PaperFlow/R: A cooperative environment for the conception and production of scientific publications

The production of scientific publications is a cooperative activity that usually involves several authors. Current solutions of cooperative editors do not contemplate features such as references management and publications deposit. In this context, the authors have previously developed the PaperFlow platform that integrates the three main functionalities required to produce scientific publications: a cooperative text editor, a cooperative reference manager and a connector to scientific digital repositories. However, this approach did not included tools for a previous important stage: the conception of the scientific publications. This paper proposes an evolution of the original platform to accommodate the conception stage. For this purpose, the specification of PaperFlow/R includes new functionalities such as whiteboards, communication tools and versioning control that improve the cooperation abilities of the platform.