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Overleaf for Scholarly Writing & Publication: Home

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OverLeaf Pro accounts are available for CMU faculty, staff, and students. Free 10GB Pro upgrades on Overleaf can be access through CMU's Overleaf Portal https://www.overleaf.com/edu/cmu or login using the institutional login option. 

Overleaf is designed to make the process of writing, editing and producing your research papers and project reports much quicker for both you and your collaborators. Overleaf can also be linked to other services such as arXiv, GitHub, Zotero, and KiltHub to best fit into your workflow.

Features of Overleaf include: 

  • Real-time collaboration in your browser for sharing and editing protected projects with authorized users. You can add and remove collaborators at any time.
  • PDF compiler and visual so you can see the results of your LaTeX editing post-saving in real-time.
  • Real-time preview of projects to review your document while editing and writing.
  • Immediate reporting of errors and warnings as you write, so you can catch issues early, and it shows them inline, so you don't have to find them in the LaTeX log.
  • Automatic typesetting of bibliographies within the Overleaf window: no need to separately compile bibliography (.bib) files.
  • Integrated, streamlined publishing allows you to publish immediately and directly to the journal of your choice with an integrated submission system to many publishing partners
  • Create 'Protected Projects' for added security. You can authorize selected users to have access and can add & remove collaborators at any time.

For teachers, Overleaf also provides a Teaching Toolkit which allows you to quickly and easily create assignments on Overleaf to send out to students: these assignments can then be completed online on Overleaf and submitted back to you with a single click for marking and review.

Contact

For OverLeaf related questions, please contact the University Libraries Publishing Services team.

Linking Overleaf to Other Accounts

As mentioned previously, your Overleaf projects can be linked to other accounts, such as GitHub, arXiv, Zotero, and more. You can also link your ORCiD to your Overleaf account via your CMU portal. The following are resource pages for linking your accounts:

Tools for Collaboration

Every project you create has a secret link. Just send it to your co-authors, and they can review, comment, and edit. Overleaf synchronizes changes from all authors, so everyone always has the latest version. More advanced tools include protected projects and integration with Git (see above.)

Beginner Tutorial

The following video provides an introduction to getting started in Overleaf. For a beginner tutorial on LaTeX itself -- including how to insert figures and tables -- you can read Overleaf's Learn LaTeX in 30 Minutes document.