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Last June, a dedicated global team of Ebola researchers began an ambitious project to track the virus using large-scale genome sequencing. Their research, published \href{http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.cell.2015.06.007}{published  today in Cell, \textit{Cell}},  reveals critical information about how the virus traveled and spread over seven months of the recent Ebola outbreak. The team, which included researchers from the Broad Institute, Harvard University, and more than a dozen other institutions, made a conscious decision to pursue Open Science practices for this project.  They chose to write their paper on Authorea, \href{https://www.authorea.com}{Authorea},  a new science editing and publishing website. The full \href{https://www.authorea.com/19957-ebola-virus-epidemiology-transmission-and-evolution-in-sierra-leone}{full  working version of the paper paper}  is now available to the public for free on Authorea. By using the “History” feature, readers can get a behind-the-scenes look at how the research came together. "When we were kicking off the study, we debated how much would we open up what we're doing," said co-lead author Danny Park. "Our team comes out of the Human Genome Project, so culturally we come from the open science, 'put everything out there' background. And especially in this kind of emergency situation there's a moral imperative to put everything out there." 

Authorea was just one of many tools used by the research team to publish their work as quickly and openly as possible. The team:  \begin{itemize}  \item Published their raw genome data to the GenBank database and Virological.org \href{http://virological.org/c/ebolavirus}{Virological.org  online forum forum}  as soon as it was collected, so that other research teams could use and discuss the data immediately \item Released demographic and clinical metadata on a special website \href{http://fathom.info/mirador/ebola/datarelease}{special website}  to enable other researchers to spot important trends \item Published a Comment \href{http://www.nature.com/news/data-sharing-make-outbreak-research-open-access-1.16966}{Comment  in Nature Nature}  strongly advocating open sharing of data during this and future outbreaks \item Chose Authorea as a platform to write and edit their draft manuscript, \href{https://www.authorea.com/19957-ebola-virus-epidemiology-transmission-and-evolution-in-sierra-leone}{draft manuscript},  allowing readers to view the writing process with full transparency \item Published their article \href{http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.cell.2015.06.007}{article}  as fully Open Access in Cell \end{itemize}  “One of the most rewarding aspects of working in this outbreak response is the connections we have made with so many extraordinary individuals through open data sharing”, said senior author Pardis Sabeti. 

With over 40000 users and a weekly growth rate that has doubled in the past nine months, Authorea is currently the fastest-growing science publishing platform in the world.