LaTeX and Bioanthropology Journals

I write all my major papers in LaTeX.  For the uninitiated, LaTeX is a document preparation system that involves text mark-up, in kind of the same way that HTML does.  I started using LaTeX when I wrote my first master's thesis, mostly because I didn't want to keep track of which citations I'd used and didn't want to create a table of contents myself.  With BibTeX, I could create a centralized, annotated database of references, and with one command, an article would be given a parenthetical citation in my text and would be sure to show up, properly formatted, in my bibliography.  LaTeX is also excellent at typesetting complex formulae, which I needed for my thesis on biological distance, and it has great support for odd fonts, which is quite useful if you're using Ancient Greek, for example.  It produces postscript and PDF as its output, and my documents always look very nice and are small relative to comparable output from Word.

LaTeX involved a pretty steep learning curve for me, and I scoured the bookstore looking for a guide that would make me less reliant on the help of my computer scientist husband.  I ended up with The LaTeX Companion, which I highly recommend for humanists and social scientists who want to learn LaTeX, in spite of the fact that it wasn't particularly useful for some of the things I needed to do.  (Seriously, you can get it used for under $1.)  For the better part of two years at the turn of the millennium, I actually ended up using Linux as my OS the majority of the time, electing to type up class notes and short papers in LaTeX.  I moved from that to running LaTeX in a virtual machine, but that was super slow.  Now I'm not as much of a purist, and I need to use PowerPoint for teaching and Word for editing, so I run TexMaker natively in Windows.

LaTeX is primarily used by scholars in the hard sciences - physics, chemistry, computer science, etc.  Because it's such a widespread assumption that LaTeX is the typesetting program of choice, journals in these fields have created style files for both the text and the bibliography.  Using these style files along with standard markup language means that with one click of the mouse, the same article can be reformatted from one journal style to another.  No futzing with bibliography entries or changing the font of headings.  When I wrote my master's thesis in 2002, my husband helped me create my own style file that would conform to ECU's standards.  Fortunately, intrepid grad students at UNC created a style file years ago, so it took just a little tweaking to get my 2005 thesis and 2010 dissertation into proper format.

Now I'm at the point where I want to publish articles from my dissertation, and I'd assumed that there were few anthropology journals that would accept LaTeX.  Fortunately, I was wrong - among the top tier anthropology journals, about half accept LaTeX, and the other half demand a Word .doc.  This list isn't exhaustive, so I encourage you to add sites or journals or other resources in the comments.

• Wiley Journals
• Archaeometry, American Journal of Physical Anthropology, Yearbook of Physical Anthropology, and American Anthropologist all demand Word (.doc) files.  No exceptions.
• International Journal of Osteoarchaeology will accept LaTeX, but I couldn't find a style file or bibliography file available on their website.
• Clearly, the other five of you who use LaTeX and want to publish in AJPA need to help me write a letter to the editor.  AJPA and YPA are arguably the best journals in bioanth, and it's crazy that they don't accept LaTeX yet.

• University of Chicago Press
• Current Anthropology will, surprisingly, accept LaTeX documents.

• Elsevier Journals
• Most will accept LaTeX, including Journal of Archaeological Science, Journal of Anthropological Archaeology, Journal of Human Evolution, and International Journal of Paleopathology, but not Homo.
• There are lots of good resources within the online author guide:
• Download the elsarticle document class.
• Download various .bst files, one of which should work for your particular journal.
• The online submission process seems kinda clunky for LaTeX, but if I learn anything in the coming weeks as I submit my manuscript to JAS, I'll update this post. 

So, cheers to Elsevier for allowing LaTeX submissions for most of their bioanth journals and to CA, which I didn't at all expect to number amongst the LaTeX-friendly.  Jeers to Wiley for nearly complete lack of support for LaTeX, particularly in AJPA.