Co-authors in Knol

How to add or remove co-authors to your knol

Many great documents are written by a group of authors working together. Knol makes it easy to collaborate amongst co-authors. Let's go through an example to illustrate this.

What is a co-author?

A co-author is someone who helps maintain the content of the knol.  Unlike owners, they are not permitted to modify the AdSense settings or delete the knol, but can invite other authors to participate in authoring the knol.  All authors can edit it at any time, without review by other owners or authors.  They can remove comments, reviews and change the display settings. 

Adding co-authors

Alice wants to invite Bob as a co-author on her knol: "Alice's incredible knol"

  • Step 1: Alice invites Bob as an author (Settings > Authors > Invite more authors). This sends an invitation email to Bob.
    • Note: some email programs have classified invitations to co-author knols as "spam". If this occurs to you, make sure the recipient knows to expect the invitation and mark it as "not spam". Also make sure you whitelist noreply@google.com, so that you receive email notifications.
  • Step 2: Bob chooses to accept his invitation to become a co-author of "Alice's incredible knol". Alice and Bob now both are authors of this knol.

If your invitation is accepted by a co-author, his or her image and name will appear in the right corner of the knol below yours. The first three co-owners or co-authors have full sized portrait displays, and all subsequent authors have reduced-size portrait displays.

You can add up to 25 co-authors to a knol.

Removing co-authors

You can remove a co-author from a knol your own using Settings > Authors and clicking the "remove" link next to the name of the co-author you would like to remove.

I can't find the Knol Settings menu

Make sure you are logged in, and look on the right hand side, below the authorship information - as highlighted in the image to the right.

There should be a message "You have permission to manage this knol". Click on Settings, just to the right.

Frequently asked Questions about Co-authors


How can I have more than 25 co-authors?

If you want password -protected access to knols by a group larger than 50 people (25 owners + 25 authors), that is possible:
  • Create a new Google Account specifically for the group.
  • Give authorship to that account, using the Manage feature as described above.
  • Tell your friends/collaborators the user name and password for that Google Account. 

This works, and it is currently how a number of us at Google share ownership of the "Knol Help" account. However, it is obviously not an optimal way of managing large scale shared ownership. We are interested in improving knol in various ways including in knol co-authorship, but we cannot pre-announce specific features.

Comments


Peter Baskerville

Can't invite co-authors without publishing!

I want to invite co-authors to help develop a Knol in an unpublished version first before releasing it to the public platform ... but there was no menu option to allow it. So, I had to publish the Knol in order to see the menu option that allowed me to invite the co-authors and in doing so aired the missmash Knol as an example of my work. Not a pretty sight.

Did I miss something or is this a bug?

Last edited Apr 29, 2009 8:23 AM
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Allen Knoll

Martin Luther King Volunteerism

Today I would like to publish this using plan B, Plan A software packages were not cooperating.

The message is effective and if you know of any groups that would be interested in particapating please do send an e-mail to king.allen@ymail.com

Last edited Jan 20, 2009 1:42 PM
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Jim Strickland

Layout - Design

Thanks for the reply to my earlier question. However, if this is to conserve screen space, why not reduce all the photos? My 4 co-authors will no doubt wonder why 2 got more prominent spots that the others...people are funny that way.

I suppose I could tell them *you* chose who got the larger spots and take any heat off myself?

Or...an option to not have a photo without leaving the blank field would be even better. That would conserve the space and do away with any issues of larger v smaller or color v B&W pictures. So far my co-authors have been dragging their feet with submitting promised work but are very rebellious about a picture...they'd really rather not.

Thanks!

Jim

Last edited Oct 27, 2008 7:25 AM
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Jim Strickland

Layout-Design

I've gotten a good start on my knol and invited 4 co-authors who are in the process of starting. However, the 3rd co-author's profile picture link on the knol's front page is significantly smaller than mine and the other 2 above it. It looks odd and seems to imply that his contribution is less than others? Is this an intentional space constraint? If it is, it takes away from the balance of the otherwise well laid out scheme of the page.

Thanks

Last edited Sep 5, 2008 10:11 AM
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Kwanghui Lim

More than 5?

Hi - I need to have more than 5 authors on my knol. Why is there a limit of 5, and why isn't this stated clearly up front?

Last edited Aug 20, 2008 11:06 PM
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Cole Wakefield

Five author limit

So I invited 29 people of a group to be co-authors and the program sent out emails to them all. Now it says I can only invite 5 co-authors. What happens to everyone else who got an email? And why did it send out 29 emails if only 5 can be invited?

Last edited Apr 28, 2009 4:54 AM
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Knol Help
Knol Help
Helping authors since 2008 at Google
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