Collaborative Documents

It is common practice for multiple writers to co-author research papers. In the past, this has meant producing multiple drafts that must be either mailed, or emailed back and forth. Some software has made this process easier, such as 'track changes' in Word, and collaboration features in Adobe Acrobat, but these still require the storing and sending of multiple drafts of documents.

A new free product from Google is Google Docs & Spreadsheets that makes collaborating much easier than in the past.

This program allows a document owner to invite collaborators to join into the writing of a document that is housed online. This eliminates the need to use your local network space, and eliminates the problem of sorting through multiple revisions and document versions.

The program also allows the owner to invite viewers - people that can read the paper, but cannot make any adjustments.

You can use the account that you created for your blog in order to log into Google Docs & Spreadsheets.

Click here to go to Google Docs & Spreadsheets.

Click on the link to take a tour of Google Docs & Spreadsheets, then follow the links to create a document, and share your document with a colleague.

If you use a MAC, click here for information about using Google Documents.

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