Collected ideas…

When citing authors, the soul package is useful. It provides small caps with additional spacing. Use it as:

\so{Author Name}

Include the package babel and babelbib in the preamble:

\usepackage{babel}
\usepackage{babelbib}

Use the following command to produce the bibliography:

\bibliographystyle{babalpha}
\bibliography{bibliography_file}

Setup hyperref to include correct author name and opening mode for PDF files:

\hypersetup{
  pdfauthor={Author Name <name@domain.tld>}, pdfstartview={FitV}
}

Some often used operators and functions:

\providecommand{\abs}[1]{\lvert#1\rvert}
\providecommand{\norm}[1]{\lVert#1\rVert}
 
\DeclareMathOperator*{\argmax}{arg\,max}

The standard \vec command produces in some situations bad looking vectors. That problem can be avoided by using the package esvect and the command \vv{a} to produce the vector a or \vv*{a}{i} to produce the vector a_i.

Disable all graphics:

\renewcommand{\includegraphics}[1][]{\url}