groups within a group?

mapskiwi

Hello there,

Thank you so much for all the work you all do and help you provide!

In short, can you create a large group of collaborators and then smaller sub-groups within it? The groups would be Public closed membership.

The longer version, I am part of a developing international research group interested in multi-discipline research into meditation and spirituality. We are looking for a platform for all of us to collaborate on and are trying to work out if Zotero will work for us.

Basically we are looking to link those already involved with this line of research with those interested in it so we can all collaborate. Collaboration to us means:
- being able to keep up-to-date with what members are doing, via individual profile pages updated either automatically or manually
- work in groups on research projects/articles
- to allow members to ask for help, collaboration or participants in projects.

Currently the main disciplines are Medical, Psychological, Engineering, Genetics, Commerce and Philosophy.

academia.edu and resaerch gate are too social and do not support privategroup functions, while Mendeley works for this but is prohibitively expensive. VIVO is another option we are investigating.

Zotero looks great as you can great groups, manage and search your own library, follow others, post questions to the group and share your work with others (am I correct in all this?).I could not see though how to create sub-groups from a main group ie. the larger group of us would also divide into the above mentioned disciplines.

From your collective/personal experience, how much do you think zotero is a match for our needs?

I would greatly appreciate your thoughts on all this?

Thank you so much and have a great day.
Andrew

adamsmith

You can't create sub-groups, but I'm not sure I fully understand why they need to be hierarchical anyway? Why not just create the main group and X number of subject groups and everyone joins the ones they want.

mapskiwi

Hi there,
thanks for the response and help. I am still new to all this. I created a group and different collections within it. By subject groups do you mean collections? I could not see how to great different subject groups? Sorry about this, the help is really appreciated.

adamsmith

I meant just create an entirely new group for each subject. They won't "belong" to the main group in any technical sense, but I'm not seeing how that would be important for what you're trying to do.

You could also do this with collections in one single group, but it may make sense to not force everyone to join one giant library.

Gurdas_Sandhu

Also, with collections, the research being done by one team will be fully transparent to other group members, which you may not want. BTW, do groups allow for group specific discussion forum?

adamsmith

Yes, groups do have their own discussion forums -- they're not used much (at all?) but they exist.

Gurdas_Sandhu

Yeah, just noticed that feature at the bottom of the group landing page. I created a test discussion:
https://www.zotero.org/message/viewdiscussion/421534

Doesn't seem as clean or featured as the Zotero forums format...right?

adamsmith

that's correct, yes.

peruzzoa

Hi,

how do I start a discussion in a private group? I don't seen any active link.

Thanks.

LiborA

Bottom on group page (https://www.zotero.org/groups/SOMETHINK) you can see:
Recent Group Discussion
New Discussion

peruzzoa

Thanks for the reply.

I'm afraid I don't see that link.

At the bottom of the page, after the list of papers, I have "See all 11 items for this group in the Group Library".

I can give you access to the group if you don't mind having a look. Thanks.

LiborA

Go to the setting of your group and allow comments.

peruzzoa

Thanks Libor! It's working now.