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Zulip is designed to facilitate the collaboration of thoughtful people
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all around the world working on difficult problems, which perhaps
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describes academic research better than any of our other use cases.
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Zulip has long been popular with individual research groups, but
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during the pandemic has started being used for large distributed
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communities focused around research topics like category theory or the
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Lean theorem prover.  We enthusiastically provide free hosting for
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both use cases.
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If you haven’t read [why Zulip](/why-zulip), read that first.  The
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communication model challenges with the Slack/Discord/IRC model
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discussed there are even more important for academic research:
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* For most research problems, the experts who it's most useful to
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  collaborate with are few in number and scattered across many places
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  and time zones.  A Slack community is a bad experience if you’re
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  rarely online at the same time as most other members; the result is
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  often poor inclusivity of researchers whose ideas or knowledge could
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  be critical to progress.
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* One needs to be able to focus for several hours at a time in order
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  to do effective research.  It's really important that one not feel
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  like one's missing out or being constantly drawn back to check
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  messages when doing focused research work.
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  Because active participation in a busy Slack community fundamentally
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  requires constant interruptions, one ends up making unpleasant
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  choices between participating in the Slack community (and not doing
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  focus work) or ignoring the Slack community (and not getting much
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  benefit from it).
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* Researchers, especially senior ones, often have interests in
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  multiple areas.  Because catching up on history in an active Slack
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  organization is a huge waste of time, this can make it hard to
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  participate in a part-time fashion and provide one's expertise while
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  personally focused on other projects.
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* Writing to a busy Slack channel often means interrupting another
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  existing conversation. This makes it harder for newer and shyer
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  members to jump into the community. Often this disproportionately
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  discourages talented individuals from groups already
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  underrepresented in research.
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* The lack of organization in Slack message history (and its 10K
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  message history limit) mean that it's hard to find previous
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  conversations that might have useful context.
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The overall effect is that a busy Slack makes poor use of researchers'
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time, and Slack is a poor choice for organizations that want to have
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an inclusive, global community that many busy researchers happily
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participate in.
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------------------------------------------
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Zulip’s topic-based threading model solves these problems:
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* Participants in any time zone can send messages and expect to get a
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  reply and have an effective (potentially asynchronous) conversation
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  with the rest of the community.
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* Zulip’s topic-based theading helps include part-time contributors in
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  two major ways.  First, they can easily browse what conversations
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  happened while they were away from the community, and prioritize
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  which conversations to read now, skip, or read later (e.g. after
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  that important talk or paper deadline).
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* Researchers can effectively participate in a Zulip community without
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  being continuously online.  Using Zulip’s [keyboard
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  shortcuts](/help/keyboard-shortcuts), it’s extremely efficient to
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  inspect every potentially relevant thread and reply wherever one’s
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  feedback is useful, and replying hours after a question was asked is
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  still a good contributor experience.  As a result, busy researchers
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  can focus on teaching or multi-hour sessions of focused research,
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  while still being able to catch up and participate fully in the
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  community.
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* Topics make it easier to provide a safe, welcoming, online
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  community.  Asking a question never has to feel like an interruption
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  of an ongoing conversation or like one's sticking one's neck out.
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See our page [for open source projects](/for/open-source) for more
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discussion of Zulip for large open communities.
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------------------------------------------
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Below, we’ve collected a list of [Zulip features](/features) that are
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particularly useful to academic research organizations (both formal
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organizations and online communities focused around research topics
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like category theory).
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### Free hosting at zulip.com.
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This free hosting is supported by (and is identical to) zulip.com’s
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commercial offerings.  If you’re not sure whether your organization
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qualifies, send us an email at support@zulip.com.
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### Native LaTeX support powered by KaTeX
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With Zulip, you can use inline LaTeX in the middle of a sentence or as
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a display math block.  Zulip's LaTeX rendering is powered by
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[KaTeX](https://katex.org); their [support
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table](https://katex.org/docs/support_table.html) is a helpful
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resource.
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### Syntax highlighting.
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[Full Markdown support](/help/format-your-message-using-markdown), including
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syntax highlighting, makes it easy to discuss code, paste an error message,
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or explain a complicated point. Full LaTeX support as well.
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If your community primarily uses a single programming language (or
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only talks about math), consider setting a default language for syntax
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highlighting.
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### Permalink to conversations.
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Zulip makes it easy to get a [permanent link to a
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conversation](/help/link-to-a-message-or-conversation), which you can
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record in emails, notes, talk slides, or anywhere else. Zulip’s
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topic-based threading helps keep conversations coherent and organized
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so they are useful for posterity.
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### Video call integration
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With a single click, you create a [video call](/help/start-a-call),
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making it convenient to do a quick call to hash out an idea.
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### Import from Slack, Mattermost, or Gitter.
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Import your existing organization from [Slack](/help/import-from-slack),
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[Mattermost](/help/import-from-mattermost), or
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[Gitter](/help/import-from-gitter).
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### Moderation suite.
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Moderation is a big part of making an open community work. Zulip was built
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for open communities from the beginning and comes with many
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[moderation features](/help/moderating-open-organizations) out of the
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box.
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In addition, Zulip's threading makes it easy for a small group of busy
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moderators to skim every thread and notice if there's anything that
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needs their attention.
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### Open invitations.
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Allow anyone to [join without an
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invitation](/help/allow-anyone-to-join-without-an-invitation).  You
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can also link to your Zulip with a [badge](/help/linking-to-zulip) in
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any associated source code repositories.
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### Full-text search of all public history.
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Zulip’s [full-text search](/help/search-for-messages) supports
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searching the organization’s entire public history via the
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`streams:public` search operator, allowing Zulip to provide all the
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benefits of a searchable forum or mailing list.  New collaborators can
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easily find relevant past discussions.
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### Quality data export.
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Our high quality [export](/help/export-your-organization) and
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[import](https://zulip.readthedocs.io/en/latest/production/export-and-import.html)
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tools ensure you can always move from [Zulip Cloud](https://zulip.com)
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hosting to your own servers.
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### Free and open source.
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Unlike many modern "open source" applications that are actually open
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core, Zulip is 100% free and open source software.  All code,
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including for the [server](https://github.com/zulip/zulip),
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[desktop](https://github.com/zulip/zulip-desktop),
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[mobile](https://github.com/zulip/zulip-mobile), and beta
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[terminal](https://github.com/zulip/zulip-terminal) apps, is available
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under the Apache 2 license.
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### Created by former academics
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Zulip's founder is a former MIT PhD student and we love helping
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academic researchers succeed.  We prioritize feature requests from
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academic research groups the same way we prioritize feature requests
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from paying customers, so if there’s something we could improve to
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make Zulip the obvious choice either for you or your research group,
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[contact us](/help/contact-support) and we'll do what we can to help!
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