Associate Professor · Ph.D. · Cambridge University Press Author

Stop Fighting Your LaTeX Template. Get Back to Your Research.

Manuscripts, dissertations, Beamer slides, CVs, and syllabi: clean, professional LaTeX deliverables for academic work. I handle the technical layer so you can stay focused on the scholarship.

  • PhD students on the job market who need a polished CV
  • Researchers submitting to a journal with a tricky LaTeX template
  • Writing teams where half the co-authors use Word
  • Dissertators who'd rather defend than debug formatting

Email your files, deadline, and questions to latex@dadams.io. You'll get a real quote—no surprises.

Get a Free Quote See Sample Work
Typical turnaround: 5–7 days  |  Clear scope + fixed quote  |  Fast, direct communication

What you're hiring me for

  • Manuscript formatting with clean references, tables, and figures
  • Beamer presentations with consistent structure and styling
  • CV and syllabus templates that are polished and maintainable
  • Multi-author Word → LaTeX pipelines — co-authors stay in Word

Every file I deliver is fully commented — so you understand it, own it, and can update it yourself.

Clear scoping • Clean deliverables • Reproducible workflow • No vendor lock-in

Services That Actually Work

Manuscript & Journal Formatting

Word/Docs to submission-ready LaTeX with journal-specific formatting, citations, figures, and tables. Custom multi-author pipelines available — co-authors stay in Word while you publish in LaTeX. Includes Overleaf setup and collaboration support.

Beamer Presentations

Conference-ready slides with consistent styling, clean figure handling, and citations that stay stable across revisions.

Academic Documents

CVs and syllabi in polished, maintainable LaTeX templates that are easy to update term after term.

Dissertations & Theses

Full dissertation formatting to your graduate school's exact specifications. Frontmatter, chapters, bibliography, appendices — all compliant, all commented, all yours.

David P. Adams

Who's doing the work

I'm David Adams — Associate Professor of Public Administration at Cal State Fullerton, Ph.D. from Auburn University, and a Cambridge University Press author. I've been writing LaTeX since grad school and have taken manuscripts through the full pipeline: drafting, co-author chaos, journal template wrestling, reviewer revisions, and final proofs. I know what editors and reviewers actually look at, and I know what breaks at submission time.

I take on select projects because academic formatting shouldn't be the thing standing between good work and publication. Every deliverable is clean, well-commented code you can maintain yourself — not a black box you have to come back to me for.

Full academic profile →
Every file I deliver is fully commented. Not just what the code does — but why. You'll be able to open it, understand it, and update it yourself. If you want to learn LaTeX from a working example, that's the point. Most services keep you dependent on them. I'd rather you not need me again.
Start with a small project →
Co-authors who don't use LaTeX? I've solved that. For a Cambridge University Press book, I built a Word → Markdown → LaTeX pipeline using Pandoc and custom Lua filters. Eight co-authored chapters, everyone writing in Word — including heading structures and index tags — converting cleanly to production-ready LaTeX. Nobody had to open a .tex file. If your collaborators live in Word or Google Docs, we can build a workflow around how they actually work.
Talk workflow →

Sample Work

These are my own academic documents. Click any to open the PDF.

All links open PDF files in a new tab.

Journal Manuscript

Peer-reviewed article formatted for journal submission. Custom callout environments, TikZ figures, journal-compliant section heading sizing, and proper hyperref metadata.

Graduate Syllabus

MPA Capstone syllabus with BibTeX reading list, PDF/UA-2 accessibility metadata, and a template maintained cleanly across eight semesters.

Beamer Lecture Deck

45-slide lecture deck on a custom institutional theme. TikZ timelines, two-column layouts, incremental reveals, styled definition blocks, and section dividers.

Academic CV

Full academic curriculum vitae — cleanly typeset, logically structured, and easy to update each cycle without touching the formatting.

Client work stays confidential and isn't posted here. These are my own documents — the same tools and approach I bring to every project.

Why hire this out?

Not an AI job

AI can generate LaTeX that looks right but won't compile, hallucinates BibTeX keys, and breaks journal templates in ways that aren't obvious until submission. Production-ready output requires actual compilation, real debugging, and knowing what editors check. I've seen what happens when dissertations go through ChatGPT for formatting. I'll save you the pain.

Your time has value

A tenure-track assistant professor spending eight hours fighting an Elsevier template is eight hours not writing the next paper. A PhD student debugging figure placement at midnight before a deadline is not a good use of what's left of their cognitive capacity.

You keep control

Every file comes with comments explaining what does what. You're not locked into a tool, a service, or me. When you need to update it next semester — or next year — you can do it yourself.

Pricing

Single-project pricing with clear scope. Every tier includes at least one revision round.

Single Document

$150

CV, syllabus, or short paper

  • One document converted to clean LaTeX
  • Up to 15 pages
  • Up to 3 figures or tables
  • References set up in standard format
  • One round of revisions
  • Turnaround: 3–5 days
  • Fully commented code you can edit yourself
Get Started

Standard Article

$300

Short to mid-length manuscripts

  • Word/Google Doc → LaTeX (clean and formatted)
  • Up to 25 pages
  • 6 figures, 4 tables (or fewer)
  • References set up in standard format
  • One round of revisions
  • Turnaround: 5–7 days
  • Fully commented code you can edit yourself
Get Started
Most Common

Journal Submission

$500

Full manuscripts and conference decks

  • Everything in Standard, plus:
  • Up to 40 pages, 10 figures, 8 tables
  • Journal template compliance
  • Reference style tuning
  • Figure and table polishing
  • Beamer presentation (up to 35 slides)
  • Overleaf or GitHub setup
  • One round of revisions
  • Fully commented code you can edit yourself
Start Project

Dissertation / Thesis

$750+

Full dissertation formatting

  • Complete formatting to your grad school's specs
  • Frontmatter, chapters, bibliography, appendices
  • Table of contents, list of figures/tables
  • Up to 200 pages
  • Two rounds of revisions
  • Turnaround: 7–14 days
  • Fully commented code you can edit yourself
Start Project

Complex / Book-Chapter Rescue

$1,000+

Large or high-complexity projects

  • 50+ pages, multi-chapter work
  • Heavy figures/tables
  • Difficult publisher templates
  • Large Beamer decks or multi-doc sets
  • Up to 3 revision rounds
  • Custom workflow setup
  • Fully commented code you can edit yourself
  • Let's talk scope first
Discuss Project

Turnaround: typical 5–7 days. Rush (48-hour): available at 50% surcharge — email first to confirm a slot.

Contact me to check current availability — turnaround commitments are made at time of quote.

Payment is invoiced on project acceptance. I can sign an NDA if your institution requires it for unpublished work.

What else to know

Extra revisions: $75 per round beyond what's included

Rush turnaround: 48-hour delivery available (50% surcharge)

Page overages: Rare, but $15/page over package limits

Scope question? Large slide decks or document sets may move a project to the next tier

Get a quote

Email latex@dadams.io with your document, target journal (if any), and deadline. No long questionnaires. I'll respond within 24 hours with a clear quote and timeline.

Email Your Details

Frequently Asked Questions

Standard: 5–7 days. Quick fixes (short CV, simple document): 24–48 hours. Rush delivery available at a 50% surcharge — if you're up against a deadline, email me first to confirm I have a slot. All timelines are quoted at the time of scope agreement, not guessed at afterward.

Yes — Elsevier, Springer, IEEE, APA, Chicago, APSA, and others. I work directly with the journal's official class files and follow their style guide. Haven't seen yours? Send it over. If it has a published template, I can work with it.

AI can draft LaTeX — and it's useful for quick experiments. What it can't reliably do: compile a document without errors, maintain formatting consistency across a 40-page manuscript, comply with a specific journal's class file requirements, or handle the edge cases that matter at submission time. AI-generated LaTeX often looks right and breaks during compilation because it hallucinated a package or used a command the journal's class file doesn't support. Production-ready LaTeX requires actual compilation, real debugging, and knowing what editors check for. AI gets you close. I get you there.

One revision round is included in every tier (the Complex tier includes three). After that, additional rounds are $75 each if you want me to handle them. But since everything is documented and commented, you can often make small changes yourself without needing to come back to me at all.

Yes. Every document comes with inline comments explaining exactly what each part does. You get the full source — on Overleaf, GitHub, or a zip file, whichever you prefer. You can add text, swap figures, update the bibliography, or adjust formatting without touching anything you don't understand.

Your documents are never shared, posted, or used for any other purpose. If your institution or department requires it, I'm happy to sign an NDA before you send anything. Client work stays confidential — which is also why the sample section shows my own documents, not client files.

Yes — and I've actually built this. For a Cambridge University Press book, I created a Word → Markdown → LaTeX pipeline using Pandoc and custom Lua filters. All eight chapters were co-authored, with every collaborator writing entirely in Word — including heading structures and index tags — converting cleanly to production-ready LaTeX. Nobody had to open a .tex file. If your collaborators are Word-native, we design a pipeline around how they actually work rather than asking them to learn new tools.

What collaborators say

Working with David on a recent book project was a wonderful experience. He was attentive, responsive, solutions-oriented, and a willing teacher. His LaTeX knowledge and expertise saved us countless hours of work and frustration — and even money that would have been spent on indexing! I would absolutely recommend collaborating with David and look forward to working with him again soon.
Jon Fisk
Co-author, Cambridge University Press
David's expertise with LaTeX produced a document that was indistinguishable from the page proofs generated by the press! The formatting of the tables and the figures was perfect, and made our editing process a piece of cake. He is very easy to work with, and his rates are very reasonable. Highly recommended!
John Morris
Co-author, Cambridge University Press

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Not sure where to start? Email latex@dadams.io with your document and deadline. No questionnaire. No sales pitch. Just a real assessment and a clear quote within 24 hours.