Spheres

Spheres are user-created research communities within ArkSphere. Each sphere brings together researchers around a shared topic, project, or collaboration goal. Spheres are accessible at /arksphere/spheres and provide tools for member management, discussions, activity tracking, and AI-assisted consortium building.

Sphere Lifecycle

Every sphere moves through a defined set of statuses:

Visibility Settings

Sphere creators control who can discover and request to join their sphere:

Creating a Sphere

To create a new sphere, navigate to /arksphere/spheres/new. The creation wizard guides you through:

1. Topic and description -- Define the sphere's research focus, name, and a description of its purpose.
2. Visibility -- Choose Public, Connections Only, or Private.
3. Initial members -- Search for and invite researchers from the People Directory or enter email addresses for external invitations.
4. AI role suggestions -- The system analyzes your sphere's topic and member profiles, then suggests roles each member could fill within a consortium (e.g., Work Package lead, technical lead, dissemination lead).
5. Consortium analysis -- AI evaluates the sphere's composition and provides feedback on coverage gaps, geographic diversity, and expertise balance.

Managing a Sphere

Once created, a sphere is managed from its detail page at /arksphere/spheres/[id].

Member Management

• Add members -- Search by name or invite by email. New members are added directly or placed on a waitlist depending on the sphere's settings.
• Remove members -- Sphere owners can remove members at any time.
• Join requests -- When the sphere is Public or Connections Only, other researchers can request to join. Requests appear in a queue for the owner to accept or decline.
• Waitlist -- Manage a waitlist of researchers who have expressed interest but have not yet been admitted.
• Role assignment -- Assign roles to members within the sphere to organize responsibilities for consortium planning.

Activity Feed

The activity feed tracks events within the sphere, including new members joining, role changes, linked funding opportunities, and status transitions. It provides a chronological record of the sphere's development.

Discussions and Comments

Sphere members can post discussions and comment on each other's posts. This serves as a lightweight communication channel for sharing updates, asking questions, and coordinating within the sphere.

Linking to Funding Opportunities

Spheres can be linked to specific funding opportunities from ArkSearch. When a sphere is linked to an opportunity, the sphere detail page displays the opportunity's key information (title, deadline, programme), and the sphere's status can advance to Submitted when an application is filed.

AI Features in Spheres

Spheres include several AI-powered tools to assist with consortium development:

• Role suggestions -- Based on member profiles and the sphere's topic, AI recommends which roles each member is best suited for.
• Consortium analysis -- AI evaluates the overall composition of the sphere and flags gaps in expertise, geographic coverage, or institutional diversity.
• Chat assistant -- A conversational AI interface within the sphere for discussing strategy, generating text, or answering questions about the consortium's focus area.
• Draft generation -- AI can generate draft text for proposal sections based on the sphere's topic, member expertise, and linked funding opportunity requirements.

Browsing Your Spheres

The Spheres list at /arksphere/spheres shows all spheres you have created or joined. Each sphere card displays the topic name, current status, member count, visibility setting, and a brief description. Click any sphere to open its detail page.

Your sphere memberships also influence recommendations elsewhere in ArkSphere. The People Directory Discover tab and the Network Overview both incorporate your sphere activity when generating suggestions.