Remove abstract from elsevier class

Question

I am using the elsevier class to prepare a document. I would like to remove the abstract environment but I can not find the way to do that. I commented out \begin{abstract} .... \end{abstract} but I still get the two horizontal lines which enclose the abstract.

Answer 1

As of Feb. 2015, I found that the answer from egreg did not remove the \hrules. There is an additional macro, \pprintMaketitle in which I had to comment out the same lines of code to remove the horizontal rules around the abstract that are present even if no abstract is present.

\documentclass{elsarticle}

\makeatletter
  \long\def\pprintMaketitle{\clearpage
  \iflongmktitle\if@twocolumn\let\columnwidth=\textwidth\fi\fi
  \resetTitleCounters
  \def\baselinestretch{1}%
  \printFirstPageNotes
  \begin{center}%
 \thispagestyle{pprintTitle}%
   \def\baselinestretch{1}%
    \Large\@title\par\vskip18pt
    \normalsize\elsauthors\par\vskip10pt
    \footnotesize\itshape\elsaddress\par\vskip36pt
    % \hrule\vskip12pt
    % \ifvoid\absbox\else\unvbox\absbox\par\vskip10pt\fi
    % \ifvoid\keybox\else\unvbox\keybox\par\vskip10pt\fi
    % \hrule\vskip12pt
    \end{center}%
  \gdef\thefootnote{\arabic{footnote}}%
  }
\makeatother

\begin{document}

\begin{frontmatter}
\title{Title}
\author{Author A. Author\corref{cor1}}
\cortext[cor1]{Corresponding Author}
\ead{[email protected]}
\address{Department of Studies, Anywhere U}
\end{frontmatter}

This is the body text.

\end{document}

Answer 2

The two rules are hardcoded in \MaketitleBox, so you have to patch it:

\makeatletter
\long\def\MaketitleBox{%
  \resetTitleCounters
  \def\baselinestretch{1}%
  \begin{center}%
   \def\baselinestretch{1}%
    \Large\@title\par\vskip18pt
    \normalsize\elsauthors\par\vskip10pt
    \footnotesize\itshape\elsaddress\par\vskip36pt
%    \hrule\vskip12pt
%    \ifvoid\absbox\else\unvbox\absbox\par\vskip10pt\fi
%    \ifvoid\keybox\else\unvbox\keybox\par\vskip10pt\fi
%    \hrule\vskip12pt
    \end{center}%
  }
\makeatother

This code should go into your preamble. I assumed it's elsarticle.cls that you're talking about, as I don't know of a elsevier.cls.

Answer 3

I had the same issue in the new version (2019), and as pointed out by egreg and darthbith, this is indeed hardcoded in elsearticle.cls and needs to be patched yourself. However, this alone did not fix the issue anymore. Instead, the following code also has to be appropriately commented in the ecrc.sty file (now also present in the template) to completely remove them. Hope this helps for new readers.

\long\def\MaketitleBox{%
  \resetTitleCounters
  \def\baselinestretch{1}%
  \begin{center}%
  \ifx\@dochead\@empty\relax%
     \vspace*{3pc}%
  \else%
     \vspace*{5pc}%
   \@dochead%
     \par%
     \vspace*{1.75pc}%
   \fi%
   \def\baselinestretch{1}%
    {\strut\elsarticle@titlefont\@title\strut}\par\vskip18pt
%   \normalsize\elsauthors\par\vskip10pt
    {\elsarticle@authorfont\elsauthors}\par\vskip10pt
    {\elsarticle@supervisorsfont\elssupervisors}\par\vskip12pt
    \footnotesize\itshape\elsaddress\par\vskip6pt
    % \hrule\vskip12pt
    % \ifvoid\absbox\else\unvbox\absbox\par\vskip10pt\fi
    % \ifvoid\keybox\else\unvbox\keybox\par\vskip10pt\fi
    % \hrule\vskip2pt
    \end{center}%
   \ifcase\jtype\or
    \vspace*{-20pt}%
   \or 
   \or 
    \vspace*{-20pt}%
   \fi 
}