Research Guides: Open Research and Scholarship : Open Writing + Peer Review

Overview

Collaborative Writing:

A process where a team of two or more people work together to produce a written work where all team members contributed to the content and the decision about how the group will function. Technological developments and new tools enhance capacity for research collaboration.

Benefits of collaborative writing include:

Collaboration has been found to increase both quality and quantity of publications produced.
Increased likelihood that papers will be accepted to a high impact factor journals and increased citations of papers.
Collaboration have been found to shorten turn-around times and timelines associated with paper preparation.
Increase access to sources and resources, including funding and datasets.
Collaboration generates cross-fertilization of ideas, encourages critical thinking and a deeper understanding of others.
Collaboration helps develop own researcher’s knowledge base and form a network of colleagues.
Collaboration leads to higher achievement and promotes excellence.

Challenges may include:

Potential misunderstanding between team members as a result of lack of non-verbal cues
Collaborators may face attribution challenges that include issues related to order of authorship, individual contributions, working with students, and opportunism and plagiarism.

Tools

Google Docs
A free and easy to use app which is automatically connected to each and every Google account. This writing tool, has many features that make collaboration a seamless process. It allows simultaneous access, allowing collaborators to work on a document at the same time while being able to see the changes that everyone else is making. Changes made to a document are saved automatically, so you never need to worry about losing work.
Dropbox Paper
An extension of the documents sharing platform Dropbox, the cloud-based Dropbox Paper adds new capabilities to simplify collaborative content writing. Dropbox Paper can be a good choice for keeping a project on track since it offers users the ability to make to-do lists and let other team members know when there's a task that needs attention.
Microsoft Word Online
A free, cloud-based versions of Word, Excel, and PowerPoint. Rather than store your files and documents on your computer, you save them to Microsoft OneDrive. Offers many of the same features and benefits as Google Docs, but there are a few compelling reasons to choose Microsoft's: 1) Office compatibility; 2) "To do" comments; 3) Group chats.
Overleaf
Overleaf is an online LaTeX and Rich Text collaborative writing and publishing tool that makes the whole process of academic writing, editing, and publishing much quicker and easier. Princeton University provides free Overleaf Professional accounts for all students, faculty and staff who would like to use a collaborative, online LaTeX editor for their projects. Overleaf Professional accounts provide real-time track changes, unlimited collaborators, and full document history.
Draft
A writing tool that allows multiple collaborators to edit a document at the same time. An updated version of the document is created whenever someone's changes are accepted. Only the document's original author can accept or reject changes. Documents could be downloaded as a Microsoft Word file, saved as a Google Doc,or downloaded in Markdown format.
Etherpad
This open-source tool allows writers and editors to collaborate in real time. Each person working on a document is assigned a specific color, making it easy to identify the contribution of each collaborator. Ethernet's interface is relatively basic compared to other tools, and it has fewer formatting features and a limited ability to include certain items like footnotes.