Supporting co‑author discussions
I am posting here and not to the wiki‑posting at the top because I am not sufficiently sure of my facts.
I was recently asked to use a new discourse forum I admin as a location for discussing an evolving academic paper as it wends its way through formal peer review. The academic context in this case is multi‑disciplinary numerical energy system analysis — but particular discipline involved should not be especially relevant. Therefore:
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Use‑case: using a discourse instance to discuss evolving modifications to a paper (in this instance requiring “substantial revisions”!)
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Explanation: discourse will be used solely for discussion — the actual edits, the document preparation that is, will take place elsewhere (say Google Docs, Overleaf, MS Teams, or GitLab)
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Requirements: the discussions should be completely private to the author list and visible to no one else (admins excepted)
One solution
I think I first need to create a group with just the co‑authors, say “u4ria‑goals‑authors”. And then a category, say “U4ria goals”. And lock that category and then make it accessible only to the co‑authors group.
One question that arises is that can I make a category “Papers” and then a “U4RIA goals” subcategory and then map “u4ria‑goals‑authors” to just that subcategory?
Closure
Stepping back, perhaps the wider use‑case of private discussions should be worked up more by the discourse devs and discourse community — to see if specific support and better documentation might help in this context? With best wishes, R