Real-time scientific collaboration on documents among researchers plays a crucial role in advancing knowledge and accelerating scientific progress.
By enabling researchers to collaborate simultaneously on the same document, regardless of their geographical location, real-time collaboration fosters seamless communication, idea sharing, and knowledge exchange.
It promotes interdisciplinary collaboration, allowing experts from different fields to contribute their expertise and perspectives, leading to more comprehensive and robust research outcomes.
Real-time collaboration also enhances efficiency, as it eliminates the need for multiple versions of documents and streamlines the review and editing process.
Collabora, CodiMD and OnlyOffice: collaboratively edit documents and foster scientific discoveries
Within the Science Mesh, there are three Collaborative Documents technologies:
- Collabora: Collabora is a software consultancy company that specialises in open-source technologies, in particular in office productivity tools
Users can edit office- documents with Collabora. It works collaboratively for multiple users within the same document and is therefore comparable to Google Docs. It offers a document editor, a spreadsheet editor and a presentation editor. It is libre office based and has therefore those document types in native format, but it can also open and edit MS Office-like documents.
- CodiMD: CodiMD is a markdown editor. This is a document format for easily creating structured documents. In contrast to the regular office editors, it is a "what you type is what you get" format. This means that the formatting of a document is also done in the text and not by marking a specific line with the mouse to be a headline, for example. This allows for quicker and more robust editing. The main purpose is for example for quick note-taking, writing (internal) documentation or structuring measurement data.
- OnlyOffice: OnlyOffice is a comprehensive online office suite that provides a set of productivity tools for creating, editing, and collaborating on various types of documents.
In summary, thanks to these technologies you do not have to send around documents via email to edit them or coordinate on when to edit documents if you want to co-edit something with your peers.
Imagine two researchers from two different countries using different sync and share services like Sciebo and Surfdrive working together. Without Science Mesh, they cannot edit documents collaboratively.
When they want to write an article, a paper, a proposal, a review, a report or something else together, they have to coordinate via email on when to open and edit the same document. With Collabora, CodiMD and OnlyOffice integrated into Science Mesh, they can do this together, even if these tools are only available on one of the sides.
Ultimately, real-time scientific collaboration empowers researchers to work together seamlessly, harnessing collective intelligence and driving innovation in their respective fields.
