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We’re excited to announce The University of Manchester as a new Overleaf customer!

The University of Manchester is now offering Overleaf Professional Accounts for all research faculty, staff and postgraduate researchers, via an Overleaf Commons subscription. These premium Overleaf accounts will allow their researchers to harness the full power of Overleaf whilst working on their collaborative research and documents.

Research at The University of Manchester has real-world impact beyond academia. They are at the forefront of the search for solutions to some of the world’s most pressing problems, seeking to be a global force for positive change. From tackling cancer and global inequalities to finding the energy solutions of the future, their research is making a real difference to the quality of people’s lives across the globe.

Not least, the University is at the forefront of research tackling the COVID-19 pandemic working on everything from tests and treatments, to understanding the social and mental health impacts of the disease on individuals and society.

At The University of Manchester, researchers work closely with organisations ranging from government bodies to global businesses, from local health services to registered charities.

Speaking about the launch of Overleaf at the University, Dr Caroline Jay, Reader in Empirically Sound Software Engineering in the Department of Computer Sciences, said:

“Overleaf is used by researchers worldwide and is a great tool for supporting collaboration. Its integration with many high profile journals has the potential to significantly increase the speed at which we publish our research.”

Overleaf has been widely welcomed by the research community at The University of Manchester, as it will allow better collaboration in teams and across disciplines.

Dr Andrew Stewart, Senior Lecturer in the Division of Neuroscience and Experimental Psychology, explains:

“Overleaf is a fantastic platform for working collaboratively. I've used it for a number of years and am really pleased to see that we now have Pro Overleaf accounts which offer full functionality. Writing via Overleaf means you don't have to worry about sending Word documents back and forth between co-authors, with each version adopting an increasingly convoluted title (e.g., "article_version_2_AJS_final_almost_final..."). The huge number of Overleaf templates that are available means you also don't have to spend time worrying about (sub)heading formatting etc., but rather you can focus on the actual task of writing. As an Experimental Psychologist, I find the American Psychological Association (APA) templates a real time saver.”

Dr Alex Casson, Reader (Associate Professor) in the Department of Electrical and Electronic Engineering also explains:

“I get free access to Overleaf Pro via my Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE) membership, but previously no-one else in my team would get the Pro features. Instead, I would always set up the project and then share. It worked, but was quite a pain. We do find we need the Pro features, we typically hit the compilation time limit on free accounts (typically for big documents like theses).

It’s also good to know IT at the University have been over it in terms of export controls, GDPR and so on. It’s an approved tool.

Before Overleaf, we hosted a git repository on a shared server and committed to this when editing a document collaboratively. This was hard work, and you can’t see others changes in real time, so have to handle merges and similar.

What sets Overleaf apart (and all good online tools in my opinion) is that it works seamlessly offline. Everything is easily linked to your Dropbox so you have a local copy and you can edit with your preferred text editor.”

If you're a member of the research faculty, staff member or a postgraduate researcher at The University of Manchester, start taking advantage of this fantastic benefit by connecting your existing Overleaf account or registering for a new Overleaf account via the The University of Manchester Portal.

Interested in an Overleaf Account?

If you think your institution or company would be interested in premium accounts, you can find out more at Overleaf for Institutions or please get in touch with us and we can provide more information and pricing.