Collaborative editing

Collaborative editing
This article is about collaborative writing in a technical or academic sense. For collaborative writing of fiction, see Collaborative fiction.
Not to be confused with simultaneous editing.

Collaborative editing is the practice of groups producing works together through individual contributions. Effective choices in group awareness, participation, and coordination are critical to successful collaborative writing outcomes.[1] Most usually it is applied to textual documents or programmatic source code. Such asynchronous (non-simultaneous) contributions are very efficient in time, as group members need not assemble in order to work together. Generally, managing such work requires software;[2] the most common tools for editing documents are wikis, and those for programming, version control systems. Most word processors are also capable of recording changes; this allows editors to work on the same document while automatically clearly labeling who contributed what changes. New writing environments such as Google Docs provide collaborative writing/editing functionalities with revision control, synchronous/asynchronous editing.

Wikipedia is an example of a collaborative editing project on a large scale.


Collaborative writing can lead to projects that are richer and more complex than those produced by individuals. Many learning communities include one or more collaborative assignments. However, writing with others also makes the writing task more complex.[3]. There is increasing amount of research literature investigating how collaborative writing can improve learning experiences[4]

Correct access management systems can prevent duplicated information.[5] Access management systems require access to a server, often online.[6] Collaboration can be more difficult online due to things like time zone issues.[7]


Notes

  1. ^ Lowry, Paul Benjamin, Aaron Mosiah Curtis and Michelle Rene Lowry. "A Taxonomy of Collaborative Writing to Improve Empirical Research, Writing Practice, and Tool Development," Journal of Business Communication (JBC), Vol. 41, No. 1, pp. 66-99, 2004.
  2. ^ Kuutti, Kari et al. (2003). ECSCW 2003: proceedings of the Eighth European Conference on Computer Supported Cooperative Work, p. 315.
  3. ^ "Online Writing Guide". Classweb.gmu.edu. http://classweb.gmu.edu/nccwg/collab.htm. Retrieved 2011-09-21. 
  4. ^ R.A Calvo and S.T O’Rourke and J. Jones and K. Yacef and P. Reimann. (2011) "Collaborative Writing Support Tools on the Cloud" IEEE Transactions on Learning Technologies". 4 (1) pp. 88-97. DOI=http://doi.ieeecomputersociety.org/10.1109/TLT.2010.43
  5. ^ . PMC 1466909. http://www.pubmedcentral.nih.gov/articlerender.fcgi?tool=pmcentrez&artid=1466909. 
  6. ^ http://worldsci.net/paradox.pdf
  7. ^ "Collaboration Structure, Communication Media, and Problems in Scientific Work Teams". Jcmc. indiana.edu. 2006-12-31. http://jcmc.indiana.edu/vol12/issue2/walsh.html. Retrieved 2011-09-21. 

References

See also


Stub icon This network-related software article is a stub. You can help Wikipedia by expanding it.