

How is Authorea different from Google Docs? - apepe
https://authorea.com/6055

======
bhouston
I think your competition isn't Google Docs so much as writelatex and
sharelatex:

[http://www.google.com/trends/explore?hl=en-
US&q=Authorea,+wr...](http://www.google.com/trends/explore?hl=en-
US&q=Authorea,+writelatex,+sharelatex&content=1)

I've used sharelatex before for academic publications and it was convenient.
The reason is the academic publication I was submitting to had this latex
template that I had to work within and sharelatex imported that without issue.

For academic publications almost no one uses Microsoft Word except for a small
minority. I think that in the online world then it is still going to be latex
that dominants for academic purposes.

Having live data drive the documents is a great idea though, and your UI looks
polished, but its content should be primarily latex with some wysiwyg
interfaces on top of it in my opinion if your market is academics.

~~~
3JPLW
> For academic publications almost no one uses Microsoft Word except for a
> small minority.

Sure, we're all biased by our own experiences, but I've found this to be
blatantly false in the biological sciences. Microsoft Word dominates, if only
for its comment and change tracking and ease-of-use.

I'd love to use latex, but very few of my collaborators even know the syntax.
I think latex predominantly rules in physics, math, and perhaps some
engineering fields (but certainly not BME). Definitely not all of academia.

(As an aside, I have a hard time not pronouncing the name as Authorrhea).

~~~
aroch
I can also attest to the biological sciences reliance on Word and Track
Changes. It's maddening at times but then again my 80 year old PI (whose in
the lab everyday doing wet work still!) can use it and every computer on our
campus (some 1000 or so) can be used to edit our drafts .

I and some of my other colleagues would much rather move into something like
Google Docs and we've done so to a limited extent. I wish someone had told me
about Authorea a month ago before I started another manuscript in Word. I'm
happy to take the hour and my PI is happy to spend the hour for me to show him
how to use other editing and collaboration tools. I just need to know about
them!

------
whois_localhost
These guys are still vulnerable to heartbleed. I witnessed my username and
password in plain text from the server's memory when I signed up with a test
account.

~~~
natejenkins
Entirely my fault, very sorry about that. Should be fixed now.

------
stared
As a side note, when it comes to various solutions and ideas wrt using LaTeX +
Markdown, there is a discussion: [https://hackpad.com/New-scientific-markup-
language-utAjFcYuv...](https://hackpad.com/New-scientific-markup-language-
utAjFcYuvvB)

~~~
apepe
Thank you. I will join the discussion. And wow, hackpad looks so good.

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csense
Great product. You should have friendly URL's for users, like Github has
[https://github.com/username](https://github.com/username). Also, it would be
nice to make it easy to incorporate secondary information. A lot of scientific
publications involve code and raw experimental data, which is usually not
included in the final paper, but is nonetheless of potential interest to
others. Providing hosting for this seems like an additional revenue
opportunity.

~~~
natejenkins
You can add any additional files to the repo. In the browser upload the file
size is limited to 10MB.

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aroch
So say an academic lab wanted to move all their projects in Authorea and
they're already using git for versioning. Can we import and maintain our
versioning?

~~~
natejenkins
Although this is not really possible entirely from the user-side I'd be happy
to help getting your projects setup on Authorea. Generally speaking, importing
an existing project creates a new git repo on Authorea which can then be
mirrored to Github. However, I can setup your articles from the admin side
using existing repos as the starting points.

~~~
aroch
Gotcha, that's pretty nice. I'll talk with my PI about it.

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bcambel
Social logins would be great

~~~
natejenkins
And they have been on the todo list for a shamefully long time.

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subb
Where were you the last 5 years?!

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yuchi
Interesting, but not ethical. This wants to be the _scientific_ version Google
Docs? Well, have a good fight with
[http://substance.io/](http://substance.io/) which is 1) opensource 2) very
well implemented 3) has a broader vision 4) 5 years ahead of it.

Get the science back to the people, please.

~~~
PeterWhittaker
_not ethical_

Can you elaborate, please? I honestly cannot make a connection between the
original post and any question of dubious ethics. While I am unlikely to use
Authorea any time soon (not in the target market) it seems like a very cool
idea. Where do the ethical concerns arise?

~~~
yuchi
I answered on @apepe. Mostly it’s about the openness of the product. The
formats are open, but how you interact with them is not.

