org-ref VS reproducible_papers

I love org mode for scientific writing (especially with org-ref [0]) but it’s just not very convenient for collaborative projects because there are very few emacs users (in my field at least). Overleaf has been workable in my experience, but I still get pushback sometimes.

A diff-aware org-latex import would be amazing for this actually, like if pandoc could do tex -> org but align all the code blocks / generated figures

[0]: https://github.com/jkitchin/org-ref

Hi All, I'm a long time user of the org-ref package for writing academic documents in org and exporting to PDF via LaTeX.

Do you have experience with org-ref? If so, would you be able to help me out and tell me why you prefer Citar? It looks very interesting.

doi-utils, part of org-ref, has functions to add bib entries from DOIs.

Sorry, I'm not using org-ref myself yet. However, I think it pretty much addresses your use-case.

My main workflow improvement over the course of my PhD has been making my papers reproducible. This means: I can clone a github repo and in a single command, re-run all computations, re-generate all figures and tables, and compile the final paper.

Any manual step like "resize the figure window until the proportions look good" or "run script A, then run script B", or "upload this file to Overleaf" creates an opportunity for your results (figures and tables) to become out of sync with your source code. This can cause big problems.

I use Makefiles to accomplish this [1], but the exact techniques don't matter. The main point is the end goal.

More broadly, in research it's always tempting to do things quick and dirty. Conference deadlines loom. Code bases are usually small and short-lived. But in my experience, your 4-months-later future self will appreciate tests, documentation, etc. just as much as your 4-years-later future self.

You can still be quick and dirty when it comes to project scope. This is where you get most of the speedup anyway. Go ahead write a function that doesn't handle edge cases, but add a comment about it!

[1] https://github.com/jpreiss/reproducible_papers