diff --git a/paper/paper.bib b/paper/paper.bib
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..7b89821
--- /dev/null
+++ b/paper/paper.bib
@@ -0,0 +1,37 @@
+@inproceedings{Boos:2001cv,
+    author = "Boos, E. and others",
+    title = "{Generic User Process Interface for Event Generators}",
+    booktitle = "{2nd Les Houches Workshop on Physics at TeV Colliders}",
+    eprint = "hep-ph/0109068",
+    archivePrefix = "arXiv",
+    reportNumber = "FERMILAB-CONF-01-496-T",
+    month = "9",
+    year = "2001"
+}
+
+@article{Buckley:2019xhk,
+    author = {Buckley, Andy and Ilten, Philip and Konstantinov, Dmitri and L{\"o}nnblad, Leif and Monk, James and Pokorski, Witold and Przedzinski, Tomasz and Verbytskyi, Andrii},
+    title = "{The HepMC3 event record library for Monte Carlo event generators}",
+    eprint = "1912.08005",
+    archivePrefix = "arXiv",
+    primaryClass = "hep-ph",
+    reportNumber = "MPP-2019-258, MCNET-19-27, LU-TP 19-58",
+    doi = "10.1016/j.cpc.2020.107310",
+    journal = "Comput. Phys. Commun.",
+    volume = "260",
+    pages = "107310",
+    year = "2021"
+}
+
+@article{Alwall:2006yp,
+    author = "Alwall, J. and others",
+    title = "{A Standard format for Les Houches event files}",
+    eprint = "hep-ph/0609017",
+    archivePrefix = "arXiv",
+    reportNumber = "FERMILAB-PUB-06-337-T, CERN-LCGAPP-2006-03",
+    doi = "10.1016/j.cpc.2006.11.010",
+    journal = "Comput. Phys. Commun.",
+    volume = "176",
+    pages = "300--304",
+    year = "2007"
+}
diff --git a/paper/paper.md b/paper/paper.md
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..c913ef9
--- /dev/null
+++ b/paper/paper.md
@@ -0,0 +1,63 @@
+---
+title: "pylhe: A Lightweight Python interface to read Les Houches Event files"
+tags:
+  - python
+  - high energy physics
+authors:
+  - name: Matthew Feickert
+    orcid: 0000-0003-4124-7862
+    equal-contrib: true
+    affiliation: 1
+  - name: Lukas Heinrich
+    orcid: 0000-0002-4048-7584
+    equal-contrib: true
+    affiliation: 2
+  - name: Eduardo Rodrigues
+    orcid: 0000-0003-2846-7625
+    equal-contrib: true
+    affiliation: 3
+  - name: Alexander Puck Neuwirth
+    orcid: 0000-0002-2484-1328
+    equal-contrib: true
+    affiliation: "4, 5"
+
+affiliations:
+  - name: University of Wisconsin-Madison
+    index: 1
+  - name: Technical University of Munich
+    index: 2
+  - name: University of Liverpool
+    index: 3
+  - name: University of Milan Bicocca
+    index: 4
+  - name: INFN Milan Bicocca
+    index: 5
+date: 6 November 2025 # APN TODO: update date
+bibliography: paper.bib
+---
+
+# Summary
+<!-- APN TODO: check that all references in paper.bib are cited in the text -->
+Some history/introduction history of different formats. HEPEVT -> LHEF -> HepMC -> HDF5? (since its binary maybe in the future? Unlike hepmc/lhe no need to gzip!)
+
+The format is used by major Monte Carlo event generators such as MadGraph, POWHEG, Sherpa, HERWIG, Pythia ... <!-- APN TODO add references here-->
+...
+
+Format is XML-like where the free text is designed to be easily parsed in fortran <!-- APN TODO: copy example form jupyter notebook 00_*.ipynb -->
+
+```xml
+```
+
+# Statement of need
+
+...
+
+## Impact
+
+...
+
+# Acknowledgements
+
+We would additionally like to thank the contributors of pylhe and the Scikit-HEP community for their support.
+
+# Reference
diff --git a/pyproject.toml b/pyproject.toml
index b3a1639..bd62739 100644
--- a/pyproject.toml
+++ b/pyproject.toml
@@ -165,3 +165,4 @@ ignore = [
 # https://github.com/codespell-project/codespell/issues/2801
 # Ignore very long base64-like strings
 ignore-regex = '[A-Za-z0-9+/]{100,}'
+skip = "*.bib"