Google Docs in the University: a Q&A with students from UCC Hillerød, Denmark
Soon after our launch in October 2013 we were contacted by a group of students from UCC Hillerød, Denmark about using Paperpile to write their final thesis project in Google Docs. Since they would only be using Paperpile for a few months, we created a special short-term group license for them and left them to their work.
A few months later we noticed a sudden spike in usage from Denmark, with a few users furiously adding citations and formatting their documents late into the night for days on end. Immediately we knew: our plucky group of students were wrapping up their thesis, using Google Docs and Paperpile to get things ready to print before the Christmas holidays!
We recently caught up with Mathias, Stasa, Morgan and Francis to congratulate them on their successful project and ask a few questions about their experience writing a group project with Paperpile.
What if creationists like your paper about evolution?
Recently, my last paper that I have worked on before I started Paperpile was finally published. I’m quite happy with the work because it brings together my favourite topics: RNAs, genomes and evolution. Unfortunately, I did not have much time following up on the reception of the paper. However, there was at least one review on the web I did not miss.
Walking through a Digital Memorial: the #pdftribute PDFs
Aaron Swartz was a vocal proponent of a free and open Internet and a staunch believer in open access. His Guerilla Open Access Manifesto, written in 2008, is just as powerful and relevant to the world of academic publishing today as it was 6 years ago.
A little over a year ago, the Internet began mourning the loss of this well-loved entrepreneur and pioneer. Tech-savvy academics were shocked by Aaron’s death; some were upset at the handling of his legal case while others called on universities to respond by doubling down on open access to the scientific literature. Meanwhile, the news media were left struggling to explain just what JSTOR was and why Aaron was potentially facing years in prison for downloading a bunch of PDFs.
And then, academics joined together worldwide in a small act of defiant tribute.
Feature update: Share papers with your colleagues
We’re excited to start start the new year with a big Paperpile update, launching one of our most frequently requested features: sharing papers.
As with our other features, we thought carefully about the problem to find a solution that’s simple, powerful, and integrates naturally with your workflow. So we added a variety of functions that make it easy to share papers with your colleagues: Email papers directly from Paperpile, quickly share papers with anyone through a private link, collaborate on a shared folder with other Paperpile users, and share references with your co-authors while writing a paper in Google Docs.
Making friends with linked data
One thing that the Internet couldn’t live without is links. In fact, the Web is pretty much defined as a collection of links between virtual resources, and a fundamental part of good web citizenship is providing links to related pieces of content. Helpful, working links are vital to the health of the web.
So it goes with papers. In today’s complex ecosystem of academic publishing, a single research project may yield several distinct web-based outputs: a preprint manuscript here, peer-reviewed paper here, and dataset over there. The ease with which an author can now disseminate her different research outputs is incredible. With sites like Arxiv, Figshare, Dryad and the nascent Peerage of Science, your data, figures, and manuscripts can live in many different places on the road toward publication.
However, a healthy Web doesn’t necessarily mean a healthy Web for scientists. If websites and search engines aren’t providing the links you need to effectively mine the literature, you’re stuck. Which is why for this post, we stepped into the world-wide web for research and asked whether our papers are getting the links that we, as authors and readers, deserve.