Astrophysicist Shows Off Academic Authoring Platform at Montclair State

At a meeting of Montclair Entrepreneurs that took place at Montclair State University on Sept. 16, Alberto Pepe, an astrophysicist-turned-entrepreneur, presented the system he developed called “Authorea.”

According to Pepe, who cofounded his company, modern research is not a solo activity.  It is done with multiple authors. In fact, a recent publication developed on Authorea by researchers out of the European Organization for Nuclear Research (CERN) had almost 130 authors. That article can be found here.

While researchers at CERN are the most prolific users of the platform, the goal is to make writing, publishing and collaborating something that you don’t need to be a rocket scientist (or an astrophysicist) to do. The Authorea team appears to have been successful in its attempt.

Authorea has a rich feature set that enables you to:

·       write online publications, be it a journal or a business plan;

·       collaborate with others, with complete version control of who added what when;

·       search for and cite papers (and Authorea automatically creates the bibliography for you);

·       insert comments on published or in-process works by yourself or others; and,

·       most importantly, to instantly transform your work with the click of a button into the specific format required for publication.

The Authorea system has both public and private authoring capabilities but, according to Pepe, public authoring and the full sharing of research data even prior to publication is the future.

The event was presented by The Theresa and Lawrence R. Inserra Chair in Italian and Italian American Studies, Department of Spanish and Italian, in collaboration with the Feliciano Center for Entrepreneurship at Montclair State University.