Most research today is not in Open Access JournalsThe majority of research today is published behind a paywall (figure \ref{420454}).  This is unlikely to be the case in the next few years. Particularly since new policies require research to be published in open access journals (figure \ref{420454}).  First coined in the early 90's, open access refers to content that is freely accessible and reusable under specific copyright agreements, such as the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 license (CC-BY 4.0). What has lead to the rise of open access journals? How does Authorea, a collaborative authoring platform, fit within the landscape?

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!

Deciding between Overleaf and Authorea? Choosing the right editor for your LaTeX manuscript is simple. Here are some key comparisons to help you decide. 

Introduction to document editorsA document editor or word processor is a software application that helps write, edit, format, and publish documents. A document editor differs from a text editor in that it is purpose-built for creating human-readable documents -- rather than simply for modifying text or code snippets. If you look at virtually any industry -- education, research, business, and so on -- document editors are more or less ubiquitous. The most popular document editors globally are Microsoft Word and Google Docs, but it wasn't always that way.History of the document editor

Writing your thesis often comes after years of work and research. It is an exciting process that marks an important transition in your life and career as a student. If you are reading this, you are probably considering or starting writing a thesis... Congratulations! Theses can range from a few dozen pages to hundreds (see Fig \ref{974669}), depending upon discipline. While many students choose to write their thesis offline in Microsoft Word or in LaTeX, there is a growing number of student's choosing to write their thesis online, with tools like Authorea.

Writing research documents has not advanced much in the last few decades. Researchers, as a whole, still write their documents in Microsoft Word \cite{Pepe}, emailing different versions back and forth amongst each other. This workflow predates online document editors, making research collaboration and dissemination slower and more tedious than what is technically possible today in 2017.  This is why we built Authorea, a modern collaborative online document editor for researchers, to make research collaboration and dissemination seamless.  Below we highlight the benefits of writing research with an online document editor, like Authorea.What are the benefits of writing with an online document editor?1. Less emails in your inbox!

Research collaboration has not advanced much in the last few decades. Researchers, as a whole, still write their manuscripts in Microsoft Word \cite{Pepe_2016}, emailing different versions back and forth amongst each other. This workflow predates online text editors. As a result, collaboration is slower and more tedious than what is technically possible today in 2017.  This is why we built Authorea. It's a modern, collaborative online text editor for researchers that makes the process seamless.  Below we highlight the pro's of preparing research with an online text editor like Authorea.Why should researchers write their papers with an online text editor?1. Save your inbox from a deluge of unnecessary emails.On average people receive 121 emails per day. Collaboration across labs, continents, and markup languages can lead to a messy inbox like below. In contrast, researchers who write online save time and their inbox.

Software started in university aisles and, as such, a lot of software today is academic software. Software programs make researchers' work more efficient and competitive. Here are the five best software tools that can help academics especially in their data-based and authoring practices. Note that all these tools integrate with Authorea - the collaborative word processor for academics.1. GithubFourteen million software developers use Github to collaborate and maintain code repositories. Although originally designed for professional developers, Github has now expanded to the classroom. Authorea is also based on git, so integration between the two platforms is as easy as clicking a button.  This feature allows researchers to work offline and provides access to version controls via Github. Read more about Authorea Github Integration here: Syncing articles to GitHub2. PlotlyAcademics and researchers use Plotly to analyze and to visualize plots and graphs. Plotly generates graphs in a variety of formats. Many of these also have interactive online capabilities. Authorea integrated with Plotly so researchers can create and access interactive graphs.3. Jupyter Notebooks (IPython notebooks)Jupyter is a virtual lab environment that contains mathematics, plots, rich media, text, and code. Instructors across academia use Jupyter to conduct research and easily inspect rerun analyses. Authorea is integrated with Jupyter notebooks so that collaborators can create data-rich manuscripts. 4. AuthoreaAuthorea itself is one of the best tools to write academic papers in collaboration. You may think of it as a Google Docs for academia. Google Docs is the most widely used collaborative editor in the world. Despite its prevalence, it lacks many features for citation management, math, LaTeX, and version control. Authorea makes it easy to import any Google Doc directly into Authorea by simply copying and pasting the URL of the document you wish to import. 

Writing a thesis is a laborious process that takes months. Thesis writing marks the culmination of years of work for many students and is a process that can be both exciting and terrifying. Whether you are an undergraduate, a masters, or a doctoral student, writing your thesis or dissertation means work, and lots of it. Get ready and try to make the most out of the experience. While arduous, it can also be gratifying.How long is a thesis?The average length of a thesis varies depending upon discipline and the degree you are pursuing. However, most doctoral theses and dissertations are dozens, if not hundreds, of pages long (see Fig \ref{382478}). On average, the longest theses are found in history and anthropology (300 pages long) whereas the shortest ones are in mathematics and biostatistics (100 pages or less). 

Among the public, there are three potential population of foster care enablers, categorized by their commitment levels. One group is people who clearly want to be or have been foster parents. Another group is people who are on the fence of becoming one. The third group is people who do not want to be foster parents now, however, want to know more about the system. They are potential social recruiters who have been neglected by ACS and foster care agencies while would contribute greatly advocating foster care parenthood among the community.Based on how the website and information are distributed, ACS has only focused on the first group. By valuing the latter two groups, we can improve both the volume and the quality in the recruitment pool of foster parents. We documented our experiences as the third group when using ACS website and getting information to explain how we observe ACS is neglecting the latter two groups. Search info on ACS websiteWhen we entered ACS’s website, it didn’t address much on why someone should be a foster care parent, however it has clear steps on how to become one.When there’s little information on the benefit of becoming a foster care parent, ACS assumes that all website visitors have strong motivation and ACS does not need to encourage them more. This shows that ACS foster care website’s intended audience is only for the first group.When the second group (people on the fence) sees little info on why, the probability of advancing to the final step of the recruitment process goes down. And as the third group, we did not become more interested in the system and would less likely to recommend foster parenting to friends and communities.Request for more informationOn ACS site, besides the FAQ, there’s a link to request more information. This is a great feature for people wanting to learn more about foster care. Yet, when we clicked the link, we were redirected to Prospective Parent Recruitment Form. As social recruiters, we were overwhelmed by being titled as prospective parents and did not want to move forward to the next step, continuing asking for more information.

The majority of the world's population has not and will not ever publish a scientific paper. That fact is even more true for pets. Yes, dogs, cats, hamsters. Pets. Surprisingly, however, there are papers with pets as authors. Here's a selection of three articles coauthored by our furry friends.1. Hamster: Tisha 🐹 Do you have a paper with a Nobel laureate? No? Well... Hamster Tisha does! The pet hamster of the physics Nobel laureate Andrew Geim was co author on the publication "Detection of earth rotation with a diamagnetically levitating gyroscope" \cite{Geim_2001}. Go Tisha!

The importance of citations in scholarshipCitations are arguably one of the defining features of research communication. Linking the corpus of knowledge together, across time and space, they connect Einstein's work at the beginning of last century \cite{Einstein_1906} to researchers writing important physics research today \cite{Stanislavsky_2017}. This web of knowledge is immensely powerful for the analysis of ideas over time and for determining what might be important or not. If you imagine the scholarly corpus as a brain you can think of scholarly citations as its neural connections.

Science writing is an important part of the research cycle. Even if findings are sound, poor communication can derail the progress of experiments and policy decisions. We would expect universities to teach science writing to undergraduate and graduate students. But they don't. Instead, researchers "learn by doing". This is having negative consequences as scientific papers become harder to read \cite{Plaven-Sigray119370}.

Academic writing and its importanceWriting is a big part of an academic researcher's career. From grants, manuscripts, and emails -- academics spend a lot of time writing. But how much time is hard to determine. Ironically, there has not been enough writing on academic writing! One study suggests that researchers spend just two percent of their work week on writing (See Figure \ref{130672}, \citealt{Ziker_2014}). Of course, depending on how long your work week is, that may not amount to much. 

In this document, you can find a number of examples showing how to typeset beautiful mathematical equations with LaTeX. In the first part of the document, you find the examples. At the bottom, in section \ref{sec:source}, you find the full code to generate these examples. A more generic guide on how to insert LaTeX blocks in your documents can be found here.

Project Overview                This project focuses on Challenge #2: Expedite the Scoring Process & Expand Onboard Families.                For the first task, Classification and Regression Tree (CART) method is introduced. The decision tree is used to predict how likely an applicant will adopt a child in a permanent manner by examining his/her profile. Taking the probability as the “score”, this method can significantly accelerate the relevant process in an agency.                For the second task, an unfolding multidimensional scaling (MDS) model is adopted. This method helps us visualize what type of children is more attractive to a certain type of families by mapping these two-mode data onto a same plot. The agency can then match families with the closest kids showing on the plot in order to raise their interest in and patience with the adoption process and reduce the attrition rate in the duration.                At last, two interactive tools based on these two methods are designed for Foster Care agencies to quickly score an applicant and match an onboard family with a kid.MethodsSelecting Datasets:                 Adoption and Foster Care Analysis and Reporting System (AFCARS), Adoption File FFY 2015 and Foster Care FFY 2015 by the Children's Bureau (St = “NY”)Generating Variables:1. For Decision Tree: 23 variables in total

Team: Data Enthusiasts

1 The Problem  We took on Design Challenge #1 to analyze the problem of identifying optimal foster families using relevant literature to guide our approach.2 Our AssumptionsWe defined a successful placement to be a discharge reason of any of the four possible permanency outcomes. This limited us to a sample size of 6,008 cases in Manhattan from 2015_AFCARS_Foster_Data, 1,454 of which resulted in a permanency outcome. Our chosen model parameters are also based on the most important family and child characteristics in literature.3 Our ApproachAfter exploring, cleaning, and clustering the data into intuitive groups, we created a logistic regression model that could predict the probability of a permanency outcome.