MDPI, PLOS, Frontiers: A Practical Guide to Journal-Specific LaTeX Templates
If you've submitted to more than one open-access publisher, you've probably noticed that "just use LaTeX" doesn't mean the same thing twice. Each major publisher maintains its own document class, its own bibliography style, and its own quirks — and a manuscript built for one won't compile against another without real rework.
MDPI
MDPI's mdpi.cls bundle is path-sensitive: the class expects to find its bibliography style file at a specific relative path (Definitions/mdpi.bst), which trips people up when they move files around or zip a submission without preserving that folder structure. MDPI also has its own bibliography style variants depending on the specific journal within the MDPI family.
PLOS (PLOS ONE and related)
PLOS expects Vancouver-style citations and a Data Availability Statement as a required structural element — not just encouraged, but checked. PLOS submissions are also DOI-strict; missing DOIs on references are more likely to come back as a formatting request here than with some other publishers.
Frontiers
Frontiers uses its own class files (FrontiersinVancouver.cls / FrontiersinHarvard.cls depending on the citation style your section requires) plus publisher-supplied logo assets that need to be present in the build for the title page to render correctly. Frontiers also expects a structured Author Contributions statement.
Other targets worth knowing about
Beyond these three, the same "not interchangeable" rule applies across bioRxiv, medRxiv, Nature Portfolio, APS (Physical Review's REVTeX 4.2 class), NeurIPS (with its checklist and submission-option requirements), and ICML (which flags outdated style files by year — using last year's .sty is a common and avoidable rejection reason).
Why this matters for conversion, not just compilation
If you're converting to Word for a co-author or an internal draft rather than submitting the LaTeX directly, the target publisher still matters — it determines the citation style, required sections, and figure/caption conventions your converted document should follow. Stemdoc's Advanced mode includes preflight rules for each of these submission targets — arXiv, MDPI, PLOS, Frontiers, Elsevier, IEEE, Springer Nature, Wiley, Taylor & Francis, ACM, NeurIPS, ICML, APS, Nature Portfolio, and Thesis/Dissertation — so the structural and citation checks match what your actual target expects, not a generic default.
Pick your submission target before you convert, and preflight will flag anything specific to that publisher before you download.