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Manuscript Guidelines

Manuscript guidelines help you ensure that your writing meets the specific formatting, style, and content requirements of your target journal or institution. Alfred Scholar lets you create custom guidelines and apply them to your manuscripts for automated compliance checking.

What are guidelines?

A guideline is a set of rules that define how a manuscript should be structured and formatted. For example, a journal might require:

  • A specific word count range.
  • Required sections (Abstract, Introduction, Methods, Results, Discussion).
  • A maximum number of images or tables.
  • A specific citation style.
  • Required declaration sections (Ethics Approval, Funding, etc.).

Alfred Scholar checks your manuscript against these rules and highlights areas that need attention.

Creating a guideline

  1. Click Manuscripts in the sidebar.
  2. Click Guidelines (or navigate to the guidelines section).
  3. Click Create Guideline.
  4. Enter a name for the guideline (for example, "Nature Neuroscience Submission Requirements").
  5. Add an optional description.
  6. Define your rules by category (see below).
  7. Click Save.

Note: Creating a guideline costs credits. See Credits & Usage for details.

Available rule types

When creating a guideline, you can configure rules across four categories:

Word limits:

  • Word count - Set a minimum and/or maximum word count for the entire manuscript.
  • Section word count - Set word count limits for individual sections (e.g. Abstract: 100-300 words).

Structure:

  • Required sections - List the headings your manuscript must include.
  • Maximum heading depth - Limit heading levels (e.g. allow only H1-H3).
  • Keywords count - Set a minimum and/or maximum number of keywords.
  • Structured abstract - Require specific abstract subsections (Background, Methods, Results, Conclusion).
  • Required declarations - Require declaration sections such as Conflict of Interest, Ethics Approval, or Funding.

Content:

  • Maximum image count - Limit the number of images.
  • Maximum table count - Limit the number of tables.
  • Forbidden elements - Block specific elements (e.g. code blocks, blockquotes) globally or per section.

References:

  • Reference count - Set a minimum and/or maximum number of citations.
  • Citation style - Enforce a specific citation style (APA, MLA, Chicago, etc.).
  • Citation cross-reference - Verify that all in-text citations have a matching bibliography entry.
  • Bibliography order - Require entries to be sorted alphabetically, by appearance, or chronologically.

System guidelines

Alfred Scholar provides pre-built system guidelines for common scenarios. These are available to all workspaces and cover general academic writing standards. System guidelines cannot be edited or deleted.

Applying a guideline to a manuscript

  1. Open your manuscript in the editor.
  2. Open the Guidelines panel.
  3. Select the guideline you want to apply from the dropdown.
  4. The editor now shows compliance indicators for each rule.

Reviewing compliance

After applying a guideline, the compliance panel shows:

  • Passing rules - Requirements your manuscript already meets, shown with a pass indicator.
  • Failing rules - Requirements that need attention, with specific feedback on what to fix.
  • Overall compliance - A summary of how well your manuscript meets the guideline.

Editing a guideline

  1. Go to Guidelines.
  2. Click on the guideline you want to modify.
  3. Update the rules.
  4. Click Save.

Changes apply to all manuscripts that use this guideline.

Deleting a guideline

  1. Go to Guidelines.
  2. Click Delete on the guideline you want to remove.
  3. Confirm the deletion.

Note: You cannot delete system guidelines. You can only delete custom guidelines you have created.

Next steps