EnICS Templates

LaTeX starting point for everything written at EnICS Labs (Bar-Ilan University): IEEE and ACM papers, MSc and PhD theses, research proposals and ISF grant proposals. One project, one shared preamble, one house style.

Template version: see \enicstemplateversion in packages/configuration.tex. Changes are listed in CHANGELOG.md.

Getting a copy of the template

Pick one:

1. Copy the Overleaf project (easiest). Open the template project, then Menu, Copy Project, and give the copy a meaningful name.
2. Import from GitHub (preferred if you use git). On your Overleaf dashboard: New Project, Import from GitHub, pick EnICS-Templates, then Menu, Copy Project to get your own working copy. You need a GitHub account linked to Overleaf; the GitHub sync feature requires an Overleaf premium plan (free for IEEE members). Email adam.teman@biu.ac.il with your GitHub username to be added.
3. Clone from GitHub (https://github.com/enics-labs/EnICS-Templates) and upload or push it to Overleaf yourself.

Never work inside the template project itself. Always copy it first. If you want the latest version later, delete your imported copy and import again before copying.

Starting your manuscript

The whole body of your manuscript lives in main.tex in the root of the project. The Templates folder holds one ready-made main.tex per document type:

Template	Use it for	Overleaf compiler
IEEE_Journal.tex	IEEE Transactions papers (with biographies and a reply-to-reviewers letter)	pdfLaTeX
IEEE_Conference.tex	IEEE conference papers	pdfLaTeX
ACM_Journal.tex	ACM journals (acmart class)	pdfLaTeX
ACM_Conference.tex	ACM conferences, currently set up for IEEE/ACM MICRO	pdfLaTeX
MSc_Thesis.tex	MSc thesis according to the BIU guidelines	LuaLaTeX
PhD_Thesis.tex	PhD thesis according to the BIU guidelines	LuaLaTeX
Research_Proposal.tex	MSc or PhD research proposal at BIU	LuaLaTeX
ISF_Template.tex	ISF Regular Program proposal	pdfLaTeX

Three steps:

1. Delete the main.tex that came with the project (it is only a selector used to test the templates).
2. Drag the template you need from Templates/ to the root of the project and rename it main.tex.
3. For theses and proposals, set Menu, Compiler to LuaLaTeX. That is what typesets the Hebrew pages.

Compile. You will see the template full of colored guidance text explaining what goes where. When you are ready to write, change \guidetrue to \guidefalse in the preamble of main.tex and every piece of guidance disappears from the PDF at once. You can then delete the \guide{...} lines and guidance blocks whenever you like, and delete the whole Templates folder.

If you use Claude Code, open the project and ask it to "start a new EnICS manuscript". It will do all of the above, ask for your title and authors, strip the guidance, remove the files you do not need and check that the project compiles. It can also apply the framework to an existing LaTeX project, add a reply-to-reviewers letter, or update an older project to the latest template version. The skill lives in .claude/skills/enics-manuscript/.

Two rules that save everyone time:

• Put your paper-specific acronyms and macros in newcommands/this_glossary.tex.
• Put your paper-specific references in bibliography/this_bibliography.bib.

Version control (Menu, GitHub) and Dropbox sync (Menu, Dropbox) are recommended.

Writing locally in VS Code

If you edit the project on your own machine with VS Code and the LaTeX Workshop extension, the settings in .vscode/settings.json come with the project and are already set up for you. They matter because the framework uses the minted package for code listings, and minted only runs when LaTeX is called with -shell-escape. Without it the build fails with "minted v3+ executable is not installed...", even though the exact same project compiles on Overleaf.

Build with Ctrl+Alt+B. Three recipes are available from LaTeX Workshop: Build with recipe in the command palette:

Recipe	Use it for
Paper	IEEE and ACM papers, ISF proposals (pdfLaTeX)
Thesis/Proposal	theses and research proposals (LuaLaTeX, needed for the Hebrew pages)
Thesis with acronym list	a thesis whose list of acronyms must be up to date (also runs makeglossaries)

You also need a TeX distribution installed locally (MiKTeX or TeX Live) with Python and Pygments available for minted.

The settings also let you open a file from Templates/ and build it where it sits, which is handy for previewing a template before you commit to it. That works only in VS Code, because the settings add the project root to the LaTeX search path. On Overleaf, and for real writing anywhere, the template still has to become the main.tex in the project root as described above.

Theses and proposals: the front matter

BIU requires English and Hebrew title pages, a supervisor page and a Hebrew abstract. These are now plain LaTeX under AuxiliaryPages/:

• Fill in the title, author, advisor and date macros at the top of main.tex (in English and in Hebrew).
• Write your Hebrew abstract in AuxiliaryPages/abstract_hebrew.tex.
• For a PhD, edit the Hebrew table of contents in AuxiliaryPages/front_page_hebrew_phd.tex.
• Compile with LuaLaTeX. Hebrew is typeset with the David CLM font, which Overleaf has installed.

If you must compile with pdfLaTeX, the Hebrew pages fall back to the ..._example.pdf files in AuxiliaryPages/. Edit the matching .docx files, export them to PDF with the same names, and you get the old workflow.

Reply to reviewers

The journal templates end with \subfile{Reply_To_Reviewers}, controlled by \replytoreviewerstrue in main.tex. Write the letter in Reply_To_Reviewers.tex using \editorsection, \reviewersection, point, \replySingle and \replyFull. Text you wrap with \Copy{name}{...} in the manuscript can be quoted in the letter with \Paste{name}. To get the letter as a separate PDF, temporarily select Reply_To_Reviewers.tex as the Overleaf main document.

A tour of the project

Folder or file	What it is
main.tex	Your manuscript (in the template project: a selector that points at one of the templates)
Templates/	The eight templates listed above, and templateText.tex, which holds the guidance text they pull in with \guide{tag}
packages/configuration.tex	The version stamp, the \ifguide switch and one \if... flag per document type. All flags are false by default; each template turns on its own
packages/basic_packages.sty	Loads every package we use, some conditionally on those flags (margins, headers, Hebrew support, bibliography style, hyperref)
packages/macros.tex	House macros: \figref, \secref, \tblref, \eqref, colored text (\red, \blue), \needref, \TBD, \orcidicon, the abstract character counter
packages/reply_macros.tex	Macros for the reply-to-reviewers letter
packages/sig-alternate.cls, packages/flushend.sty	Used by the ACM conference (MICRO) template only
newcommands/units.tex	Units and symbols with siunitx (\nm, \uW, \X, ...)
newcommands/general_glossary.tex, vlsi_glossary.tex, ai_glossary.tex	Acronyms (glossaries package) for general, chip-design and AI terms, with shorthand macros (\sota, \soc, \dnn, ...)
newcommands/enics_glossary.tex	EnICS affiliations, IEEE membership macros, staff author macros with ORCIDs, funding sentences
newcommands/this_glossary.tex	Your own acronyms and macros
bibliography/bibliography.tex	Sets the bibliography style and loads all the .bib files below
bibliography/abbreviations.bib	Journal and conference names as BibTeX strings (journal=JSSC, booktitle=ISCAS), with impact factors
bibliography/general_biblography.bib, <staff>_bibliography.bib	Things we cite a lot, and each staff member's publications
bibliography/this_bibliography.bib	Your own references
AuxiliaryPages/	LaTeX front matter for theses and proposals (English and Hebrew), the BIU logos, and the legacy .docx files with example PDFs
Reply_To_Reviewers.tex	The reply-to-reviewers letter (journal templates)
Bios/	IEEE biographies and photos of EnICS staff, pulled in with \ExecuteMetaData[Bios/BiosText]{Name}
Figures/	Put your figures here. Also holds matlab_figure.m and python_figure.py, templates for article-quality plots
Utilities/latexmkrc	Copy to the root to embed all fonts (IEEE PDF eXpress compliance)
Utilities/ExtractPagesFromPDF.tex	Extract a page range from a PDF (e.g., only the bibliography of a proposal)
Utilities/build_all.sh	Compiles every template in a scratch copy; used by the GitHub Actions workflow and before releases

For maintainers

• Work in Overleaf; push to GitHub when a version is ready. Bump \enicstemplateversion in packages/configuration.tex and add a line to CHANGELOG.md.
• Before pushing, run bash Utilities/build_all.sh -n locally (needs latexmk, lualatex, texcount and pygments), or rely on the GitHub Actions workflow in .github/workflows/, which builds all templates on every push.
• Guidance text belongs in Templates/templateText.tex (as a tagged block used with \guide{tag}), in a \guidenote{...}, or inside a guidance environment. Never as plain text in a template.
• Anything the templates need at compile time must live outside Templates/, because students delete that folder.

Questions, suggestions, or want to become a collaborator? Email adam.teman@biu.ac.il.