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WritingAcademiaPublishing

What are the best collaborative academic writing tools?

7

Options
Considered

9

User
Recs.

Nov 8, 2022

Last
Updated

Here’s the Deal

6 Options Considered

Best collaborative academic writing tools	Price	Platforms	Git
-- GitLab	Free/Paid	Linux	Yes
-- GitHub	Free / paid	-	Yes
-- Authorea	Free/Paid	-	-
-- Cryptpad	Free / paid	Web	-
-- Overleaf	Free / paid	-	-

GitHub

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Top Con

No OAuth2 support

In order to sign in to GitHub, users have to sign up first with unique credentials for GitHub only, so no option to sign in with Google+ or Facebook. See More

Top Pro

Large community

GitHub is the largest code host on the planet with over 21.4 million hosted repositories and many users. It's unarguably the largest VCS used by developers worldwide and as such, it has a vibrant community that follows it resulting in many guides and tutorials for new users. Even experienced developers can always find an answer to any question they may have. See More

D.'s Experience

Use any tools locally to write in a text-based format (e.g. markdown), use git to sync between collaborators, and publish digital/interactive files on Github Pages (free public storage for static files) See More

Specs

SVN:Yes (Limited)

Top Con

Using it encourages other tools to integrate only with GitHub, leading to a monopoly

Top Pro

Provides free hosting for static websites

GitHub Pages is a feature that allows developers to create websites for their projects or anything they need a static website for, for free. See More

Top Con

Very inconvenient UI

Very hard to switch between projects. See More

Top Con

Rule of thumb: 1GB per repository, 100MB per file

For most repositories this is acceptable, but for already large repositories with a long history, this may be a limiting factor. See More

Top Con

Owned by Microsoft

Top Con

Steals and sells your privacy

Top Con

Limited web browser support

Modern web browsers like Waterfox are no longer supported, breaking basic UI elements and making the site unusable. See More

Top Con

Proprietary

Authorea

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Top Pro

Submit articles directly to journals

Authorea has a Direct Submission feature, that allows authors to directly submit their work to several academic journals, with the correct formatting. See More

Top Con

Limited export options

Missing export options which preserve the interactivity which may be added to authorea documents, e.g. html files. See More

Top Con

Pricey

Has some interactive features which require storage on their platform, which require payments after 10 papers. Those costs should be paid by the publisher/journal not by the researcher/writer. See More

Top Con

Not completely free

Authorea can be used with a free plan, but to get the complete set of features, a paid subscription plan is needed. See More

Overleaf

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Top Pro

Template database

Overleaf has a very interesting and varied template database, making document creation so much easier. See More

Arcane Office

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Curvenote

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