In my department, it's the season for preparing and submitting papers to conference organizers. If those papers are accepted, we'll present them at conferences later this year. I'm working collaboratively on two paper drafts this weekend, and last weekend, I worked with other authors on two paper proposals.

The drill is as follows: one member of a research group creates an initial draft, then emails it out for review and editing by other members. Someone else takes a crack at the draft, using Microsoft Word's Track Changes feature (which allows everyone to see just which changes were made and who made them). Meanwhile, someone else might go off on a literature review to find better support for some argument in the draft. The emails and drafts go back and forth, following us back and forth to home and office (since most of us work in both places at different times). After a few rounds of such editing, researching, and review, everyone's finally happy, and the paper or proposal is submitted to the conference organizers.

I love the process of writing collaboratively with others who are good at it, as my colleagues are. The document that finally emerges is better than any one of us could have produced alone. Not only is each weak point in each author's arguments and syntax identified; someone else offers up a better alternative. We all learn something in the process and the draft is strengthened.

Aristotle would be pleased. His view was that a group of people who put their heads together will arrive at thoughts that are wiser than even the wisest person could achieve alone. Here's how he put it in Book 3 of "Politics": “For it is possible that the many, though not individually good men, yet when they come together may be better, not individually but collectively, than those who are so, just as public dinners to which many contribute are better than those supplied at one man's cost; for where there are many, each individual, it may be argued, has some portion of virtue and wisdom… “