Knowledge Base

In HORTUS, a Project is the highest-level structure for organizing and presenting a research initiative. It is much more than a simple page: it is the main aggregation layer where a research team can bring together its identity, its people, its outputs, its working materials, and its scientific conversations in one coherent space.

A Project helps researchers understand a research initiative as a whole. Instead of discovering isolated resources one by one, users can open a Project page and immediately see the broader context: what the initiative is about, who is involved, which resources are connected to it, what discussions are taking place around it, and how they can engage with it. For this reason, Projects are one of the most important entry points into HORTUS for researchers, contributors, and project leaders alike.

A Project in HORTUS serves three major functions at the same time.

First, it is a research structuring instrument. A Project gives a clear framework to a scholarly initiative by presenting its purpose, scope, methods, and internal organization. The introductory area of the Project page allows the team to build a rich and well-structured description, section by section, paragraph by paragraph. This makes it possible to explain the scientific rationale of the project in a way that is readable, attractive, and academically meaningful. Teams can enrich this description with labels, links, and multimedia elements, turning the Project page into a living research presentation rather than a static administrative record.

Second, it is an attraction tool for collaboration. A well-built Project page shows not only what the project does, but also who stands behind it. Through the Contributors area, users can discover the members of the project, access their profiles, and better understand the human network behind the work. This is particularly valuable for young researchers and doctoral candidates, who may use Projects to identify potential collaborators, supervisors, peer communities, or research teams working on similar topics. In this sense, a Project is not only a container of information: it is a visibility and networking instrument that can stimulate contact, dialogue, and scientific exchange across the Religious Studies community.

Third, it is an aggregator of resources and activity. A Project can gather together one or many resources from the HORTUS Marketplace, allowing users to see how individual research outputs belong to a larger intellectual or collaborative effort. Through the Resources tab, a user can move from the project narrative to the outputs that have been associated with it, such as datasets, publications, tools, images, or other research objects. This makes Projects especially useful for users who want to move from discovery to understanding: instead of seeing a resource as an isolated item, they can see how it contributes to a larger research programme.

Beyond formal resources, a Project also includes a working space for collaboration.

Through the Working folder tab, project members may access shared documents and working materials, depending on their permissions. This allows a Project to function not only as a public-facing landing page, but also as a practical collaboration environment for the team itself. In other words, a Project combines public presentation and internal work: it can be both a scholarly showcase and a workspace for ongoing research activity.

Projects also support scientific interaction and debate. Through the Discussions tab, users can ask questions, leave comments, raise issues, and develop exchanges that remain attached to the project context. This is important because it keeps the conversation connected to the research initiative itself. Instead of scattering debate across email threads or external tools, HORTUS allows the discussion to remain visible, contextualized, and reusable for other users who later arrive on the same Project page. This makes Projects a natural place not only for collaboration, but also for community-building and scholarly dialogue.

Another powerful aspect of Projects is their ability to include action-oriented buttons and external links. Project maintainers can add as many call-to-action buttons as needed to direct users toward meaningful next steps. A Project can therefore include buttons linking to a Training Centre activity, a YouTube channel, a registration form, a survey, an external repository, documentation, a website, or any other relevant destination. These buttons make the Project page dynamic and interactive: they allow the page to connect users not only to information, but also to concrete actions, both inside and outside HORTUS. This is one of the reasons why Projects can become highly effective gateways for engagement.

Projects in HORTUS are also hierarchical. A Project can exist as a main project, but it can also contain one or more sub-projects. This is especially useful when a large research initiative includes several teams, work packages, thematic branches, or specialized developments. For example, a major project on Bibles could include one sub-project focused on a digital annotation tool, another sub-project focused on manuscript imaging, and another one focused on software creation. This hierarchy allows the platform to reflect the real structure of complex research work. It also helps users understand how different strands of work relate to each other inside the same broader initiative.

For the user, this means that a Project is often the best place to start when trying to understand a scholarly activity on HORTUS. A resource tells you what has been produced. A profile tells you who a person is. But a Project shows you how people, outputs, collaboration, working documents, and research goals fit together. It gives you the narrative, the team, the outputs, the debate, and the pathways to engage.

A good way to think about a Project in HORTUS is this:

A PROJECT IS THE DIGITAL HOME OF A RESEARCH INITIATIVE.

It explains the work, gathers the outputs, showcases the people, supports interaction, and creates bridges toward future collaboration.

For a young researcher, this makes Projects particularly valuable. A Project page can help you discover where interesting work is happening, who is leading it, which resources have already been produced, and whether there is space to connect, contribute, or follow the initiative more closely. For an experienced researcher, it offers a powerful way to structure and present research activity in a visible, coherent, and reusable form. For a project leader, it becomes both a communication tool and a collaboration tool: a place to describe the initiative, coordinate participation, connect outputs, and sustain scholarly engagement over time.

In practical terms, a Project page in HORTUS may include:

• a structured textual presentation of the research initiative
• tags, metadata, and contextual information
• linked resources from the Marketplace
• a list of contributors and members
• working folders and shared documents, depending on permissions
• a discussion space for scientific exchange
• engagement actions such as Request to join, Favourite/Follow, Share, and Leave feedback
• custom call-to-action buttons linking to internal or external destinations
• parent/child relationships that reflect the structure of a larger research programme

Taken together, these elements make Projects one of the most strategic features of HORTUS. They are not just pages to describe research: they are the platform’s main way of organizing, connecting, presenting, and activating research communities.

I have found a project of interest

• Use Request to join when the project is open to participation requests.
• Use Share when you want to send the project to colleagues without reproducing the navigation path manually.
• Use Favourite and Follow when you want to monitor updates without joining immediately.

If you are a project lead, My Workspace later gives you the tools to invite users, review join requests, and manage project relations.