Closure Report
Project Summary
LaTeX is a high-quality typesetting system; it includes features designed for the production of technical and scientific documentation. LaTeX is the de facto standard for the communication and publication of scientific documents and is used currently by the University as a stand alone tool for users.
ShareLaTeX and Overleaf are online LaTeX editors that allow real-time collaboration and online compiling of projects to PDF format.
Currently there are a number of users across the College for OverLeaf and ShareLaTex, primarily of their free services, and it has been raised as to whether the university could get a license for OverLeaf. Some initial polling of opinion has been gathered from academics and research assistants in Engineering and almost all responses have been positive and encouraging (approx. 30).
Initial investigations have also shown that many of the high end competitors of the University (Imperial, Cambridge) have site licenses for OverLeaf or ShareLaTex which they offer to both academics and students.
The Senior User of the project has secured a discount with OverLeaf to pilot it for one year, which started in January 2018. The aim of the pilot is to demonstrate that there is enough interest in the product which will be used as evidence to support the business case for purchasing a site wide license.
Objectives and Deliverables
|
ID |
Description |
Priority (MoSCoW) |
Outcome |
|
O1 |
To define and implement appropriate measures that will help support the business case |
Must |
|
|
D1.1 |
Project Approach Plan (Data Gathering) |
M |
Complete |
|
O2 |
To identify and implement methods for encouraging user participation in the pilot across additional schools |
Must |
|
|
D2.1 |
Project Approach Plan (Marketing) |
S |
Complete |
|
O3 |
To summarise and present collated data in a format suitable for inclusion in business case. |
Must |
|
| D3.1 | Project Approach Plan (Data Presentation) | S | Complete |
|
D3.2 |
Business Case Metrics Report |
M |
Complete |
Analysis of Resource Usage:
Staff Usage Estimate: 10 days
Staff Usage Actual: 10 days
Outcome
The University has acquired a three year licence agreement for Overleaf.
The Senior User of the project has completed a one year OverLeaf pilot which started in January 2018. The aim of the pilot was demonstrate that there was enough demand for the product in other schools across the University and to satisfy that the additional functionality offered through a site wide licence was a worthwhile investment. That criteria was fully met and is evidenced in within the business case metrics.
The success criteria from the pilot were defined and measured to demonstrate that there was positive quantitative indicators for the justification that would support the business case to acquire an appropriate licence model for the University.
These success criteria included; number of additional licences allocated, number of active users increasing, number of new projects started, increasing levels of collaboration and additional schools uptake.
Across all these indicators there was a twofold increase across the board and usage is continuing to grow month on month. October 2017 to November 2018. Details of this can be found in here.
A number of funding options were considered including;
- Option 1 – Purchase Overleaf site wide license funded by University
- Option 2 – Purchase Overleaf license for CSCE funded by College
- Option 3 – Purchase Overleaf license for School of Engineering funded by school
- Option 4 – Purchase Overleaf license for consortium of schools and split costs
Option 1 was the recommended approach for the business case justification.
The Colleges IT leads have agreed to jointly fund, in equal proportions, the purchase over the next three years.
Feedback
A massive massive thanks to both of you!
Overleaf has been transformative for my research group. Since last year, all papers to major journals and theses being written are overleaf based! The best part is the sharing aspect!!
No more emails with a million crazy latex attachments - tex, eps, sty, bib files and heaven knows what! No more the need of a million folders to take care of these and their versions!
Thanks a lot, truly truly transformative!
Prash
---
Dr. Prashant Valluri
Head of Grad School, IMT, School of Eng, Uni of Edinburgh, UK. JSPS Invited Fellow at Kyushu University, Japan
Latest Publications: Phys. Rev. Fluids and Nature Communications
W: http://www.research.ed.ac.uk/portal/pvalluri
_______________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
Well done Antonis and Victoria!
I will certainly be making use of this – I’m fed up of fighting with Word for producing complex documents like the EE1 lab manual. As it happens, I am in the process of converting it to LaTeX (so much cleaner), so now I know that it would also be easier to hand over to someone else in the future if I do,
Dave.
Dr David Laurenson School Of Engineering
Key Learning Points
The business case model used in the project running a pilot and utilising quantitative and qualitative measures to justify investments is to be take forward for future acquisitions.
Outstanding Issues
None
| Attachment | Size |
|---|---|
 sce013_-_business_case_v4.pptx | 434.12 KB |