Projects Overview

Projects are the core organizational unit in AcaTrove. A project groups together the people, documents, tasks, and milestones associated with a specific research effort, giving your team a shared workspace to coordinate from proposal through publication.

What Is a Project?

A project in AcaTrove represents a discrete research initiative. It could be a grant-funded study, a thesis chapter, a collaborative paper, or an institutional review. Each project has its own timeline, collaborator list, document library, and task board. Everything related to that effort lives in one place, so you never have to search across disconnected tools.

Projects also serve as the scope boundary for several AI features. When you use Multi-Doc Chat inside a project, the AI searches across all documents attached to that project. When AI task suggestions are enabled, the system analyzes your project's current state to recommend next steps.

When to Create a Project

Create a project whenever you have a body of work that involves multiple steps, documents, or collaborators. Common triggers include:

• Starting a new study -- You have a research question, a team, and a timeline.
• Writing a paper or proposal -- You need to organize references, drafts, and reviewer feedback.
• Managing a grant -- You want to track deliverables, compliance requirements, and deadlines.
• Coordinating a thesis -- You need milestone tracking and advisor collaboration.

If your work is a quick, solo task with no documents to manage, you may not need a full project. But for anything that spans weeks or involves more than one person, a project keeps things organized.

Project Types

When creating a project, you select a type that best describes the work:

• Research -- Empirical studies, experiments, data collection and analysis.
• Publication -- Papers, articles, book chapters, or conference proceedings.
• Grant -- Proposals, funded awards, and deliverable tracking.
• Thesis/Dissertation -- Long-form academic work with committee oversight.
• Course -- Teaching-related projects with student collaboration.
• Administrative -- Departmental initiatives, reports, or institutional tasks.

The project type influences which templates and AI suggestions AcaTrove offers. A grant project, for example, surfaces compliance checklists and funder-specific templates automatically.

Project Structure

Every project includes these core sections:

• Overview -- Title, description, research phase, discipline, and compliance flags.
• Tasks -- A task board with milestones, dependencies, and due dates.
• Documents -- Uploaded papers, data files, and drafts linked to the project.
• Collaborators -- Team members with assigned roles and permissions.
• Activity -- A timeline of changes, comments, and updates.

Navigating Projects

Access your projects from the sidebar under Work > Projects or by navigating directly to /projects. The project list shows all projects you own or have been invited to, sorted by most recent activity. Use the search bar and filters to narrow results by type, discipline, or research phase.

Tips

• Pin your most active projects to keep them at the top of your list.
• Use the research phase field to track where each project stands (planning, data collection, analysis, writing, review).
• Link projects to labs when the work involves shared lab resources or personnel.