How to use github for collaboration on writing and revising papers

… a set of step by step

Step 1. Set up a free github account, go here. Likewise, please ask your collaborators to get github accounts as well (if they do not have them already), or ask them to share their github usernames.

GitHub: Where the world builds software

Step 2. In github, you can upload any file that you want to share with your collaborators. Let’s say you have written a paper called “mypaper1.docx”, a word document and you have several co-authors. You have submitted the paper to a journal and the journal editor has returned the paper for revision. You have revised and you want your co-authors to work on the paper as well. Now your revision is ‘mypaper1_rev.docx”. So, the first thing is for you to upload the paper to your new github site. You upload like this:

Click on add file and upload the file

So, your file now resides on your repository. Your collaborators can either directly edit the file OR they can download and work on their own, but they can only upload the file to your repository if you give them permission, or if they fork the repository to their own. Then they too will be…