Whether you are collecting data through interviews, applying an established method to a new sample type, or collaboratively writing a new paper – research is almost always structured around projects.
Ideally, a research project starts with a clear hypothesis, is carefully planned, and carried out with the goal of generating meaningful results. Projects can be pursued independently or in collaboration with colleagues and research partners. Project management is the backbone of scientific work. In scienceOS, projects are designed to support this approach, helping you organize, share, and advance your research more effectively.
Introduction to projects
In scienceOS, a project is essentially a workspace that brings together sources, colleagues, and findings in one place. Each project is made up of four core elements:
- Project sources
A project can include sources from the project owner’s personal library and/or access to the 230 million abstracts in the general paper database. - Project members
The user who creates a project is the project owner. Only the project owner can modify the project sources, the settings, and invite others. Once invited, project members can chat with the project and contribute their saved answers to the project feed. - Project chats
When you start a chat within a project, the AI agent draws its knowledge from that project’s sources. Project chats are private to the individual member by default. - Project feed
While project chats are private by default, the project feed is the persistent record of a project. When a project member saves an answer, chat, or note, it is stored in the feed and becomes visible to all project members. This allows insights to be preserved and, if the project is shared, turned into collective project knowledge.
Advanced users can also customize the AI agent’s behavior and create conversation starters via the project settings.
Create a project. A brief video showing how to create a project in scienceOS, chat with it, and add annotated AI answers to the project feed. Over time the feed turns into a curated knowledge base.
Projects help you organize your sources and chats into dedicated workspaces – whether you are working on your own or collaborating with others. They are especially useful when writing papers, R&D reports, grant applications, or your thesis, as they allow you to focus the AI research agent on a curated set of literature.
Create projects (and share them)
If you are involved in multiple research projects, have a large library with hundreds or thousands of sources, or want to share chat access to a subset of your papers with your research partners, you may want to create dedicated workspaces to work with clarity.
Creating a new project in scienceOS is quick and easy. Just follow these four steps:
- Create a new project
Use the “New project” button on the app homepage or click the plus button in the sidebar to create a new project. You can also name it to reflect your topic or goal.
- Add sources to the project
During the project setup, add individual papers, one or more collections, or your entire library to the project sources. You may also enable the “230 million research papers” option to include the scienceOS paper index in your project. (You can still add further sources or remove irrelevant papers after the creation of the project.)
- Invite and manage project members (optional)
During the last step of the project setup, copy the project invitation link and send it to your colleagues. Once your research partners join, you can manage access to the project as needed and invalidate the old invitation link by generating a new one. Simply click “Share” on the project homepage. Please note: chats are not shared among project members, but saved answers, chats, and notes populate the joint project feed.
- Adjust the project settings (optional)
Click the three-dots menu on the project homepage to provide custom instructions that will adjust the behavior of the AI research agent and/or add conversation starters.
By inviting other researchers, the project owner provides read-only access to the project sources. This ensures that everyone in the shared project works from the same literature base. While project chats remain private by default, the project structure allows centralized guidance of the project while supporting independent, parallel exploration by each team member.
Invite colleagues to a project. A short video showing how to invite colleagues to a project and collaboratively build on each others insights.
When a project member generates an important insight during their interaction with the project, they can click the “star” button to save an AI answer or an entire chat to the project feed. Saved items are stored persistently in the feed and become visible to all project members, allowing others to read, build upon, and be inspired by existing insights, and helping to reduce redundant work.
In addition to saving answers and chats, the project feed supports notes, task lists, tagging, and source suggestions, functioning as a lightweight collaborative knowledge base for the project. Notes can be created either as standalone entries or attached to saved answers and chats to provide context.
Projects are designed to adapt as your research progresses. For example, you can start a project with access only to the 230 million papers from the general database. This is especially useful when you are in the early stages of a project and still gathering relevant sources. As your project develops, you can add curated papers and adjust access to the global database to better focus the project’s source base.
Try projects in scienceOS yourself
Projects in scienceOS offer a powerful way to structure your research in a trustworthy environment, whether you are working independently or collaborating with others. By organizing your sources and chats into dedicated workspaces, you can focus your research, streamline your writing process, and maintain a more organized workflow.
With the ability to create projects tailored to your needs – whether that is exploring your personal library, gathering external sources, collaborating with team members, or even preparing a lecture series – scienceOS helps you manage your research more efficiently. The flexibility to build, customize, and share projects will help you move your research forward.
