Denné Reed wrote:
I use LyX for scientific papers but have had problems with both collaborators and editors. Many collaborators are unfamiliar with LyX / LaTeX and it lacks strong collaboration tools (change tracking etc.). I've tried sharing drafts with PDF but that requires colleagues to purchase full versions of Acrobat, and still the tools are tracking changes are not as good.
I've collaborated once with a coauthor who used SciWord, once (most recently) with a coauthor who uses LaTeX and won't adopt LyX (I need to work on my powers of persuasion, obviously) and frequently with coauthors who are limited to Word (or in once case WordPerfect). In most cases I simply declare that I will be the keeper of the official draft. I send them PDFs, they send changes in whatever they care to (just the changes, or maybe a pasted copy of the offending text followed by a rewrite), and I put the changes into LyX. On the most recent collaboration, I used LyX's change tracking feature, but not for the benefit of my coauthor; the journal required that changes in a revision be highlighted with color, and change tracking was the easiest way to do that.
As noted elsewhere, if you want collaborators to be able to mark up a draft and send it back using PDF, you can either try AREnable (which works somewhat spottily in my experience), or get them to install something like FoxIt Reader. Don't count out the option of copying text from a Acrobat Reader and pasting it into (pardon my language) Word. For Word users, that might be easier than screwing with the editing tools in Acrobat.
I've also had problems with journal and book editors, one of which insisted I convert a book chapter written in LyX into Word format despite the fact that the publisher (Elsevier) has a LaTeX document class available. I've also encountered other journals where document classes are not available (e.g. I've not found one for Journal of Biogeography....)
Publishers employ people whose sole mission is to create and enforce arcane and often pointless formatting and submission rules. I find it interesting that we can standardize on Internet communication protocols and (to within two or three common choices) paper sizes, but every journal for some reason needs its own unique bibliographic format.
That said, there are specific LaTeX classes for some journals; LyX is distributed with layouts for some, and it's possible to cobble together layouts for others. (There's a somewhat underutilized IMHO page on the wiki for sharing custom layouts.) For other journals that accept submissions in TeX (or PDF or Postscript), you don't necessarily need to build your own LaTeX class; you may be able to use a standard class and graft on the necessary changes with LaTeX code in the preamble of the document. If you do business repeatedly with that journal, you might even make a template containing your customizations so that you don't have to repeat the process each time.
Unfortunately, there's not much you can do when a journal requires submission as a Word document, although in my experience the unenlightened journals usually accept PDFs as well.
For these reasons I'm tempted to try Scientific Word, but so far I've been put off by the price.
That's how I arrived at LyX: wanted to use LaTeX but didn't want to invest the time to be come a TeXpert (and wasn't geeked about writing in a plain text editor); looked at SciWord but gagged at the price (particularly as I wasn't sure I'd like it); found LyX and got hooked. I'm not sure that SciWord solves the collaboration problem, though, unless your coauthors use SciWord as well. Can you load a SciWord doc in Word, use Word's collaboration tools, put the marked up doc back into SciWord and live through the experience? I can tell you that collaboration between a SciWord users and a LyX or LaTeX user is possible but not entirely easy. SciWord puts custom macros into documents, which are a PITA to deal with.
Here's one reason I like to do the official draft in LyX, even if final submission will be as a PDF and even if my coauthors use Word or WordPerfect: the output looks more "professional". I can't document it, but I suspect that produces a slightly favorable subconscious response in the minds of reviewers, and I'll take whatever edge I can get in the review process.
/Paul
