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Texprlcount

texprlcount is a Perl script that uses texcount to estimate the word count for Physical Review Letters articles (or other Physical Review articles).

APS sets a limit of 3750 words for PRL articles and provides a guide for estimating the length of a paper:

https://journals.aps.org/authors/length-guide

This script uses the output of texcount to evaluate the word count by considering:

  • Words in text
  • Words in captions
  • Inline equations (1 equation = 1 word)
  • Displayed equation (1 equation = 12 words)

and excluding

  • Bibliography
  • Title and abstract
  • Acknowledgements

Then, it detects the images appearing in the document and their aspect ratio, based on the output log of pdflatex.

Usage

In order to use texprlcount, do the following

  1. Make sure that texcount is installed (most TeX distributions include it). It may be installed by e.g., apt install texlive-extra-utils on Debian sytems.

  2. Fetch the texprlcount script, e.g.,

      wget https://raw.githubusercontent.com/matteoacrossi/texprlcount/master/texprlcount.pl

  3. Use texprlcount with the following syntax

     perl texprlcount.pl filename.tex

  4. texprlcount looks for the filename.log file for extracting information on images. If the file is not present, texprlcount will compile the .tex file with pdflatex in a temporary folder. If your file requires special instructions for compiling, please compile it and make sure the log file is present in the file directory.

NOTE

texprlcount is offered as a tool for estimating the word count of a tex document. texprlcount may fail to produce the correct estimation for a number of reasons and should be used with caution. Apart from unknown bugs, the following are known limitations.

Current limitations

  • Currently, texprlcount doesn't work with included .tex files
  • It can't distinguish between single and two-column equations and tables
  • It can't detect whether multiple image files in the same figure environment are placed side by side or in column (the length check tool provided by APS doesn't either, by the way). A single pdf per figure is recommended
  • Some multiline equation environment may not be detected correctly (please check the number of reported equation lines)
  • Embedded graphics, such as tikz code, are not recognized. You can overcome this problem by creating a tex file for each tikz image and then include the generated pdf in the main LaTeX file