Overleaf2Arxiv

Academics often write papers in Overleaf, and publish them to arXiv, but the steps to do so requires a little manual labor. For example, arXiv requires a main.bbl file, which must be manually downloaded from Overleaf and packaged into the zip file.

Overleaf2Arxiv is a simple CLI that aims to make this easier. Given the Overleaf project ID, it will automatically package it for upload to arXiv, including the main.bbl file.

[!NOTE] MacOS and Linux are the primary supported platforms.

Installation + Setup

To install, run

pip install overleaf2arxiv

Additionally, ensure that you are logged into Overleaf on your default browser. The cookies on this browser will be used to authenticate with Overleaf, possibly asking for your keychain password in the process.

Finally, install pdflatex on your machine and ensure it's available on the system path.

• On Linux, consider TeX Live
• On Mac, consider one of:
  • TeX Live
  • BasicTeX (smaller installation), install with brew install basictex

Usage

Using this script is easy!

To automatically download the project from Overleaf and package it, simply run

overleaf2arxiv -p <project_id> project.zip

where <project_id> is the Overleaf project ID (visible in the URL). This may ask for a password while authenticating with Overleaf to download your project.

You can avoid authenticating with Overleaf by downloading the project zip manually, and then running:

overleaf2arxiv -f <path_to_downloaded_project.zip> project.zip

If your source is located in some subfolder of your Overleaf project, use --subfolder to specify that.

Finally, just upload project.zip to arXiv!