Hullo scientists, fellow researcher here with a question for peers:
Do you have any suggestions for closed-off writing software (no AI scraping, no school oversight, no cloud storage with mysterious and unknown security). As we are all aware, formatting an article can take as much effort as writing the damn thing some days, especially if you do not want to use Microsoft or Google for ethical and privacy reasons.
My peers and I work with a lot of students who want to study and work with vulnerable populations, the sort of populations that some companies and (shameful) universities are attempting to delete evidence of. I am attempting to address some concerns coming up in the classroom without putting my career at risk. What better way than with a lesson and a resource list for secure writing and storage tips?
The school doesn’t pay for a Microsoft license, and some students have expressed feeling unsafe and uncomfortable supporting google. I have suggested Libreoffice as its what I use but some of the students are really struggling with formatting their papers to academic standards in this software. Admittedly, I agree, Libre takes 7-14 steps to do some things google can do in two clicks. I would like to look into alternatives.
Most of the writing applications I’m seeing both free and paid tend to be for creative writers or note taking and I am not seeing tools to make running titles or easily format your sources.
What are you all using, do you have recommendations? I
local tex install in your editor of choice.
WPS Office is the closest to the MS suite, and I believe now it’s available on both Windows and Mac.
If you’re interested in technical academic writing that supports math and robust formatting in particular, LaTeX is still the top of the line. It has a bit of a learning curve, but better for documents that require more control on formatting involving equations, images/figures, advanced paragraph forms, etc.
Edit: @[email protected], newer versions of WPS Office have AI + cloud integration and are exploitable. In light of this thread, I wouldn’t recommend. Thanks, @[email protected].
wonderful! I will add this and your explanation to the list I am compiling. Students love trying new apps
Seconding LaTeX as the gold standard for formatting math/science in written form. Some of my peers in grad school (physics) wrote up their assignments in it (I opted instead for massive reams of handwritten work). However, I did write up my thesis in LaTeX. My university had a LaTeX template for a thesis that took care of the boilerplate formatting, I just had to focus on the content.
interesting, could you tell me a little more about this? I am on their webpage and they emphasize that they are not a word processor application. I am looking at this page on APA formatting examples and thinking that it could be very useful for my graduate classes but probably a bit above (terrify the shit out of) the sophomore class.
It seems to require some knowledge of script writing. I’ll add it to the list because I’m sure a lot of folks will use it but I think that image alone would have some of my students going down to the office to switch majors XDThere’s a large ecosystem of software built around LaTeX that provide different types of interface and other features—see here:
Any recommendations?
ONLYOFFICE (sorry for the caps, poor name) has better docx compatibility than WPS or any other suite. It’s the only thing I’ve found that can do everything in an academic style paper without issue. In addition, its source code is open (unlike WPS) and it has Zotero and Mendeley integrations. Its Zotero integration was better than its Mendeley integration last I checked.
I’m a professor and use ONLYOFFICE as the only word processor on my office computer.
Edit: apparently the Zotero plugin needs to be updated.
I would try the free https://typst.app/ on the command-line. It’s a simpler LaTeX.