How to Work with the Project Builder

A project draft is an unpublished project that does not yet appear in the Project Catalog. Any project is considered a draft until it is published. When it is published, the project will appear in the Project Catalog.

For a project to get published, it has to successfully pass a moderation review process. Once that is done, the moderator will notify the project’s author via email.

While in draft mode, you can prepare your project for publication. This entails completing the mandatory fields of the Project Builder. Your draft will appear exactly as it does on your computer as if it were a published investigation. This makes draft work much more visual.

We highly recommend that you test your project draft and its widgets’ settings for the Findings page by submitting a few trial Report Forms (as it would be done by other project participants). After publication, all of the test data that you submitted for the project draft will be deleted as a part of the debugging process.

The draft is created in the Project Builder that you can access by opening the Projects page from the main menu.

Click on the Create a project button to open the GlobalLab Project Builder. The Builder will navigate you through four essential parts of a project: Description, Protocol, Report Form, and Findings.

For more information please go to the section How do I create my own project?

Click on the Save this Draft button at the bottom of every page of the Project Builder.

All drafts are displayed in your User Profile. You can continue editing the project by clicking on the Edit this project button on the project’s About page.

Also if you want to preview your draft while you are editing it in the Project Builder, you can do so by opening project’s Description or Protocol tabs and clicking on the project card (page right side).

Open the Project page. Click on the Create a project button to open the GlobalLab Project Builder. The Builder will navigate you through four tabs: Description, Protocol, Report Form, and Findings.

Complete all required fields of all four tabs.

• Description:
  • Project title
  • Short description: briefly describe your project in about 150 characters. Your project’s short description will appear in the Project Catalog. Project description: tell us why this is an interesting, fun, or important project. What question will it answer? What do we want to learn? Describe what we need to do and what kinds of data we need to answer the question.
  • Pictures: provide at least two photos or graphics that gives a sense of your project. If you have only one, make sure it can be resized. The smaller image will appear in the Project Catalog and larger image in your project’s About page. See What types of materials can be used to create a project? below.If you did not take the photo or create the graphic, make sure you have permission to use it. See Where should I acquire the materials (pictures, texts, etc.) to be used for a project? below.
• Protocol:
  • Goal
  • Protocol
• Report Form:
  • Add fields to your Report Form by clicking on Add a question.
  • For each Question, enter a headline, a description, select the type of your question from the drop down menu, and mark the question as "optional" if needed.
• Findings:
  • Use at least one of the widgets for data display.

To save the new project draft, click on the Save this draft button. To learn more about what is a project draft, please go to the What is a project draft? How can I publish it? section of the Support page.

To create a project based on a particular idea, go to the Ideas page. Click on the idea you like, and then click on the Create a project button in the upper right corner of the idea page. Then follow the procedure described above. The idea used as a basis for a project will appear on the project homepage.

All projects must undergo pre-moderation evaluation before they are published. Only registered GlobalLab users can create projects on the GlobalLab platform.

A project must possess certain attributes: a title, description, a goal, a hypothesis, a data-collection protocol, a Report Form, a well developed structure, and visualizations and analysis of the investigative results.

Mandatory fields are found in each of the four parts of a project: Description, Protocol, Report Form, and Findings.

• Project Description has the following required fields:

• Project title
• Short description
• Picture
• Project Protocol has the following required fields:
  • Goals
  • Investigation Protocol
• Project Report Form has the following required fields:
  • At least one Question (field) besides Questions #1 (map). If your Question(s) types are “Option” or “Choice,” please provide at least two options or choices to choose from.
• Project Findings has the following required fields:
  • Add at least one of the widgets for data display.

There are two major types of materials — texts and images. All fields are designed for text-related functionality such as uploading and formatting text. There are special buttons for inserting links and/or pictures. Note that you need to provide one, if not two, images for your project:

1. Small: a project thumbnail on the Projects page (it will also be displayed in the project menu);
2. Big: an image that will be displayed on your project’s About page.

You can upload image files up to 10 MB in size in png, jpg, and gif formats. As a rule, if an attempt to upload an image file fails, a failure warning is automatically generated. Should uploading the image file fail and no failure message is generated, check your Internet connection. If your Internet connection is intact but you still cannot upload image files, contact our support department at support@globallab.org.

Ideally, project authors will use only their own materials. However, we must always respect the works of others and should you decide to use another author’s content, you need to follow some rules.

Depending on your country regulations, when using copyrighted materials it is necessary to either obtain author’s permission or provide acknowledgments. If you use text written by someone else, make sure it is relevant to your investigation and provide at least the author’s name and the year the text was published. The author’s name must be mentioned because we cannot infringe on someone else’s authorship.

When using photos, images, photographic reproductions, and illustrations that are not yours, please check the copyright regulations in your country. Some items may be in the public domain, some may require identification of an online resource hosting the image, and some may require written consent from the image owner.

Please note that in accordance with the GlobalLab User Agreement, each user is personally responsible for any and all breaches of the rights of authors and other third parties.

Yes, when working on the draft, you can complete and submit trial Report Forms just the way participants do while working on published projects. The Report data you send will be aggregated in your project draft. You can view the data on the Findings page and adjust the settings of the Findings widgets of your draft project as needed. When your project is published, this test data will be deleted.

Publishing a project means making it available for use by the GlobalLab community. The published work appears in the Project Catalog and is supplemented by a blog, which the author can use to share investigation-related information with others.

Before publication, all projects must be reviewed by GlobalLab staff to ensure that all required fields are completed and that the content complies with the norms of the GlobalLab community. You have to wait for your project to be published while it is being reviewed by one of our moderators. If your project is not published within a set time period, you will be notified about the delay via email. In this case, you may be asked to make some changes to your project.

You can make minor changes after publication (description, goal, protocol, equipment). However, the Report Form fields cannot be changed to avoid compromising data collection and submission.

You can only delete your project at the draft stage. The Delete Project button is available on the project’s About page.

If it becomes necessary to remove a project after it has successfully passed moderation and has been published, contact our support staff at support@globallab.org and provide valid reason(s) for its removal.

Authors can remove their own projects at the draft stage before publication. But once your project has been published, only GlobalLab moderators can remove it. The reasons for removal include: breach of the User Agreement, factual mistakes, and other issues that cannot be addressed.