Overleaf

Cloud-based LaTeX editor

Overleaf

Overleaf running as a PWA on Windows 11

Original author(s)| John Hammersley and John Lees-Miller
Repository| github.com/overleaf/
Written in| JavaScript
Platform| Web platform
Type| Web application
License| AGPLv3
Website| www.overleaf.com

Overleaf is software for running a collaborative cloud-based LaTeX editor used for writing, editing and publishing scientific documents. More precisely, the term "Overleaf" may refer to the free-licensed software itself, to the main website running a proprietary version of the software, or to the organisation hosting the website running the proprietary software version.[1][2][3]

The Overleaf organisation works with several scientific publishers to provide official journal LaTeX templates and direct submission links.[4][5][6]

The Overleaf software was conceived by John Hammersley and John Lees-Miller, who started developing it in 2011[7] as WriteLaTeX, through their company WriteLaTeX Limited.[8][9][10][11][12] Both are mathematicians and were inspired by their own experiences in academia to create a better solution for collaborative scientific writing.[13][14] They launched a beta version of Overleaf on 16 January 2014, at the first #FuturePub event, held at the British Library in London.[15][16]

After merging with ShareLaTeX in 2017, the developers released Overleaf v2, combining original features from both into a single cloud-based platform.[17]

## History

[edit]

Overleaf was selected as one of the ten teams who participated to the 2013 Summer's Bethnal Green Ventures (BGV) accelerator programme.[18][19][20] That program started on the July 1, 2013, and lasted for 3 months.[21][22][23] The Demo Day of that BGV 2013 Summer program was held on the September 19, 2013.[24]

The Overleaf organisation received strategic investment from Digital Science in 2014.[25][26][27][28] Overleaf won Innovative Internet Business at the 2014 Nominet Internet Awards,[29] and featured 99th in SyndicateRoom's 2018 list of Britain's top 100 fastest-growing business.[30]

Overleaf was described as a tool for writing scientific publications in Nature,[31] Science,[32] Red Hat's opensource.com[33] and the German IT magazine Heise Online.[34] In 2017, CERN, Europe's particle-physics laboratory near Geneva, provided the proprietary, hosted version of Overleaf to its members. A survey found that Overleaf was more popular than Authorea and doDoc.[31][35]

Overleaf provides templates for submission to scientific journals and conferences. For example, the IEEE[36] and Springer[37] (including Nature[38]) mention the possibility for submission using Overleaf.

### Merge with ShareLaTeX

[edit]

On 20 July 2017, Overleaf acquired ShareLaTeX to create a combined community of over two million users.[39][40][17] This led to the creation of Overleaf v2, combining original features from both into a single cloud-based platform hosted at overleaf.com.[17]

In May 2021, Lees-Miller (Overleaf), Paulo Reis (Overleaf), and Sven Laqua (Digital Science) were awarded the SIGCHI Best Case Study Award at the ACM CHI2021 Conference for their case study "Merging SaaS Products In A User-Centered Way: A Case Study of Overleaf and ShareLaTeX".[41][42]

## See also

[edit]

* Free and open-source software portal

* Collaborative real-time editor
* Comparison of TeX editors
* TeX – Typesetting system

## References

[edit]

1. ^ "Write papers like a modern scientist (use Overleaf or Google Docs + Paperpile)". Simply Statistics blog. Retrieved 7 March 2020.
2. ^ "Overleaf - About us". Overleaf. Retrieved 7 March 2020.
3. ^ Overleaf – An open-source online real-time collaborative LaTeX editor., 29 March 2024, Wikidata Q133891194, archived from the original on 29 March 2024
4. ^ "ScholarOne Partner Program". Web of Science Group. Retrieved 18 November 2019.
5. ^ "New partnership between AIP Publishing and Overleaf provides an enhanced authoring experience". AIP Publishing. 22 October 2018.
6. ^ "Gallery — Direct Submission Link". Overleaf. Retrieved 18 November 2019.
7. ^ Hammersley, John (Winter 2015). "Collaborative Writing". Journal of Electronic Publishing. 18 (1). doi:10.3998/3336451.0018.116. hdl:2027/spo.3336451.0018.116. Retrieved 7 March 2020.
8. ^ "WriteLaTeX limited". Companies House. Retrieved 7 March 2020.
9. ^ "WriteLaTeX limited". OpenGovUK. Retrieved 7 March 2020.
10. ^ "WriteLaTeX limited". Endole. Retrieved 7 March 2020.
11. ^ "WriteLaTeX limited". DueDil. Retrieved 7 March 2020.
12. ^ "WriteLaTeX has built a Cloud-based collaborative paper writing platform for academics". CMSWire. Retrieved 7 March 2020.
13. ^ Budrikis, Zoe (10 May 2019). "Interactions: John Hammersley". On Your Wavelength - A physics blog from the Nature journals. Retrieved 7 March 2020.
14. ^ King, George (2 July 2015). "The Overleaf Founder Story". Digital Science News Blog. Retrieved 18 November 2019.
15. ^ Freyfogle, Ed (17 January 2014). "The #futurepub event". Ed Freyfogle Blog. Retrieved 7 March 2020.
16. ^ Mulvany, Ian (18 January 2014). "WriteLateX/Overleaf launch event at the British Library". ScholCommsProd Blog. Retrieved 7 March 2020.
17. ^ a b c "ShareLaTeX is now part of Overleaf". ShareLaTeX. Retrieved 8 March 2020.
18. ^ "Announcing BGV Summer 2013 Cohort!". Bethnal Green Ventures Blog. 24 June 2013. Retrieved 8 March 2020.
19. ^ "Teams announced for Bethnal Green Ventures Summer 2013". Nesta. 24 June 2013. Archived from the original on 2013-07-07. Retrieved 7 July 2013.
20. ^ "WriteLaTeX joining forces with Bethnal Green Ventures and Nesta". Overleaf Blog. 25 June 2013. Retrieved 8 March 2020.
21. ^ "The Bethnal Green Ventures Incubator opens for entries". Startacus. 17 March 2013. Retrieved 8 March 2020.
22. ^ "We're back!". Bethnal Green Ventures Blog. 14 February 2013. Retrieved 8 March 2020.
23. ^ Miller, Paul (14 February 2013). "Bethnal Green Ventures — some good news". Paul Miller Blog. Retrieved 8 March 2020.
24. ^ "And suddenly… it's almost DEMO DAY!". Bethnal Green Ventures Blog. 17 September 2013. Retrieved 8 March 2020.
25. ^ Shepherd, Cameron (23 July 2014). "Digital Science Invests in London start-up WriteLaTeX". Digital Science News Blog. Retrieved 9 March 2020.
26. ^ "Digital Science invests in WriteLaTeX". Research Information. 23 July 2014. Retrieved 9 March 2020.
27. ^ Zhou, Larry (23 July 2014). "WriteLaTeX picks up funding to push its collaborative academic writing tool". VentureBeat. Retrieved 9 March 2020.
28. ^ Page, Benedicte (24 July 2014). "Digital Science in WriteLaTeX investment". The Bookseller. Retrieved 9 March 2020.
29. ^ "Nominet Internet Award winners 2014 revealed". Nominet. 3 July 2014. Retrieved 8 January 2020.
30. ^ "Britain's Top 100 fastest-growing businesses 2018". SyndicateRoom. Retrieved 8 January 2020.
31. ^ a b Perkel, Jeffrey M. (2020-03-31). "Synchronized editing: the future of collaborative writing". Nature. 580 (7801): 154–155\. Bibcode:2020Natur.580..154P. doi:10.1038/d41586-020-00916-6. PMID 32235940.
32. ^ Pain, Elisabeth (2018-04-30). "How to write your Ph.D. thesis". Science | AAAS. Retrieved 2020-06-11.
33. ^ Donnelly, Lois (3 November 2015). "A breakdown of FOSS for students and researchers in academia". Opensource.com. Retrieved 2020-06-11.
34. ^ "LaTeX im Browser: Overleaf und ShareLaTeX fusionieren". iX Magazin (in German). Retrieved 2020-06-11.
35. ^ Kasioumis, Nikos; Brancolini, Valeria (2019). Forti, A.; Betev, L.; Litmaath, M.; Smirnova, O.; Hristov, P. (eds.). "Collaborative Scientific Authoring at CERN: A user-centered approach". EPJ Web of Conferences. 214: 07003. doi:10.1051/epjconf/201921407003. ISSN 2100-014X. S2CID 203696999.
36. ^ "What is Overleaf?". IEEE. Retrieved 2020-06-11.
37. ^ "Write your article using Overleaf | Springer". www.springer.com. Retrieved 2020-06-11.
38. ^ "Submit a LaTeX manuscript to a Springer journal using Overleaf". Springer Nature Support. Retrieved 2020-06-11.
39. ^ "Overleaf and ShareLaTeX join forces to create community of two million". Research Information. 20 July 2017. Retrieved 18 November 2019.
40. ^ "Overleaf and ShareLaTeX join forces to create community of two million". Society for Scholarly Publishing (SSP). 20 July 2017. Retrieved 8 March 2020.
41. ^ "Merging SaaS Products In A User-Centered Way: A Case Study of Overleaf and ShareLaTeX (Conference entry)". SIGCHI. Retrieved 2021-06-01.
42. ^ Reis, Paulo; Lees-Miller, John D.; Laqua, Sven (2021). "Merging SaaS Products in a User-Centered Way — A Case Study of Overleaf and ShareLaTeX". Extended Abstracts of the 2021 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems. New York: Association for Computing Machinery. pp. 1–8\. doi:10.1145/3411763.3443455. ISBN 9781450380959. S2CID 233987710.

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