Study Collections

Grouping studies that span projects

Study Collections are a simple way to organize studies that span multiple projects or contexts. A collection can represent a meta-study, group the studies backing a regulatory filing, or just gather work you want to keep an eye on in a single place.

A study lives in exactly one project. That is the right model for ownership, but it is a poor fit for the many reasons you might want to look at a set of studies together. Collections solve that: a study can belong to any number of collections, and adding it to one changes nothing about the study itself.

Collections versus projects

Reach for a project when you are deciding where new work belongs. A project owns its studies, supplies the code prefix, and determines where storage and notebook folders are created.

Reach for a collection when you want to view existing work through a different lens. Collections own nothing, create nothing, and can be made and discarded freely. The same study can sit in a discovery project, a regulatory-submission collection, and a personal reading list at the same time.

Creating a collection

Click Collections in the sidebar, then New Collection.

• Name — what the collection is for.

• Description — optional, but worth writing. Collections are often assembled for a reason that will not be obvious to a colleague six months later.

• Visibility — see below.

• Members — the users who can contribute, for Protected and Private collections.

Visibility

Visibility controls both who can see a collection and who can change what is in it.

Visibility	Who can see it	Who can add or remove studies
Public	Everyone in your organization	Anyone in your organization
Protected	Everyone in your organization	You and the users assigned to the collection
Private	You and the users assigned to it	You and the users assigned to the collection

Use Protected for a curated set that others should be able to read but not reshape — a regulatory bundle, for instance. Use Private for work in progress or anything sensitive.

A collection never widens access to a study. Someone who cannot see a study in the first place will not see it through a collection, no matter how the collection's visibility is set.

Adding and removing studies

Open the collection, click the Actions menu, and choose Manage Studies. The dialog lets you search for studies across every project you have access to, and add or remove them in one pass.

Removing a study takes it out of the collection only — the study, its assays, notes, files, and notebook entries are untouched.

Because a study can be in as many collections as you like, there is no cost to adding it to a second one.