Digital Science Invests in London Start-up WriteLaTeX

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Jul 23, 2014, 08:14 ET

LONDON, July 23, 2014 /PRNewswire/ --

Award-winning collaborative scientific writing tools to speed up scientific research

Macmillan Science & Education is pleased to announce that Digital Science, its global technology division providing software and technology tools to scientists and researchers, has invested in WriteLaTeX - a London based scientific start-up and creators of the leading online collaboration platform for scientific research, Overleaf.

Overleaf is a premier system which gives users the ability to author and edit scientific papers, research and reports quickly and accurately. Using a WYSIWYG manuscript editor Overleaf provides real-time collaboration for a live view of the final typeset output. Created with the goal of making science and research faster, more open and more accessible, Overleaf brings the whole scientific process into one place, from idea to writing, to review to publication.

Digital Science supports a suite of renowned researcher tools across a wide portfolio of companies across the globe, including ReadCube, Figshare and Labguru. The addition of WriteLaTeX into the Digital Science portfolio will afford the group increased opportunities to serve researchers, publishers and academic institutions. WriteLaTeX plans to continue to enhance the development of Overleaf to reach its ambitious target of one million users worldwide. The team of four will be based in Digital Science's London HQ whilst having easy access to Digital Science's offices and portfolio companies in the USA, Japan, Israel and Germany.

Overleaf's rapidly growing service is already being used in more than 1,000 universities and institutions globally and has been utilised to create more than one million documents by users in over 180 countries worldwide. It already has more than 100,000 registered users worldwide. In July 2014, Overleaf was crowned Innovative Internet Business of 2014 at the Nominet Internet Awards held in London, representing the pinnacle of online innovation in the UK.

WriteLaTeX was co-founded by John Hammersley and John Lees-Miller, two mathematicians who, having worked together, were inspired by their own experiences in academia to create a better solution for collaborative scientific writing.

John Hammersley, Co-founder and CEO at WriteLaTeX said: "This is a great day for our team, and we're all incredibly proud of what we achieved to get us to this point. Our focus has always been on developing tools for our authors, and this investment gives us the opportunity to ensure we are able to deliver a complete authoring solution for the scientific world."

"Science is increasingly asked to provide solutions to society's most pressing issues and to do so, scientists need to be able to deliver results faster and in a way that is more open, trustworthy and meaningful to those outside the scientific community. We welcome WriteLaTeX into the fold and look forward to working closely together to change the way we support, deliver and measure scientific research," commented Timo Hannay, Managing Director, Digital Science.

About WriteLaTeX

Launched in 2012, WriteLaTeX has grown rapidly to become an innovative provider of scientific writing tools. Its flagship product, Overleaf makes the power of professional typesetting immediately accessible to all scientists and technical writers at all stages of their career. WriteLaTeX is also supported by Bethnal Green Ventures and business advisors, Ed Freyfogle and Steven Feldman.

Visit: https://www.writelatex.com/overleaf and follow @WriteLaTeX on Twitter.

About Digital Science

Digital Science is a technology company serving the needs of scientific research. Whether at the bench or in a research setting, their range of products help to simplify workflows and change the way science is done. Their portfolio brands include Altmetric, Labguru, Figshare, ReadCube, ÜberResearch, BioRAFT and Symplectic. Digital Science is a business division of Macmillan Science and Education.

Visit http://www.digital-science.com and follow @digitalsci on Twitter.

About Macmillan Science & Education

Macmillan Science and Education has over 5,700 employees in over 50 markets, and supplies high-quality content and innovative digital products and services to customers in 120 countries around the world. Macmillan Science and Education is part of the Holtzbrinck Publishing Group, and unites all of Macmillan's scientific, scholarly, academic and education businesses.

Visit: http://www.learndiscover.com and follow @MacmillanSandE on Twitter.

SOURCE Digital Science