Here's a FIRST SUGGESTION for a proposed journal.cls. Each journal would have its own .cls with a different name but REQUIRING THE SAME COMMANDS AND ARGUMENTS. Contrary to what I mentioned before, there should be NO optional arguments (except to the \documentclass command itself), so that the author is forced to include everything. Each .cls is free to ignore any arguments, but should complain if an argument is not present (an empty {} is enough if it is not really needed; it should not be empty (and the .cls should complain) if it is really needed). The idea is to include all information necessary for the markup, but leave the appearance in the hands of the individual .cls. The \maketitle command would format the information in a way appropriate to the journal. Unwanted commands (which might be used by those attempting visual formatting) could be temporarily defined to give error messages. I intentionally wrote this before looking at any other suggestions, so as to be completely uninfluenced and (perhaps) offer a fresh perspective. ======================================================= %THERE SHOULD BE SOME STANDARD OPTIONS \documentclass[referee]{journal} %DO WE NEED MORE ARGUMENTS? \title{Title}{short form} \note{any notes immediately after title will be marked as notes to the title} \note{there may be more than one} %ALL BUT THE FIRST ARGUMENT ARE REFERENCES TO LABELS %DO WE NEED MORE? \author{short form}{affiliation-ref}{address-ref}{email-ref} \note{any notes immediately after this author will be marked as notes to this author} \note{there may be more than one note for each author} %THIS IS THE SECOND AUTHOR \author{short form}{affiliation-ref}{address-ref}{email-ref} \note{any notes immediately after this author will be marked as notes to this author} \note{there may be more than one note for each author} %DO WE NEED MORE ARGUMENTS? \date{received in original form}{received}{accepted} %THE TWO ARGUMENTS FOR EACH \item IN THE ENVIRONMENTS BELOW WORK SIMILAR %TO THE KEY AND THE OPTIONAL ARGUMENT OF \bibitem. WHAT IS DONE WITH %THIS INFORMATION (INCLUDING THE ORDER AND POSITIONING OF AFFILIATIONS, $EMAIL ADDRESSES ETC) IS UP TO THE INDIVIDUAL .cls \begin{affiliations} \item{affiliation-label}{name of affiliation} \item{affiliation2-label}{name of affiliation2} %... \end{affiliations} \begin{addresses} \item{address-label}{address} \item{address2-label}{address2} %... \end{addresses} \begin{emails} \item{email-label}{email} \item{email2-label}{email2} %... \end{addresses} \begin{document} \maketitle %AS OF HERE, STANDARD LaTeX WITH PERHAPS PERSONAL MACROS ARE USED. NO %EXTRA COMMANDS, JUST CHANGES IN THE WAY THE USUAL ONES WORK (MARGINS, %APPEARANCE OF LISTS AND SO ON). %ONE EXCEPTION WOULD BE THE (REQUIRED) USE OF MACROS FOR THINGS WHICH %ARE TYPESET/PUNCTUATED/SPELLED DIFFERENTLY, SUCH AS \etc, \etal, %\colour, AND SO ON. %WE DO NEED A REPLACEMENT FOR \caption WHICH LEAVES WHETHER OR NOT IT %APPEARS BEFORE OR AFTER THE FLOAT UP TO THE .cls AND NOT UP TO WHERE %IT IS PLACED WITHIN THE ENVIRONMENT. %UNTIL THE OTHER STUFF IS SORTED OUT, I'M ASSUMING THAT DALY'S natbib %AND SO ON CAN HANDLE REFERENCES, CITATIONS ETC. OK =======================================================