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Physics and Astronomy: Overleaf, LaTeX and Scientific Writing

OverLeaf Library Guide

Overleaf is a popular  LaTeX/Rich Text based online collaborative scientific writing and publishing tool for students and researchers alike. It is designed to make the process of writing, editing, and producing scientific papers quicker and easier for authors. The guide also includes a 30-minute tutorial on LaTeX https://www.overleaf.com/learn/latex/Learn_LaTeX_in_30_minutes

The University of  Southampton is offering Overleaf Professional accounts free of charge to all students and staff who would like to use a collaborative, online LaTeX/Rich Text editor for their projects. This allows you to focus on the contents of the document and the Overleaf tool will take care of the formatting using the correct templates for research papers, documents and more. You also won’t have to worry about version controlling documents, as the tool will allow you to see all changes made and has the ability to revert back to any previous change.  

Researchers and students can now write, collaborate, teach, review and publish directly from their Overleaf accounts. To create or link an existing account go to the University of Southampton Resource portal where joining instructions are given.

The official University of Southampton LaTeX PhD Thesis Template can also be found in the templates (updated 2023) section of the portal.

Link: https://git.soton.ac.uk/uos-latex-group/uos-latex-template

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OverLeaf Library Guide

Additional Help using Overleaf https://www.overleaf.com/learn/latex/Tutorials

LaTex and Writing Lab Reports

LaTeX

The University provides templates in Word and LaTeX that meet the requirements set out in the Regulations.

LaTeX Thesis Templates  https://library.soton.ac.uk/thesis/templates

Information from LaTex web site:  https://www.latex-project.org/

Tutorials and resources from the LaTex web site: https://www.latex-project.org/help/links/

Video tutorials on various LaTeX topics This channel shows a growing collection of high-quality video tutorials from the folks from ShareLaTeX (an online editor for LaTeX) on different aspects of LaTeX, currently a beginners series, a series on Thesis writing, a series on beamer, and one on TikZ.

This article by Keith Reckdahl shows you how to do (almost) anything with graphics: side-by-side, rotated, etc.

Using BibTeX for LaTeX

BibTeX is a tool used with LaTeX that allows you to store reference details in separate files that can be linked to a LaTeX document. There are many, mostly free, versions (distributions) of LaTeX available either for download (e.g. MiKTeX, TeXnicCenter, TeXworks) or as web-based versions (e.g. Authorea, Overleaf, ShareLaTeX). https://www.imperial.ac.uk/admin-services/library/learning-support/reference-management/bibtex-for-latex/

 

Lab Reports

Links:

http://library.soton.ac.uk/sash/pdf-guides

Writing Lab Reports: Get to grips with scientific writing.

University of Toronto Writing Advice on The Lab Report:

https://advice.writing.utoronto.ca/types-of-writing/lab-report/