---
author: Sam White
toc-title: Contents
toc-depth: 5
toc-location: left
date: 2017-01-23 20:30:38+00:00
layout: post
slug: manuscript-writing-the-nuances-of-using-authorea
title: Manuscript Writing - The "Nuances" of Using Authorea
categories:
  - 2017
  - Genotype-by-sequencing at BGI
  - Miscellaneous
tags:
  - Authorea
  - BibTeX
  - LaTeX
  - manuscript
  - olympia oyster
  - Ostrea lurida
  - troubleshooting
---






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**PROBLEM**: Authorea spits out a browser-crashing "unresponsive script" message (actually, lots and lots of them; clicking "Stop script" or "Continue" just results in additional messages) in Firefox (haven't tried any other browsers). This renders the browser inoperable and I have to force quit. It doesn't happen all of the time, so it's hard to pinpoint what triggers this.



![](https://eagle.fish.washington.edu/Arabidopsis/20170123_authorea_script_bug.png)(http://eagle.fish.washington.edu/Arabidopsis/20170123_authorea_script_bug.png)








* * *





**PROBLEM**: Authorea remains in a perpetual "saving..." state after inserting a citation. It also renders the page strangely, with HTML <br></br> tags (see the "Methods" section in the screen cap below).

![](https://eagle.fish.washington.edu/Arabidopsis/20170123_authorea_saving_bug.png)(http://eagle.fish.washington.edu/Arabidopsis/20170123_authorea_saving_bug.png)



**SOLUTION**: Type additional text somewhere, anywhere. This is an OK solution, but is particularly annoying if I just want to go through and add citations and have no intentions of doing any writing.





* * *





**PROBLEM**: Multi-author citations don't get formatted with "et al." By default, Authorea inserts all citations using the following LaTeX format:

`\cite{Elshire_2011}`

Result: (Elshire 2011).

This is a problem because this reference has multiple authors and should be written as: (Elshire et al., 2011).

**SOLUTION**: Change citation format to:

`\citep{Elshire_2011}`

Other citation formatting options can be found here (including multiple citations within one set of parentheses, and referring in-text author name with only publication year in parentheses):

[How to add and manage citations and references in Authorea](https://www.authorea.com/users/9932/articles/12628/_show_article)



* * *







**PROBLEM**: When a citation no longer exists in the manuscript, it still persists in the bibliography.

**SOLUTION**: A known bug with no current solution. Currently, have to delete them from the bibliography by hand (or, maybe figure out a way to do it programatically)...



![](https://eagle.fish.washington.edu/Arabidopsis/20170123_authorea_bib_bug.png)(http://eagle.fish.washington.edu/Arabidopsis/20170123_authorea_bib_bug.png)





* * *





**PROBLEM**: Cannot click-and-drag some references from Mendeley (haven't tested other reference managers) without getting an error. To my knowledge, the BibTeX is valid, as it appears to be the same formatting as other references that can be inserted via the click-and-drag method. There are some references it won't work for...

![](https://eagle.fish.washington.edu/Arabidopsis/20170123_authorea_bibtex_bug.png)(http://eagle.fish.washington.edu/Arabidopsis/20170123_authorea_bibtex_bug.png)



**SOLUTION**: Use the search bar in the citation insertion dialogue box. Not as convenient and slows down the workflow for citation insertion, but it works...