IEEE Paper Format: The Complete Guide for Indian Researchers (2026)

IEEE format is the global standard for technical research papers. Almost every credible engineering, computer science, and applied-science journal in India and abroad expects submissions in IEEE two-column style.

But IEEE format has dozens of small rules, and getting any of them wrong gets your paper desk-rejected before review. This guide covers every rule, in plain language, with copy-paste examples.

The big picture

An IEEE paper has:

• US Letter or A4 page, 0.5-inch margins
• Two columns of body text
• Times New Roman font throughout
• A single-column header (title, authors, abstract, keywords)
• Roman-numeral section headings (I., II., III.)
• Numbered references in square brackets [1]

Font sizes (memorize these)

Element	Size	Style
Title	24pt	Centered, regular
Authors	11pt	Centered
Affiliation	10pt	Centered, italic
Abstract heading	9pt	Bold italic
Abstract body	9pt	Bold
Section heading	10pt	Small caps, centered
Subsection heading	10pt	Italic, left-aligned
Body text	10pt	Justified
Figure caption	8pt	Centered
References	8pt	Hanging indent

Section headings — the IEEE way

IEEE uses three heading levels:

• Level 1 (sections): Roman numerals, centered, small caps. Example: I. INTRODUCTION
• Level 2 (subsections): Italic capital letter, left-aligned. Example: A. Dataset Description
• Level 3 (sub-subsections): Italic number, left-aligned. Example: 1) Pre-processing steps

Never use bold for headings. Never number with Arabic numerals at the section level. The Acknowledgement and References sections don't get a Roman numeral.

Abstract — the most-read paragraph in your paper

Your abstract is 150–250 words, one paragraph, no citations. Lead with "Abstract—" in bold italic, then the body in bold.

Structure: problem (2 sentences), method (3 sentences), key result (2 sentences), implication (1 sentence). Don't include figures or formulas.

Keywords

5–7 keywords, separated by commas, in alphabetical order. Format:

Keywords—Convolutional neural network, image classification, transfer learning.

Body sections — the canonical structure

Most IEEE papers follow this structure:

1. Introduction — what's the problem, why it matters, what you contribute
2. Related Work / Literature Review — what others have done
3. Methodology — your approach in detail
4. Experiments / Implementation — datasets, setup, parameters
5. Results and Discussion — tables, charts, analysis
6. Conclusion — recap + future work
7. Acknowledgement (optional)
8. References

Figures and tables

• Place near the first reference to them
• Caption below figures, above tables
• Numbered separately: Fig. 1, Fig. 2 for figures; Table I, Table II for tables (Roman numerals)
• Reference in text as "shown in Fig. 1" (not "see Figure 1 below")

References — IEEE style

References are numbered in order of first appearance, not alphabetically. Use square brackets in text: as shown in [3] or several studies [1]–[4].

Format examples:

Journal article:

[1] A. Sharma and R. Gupta, "Real-time object detection using YOLOv5," IEEE Trans. Image Process., vol. 30, no. 4, pp. 234–245, Apr. 2024.

Conference paper:

[2] M. Patel, "Edge AI for smart agriculture," in Proc. IEEE Int. Conf. Computer Vision, 2024, pp. 1102–1110.

Book:

[3] S. Russell and P. Norvig, Artificial Intelligence: A Modern Approach, 4th ed. Pearson, 2021.

Website:

[4] World Health Organization. (2024). Global Health Report. Available: https://who.int/report

Common mistakes Indian students make

• Using Arial or Calibri instead of Times New Roman
• Numbering sections with Arabic numerals (1. Introduction) instead of Roman (I. Introduction)
• Writing references in APA or MLA style
• Placing figures inside columns and breaking the layout
• Forgetting the corresponding-author asterisk

Use the free IJVAST template

Don't build your IEEE paper from scratch. Download our pre-formatted MS Word template at /sample-paper, paste your content into the placeholders, and submit. Every margin, font, and heading is already correct.

Tools that help

• MS Word with the IEEE template (easiest for students)
• Overleaf with the official IEEE LaTeX class file (for math-heavy papers)
• Zotero or Mendeley for managing references in IEEE style

Get your paper formatted right the first time and you've already cleared the biggest hurdle to publication.