%
% Abstract %
%%%%%%%%%%%%

\twocolumn[
  \begin{@twocolumnfalse}
    \maketitle
    \begin{abstract}
      \abstractText
      \newline
      \newline
    \end{abstract}
  \end{@twocolumnfalse}
]

%%%%%%%%%%%
% Article %
%%%%%%%%%%%

\section{Section1Title}

This is the first sentence\cite{ArticleReference1}.

\section{Section2Title}

\lipsum[1]

%%%%%%%%%%%%%%
% References %
%%%%%%%%%%%%%%

\nocite{*}
\bibliographystyle{plain}
\bibliography{test}

\end{document}

% Create PDF on Linux:
% FILE=test; pkill -9 -f ${FILE} &>/dev/null; rm -f ${FILE}*aux ${FILE}*bbl ${FILE}*bib ${FILE}*blg ${FILE}*log ${FILE}*out ${FILE}*pdf &>/dev/null; pdflatex -halt-on-error ${FILE}; bibtex ${FILE} && pdflatex ${FILE} && pdflatex ${FILE} && (xdg-open ${FILE}.pdf &)

Screenshot:

Example screenshot

As noted in detail in the last line of the file, to process the inline bib file, the general procedure is to run pdflatex multiple times and bibtex after the first run. For example:

$ pdflatex -halt-on-error test
$ bibtex test
$ pdflatex test.tex
$ pdflatex test.tex
# Now open test.pdf

To reduce the margins:

\usepackage{geometry}
\geometry{top=1cm,bottom=1.5cm,left=2cm,right=2cm,includehead,includefoot}
\setlength{\columnsep}{7mm} % Column separation width
freeradical
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