There are plenty of equation writers out there -- which is best?Writing equations online can be very painful. Although there exist online communities working to define standards and best practices, for many researchers, scientists, and students it's not clear what is the best way to write math equations.Choosing an equation writer for mathIf you're writing in Authorea, you have access to an Equation Editor (\ref{940296}) and a LaTeX Editor (\ref{896173}) and can use either to write equations. The Equation Editor has two ways to write equations: using the Live Editor and using the TeX source.Equation Editor

Introduction to online LaTeX editorsOnline LaTeX editors have only come around recently -- but the advantages are clear if what's needed is a pure cloud-based LaTeX compiler. There are several interchangeable options for online LaTeX editors which provide comprehensive LaTeX package support online.

The web was built specifically to share research papers amongst scientists. Despite this being the first goal of the modern web, most research is still published behind a paywall. We have recently highlighted famous math papers that reside behind a paywall as well as ten papers that have achieved a near rockstar status in research and the public. Here we systematically look at the top one hundred cited papers of all time and find that 65% of these papers are not open. Stated another way, THE WORLD’S MOST IMPORTANT RESEARCH IS INACCESSIBLE FROM THE MAJORITY OF THE WORLD. A few facts about the top 100 cited papers: 1. The weighted average of all the paywalls is: $32.33, rounding to the nearest cent. 2. There are 1, 088, 779 citations of the Open Access articles, so, if they cost the same on average as the Paywalled articles and were paid for individually, they would cost a total of: $35, 199, 108.44–that’s 14 Bugatti Veyrons, or enough to buy everyone in New York City a Starbucks Tall coffee and chocolate chip cookie. In comparison, the total amount for the paywalled articles, assuming everyone bought the paywalled articles individually, is $54, 722, 252.80. 3. That’s 23 Bugatti Veyrons, or enough to buy everyone in New York City a footlong from Subway. 4. Although 65% of the most cited papers are paywalled, only 61% of those paper’s citations are from paywalled journals. Thus the open access articles in this list are, on average, cited more than the paywalled ones.

Introduction to LaTeX Software LaTeX (pronounced lay-tech or lah-tech) is a markup language and document typesetting system. Developed by Leslie Lamport and originally released in 1985, the software has proliferated greatly since its release. It is distributed under a free and open source license, but there are numerous paid LaTeX software offerings  \cite{tex}.Despite the lack of a unified style specification, LaTeX remains a standard for many academic publications. Especially those in areas like physics, astronomy, mathematics, and other technical fields. Despite the lack of a WYSIWYG interface (LaTeX source code is vastly different than rendered LaTeX), LaTeX remains popular for typesetting and publishing because of the professional outputs available via LaTeX software.All LaTeX software originates from TeXThe progenitor of LaTeX is TeX, a typesetting system first introduced by computer scientist and mathematician Donald Knuth in 1978. TeX software was designed to make it easy to translate nonstandard characters to the computer. Also, to ensure that the results would be the same no matter where the content was viewed.Now more than 30 years old, LaTeX remains one of the most popular tools out there for writing scientific and technical content. Authorea recently estimated that ~20% of scholarly articles are still written in LaTeX. This is surprising since LaTeX was developed in the pre-Internet era and was originally designed for a world in which document editors copied the paradigm of pen and paper. Today's leading document editors and LaTeX software are designed for a world in which content is shared and distributed on the web. As a result, the old model of page-based document editing is starting to look more and more obsolete.Most popular LaTeX softwareThe most popular LaTeX software options today are compilers that run locally on a user's machine. Some example are the following:TeXmakerTeXstudioTeXworksTeXliveLyXIssues with LaTeX softwareLaTeX was not created with the modern web in mind. It was created with physical pieces of paper in mind. Therefore, LaTeX software is suited to produce professional on-the-page results. It is ill-suited to produce professionally typeset web content. This has long been a frustration for many and there have been numerous attempts to convert LaTeX to HTML over the years. The future of LaTeX software on the webAuthorea provides the only web-based LaTeX environment that renders beautifully to HTML5 in the browser.Further ReadingMathML on the Web, Please!

Writing math on the web can be difficult -- not on Authorea!Writing equations online can be very painful. While there are many options out there for writing simple math equations, none of them provides as many options as Authorea.How Authorea helps you write mathIn Authorea, you have a few different choices for writing math. You can use the built-in Equation Editor (\ref{940296}), or the built-in LaTeX Editor (\ref{896173}). The Equation Editor has two ways to write equations: using the Live Editor and using the TeX source.These options are covered in detail below.Equation Editor

Some research findings have permeated all parts of our culture -- so much so that we often take the actual ideas and access to them for granted. Would you believe that Einstein's "Does the Inertia of a Body Depend Upon Its Energy Content?" remains behind a paywall, despite being more than 100 years old? Here we show 10 famous papers that have achieved a similar "rockstar" status in the public imagination yet are still subject to paywalls. At Authorea, we believe that open communication is the key to advancing research. We're working every day to make it possible for researchers to have full control over their work and its dissemination. 

Authorea was founded with the mission of improving how researchers write and publish their findings. We created a platform that allows researchers to write across formats, to automatically add and format citations from over 86,594,377 scholarly documents, to directly submit to a growing list of leading journals, and to collaborate easily across continents and disciplines with superior version control.  We built Authorea to be the most powerful editor for researchers because we believe that research is fundamentally important in all aspects of life.  Today, we're happy to announce our latest addition to the Authorea toolset: the ability for researchers assign a digital object identifier (DOI) to their Authorea documents.  With this release, you can now write, cite, host data, and preprint on Authorea.What is a preprint?Preprints are publication-ready research papers that are made public before peer review and formal publication. Preprints are designed to address the speed of scientific communication, the accessibility of knowledge and the existing tendency to report mostly positive results.  Preprints have a long history in research dissemination and are part of the story about how the web was created. They have long been used in physics and math with nearly 10,000 preprints posted per month at ar\(\chi\)iv and are starting to gain rapid adoption in other disciplines like the life sciences.  In fact, the growth of preprints in other disciplines was named one of Science's events that shaped 2016.

CAMBRIDGE, UK, Friday, January 13, 2017 -- Authorea, the leading online editor for writing and publishing research documents, is integrating eLife into its submission system to give authors more options for direct submission to journals.eLife, the non-profit initiative backed by leading research funding organizations and led by scientists, operates a platform for research communication that recognizes and encourages responsible practices in science. eLife is now working with Authorea to allow authors to write and submit research directly to the journal as quickly and easily as possible.eLife’s partnership with Authorea aims to reduce the burden of submission on authors. A new document editor for researchers, Authorea makes it easy to write research documents and to host these online or submit them to journals for publication.Authorea gives authors the ability to write in multiple markup languages and host documents directly as standalone preprints. There are also hundreds of export styles for these documents, and Authorea’s recent integration with EJournalPress (EJPress) provides a direct link to eLife, simplifying the journal submission process.Josh Nicholson, Chief Research Officer at Authorea, says: "We're excited to partner with eLife, a major innovator in research publishing. eLife is an ideal submission destination for the tens of thousands of researchers who use Authorea to write groundbreaking research, and we look forward to partnering with eLife to help scientists gain great exposure for their discoveries."Melissa Harrison, Head of Production Operations at eLife, adds: “We’re delighted to be working with Authorea to make the submission process easier for authors. We hope to see this and other partnerships continue over the coming months, so that we can provide our authors with the best possible writing and publishing tools available to them.”For more information, please contact:Emily Packer, Press Officer, [email protected] 855373Adyam Ghebre, Outreach, [email protected]+1 (646) 598-9285About eLifeeLife is a unique collaboration between the funders and practitioners of research to improve the way important research is selected, presented, and shared. eLife publishes outstanding works across the life sciences and biomedicine -- from basic biological research to applied, translational, and clinical studies. All papers are selected by active scientists in the research community. Responses are consolidated by the Reviewing Editor into a single, clear set of instructions for authors, removing the need for laborious cycles of revision and allowing authors to publish their findings quickly. eLife is supported by the Howard Hughes Medical Institute, the Max Planck Society, and the Wellcome Trust. Learn more at elifesciences.org.About AuthoreaAuthorea is the online document editor for research and the place where scientific collaboration happens. Authorea is trusted worldwide by leading researchers writing and publishing content in every discipline, from astrophysics to zoology. The online document editor supports a wide range of markup languages and scientific integrations, including the most popular citation management, graphing, and visualization plugins. Authorea is on a mission to accelerate science through a superior web-based research-writing platform that delivers powerful tools and capabilities to researchers.

BROOKLYN, NY, March 20, 2017 – Authorea, the online collaborative document editor for researchers, has partnered with Rockefeller University Press (RUP), a leading publisher in the life sciences, to offer better collaboration and submission options for scientists. With this partnership, researchers writing on Authorea can submit directly to The Journal of Cell Biology, The Journal of Experimental Medicine, or The Journal of General Physiology with one-click submission.Authorea has integrated with a growing list of journals in the past year as it pushes to become the one-stop shop for researchers to write collaborative work and disseminate it widely. Researchers writing on Authorea can write in multiple markup languages (including rich text, Markdown, and LaTeX), can easily search, insert, and format citations, as well as automatically format their manuscripts for submission to leading publishers like RUP.The Rockefeller University Press provides scientists and the public with peer-reviewed results of groundbreaking research and vital news and information they can trust. With a strong commitment to quality and integrity, RUP strives to publish excellent science using the latest technologies. It carries out rigorous and fair peer-review, applying the highest standards of novelty, mechanistic insight, data integrity, and general interest. All three journals are led by active scientists in partnership with professional editors, ensuring that RUP represents the communities it serves.Rob O’Donnell, Director of Publishing Technologies at RUP, says: “RUP journals have allowed format-neutral submission for years, making the process fast and efficient for authors. We are happy to integrate with Authorea, who take that efficiency one step further by allowing authors to submit to JCB, JEM, or JGP directly from the authoring tool.”Josh Nicholson, Chief Research Officer at Authorea, says: “We want to make research more robust, open, and impactful. Rockefeller University Press publishes some of the most important journals and research in the world and we’re happy to partner with them to make the writing, submission, and ultimately publication process easier for researchers.”The partnership makes formatting and submitting extremely simple for researchers so that they spend less time formatting and more time on their essential work. With this integration,Press ContactAdyam Ghebre, Outreach, Authorea+1 (646) 598-9285About AuthoreaAuthorea is the online document editor for research and the place where scientific collaboration happens. Authorea is trusted worldwide by leading researchers writing and publishing content in every discipline, from astrophysics to zoology. The online document editor supports a wide range of markup languages and scientific integrations, including the most popular citation management, graphing, and visualization plugins. Authorea is on a mission to accelerate science through a superior web-based research-writing platform that delivers powerful tools and capabilities to researchers.

Social media is generally discouraged in science today. A recent article, "I'm a serious academic, not a professional Instagrammer" castigated scholars with active online social lives. Most advisors won't ask you to "tweet out our paper" or "write a blog post about our findings" and it's likely that you'd close Twitter or Reddit if your colleague or advisor walked by. Some conferences have taken it so far as to enforce a "no tweeting" policy. But social networking is here to stay and will likely become even more integrated into our lives and research.

The 2016 Olympics have captivated the world -- records are breaking, medal counts are climbing, and nationalism is roaring! It's all very exciting. It should get even more exciting in Tokyo in four years time at the 2020 games when several new sports are scheduled to be introduced, including surfing, skateboarding, and... research! Okay, research definitely won't be included, but what if it were? How would each country fare? Here we look at research output vs. Olympic prowess on a per-country basis.

Introduction to online markdownMarkdown is a markup language with a simple text formatting syntax. It is designed to provide basic formatting to text. Each piece of Markdown formatting has a corollary in HTML. This means that online Markdown is easy to write and maintain. Markdown was released in 2004 and is now one of the most popular markup languages on the web, powering GitHub (with Github-flavored Markdown or GFD) and many other sites.Advantages of online markdownOnline Markdown editors make it easy to write Markdown in the browser. Markdown can be integrated into apps for writing (as is the case with Authorea -- which supports inline Markdown). It can also be used as a standalone service for things like note-taking. Some of the most popular online markdown editors are:DillingerMinimalist Online Markdown EditorMarkableStackEditAuthoreaMarkdown for research writingAuthorea is an online document editor that has full Markdown support. Whether you want to write entirely in Markdown, or switch between markdown and richtext, you can do so in Authorea. If you're writing technical or scientific documents you'll find that Authorea can support your writing style. Authorea also renders the online Markdown environment beautifully to HTML5 in the browser. This makes documents into beautiful web pages.

Retraction Watch is a blog that tracks retractions in science -- and it's probably a site you never want your research to be on. To many, retracting your work means that you've committed fraud, and in most cases can be the end of a researcher's career. However, that's not always the case: in fact, retracting your work for the right reasons can even be good for your career and good for science (Lu 2013). Retraction Watch highlights cases where scientists did not retract their work due to fraud, but rather because it was "the right thing."  Here we take the opportunity to further highlight these pieces and the courageous scientists that did the right thing despite an enormous stigma.We believe the future of scholarly communication will be more dynamic than it is today. By definition, this will require more corrections and retractions.  Authorea was built to show the full history of a document, from creation to final publication. We allow annotations of the literature and believe that a more dynamic and robust form of communication is the future -- it's what we're building. Join us!

Authorea is on a mission to build the best research document editor and publishing platform ever made. We believe that the best way to accelerate scientific discovery is to give full control of document creation and distribution to the researcher, and that the best way to do that is to build a web-based editor that enables researchers to collaborate and disseminate their work seamlessly.Authorea,  like many research projects, started with a question: Why is the research writing process so slow? We started with the rough notion that the internet age was failing to deliver optimal tools for things like collaborative writing and submitting works to publishers.  We refined this core idea and launched Authorea two years ago.Since then, we've devoted tens of thousands of hours to understand how to build software that makes it easier for researchers to do groundbreaking work. At the beginning of this year, we started building our new editor -- Authorea Beta -- the editor that will bring Authorea to the mainstream to benefit researchers in every discipline.Today, we're happy to share with you Authorea Beta. Writing research online has tremendous potential for collaboration, dissemination, and discovery. We're here to bring writing online to researchers and we'll be with you every step. 

Today, we're happy to announce the release of a new and improved version control for Authorea documents: History view. What is version control?A version control or revision control system automatically records changes to a piece of text over time. As a result, a document will contain underneath it the story of how it came together -- who made which contributions and when -- with the ability to track changes on a granular level over time. The Authorea system is based on Git, the most popular version control system in the world and one originally developed by the creator of the Linux operating system. 

How researchers communicate with one another and the world has changed very little over the last 350 years. Attempts to improve the process have been implemented throughout the years, not all of which have been to the benefit of research. Here we highlight some policies implemented by various publishers that we believe are antithetical to research communication and what we're doing to try to fix them.

Introduction to online LaTeXLaTeX (pronounced lay-tech or lah-tech) is a Turing-complete markup language and typesetting framework used most often in the physical and mathematical sciences \cite{texentry}. LaTeX has history going back to 1985 -- and TeX, the progenitor of LaTeX, goes back to 1978 when it was introduced by computer scientist and mathematician Donald Knuth.LaTeX is first and foremost designed for typesetting mathematical notation on the printed page. LaTeX gives increased control for typesetting, enabling far stricter control of elements on a page -- from tables to specialized mathematical notation and so forth. LaTeX is widely used in the physical sciences and to this day LaTeX is used for typesetting journals, textbooks, and other structured texts.How to Write Mathematical Equations, Expressions, and Symbols with LaTeXIn recent years, several LaTeX software options have introduced online-only versions that bring the traditional LaTeX compiler to the cloud. These online LaTeX solutions come with advantages and disadvantages, however LaTeX on its own remains problematic for producing web-native content as it's extremely difficult to determine how text will look online if typeset using LaTeX.

What better way to argue for the benefits of open access than to publish a research paper with restricted access rights? While open access has been shown to be beneficial for researchers and the public by numerous studies (some of which are listed below), these same papers make it pretty self-evident that the move to full open access is going to take some time. It is true that more and more open access articles appear each year -- some predict that the volume of open access publications will overtake subscription publications by 2018 -- yet despite the increase in publishers and researchers adopting open access as a modus operandi, paywalls still remain on the vast majority of articles, including many which tout the benefits of open research. The following is a list of articles that while advocating for open research remain, ironically, behind paywalls: