How to reduce space after authors block? (ieeetran)

Question

I'm using \documentclass[10pt, conference, compsocconf, letterpaper]{IEEEtran}.

How can I reduce the space between the authors block (with their affiliations) and the text?

Right now I have:

Paper Title

  authors
affiliation




col1   col2
....   ....

But I'd like to have:

Paper Title

  authors
affiliation

col1   col2
....   ....

Answer 1

This is an old question, but it seems there is a preferred solution that has not been mentioned. In "How to Use the IEEEtran LaTeX Class," Michael Shell explains:

IEEEtran provides the command \IEEEaftertitletext{} which can be used to insert text or to alter the spacing between the title area and the main text: \IEEEaftertitletext{\vspace{-1\baselineskip}}

As best I can tell, some journals use this modification to compensate for the publication ID marks at the bottom of the title page. It provides a means to keep the amount of space available for text consistent after calling \IEEEpubid{}. That said, under the "Common User Mistakes" section, Shell lists:

Altering the default spacings, section heading styles, margins or column style

So it's probably best for users to leave the spacing as is, especially for journal submissions, then let the editors control the after title spacing. The factors are a bit different for conference submissions since \IEEEpubid{} is disabled in conference mode.

Answer 2

The internal command \@maketitle adds some vertical spacing before closing the group it uses:

\addvspace{0.5\baselineskip}\egroup

You can patch the command to replace this with some other spacing; in the following example I used the etoolbox package to replace the default 0.5\baselineskip with -1\baselineskip (use any other value that suits your needs):

\documentclass[10pt, conference, compsocconf, letterpaper]{IEEEtran}
\usepackage{etoolbox}

\author{The Author\thanks{M. Shell is with the Georgia Institute of Te
chnology.}}
\title{The Title}

\makeatletter
\patchcmd{\@maketitle}
  {\addvspace{0.5\baselineskip}\egroup}
  {\addvspace{-1\baselineskip}\egroup}
  {}
  {}
\makeatother

\begin{document}
\maketitle

Some test text test text test text test text test text test text test text test text test text test text test text test text test text test text test text test text test text

\end{document}

Answer 3

Figured a simple way to do it: Inside the \author{} block, just before the closing curly brace, I added \\[-3.0ex], which effectively removed some of the vertical space. Obviously, one can replace -3 with whatever negative value they want.

\title {Paper Title} 
\author {
    \IEEEauthorblockN {
        Only Author
    }
    \IEEEauthorblockA {
        University of X, Xland
    }
    \\[-3.0ex]
}