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Git: How to write reviewers collaboratively and efficiently

Writing the content for reviewers is tough enough as it is, and as a non-programmer but slightly techy person, you are tasked with the job of putting together everything that you and your teammates have produced. You start to put together the Microsoft Word documents together but you find… inconsistent formatting! And possibly… incomplete data! And wait a minute, there seems to be something wrong with the cohesion of the sections you put together!

What do you want as a writer?

As a writer, you want the following things:

  • Ease of collaboration and integration
  • Historical records
  • Accountability and ownership of written content
  • Private or public access

These were the same problems that software developers encountered back in the early 2000s. Linus Torvalds (author of the operating system Linux) then developed Git.

Git is free and open source software for distributed version control [that tracks] changes in any set of files, usually used for coordinating work among programmers collaboratively developing source code during software development.

Git on Wikipedia

These problems were solved almost two decades ago. You can use these tools in a more convenient manner.

How do you recommend I write my documents?

I recommend writing it using Gitbook, or if you’re not scared of a little bit of programming, check out Overleaf.

I’d rather you students focus on studying your course material though rather than learning some programming, or mark up languages.