Guide to Overleaf and LaTeX at NJIT

Welcome to the Overleaf and LaTeX guide at NJIT. 

What is LaTeX?

LaTeX (pronounced either “LAY-tek” or “LAH-tek” depending on who you talk to) is a tool that lets anyone create beautifully typeset documents. It’s the code you write in when you use Overleaf’s Code Editor.

What is Overleaf? 

Overleaf is the scientific and technical writing platform loved by over 16 million users worldwide for its powerful online LaTeX editor, thousands of ready-to-use templates, and seamless collaboration features.

NJIT students, faculty and staff can sign up for an Overleaf Professional account. Visit the NJIT Overleaf page and use your NJIT credentials to log in. 

There are several ways to get help: 

1. Contact Overleaf support -- support@overleaf.com 

2. Use contacts in your department -- network to find your way to a local expert.

3. Send a message to askalibrarian@njit.edu.

4. We are asking for volunteers to sign up for a LaTeX help group -- Get in touch with Jill Lagerstrom if you are interested.

5. Use one of the helpful resources found in this guide -- videos, tutorials, forums, FAQs and more. 

6. Overleaf provides regular free webinars -- register for one to learn Overleaf.

Real-time collaboration in your browser!

The convenience of an easy-to-use manuscript editor, with real-time collaboration and structured, fully typeset output produced automatically in the background as you type. Prefer to edit directly in LaTeX? Overleaf provides a full collaborative online LaTeX editor you can switch to at any time.

Short Video Introduction to Overleaf

Interactive Online Introduction to LaTeX

Overleaf offers the following features that ease collaborative research, writing and publishing workflows:

• Real-time preview of projects to review your document while editing and writing - type on the left and see your finished document on the right.

• Integrated, streamlined publishing allows you to submit immediately and directly to the journal of your choice with an integrated submission system to dozens of publishing partners.

• Overleaf for Teaching - provide interactive demonstrations in class and easily create templated assignments on Overleaf for students, there's nothing to install for them to get started!

Free online LaTeX course by John Lees-Miller, co-founder of Overleaf.

Part 1: The Basics

Part 2: Structured Documents & More

Part 3: Not Just Papers: Presentations & More

The course was developed for the University of Bristol and the slides are open source and permissively licensed (MIT), so you are free to remix them for use in your own courses.