The increasing number of co-authored academic papers points to
the importance of collaborative writing in contemporary research.
Digital technologies add a new dimension to collaborative writing
by providing co-authors with access to the same document and
enabling co-authors to edit the shared text at the same time. The
availability of web-based tools for collaborative writing prompts
the question of the extent to which researchers incorporate these
tools into their scholarly practices. Based on my statistical
analysis of the data from the Science 2.0 Survey (2014), conducted
in cooperation with the Leibniz Research Alliance Science 2.0, I
examine the usage of digital technologies in the process of
collaborative writing among researchers in Germany. I use the
concepts of asynchronous and synchronous modes of writing,
derived from the field of Computer Supported Cooperative Work,
to discuss collaborative writing strategies in the context of
Science 2.0. My study shows that researchers use a mixture of
different writing strategies and that they tend to use the same tool
for different writing strategies. Moreover, I discuss researchers’
attitudes towards online text editors. In reflecting on collaborative
writing, I consider both the technological and social aspects.
