When it comes to collaborative authoring for Life Science work, is Word the right choice?

When it comes time to author anything from protocols to regulatory submissions, the Life Sciences turns to Microsoft Word. Is this the right choice? The reason we tend to use Word is, well, everyone has it and we all know how to use it. We all do tend to have it, that is a fact, but we don't all know how to use it.

Word is a good tool for many things, like writing letters to Mom, creating labels, doing a "mail merge". But it is not really great for writing the content that is critical to us. Here is a brief overview of why.

The Life Sciences by nature are a collaborative group. We need to be because expertise lies in many different people but all of this expertise needs to be assemble into one cohesive and consist place (in the submission example). Microsoft Word really allows for authors to do what they want. They can change fonts, sizes, layouts, etc. Of course you can lock down styles but most authors will just get around this with the File>New function.

Also, Word just doesn't do well with long documents. I will say this again, Word just doesn't do well with long documents. Isn't this what we do? Write long documents? Last time I checked, most of the real documents created by Life Science companies are pretty complex and long. What tends to happen is that layouts, numbering, headers and footers - they all lose their place after a document in Word gets too long. That simply isn't acceptable. Authors spend their time trying A) fix problems with their documents or B) make things look the way they want, when their precious time should be spent putting the important information into the document.

What is the alternative? Well the ideal alternative needs a few main things. It needs to be something that all contributing authors have access to. It needs to limit what they can do as far as formatting and "playing" with the way a document looks. It needs to be good with long documents.

When we at Mission3 were thinking about this problem, we decided the solution needed to be web-based. This means everyone can have access to it. More people have a web-browser than have Word. It also means that there is no need for external resources to install software or have their IT departments (if they have such a thing) support it. This also means that there are no documents to download or email, giving precise control over access and versions.

We thought, let's set specific document constructs like heading levels, table headings, figures, equations, and make them fixed so their styles cannot be altered by the author. Then we said, to support collaboration we should allow comments like Word but they should be threaded meaning you can have a discussion over a specific item directly in the document. Also, it should support templates. Now, since we are specific to Life Sciences, maybe those templates can have guidance tracablity, instructions, and referential integrity to other documents.

We are happy to announce we have done all of that. We call it SciAuth and it is part of Mission3 OnDemand 3.0.