Most teams choose their research writing tool the week a paper is due, which is the worst possible time to find out it cannot do what you need.
A tool that is fine for one author can fall apart with four. A free plan that looks generous can stop you the night before submission. A tool that is easy to start with can be hard to leave.
This checklist gives you nine questions to ask about any collaborative research writing tool, including LaTeX editors, Git setups, and word processors. Run your shortlist through it before you commit a paper to one.
The 9-point checklist
1. How does it handle two people editing at once?
There are only a few answers: the file is locked, you merge afterward, or edits combine live. Live editing is the most comfortable for prose, but test it with a real conflict. Ask two people to edit the same paragraph at the same time and see what happens.
2. What does the free plan limit?
This is where surprises hide. Check these before the deadline, not during it:
- How many collaborators can join a project?
- How many projects can you have?
- Is there a daily or monthly compile limit?
- How long can a single build run before it times out?
A tool that limits collaborators on its free plan is a poor fit for a paper with three or more authors, unless you plan to pay.
3. How fast and reliable is compiling?
If you write in LaTeX, the edit-compile-preview loop is where you spend your time. Time a full build of your actual paper, not a demo. Check what happens with a long document, many figures, or heavy TikZ.
4. How much version history do you get?
History is your safety net for big rewrites and for the moment a co-author deletes a section. Find out how far back it goes and whether you can restore a single file or only the whole project. Some plans keep only a short window, and some keep a limited number of versions.
5. Does it have the templates your venue needs?
Look for the specific class your target venue uses, such as IEEE, ACM, Springer, or your university's thesis template. Starting from a working template saves hours of preamble debugging.
6. What happens to your unpublished work?
Unpublished results are sensitive. Look for a clear statement about who can see your projects, where they are stored, and whether your documents are used to train AI models. If the answer is vague, treat that as an answer.
7. Can you leave?
Portability protects you. You should be able to export a plain ZIP of your source files at any time and open it in any other LaTeX setup. Also check that you can import an existing project, so switching in is not a rewrite.
8. How does review and feedback work?
Co-authors and advisors need to comment without rewriting. Find out whether the tool has comments or tracked changes, or whether your team will rely on a convention instead, such as per-author comment macros. If the tool has no built-in review feature, you can still make one with a small amount of structure.
9. What does it cost at your team's size, over the whole project?
Price per person adds up for a lab, and student prices can have eligibility rules. Work out the total for the people you actually have, for the months the project will run, and compare that with the features you will use.
A scorecard you can copy
Score each tool from 0 to 2 on each point (0 = fails, 1 = partial, 2 = solid). Weight the rows that matter most for your team.
| # | Criterion | Tool A | Tool B | Tool C |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Simultaneous editing | |||
| 2 | Free-plan limits | |||
| 3 | Compile speed and limits | |||
| 4 | Version history | |||
| 5 | Venue templates | |||
| 6 | Privacy and AI policy | |||
| 7 | Import and export | |||
| 8 | Review and feedback | |||
| 9 | Total cost for your team |
A total matters less than any zero. A zero on a point your team depends on is a reason to rule a tool out.
Run it on a real project
Do not judge a tool from its homepage. Take a real paper, invite your actual co-authors, and spend one afternoon doing this:
- Import your existing project.
- Have two people edit the same section at the same time.
- Compile the full paper and note the time.
- Roll back to an older version.
- Export a ZIP and open it somewhere else.
If a tool survives that afternoon, it will probably survive your deadline.
Where LetX fits
I work on LetX, a collaborative LaTeX editor, so weigh this part accordingly. Here is how it answers the checklist, based on what is published on the site:
- Collaboration (1, 2): Live editing built on Yjs, with unlimited collaborators and unlimited projects on the free plan.
- Limits (2, 3): The free plan allows 40 compiles per day and builds of up to 2 minutes. Pro removes the daily cap and allows 5-minute builds.
- History (4): The free plan keeps the last 15 versions. Full history is on Pro.
- Templates (5): 1000+ templates, including IEEE, ACM, Springer and Elsevier journal formats and many university theses. Browse the template library.
- Privacy (6): Projects are private by default, and LetX states that documents are never used to train AI models.
- Portability (7): Import any ZIP, including Overleaf exports.
On review and feedback (8), check the current feature set yourself, and use the comment-macro approach from my earlier post on shared notation if you need a lightweight system. Limits and prices change, so confirm them on the pricing page before you decide.
Your turn
Which of the nine points has bitten your team before? Tell me in the comments. Tomorrow I will compare LetX and Overleaf head to head against this same checklist.
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