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Authorea is an
online In computer technology and telecommunications, online indicates a state of connectivity and offline indicates a disconnected state. In modern terminology, this usually refers to an Internet connection, but (especially when expressed "on line" or ...
collaborative writing tool that allows researchers to write, cite, collaborate, host data and publish. It has been described as "
Google Docs Google Docs is an online word processor included as part of the free, web-based Google Docs Editors suite offered by Google, which also includes: Google Sheets, Google Slides, Google Drawings, Google Forms, Google Sites and Google Keep. Goo ...
for Scientists". It has been owned by the commercial publishing company Wiley through
Atypon Atypon Systems, LLC, is an online publishing platform provider for publishers and other providers of scientific, technical, medical, scholarly, professional and government content. It is headquartered in Santa Clara, California. It has been owned ...
since 2018.


Overview

Authorea allows researchers to write documents together and attach references, figures, data, and source code. Features of the tool include collaborative editing (multiple people editing a document at the same time), automatic citation formatting, tracking changes, and the ability to make any document public or fully private. When used as an editing tool for
scientific paper : ''For a broader class of literature, see Academic publishing.'' Scientific literature comprises scholarly publications that report original empirical and theoretical work in the natural and social sciences. Within an academic field, scienti ...
s, Authorea will automatically format a paper in the preferred style and provide files suitable for online submission to
peer-reviewed Peer review is the evaluation of work by one or more people with similar competencies as the producers of the work ( peers). It functions as a form of self-regulation by qualified members of a profession within the relevant field. Peer review ...
journals and
conferences A conference is a meeting of two or more experts to discuss and exchange opinions or new information about a particular topic. Conferences can be used as a form of group decision-making, although discussion, not always decisions, are the main p ...
. Over 40
publisher Publishing is the activity of making information, literature, music, software and other content available to the public for sale or for free. Traditionally, the term refers to the creation and distribution of printed works, such as books, newsp ...
- and journal-specific styles are currently supported. Authorea is part of the open science movement and supports
open access Open access (OA) is a set of principles and a range of practices through which research outputs are distributed online, free of access charges or other barriers. With open access strictly defined (according to the 2001 definition), or libre op ...
publishing for academic research and free access to research data. The free version of the service allows unlimited public documents, public storage space (for figures, data, code, and other supporting material), and an unlimited number of collaborators (co-authors) per document. Public documents are free for anyone to read. Authorea also supports private writing: a document and all its attachments can be kept private, visible only to co-authors. A free account allows the user to create one free private document, with more available via a paid subscription. Authorea also supports preprint workflows. Authorea partnered with bioRxiv to enable authors to submit preprints directly to bioRxiv from Authorea in 2017. Additionally, preprint review hosting platfor
PREreview
was built using Authorea technical infrastructure. The site currently supports an online
LaTeX Latex is an emulsion (stable dispersion) of polymer microparticles in water. Latexes are found in nature, but synthetic latexes are common as well. In nature, latex is found as a milky fluid found in 10% of all flowering plants (angiosperms ...
editor as well as a
Markdown Markdown is a lightweight markup language for creating formatted text using a plain-text editor. John Gruber and Aaron Swartz created Markdown in 2004 as a markup language that is appealing to human readers in its source code form. Markdown is ...
(wiki) editor. A simple
MS Word Microsoft Word is a word processor, word processing software developed by Microsoft. It was first released on October 25, 1983, under the name ''Multi-Tool Word'' for Xenix systems. Subsequent versions were later written for several other pla ...
-like (
WYSIWYG In computing, WYSIWYG ( ), an acronym for What You See Is What You Get, is a system in which editing software allows content to be edited in a form that resembles its appearance when printed or displayed as a finished product, such as a printed ...
) interface is currently in development. Authorea grew from over 10,000 active users in 2014 to over 50,000 in 2016.


History

Authorea was launched in February 2013 by co-founders Alberto Pepe and Nathan Jenkins and scientific adviser Matteo Cantiello, who met while working at
CERN The European Organization for Nuclear Research, known as CERN (; ; ), is an intergovernmental organization that operates the largest particle physics laboratory in the world. Established in 1954, it is based in a northwestern suburb of Gene ...
. They recognized common difficulties in the scholarly writing and publishing process. To address these problems, Pepe and Jenkins developed an online, web-based editor to support real-time collaborative writing, and sharing and execution of research data and code. Jenkins finished the first prototype site build in less than three weeks. Bootstrapping for almost two years, Pepe and Jenkins grew Authorea by reaching out to friends and colleagues, speaking at events and conferences, and partnering with early adopter institutions. In September 2014, Authorea announced the successful closure of a $610K round of seed funding with the New York Angels and
ff Venture Capital ff Venture Capital is a venture capital firm that specializes in providing seed-stage and early-stage funding to technology companies. Headquartered in New York City, ff Venture Capital was founded by John Frankel and Alex Katz in 2008, who ...
groups. In January 2016, Authorea closed a $1.6M round of funding led by
Lux Capital Lux Capital is a venture capital firm based in New York City. It was founded in 2000, and focuses on investments in emerging technologies. History Lux Capital was founded in 2000 by Peter Hébert, Robert Paull and Josh Wolfe. In April 2011, for ...
and including the Knight Foundation and Bloomberg Beta. It later acquired the VC-backed company
The Winnower The Winnower was a publishing platform and journal that offered traditional scholarly publishing tools (Digital Object Identifiers (DOIs), permanent archival, Altmetrics, PDF creation, etc.) to enable rigorous scholastic discussion of topics across ...
. In 2018 Authorea was acquired for an undisclosed amount by Atypon (part of Wiley).


List of features

The Authorea platform supports a number of features relevant to academic writing.


Collaboration

* Collaborative writing – Multiple users can edit a document at the same time * Commenting – Document sections and highlighted text can be annotated with public or private comments * Live chat in-article – Co-authors can chat online while writing * Change tracking – The full history of the document is tracked with Git; individual edits can be reviewed and undone


Formatting and citations

* Citation Search – The built-in citation search allows adding full citations directly from PubMed and CrossRef, or from a paper's DOI * Reference Formatting – Authorea automatically formats references for a target publication upon export * Publisher styles – Over 40 publisher and journal style templates are supported * Equations – Authorea supports equations written in LaTeX markup


Rich content

* Figures – Drag-and-drop figures directly into a document or upload figures from a folder * Data publishing – Raw data files and iPython notebooks can be attached to figures * Live source code – Authorea provides a live iPython Notebook server for opening and running attached iPython notebooks. Allows calculations and data analysis * Interactive figures – Authorea supports interactive figures using D3.js


Export and import

* GitHub and Offline Editing – Documents and files are stored in Git repositories on Authorea servers. Each document can be synced to a GitHub account for offline editing and backup * Export – Word, PDF, and LaTeX export formats are supported * Import – Users can import a LaTeX or .docx file to create a new Authorea document


Technical architecture

Authorea is built primarily with
Ruby on Rails Ruby on Rails (simplified as Rails) is a server-side web application framework written in Ruby under the MIT License. Rails is a model–view–controller (MVC) framework, providing default structures for a database, a web service, and web p ...
, and documents and files are stored in
Git Git () is a distributed version control system: tracking changes in any set of files, usually used for coordinating work among programmers collaboratively developing source code during software development. Its goals include speed, data inte ...
repositories. Resque and Faye are used as well. The site supports
iPython IPython (Interactive Python) is a command shell for interactive computing in multiple programming languages, originally developed for the Python programming language, that offers introspection, rich media, shell syntax, tab completion, and his ...
notebooks A notebook is a small book often used for writing. Notebook or The Notebook may also refer to: Computing *Laptop, a type of personal computer *Google Notebook, a discontinued online application * Notebook interface, a type of programming environ ...
and runs a live iPython notebook server, so that users can attach, re-run and reproduce scientific calculations and data analysis directly in an Authorea document.


References


External links

*{{official website Online word processors Web applications Open access projects