Distributed Team Writing Tool

Henok Aliation not available Ghebrezghi Aliation not available

September 26, 2013

0.1

Introduction

Authorea.com is a web-based tool geared towards the academic research community. While the work of this group is not technically considered academic research, some members have produced papers at par with the academic research community (minus the citation of non-academic sources). Still, Authorea is the only tool I can currently nd that oers important features that can be useful to a disconnected team of writers (see comparison to Google docs below). Although Authorea oers great features, its not perfectly suited for non-academic papers due to lack of features and inexible restrictions (see restrictions and work-around solutions below). Lastly, I think the best thing about Authorea is how easy it is to start using it, even if you are a solo writer (I wrote this short paper on Authorea as a way to test the system).

0.2

Useful Features

Here is a brief list of features Authorea oers: Multiple writers collaborate on one paper (also oered by Google docs) [2] Automatic locking of paper sections (not oered by Google docs) http://productforums.google. com/forum/#!topic/docs/HBB8p5ke9lQ Search and cite academic sources within Authorea (may not be that important for us but also not oered by Google docs) [3] Add citations from non-academic sources by adding manually to citation system (not oered by Google docs) [1] Add images by drag/drop (also oered by Google docs) (see below) Comments per individual paper section (not oered by Google docs) Export to PDF or Latex format Ability for writers to see how the entire paper reads and writing content to t the theme or style of other writers (not exactly a feature but a good bi-product of features)

0.3

Limitation

Like I said earlier, Authorea has great features but it also has a few irritating limitations. Here are some of those limitations with possible work-around solutions. Cant easily cite external sources. Solution: manually modify biblio section (its actually easy, ask me if you need help) [1]. Cant export in Word format (only PDF and Latex is supported). Solution: can be to use Authorea for collaboration and copy/paste content manually from Authorea to Word when nished. Another solution: is to convert PDF or Latex to Word and perform nal editing work on then. Unable to mix images in with text. Images need to have their own section (no work-around for this and might not be a big issue). Free accounts only have one private article. Solution: Articles that are still in Rough Draft mode are not made public; simply keep articles in this mode, export them when complete and publish manually to your Blogs or the usual websites.

Figure 1: Image of young EPLF ghters from Eritreas independence struggle.

0.4

Getting Started

Getting started is very easy. After signing up, there is a help wizzard that takes you through the entire process. For brevity, here is a short workow to follow in order to get started quickly. 1. Go to authorea.com and sign-up for a free account (you can create unlimited public articles and one private article). 2. Create your rst article and go through the wizzard. 3. Specify the outline of the article (article index on the left). 4. Add authors to your new article (emails will go out inviting them to start writing). 5. Manually send personal emails to co-authors and give them instructions on what sections they should contribute to. Also encourage them to give feedback on other sections by making comments on sections. 6. Once complete, click on the export button above and export to PDF or Latex using one of the output templates provided. 2

7. Alternatively, copy and paste nal version of all sections into any other word processor or blog website in order to publish.

Bibliography
[1] Ministry of Information Sta. New pond in Aitera area secures signicant water reserve for livestock. Ministry of Information, 1(2):1, Sept 2013. [2] Debra A. Riley-Hu. Using Google Wave and Docs for group collaboration. Library Hi Tech News, 27(4/5):1214, 2010. [3] A. Zegeye and M. Tegegn. The Post-war Border Dispute between Ethiopia and Eritrea: On the Brink of Another War? Journal of Developing Societies, 24(2):245272, Jun 2008.