Synchronized editing: the future of collaborative writing

Most collaborative writing tools offer researchers a range of useful functions. Team members can keep documents private or share them with select collaborators; track changes and comment on the text; and edit documents simultaneously or asynchronously with their collaborators. Science-focused programs supplement those with features aimed at the research community, such as built-in citation management. (Some citation managers can integrate with Google Docs using plug-ins, such as Zotero and Paperpile.) Users can generally import libraries from reference managers such as Zotero or Mendeley, or query external databases directly. The ‘cite’ button in Authorea, for example, allows users to search PubMed or CrossRef, or pull in articles by DOI or URL. In Fidus Writer, references can be added from Zotero with a simple drag-and-drop.