Nomia Lab — Complete User Guide

Research OS for medical & scientific research teams — every feature, explained.

Research OS for medical & scientific research teams

Welcome to Nomia Lab. This guide walks you through every feature of the platform, from creating your account to publishing a manuscript — writing and citations, references and your library, tasks and files, team chat and meetings, the smart lab notebook, the AI assistant, your account and billing settings, and the administrator panel. Nothing is skipped: if it's a button in the app, it's explained here.

Nomia Lab is bilingual — the entire interface works in English and Arabic, and in Arabic it flips to a full right-to-left layout automatically. It's built to keep your research private and compliant by design, with AI processing kept in-region.

A note on what you'll see: Nomia Lab is organised into workspaces (organisations) and projects. Some capabilities — certain AI features, single sign-on, some integrations — are switched on per workspace by your administrator. If this guide mentions something you can't find, it may simply not be enabled for your workspace yet; ask your administrator (see The Admin Panel).

How this guide is organised#

  1. Getting Started — accounts, sign-in, the dashboard, and creating projects
  2. The Manuscript Editor — writing, formatting, co-editing, versions, and exporting
  3. Citations & Reference Styles — inserting citations and the eight built-in styles
  4. References & Importing — building your reference list from anywhere
  5. Research Library & My Library — organising papers and reading with AI
  6. Tasks & Files — the project board and shared file storage
  7. Communication — Team Chat — messages, channels, voice notes, and search
  8. Meeting Minutes — structured minutes with AI transcription
  9. Smart Lab Notebook — capture ideas, images, links, and voice with AI
  10. Comments & Sharing Documents — feedback, external share links, and publishing a snapshot
  11. Learning hub — built-in tutorials that walk you through the platform
  12. The AI Assistant Suite — every AI feature, and how usage works
  13. Your Account, Billing & Settings — profile, security, plans, and language
  14. The Admin Panel — for workspace administrators

Tip — changing the language: You can switch the interface between English and العربية (Arabic) from your profile settings (see Your Account, Billing & Settings). Nomia Lab also follows your browser's language on your first visit. In Arabic, menus, text, and layout mirror to right-to-left.

Tip — staying informed: A bell icon in the top bar shows your notifications — new comments, replies, mentions, shared entries, task assignments, and more. Click it for a quick preview, or open Notifications from your account menu to see everything and manage exactly which events email you (see Your Account, Billing & Settings → Notifications).

What's new (2026-07-19 release)#

This release deepens reviewing, sharing, and learning.

Reviewing (The AI Assistant Suite → AI review)

Sharing & publishing (Comments & Sharing Documents → Publishing a document)

Learning (Learning hub)

What's new (2026-07-12 release)#

This release brings Nomia Lab to full feature parity with leading AI research-writing tools. Everything below is described in depth in the section named in italics.

Writing & the AI assistant (The Manuscript Editor, The AI Assistant Suite)

AI chat (The AI Assistant Suite)

Reviews (The AI Assistant Suite → Review)

References & library (References & Importing, Research Library & My Library, Citations & Reference Styles)

Comments & collaboration (Comments & Sharing Documents)

Account & app (Your Account, Billing & Settings)

Getting Started — accounts, sign-in, dashboard, projects#

Welcome to Nomia Lab (Research OS). This section walks you through everything you need to get up and running: creating your account, verifying your email, signing in (with a password or with Google/Microsoft), recovering a lost password, finding your way around the dashboard, creating your first research project, understanding team roles, and inviting collaborators. Nomia Lab works fully in English and Arabic — if you switch to Arabic, the whole interface flips to right-to-left automatically.

Note: Some capabilities described here (for example, Google/Microsoft sign-in, your institution's own sign-in, or AI features) only appear if they've been enabled for your workspace. If you don't see something mentioned below, it may not be turned on for your organization yet.

Creating your account with email and password#

You can sign up in a minute with just an email address and a password.

  1. Go to the Create your account page (the sign-up screen).
  2. Fill in the Email field — this is required and becomes your sign-in name.
  3. Optionally add your Full name — you can leave this blank and set it later.
  4. Choose a Password. Your password must be at least 12 characters and include a lowercase letter, an uppercase letter, and a digit. Nomia Lab checks this as you type and shows a red message if something's missing.
  5. Click Sign up.

If the email you entered already belongs to an account, the form tells you inline ("is already registered") instead of creating a duplicate — in that case, head to sign-in or reset your password.

Tip: Already have an account? The sign-up page has a Sign in link at the bottom that takes you straight to the login screen.

For security, a brand-new email-and-password account has to confirm it owns the address before it can sign in.

  1. Right after you sign up, Nomia Lab emails you a verification link.
  2. Open that email and click the link. This confirms your address and unlocks sign-in.
  3. The link is valid for 24 hours and can only be used once. After that (or if you never received it), you'll need a fresh one.

If you try to sign in before verifying, the sign-in page shows an amber notice: "Verify your email to sign in." It has a Send verification email button — click it to receive a new link.

Note: You can request up to 5 verification emails per 24 hours. If you run out, please contact support@nomialab.com and we'll help.

Tip: Signing up with Google or Microsoft skips this step entirely — those providers have already verified your email.

Signing in with email and password#

  1. Open the Sign in page.
  2. Enter your Email and Password.
  3. Click Sign in.

Two handy links sit just below the form: Forgot password? and Create account. Once you're signed in, your session stays active for about a week before you'll need to sign in again.

Forgot your password? Requesting a reset#

If you can't remember your password, you can request a reset link by email.

  1. On the sign-in page, click Forgot password?
  2. Enter your Email and click Send reset link.
  3. Check your inbox for the reset email and click its link.

Note: For your privacy, Nomia Lab shows the same confirmation message whether or not the email is registered — this prevents anyone from using the form to discover which addresses have accounts. So if you don't receive an email, double-check the address and that you signed up with a password (rather than Google/Microsoft).

Setting a new password#

When you open the reset link from your email, you'll land on the Reset your password page.

  1. Type your New password — the same rules apply (12+ characters, with a lowercase letter, an uppercase letter, and a digit).
  2. Click Reset password.

Note: Setting a new password signs you out of every other device as a safety measure — you'll simply sign in again with your new password. If the reset link has expired or looks tampered with, the page tells you clearly so you can request a fresh one.

Signing in with Google or Microsoft#

If it's enabled for your workspace, you can sign up or sign in with one click using a Google or Microsoft account. The buttons appear under "Or sign in with" (and "Or sign up with") on the sign-in and sign-up pages.

  1. Click Continue with Google or Continue with Microsoft.
  2. Sign in with that provider and approve access.
  3. You're returned to Nomia Lab and dropped straight onto your dashboard — no separate email verification needed.

Note — the "already registered with a password" rule: If your email address was first registered with a password, you cannot switch to the Google/Microsoft button for that same address. Nomia Lab will stop and tell you: "This email is registered with a password. Please sign in with your email and password." This is deliberate — it keeps someone from taking over a password account just by owning a matching Google/Microsoft login. Each Google or Microsoft account is treated as its own separate sign-in; accounts are never merged automatically by email.

Tip: If you started with a password but later want to sign in with Google or Microsoft instead, you can switch your sign-in method from your account's Security settings after you're signed in (subject to your provider email matching your Nomia Lab email). Your institution may also offer its own single sign-on if it's been set up for your workspace.

Your dashboard#

After you sign in, your home base is the Research Projects dashboard. Its subtitle reminds you it shows "All projects you're a member of, across all your organizations." Here's what you'll find.

The stat row. Six tiles across the top give you an at-a-glance count of your projects by state:

Tile What it counts
Total Projects Everything you belong to
In Progress Active projects still being worked on
Under Review Projects submitted for review
Completed Finished projects
Published Projects that have been published
Archived Projects you've set aside

Search and filters. A Search projects... box lets you find a project by name as you type. Next to it, a row of filter pills — All, In Progress, Under Review, Completed, Published, Archived — narrows the list to one status. The search and the active filter work together.

Project cards. Each project shows as a card with its title, a short description (if you added one), a colored status badge, who created it, and when it was last updated. Three quick-jump buttons at the bottom of every card take you straight into the project's key areas: Editor, Notes, and Refs (references). Click anywhere else on the card to open the project's overview.

Top-right buttons. A New project button (top right) starts a new project. If you administer an organization, you'll also see an Administer organization button that opens your organization's admin area — it only appears if you actually manage one.

Empty state. If you have no projects yet, the dashboard invites you to Create your first project to get started. If a search or filter simply hides everything, it tells you no projects match and suggests clearing the filter.

Creating a project#

  1. Click New project (from the dashboard's top-right button, or the empty-state prompt).
  2. Fill in the form:
    • Title (required) — the project's name, up to 500 characters. Example placeholder: "Machine Learning in Healthcare Diagnostics."
    • Description (optional) — a sentence or two on what the project is about.
    • Keywords (optional) — comma-separated terms (e.g. deep learning, healthcare, diagnostics). These are used for journal-submission metadata and for discovery.
    • Target journal (optional) — where you're aiming to publish, up to 255 characters (e.g. The Lancet, NEJM, BMJ). You can change this later.
  3. Click Create project (or Cancel / Back to Dashboard to bail out).

When the project is created you're taken straight into it, and you're automatically assigned as the Principal Investigator (PI) — listed as the first author and marked as the corresponding author. You can adjust authorship and add teammates afterward.

Tip: If this is your very first project, Nomia Lab sets up your workspace/organization for you automatically — there's nothing extra to configure.

Note: The create page reminds you: "Add team members from the project Overview after creating." Team management lives inside the project once it exists (see below).

Project roles — who can do what#

Every person on a project has one role. The role decides what they're allowed to do. There are five roles, and each project always has exactly one PI.

Role Best suited for What they can do
Principal Investigator (PI) The project lead Everything: read, write and edit documents, edit project settings, approve exports/submissions, change the project's status, invite and manage members, revoke invitations, chat with the team, and transfer the PI role to someone else
Co-Investigator A senior collaborator Read, write and edit documents, edit the Methods section, invite and manage members, revoke invitations, and chat
Research Fellow A hands-on contributor Read, write and edit documents, edit the Methods section, and chat
Statistician Stats/analysis specialist Read, edit the Methods section specifically, and chat
Research Coordinator Operational coordination Read the project and chat with the team

A couple of things worth knowing:

Note: If your organization has assigned you an organization-wide role (for example, a research director or an org administrator), that can grant additional access across the organization's projects on top of your per-project role.

Inviting and managing members#

Team management lives inside each project, under Settings → Members. You'll see the full member table and the invite tools here only if you're the PI or a Co-Investigator; other members can view the roster but not change it.

To invite someone:

  1. Open the project's Settings → Members page.
  2. In the Invite a member box, enter their email address.
  3. Pick a role from the dropdown — Co-Investigator, Research Fellow, Statistician, or Research Coordinator. (You can't invite someone directly as PI — that only happens through Transfer PI, below.)
  4. Click Invite.

What happens next depends on the person:

Note: The invitation email has no link to click and no token — that's intentional, for safety. The invitee simply signs in (or creates an account) using that same email address, and once their email is verified they're added to the project automatically. Pending invitations expire after 14 days.

Pending invitations appear in their own panel showing the email, the role, and the expiry date. PIs and Co-Investigators can Revoke any pending invite that hasn't been accepted yet.

Note: You can only invite people who share your organization. If you enter someone from a different organization, Nomia Lab asks you to arrange cross-organization collaboration through support rather than adding them directly.

Changing a role. In the members table, PIs and Co-Investigators can change any non-PI member's role using the inline role dropdown. The PI row shows a star and can't be edited here — a PI's role only changes through Transfer PI.

Removing someone / leaving. Use the Remove button in a member's row to take them off the project (you'll be asked to confirm). Your own row shows Leave instead, so you can remove yourself. The PI can't simply be removed — you'll be prompted to transfer the PI role first.

Transferring the PI role. Because every project must have exactly one PI, handing off the lead role has its own two-step, safety-checked flow (visible only to the current PI):

  1. In the Transfer principal investigator role box, choose the member to promote.
  2. Type the project's title exactly to confirm.
  3. Click Transfer PI role.

The swap is instant and all-or-nothing: the chosen member becomes PI and you become a Co-Investigator in the same step, so the project never ends up with zero or two PIs. If there's no one eligible yet, Nomia Lab tells you to invite a Co-Investigator first.

Your setup checklist (Complete setup 0/5)#

When you open a project's document editor, Nomia Lab shows a small "Complete setup" meter — a friendly 0-to-5 checklist that helps you get the most out of a new project. It tracks itself automatically from what you actually do, and it quietly disappears once you've done all five.

The five steps are:

  1. Write 50+ words in a document
  2. Add a reference
  3. Organize a collection
  4. Try an AI feature (if AI is enabled for your workspace)
  5. Invite a collaborator

Click the meter to expand or collapse the checklist at any time.

Tip: You don't have to do these in order, and there's nothing to tick off manually — the moment you complete a step (say, adding your first reference), that item checks itself. When all five are done, the checklist hides itself so it stays out of your way.

The Manuscript Editor#

The Manuscript Editor is where you write your paper. It behaves like a familiar word processor — a formatting toolbar across the top and a clean writing page below — but it's built for research: headings that auto-number, figures and tables that number themselves, equations, footnotes, cross-references, citations, live journal formatting, version history, and one-click export to Word or PDF. You reach it by opening a project and choosing the Editor tab. Everyone on a project can read documents; creating, renaming, editing, archiving and restoring are available to team members with edit access. Everything works in both English and Arabic, including full right-to-left writing.

Note: Depending on how your workspace is set up, you'll either write in the standard editor (one author at a time, with autosave and version history) or, if real-time co-editing is enabled for your workspace, in the live co-editing editor (several people typing together with visible cursors). Both share the same headings, lists, tables, figures, equations, footnotes and slash menu described below — the differences are called out where they matter.

The document sidebar: tabs, outline, and switching documents#

The left sidebar lists every document in the project. Each project can hold many documents (a manuscript, its abstract, a cover letter, a protocol, and so on).

  1. Click any document in the list to open it. The one you're viewing is highlighted, and the address updates so you can bookmark or share a direct link to that exact document.
  2. Under the open document, an outline appears automatically — every heading you've written, indented by level. Click any outline entry to jump straight to that section.
  3. Use the burger / chevron button at the top of the sidebar to collapse it to a slim icon strip when you want more room to write (it also starts collapsed on small screens). Collapse again to bring the titles and outline back.

Tip: If the outline says "Headings you add to the document will appear here," you simply haven't added any headings yet. Turn a line into a heading (see Structure blocks below) and it shows up instantly.

At the top of the list, an Active / Archived toggle switches between your working documents and ones you've set aside.

Creating a document#

  1. Click + New document at the top of the sidebar (or the New document button on the empty-project screen). This opens the New-document window.

  2. At the top is a short "What are you writing?" prompt box. As you type a sentence or two describing your paper, a live strength meter tells you whether the prompt is empty, weak, good, or strong — the more you describe, the better any assisted suggestions will be.

  3. Choose how the new document should start:

    Starting style What you get
    Smart An outline tailored to the topic you typed (available when AI features are enabled for your workspace)
    Standard (IMRAD) A ready-made skeleton with Abstract, Introduction, Methods, Results, Discussion and Conclusion headings
    None A completely blank page

  4. Click Start Writing to create the document with your chosen starting style, or Create blank for an empty page with no prompt.

The window also offers two libraries of starting points:

Tip: The Smart and outline-seeding options draw on Nomia's writing assistant. See the AI Writing Assistant section for what it can do and how credits work.

Renaming, duplicating, archiving, restoring and deleting#

The document's title sits at the top of the editing area. To the right of it (and in each sidebar row) you'll find these controls:

  1. Rename — click the title or the rename control, type a new title, and confirm. Titles can't be blank.
  2. Duplicate — makes a full copy of the current document and opens it, so you can branch a draft without losing the original.
  3. Archive — hides a document you're no longer working on. You'll be asked to confirm. Archiving never deletes your work; the document simply moves to the Archived tab.
  4. Restore — open the Archived tab in the sidebar and click Restore on any row to bring the document back to your active list.
  5. Delete permanently — from the Archived tab only, you can permanently remove a document. This is irreversible, so a document must be archived first before it can be deleted.

Note: If you try to delete a document that hasn't been archived, Nomia asks you to archive it first — a deliberate safety step so nothing is lost by accident.

The writing surface and formatting toolbar#

The page in the centre is your live document — type directly onto it. The toolbar above gives you the everyday formatting tools:

As you move the cursor, the toolbar highlights whatever's active at that spot (for example, it shows "Heading 2" and lights up Bold when your cursor is in bold text), so you always know the current formatting.

Tip: You can format without touching the mouse. Common shortcuts include Ctrl/Cmd + B / I / U for bold, italic and underline, Ctrl/Cmd + K to insert a link, Ctrl/Cmd + Shift + C to cite, Ctrl/Cmd + Shift + 7 / 8 for numbered and bulleted lists, and Ctrl/Cmd + Alt + 0/1/2/3 to switch between body text and headings. The full list is in the keyboard-shortcuts panel — open it from the shortcuts button near the top of the editor.

You can also format as you type, Markdown-style: start a line with # , ## or ### for headings, - or * for a bullet, 1. for a numbered list, > for a quote, or ``` for a code block. (In the live co-editing editor, typing straight quotes, -- and ... also turns them into smart quotes, an em-dash and an ellipsis automatically.)

The slash "/" menu#

Type / at the start of a line to pop up a quick insert menu — no need to reach for the toolbar.

  1. Type / on an empty line (or at the start of a line).
  2. Keep typing to filter — for example /quote or /table.
  3. Use ↑ / ↓ to move, Enter to insert, and Esc to close.

The standard editor's slash menu offers:

Item Inserts
Heading 1 / 2 / 3 A big, medium or small section heading
Body text A plain paragraph
Bulleted list An unordered list
Numbered list An ordered list
Quote A block quote
Code block A monospaced, syntax-highlighted code block
Divider A horizontal rule
Citation Opens the reference picker to cite a source
Table Opens the table builder

Note: In the live co-editing editor the slash menu covers the same headings, lists, quote, code block and table, and — for editors — adds Cite, Footnote, Equation and Figure directly in the menu.

Structure blocks: headings, lists, quotes, code#

Tables#

  1. Open Insert → Table (or type /table).
  2. Choose the number of rows (up to 20) and columns (up to 10), and optionally type a caption.
  3. Click Insert table. The first row is a header row.

Tables are numbered automatically as Table 1, Table 2, … in Preview and in your Word/PDF exports, and you can point to them with a cross-reference (see below).

Note: In the live co-editing editor, the table button drops in a ready 3×3 table (one header row plus two rows); press Tab to move from cell to cell.

Figures (image + caption)#

Figures let you place an image by its web address and give it a caption.

  1. Open Insert → Figure (or type /figure in the co-editing editor).
  2. Fill in:
    • Image URL — a link starting with http:// or https://.
    • Alt text — a short description read aloud by screen readers.
    • Caption — e.g. "Survival curves by treatment arm."
  3. Click Insert figure.

Figures are numbered automatically as Figure 1, Figure 2, … in Preview and exports. To change a placed figure later, click it to reopen the same panel.

Note: Nomia stores figures by their web link. When you export to Word or PDF, images hosted on trusted sources are embedded; an image from an unrecognised host falls back to its caption only. Always write a meaningful caption and alt text so the figure still makes sense either way.

Equations (LaTeX)#

You can write mathematics in LaTeX and Nomia renders it beautifully.

  1. Open Insert → Display equation for a centred, standalone formula, or Insert → Inline math for a formula that sits within a sentence (the standard editor offers both; the co-editing editor offers display equations).
  2. Type the LaTeX — for example E = mc^2.
  3. Click Insert. The formula renders live on the page.

Display equations are numbered automatically as Equation 1, Equation 2, … and can be cross-referenced. Click a placed equation to edit its LaTeX.

Footnotes#

  1. Open Insert → Footnote (or type /footnote in the co-editing editor).
  2. Type the footnote text.
  3. Click Insert footnote. A small marker appears in your text, and the note itself is collected at the bottom in Preview and in your Word/PDF exports.

Footnotes are numbered automatically (1, 2, …) and can be cross-referenced. Click a footnote marker to edit its text.

Cross-references#

Cross-references let you write "see Figure 2" or "as shown in Table 1" and have the number stay correct even if you reorder things later.

  1. Open Insert → Cross-reference.
  2. Pick what you're pointing to — the picker is grouped into Figures, Sections, Tables, Equations and Footnotes, listing each item with a short preview.
  3. Choose one to drop a reference marker into your text.

When you switch to Preview (or export), each marker resolves to the real, current number — so renumbering figures never breaks your prose.

Autosave and the "edited elsewhere" notice#

In the standard editor you never have to press Save. Nomia saves automatically a moment after you stop typing (and whenever you click away). A small status label shows Editing…, then Saving…, then Saved.

If another team member saves the same document while you have it open, a gentle banner appears telling you it was edited elsewhere; click Refresh to load their latest version. And if you try to save on top of a newer change, Nomia won't silently overwrite it — it asks you to refresh to the latest and reapply your edit, so nobody's work is lost.

Real-time co-editing and presence (if enabled for your workspace)#

When live co-editing is turned on, several people can write in the same document at once:

Version history and restore#

Every save is captured, so you can always look back or roll back.

  1. Click History in the editor's top bar (anyone who can read the document can open it).
  2. A timeline opens on the right, newest first — each entry shows who edited it and when.
  3. Click any entry to preview that version.
  4. To see what changed, use the Compare with dropdown: compare the selected version against the current document or against another version. Differences are highlighted so you can read the changes at a glance.
  5. To roll back, click Restore this version (available to team members with edit access; it's hidden on the newest version, since restoring the current one would do nothing). Restoring makes that version the live document — and is itself recorded as a new history entry, so nothing is ever truly lost.

Preview: bibliography and in-text citations#

The Preview button (top of the editor) flips the page from editing to a clean, finished view — exactly how the paper reads once everything is resolved. Preview:

Click Edit to return to writing. Preview is read-only — it never changes your draft.

Tip: Preview is the fastest way to sanity-check numbering and references before you export or submit. Use it whenever you've added or reordered figures, tables or citations.

Page setup and printing#

Open Page setup in the editor's top bar to control the physical page:

Setting Options
Page size Letter, A4, Legal, A3, A5, B5
Orientation Portrait or Landscape
Margins Normal (25 mm), Narrow (12.5 mm), Wide (50 mm), or Custom (enter Top / Right / Bottom / Left in millimetres)

Click Apply to save. Your choices are reflected on the page and are respected when you print with Ctrl/Cmd + P or export to PDF.

Journal templates and citation style#

Journal templates apply a publisher's house style across your whole project in one click.

  1. In the New document window, look at the Journal templates column. You'll see presets for major publishers (for example Nature, Cell, The Lancet, JAMA, NEJM, BMJ, PLOS One, Scientific Reports, JCI, IEEE, Science, and a Generic IMRAD template). Each card shows its citation style and any editorial limits it enforces — such as a maximum abstract length or body-word count.
  2. Click a journal to make it your project's active template. Nomia cascades that publisher's formatting — font, margins and citation style — to your documents and opens a fresh page ready to write under those rules.
  3. To use a house style that isn't in the list, click + Custom and fill in the name, family, citation format and any word limits to create your own template. Custom templates you no longer need can be removed.

You can also set the citation style directly. Click the style pill (e.g. APA) at the bottom of the editor to open the style picker, which shows a live preview of a sample reference with tabs for Bibliography and In-text so you can see exactly how each style looks before choosing:

Style
Default — follow the journal template
AMA (11th ed.)
APA (7th ed.)
Chicago (17th, author–date)
Harvard
IEEE
MLA (9th ed.)
Nature
Vancouver

Your selection overrides the journal template's default for that project, and every in-text citation and the bibliography update to match.

Tip: Set the journal template first — it fills in a sensible citation style, page size and margins for you. Then only change the citation style separately if you need something different from the journal's default.

Exporting to Word, PDF and LaTeX#

When your draft is ready to share or submit, use the export links in the editor's top bar. Each one downloads a finished file with your numbering, cross-references, citations and bibliography fully resolved:

Export File Best for
Word .docx Co-authors and journals that require Word
PDF .pdf A polished, fixed-layout copy for reviewing or printing
LaTeX .tex + .bib (in a ZIP) Journals and authors who typeset in LaTeX

Just click the format you want and the file downloads — the editor keeps running while it does. Any reader can export.

Note: Exports honour your page setup and journal template, so the Word and PDF you download match what you see in Preview.

Word count, citation check, and more#

At the bottom of the editor you'll always see a live word count. Next to it, a citation check flags two easy-to-miss problems: sources you've cited that aren't in your project's reference library, and references in your library that no document actually cites — click the badge to see the details and tidy them up.

The editor's top bar also holds tools that have their own tutorials: Comments for inline review and discussion, Share for read-only links to people outside the project, the writing assistant and citation tools. For those:

Tip: See the AI Writing Assistant section for drafting help, outlines, review and the document chat, and the Citations & References section for adding, inserting and formatting sources.

Citations & Reference Styles#

Nomia Lab lets you cite the papers in your project's reference library right inside the document you're writing, then turns those in-text markers into a properly formatted reference list automatically. You never format a citation by hand: you point at a reference, Nomia inserts a small citation "chip," and when you open Preview or export to PDF or Word it renders every marker and builds the bibliography in the style you've chosen. This works the same whether your workspace is in English or in Arabic (right-to-left).

Note: You can only cite references that are already in your project's library. If a reference isn't there yet, add it first (in the Reference Manager for the project). Everywhere a citation picker is empty, you'll see "No references in this project yet" with a shortcut to Open the Reference Manager.

Insert a citation as you write — the "@" menu#

The fastest way to cite is to type @ while writing, exactly like mentioning a person.

  1. In the document body, type @ at the start of a line or after a space.
  2. A small picker opens right at your cursor, listing your project's references (each row shows the paper's title and a short author · year · journal subtitle).
  3. Keep typing to filter — the letters after @ search across title, authors, and year. The first match is highlighted automatically.
  4. Press Enter to insert the highlighted reference, or use ↑ / ↓ to move the highlight first. You can also click a row with the mouse.
  5. Nomia replaces your @… text with a citation chip (a short label such as [Johnson 2024]) and adds a space after it so you can keep typing.

Tip: The menu only stays open while you're clearly citing. If you type a space after @, Nomia assumes you're writing normal prose and closes it. Press Esc any time to dismiss it without inserting.

Insert a citation from the toolbar — the Cite button#

If you'd rather browse the full list, use the toolbar.

  1. Click Cite on the editor toolbar (keyboard shortcut Ctrl + Shift + C). You can also type / for the slash menu and choose Cite a reference.
  2. The Cite popover opens with a Filter by title, author, or year… box, an optional Narrative checkbox and Page box (explained below), and the list of references.
  3. Type in the filter box to narrow the list; a "No references match" line appears if nothing fits.
  4. Click a reference to drop its citation chip at your cursor.

Tip: If you're co-writing a document live with teammates, the shared editor's toolbar also has its own Cite button that opens a reference picker — the citation it inserts behaves identically.

Narrative, parenthetical, and page-locator forms#

Author–year styles (APA, Harvard, MLA, Chicago) can show a citation three ways. This is what the Narrative checkbox and Page box control. Numeric styles (IEEE, Vancouver, AMA, Nature) always render as a small superscript number, so these options don't apply to them.

Form How to get it Example (APA)
Parenthetical (default) Leave Narrative unchecked (Johnson, 2024)
Narrative Tick Narrative — the author's name reads as part of your sentence Johnson (2024)
With a page locator Type a page/range in the Page box (e.g. 23 or 112–128) (Johnson, 2024, p. 23)

Note: Each style shows the page locator its own way — APA/Harvard use , p. 23, Chicago uses , 23, MLA uses 23. You just type the number; Nomia formats it to match the chosen style.

Reading and checking your citations#

The reference list (bibliography)#

You don't build the bibliography — Nomia does. When you open Preview or export, a References section is added at the end of the document containing exactly the references you cited, formatted in the project's style. Entries appear in the order they were first cited in the document. Numeric styles produce a numbered list; author–year styles produce a paragraph list. Any DOI becomes a clickable link.

Choosing a reference style for the project#

One style setting governs the whole project — every in-text citation and the reference list re-format together, instantly, when you change it. You never redo your citations.

  1. In the editor header you'll see the current style as a small chip, e.g. APA ▾. Click it. (The Citation settings panel also shows the current style and points you to this chip.)
  2. The Citation style window opens with the list of styles on the left and a live Preview on the right.
  3. Toggle the preview between Bibliography and In-text to see how a sample reference will look in each style.
  4. Click a style to select it — a checkmark marks the active one, and the change is saved for the whole project immediately. Click Done to close.

The choices are:

Option Meaning
Default — journal template Follow whatever format your project's journal template specifies
AMA (11th ed.) Numeric, medical journals
APA (7th ed.) Author–year, common in health & social sciences
Chicago (17th, author–date) Author–year
Harvard Author–year
IEEE Numeric, engineering/technical
MLA (9th ed.) Author–page
Nature Numeric, life sciences
Vancouver Numeric, biomedical

Note: The Search more styles & locales box in this window is marked Coming soon — today Nomia offers the eight curated styles below. Editing the style is available to project members with edit access.

The eight built-in styles#

Every style renders the same reference two ways: an in-text marker where you cite, and a reference-list entry at the end. Numeric styles show a superscript number in text; author–year styles show the author and year.

Style Type In-text marker
APA Author–year (Johnson, 2024)
Harvard Author–year (Johnson, 2024)
MLA Author–page (Johnson) — or (Johnson 128) with a page
Chicago Author–year (Johnson 2024)
IEEE Numeric ¹ (superscript, tap to jump)
Vancouver Numeric ¹
AMA Numeric ¹
Nature Numeric ¹

Here is how each style formats the same reference in the reference list (this is the exact sample shown in the style picker's live preview — Johnson, Chen & Patel, 2024):

Tip: Long author lists are shortened automatically the way each style expects — for example APA switches to "et al." after seven authors, Vancouver and IEEE after six, Nature after five — so you don't have to trim them yourself.

Turning pasted "[1]" markers into linked citations#

If you paste text from another manuscript that already has a References section and inline markers like [1], Nomia can turn those into real, linked citations for you.

At a high level, matching finds the reference each marker refers to and replaces the plain marker with a proper citation chip, so from then on it renders and links like any citation you inserted yourself.

Note: The Citation settings panel also has filters that shape which references citation-matching and suggestions will surface — a Publish year range, a minimum Impact factor, a Sources choice (library, external, or both), an Open-access sources only toggle, and Show page numbers in citations. Your own library references are always eligible; these filters only narrow external suggestions.

AI citation suggestions (if enabled for your workspace)#

Some workspaces also have an assistant that recommends citations for a passage:

  1. Select the sentence or paragraph you want to support.
  2. Choose Suggest citations (the Cite action on the floating selection toolbar).
  3. A Suggested citations panel lists the best matches from your project library, each with a one-click Cite button. If nothing in your library fits, it tells you so and suggests adding references first.

References & Importing#

Every project in Nomia Lab has its own Reference Manager — a shared library of the papers, books, datasets and other sources your team is working from. You can build it by typing references in by hand, by pulling them automatically from a DOI, by importing files your other tools export, by pasting the reference list straight out of a PDF, by saving papers from the web as you browse, or by connecting your Zotero account. This section walks through every way to get references in, and everything you can do with them once they're there.

To open it, go into a project and choose References in the workspace menu. The page is titled Reference Manager, and a small counter next to the title shows how many references are currently in view.

Note — who can do what. Adding, importing, editing, and archiving references is available to the project lead and to members with editor access. Anyone who can open the project can browse the library, follow a reference's link, and save a copy to their own personal library. If you don't see the buttons described below (Add Reference, Import, and so on), you have viewing access rather than editing access.

The reference types#

Every reference has a Type. You'll see these as filter buttons across the top and as a dropdown on the forms:

Type Use it for
Article Journal articles (the default)
Book Whole books
Chapter A chapter or section within a book
Conference Conference papers and proceedings
Preprint Preprints and unpublished manuscripts
Dataset Published datasets
Website Web pages and online resources
Other Anything that doesn't fit the above

Finding references in your library#

  1. Use the Active and Archived tabs to switch between your current library and references you've retired.
  2. Type in the Search title or author… box to filter the list. It searches reference titles and author names, and updates as you type.
  3. Click a type filter button (All, Article, Book, and so on) to show only one kind of reference. Click it again, or click All, to clear the filter.

Tip: Search and the type filters work together — for example, filter to Article, then search an author's surname to find just their papers.

Reading a reference card#

Each reference appears as a card showing its type badge, its DOI (if it has one), the title, the authors, and a journal line (journal, volume, issue and year, whichever are filled in). If someone on your team added it, you'll also see Added by [name] and the date. On the right of each card are quick actions:

Click a reference's title to open its full details.

The reference details drawer#

Clicking a title slides out a panel on the right showing everything recorded for that reference — Type, Title, Authors, Year, Journal, Volume, Issue, Pages, Citations (a scholarly citation count, when one is known), DOI, PMID, URL (as a clickable link), Abstract, and Added by. Empty fields are hidden to keep the panel clean.

  1. To close the drawer, click the ✕, or click anywhere outside the panel.
  2. If you have editing access, an Edit button appears at the bottom.

Adding a reference by hand#

  1. Click Add Reference. A New reference form opens.
  2. Fill in the fields. Title is the only required one; Type, Authors, Year, Journal, Volume, Pages, DOI and URL are all optional.
  3. In the Authors (comma-separated) box, separate authors with commas and write each one as first name then surname — for example Jane Smith, Wei Liu.
  4. Click Save reference.

A few gentle rules the form enforces:

Tip: You can cancel at any time with the Cancel link in the form header.

Auto-filling from a DOI#

If you have a paper's DOI, you don't have to type its details.

  1. Click Add Reference to open the form.
  2. At the top, in the Have a DOI? Auto-fetch from Crossref box, paste the DOI. Nomia accepts it in any common form — 10.1056/NEJMfoo24, doi:10.1056/…, or a full https://doi.org/… link.
  3. Click Fetch. Nomia looks the paper up and fills in the title, authors, year, journal, and more for you.
  4. Review the details, adjust anything you like, and click Save reference.

If the lookup can't find a match you'll see a clear message — for example that there's no record for that DOI, that it doesn't look like a valid DOI, or that the lookup service couldn't be reached — and you can simply type the reference in instead.

Importing from a file (BibTeX, EndNote XML, RIS)#

If you already keep references in another tool, export them and bring them in as a batch.

  1. Click Import. The Import references panel opens.
  2. Choose the format with the buttons at the top:
Format File Comes from
BibTeX (.bib) .bib Nature, IEEE, Lancet, Mendeley, Zotero, and most reference tools
EndNote XML (.xml) .xml EndNote, Mendeley, Zotero
RIS (.ris) .ris Zotero, Mendeley, EndNote, PubMed, Scopus
  1. Either paste the content into the text box, or upload a file — you can click to choose it or drag and drop it onto the dashed area. Files must be .bib, .xml, or .ris, and up to 5 MB.
  2. Click Validate & import.

If everything looks clean, your references are added straight away and you'll see how many were imported.

Note: If you both paste text and choose a file, the uploaded file takes priority.

The cleanup preview#

Reference files exported from other tools sometimes carry hidden formatting problems — garbled characters, odd spaces, or "smart" punctuation. When Nomia spots these, instead of importing them silently it shows a Review before importing screen listing exactly what it found:

What Nomia flags
Encoding garbage (mojibake)
Non-breaking spaces
Smart quotes
Em-dashes and en-dashes
Ellipses
Byte-order marks
Unescaped % characters in fields

You then choose how to proceed:

If a file is genuinely broken and can't be read at all, you'll get a plain error message (and the clean-up option won't be offered, since cleaning wouldn't help). You'll also see friendly messages if a file is too large, isn't one of the accepted types, or is empty.

Importing the reference list straight from a PDF#

Sometimes you don't have a tidy export file — you just have the text of a paper, references section and all. The Paste from PDF tool turns that raw text into real references.

  1. From the Reference Manager, click Paste from PDF. This opens the Import references from text page.
  2. Paste in the text — ideally the body of the paper plus its References (or Bibliography) section. Nomia understands the four common reference styles and detects which one you've pasted:
Style Looks like
Vancouver Numbered 1., 2. … with compact author initials
APA Surname, I. I. (Year). with periods after initials
IEEE Numbered [1], [2] … with the title in quotes
Harvard Like APA, but joins authors with "and"
  1. Click Parse. Nomia shows a Preview with three counts: how many references were parsed, how many are already in the project, and how many in-text citation markers it could line up with those references. It also tells you which style it detected.
  2. Any lines it couldn't make sense of are listed under entries couldn't be parsed so you can see exactly what to fix or add by hand.
  3. When you're happy, click Confirm import. You'll get an Import complete summary showing new versus existing references and how many in-text citations were linked, plus links to View references or Import more.

Note: This tool needs to find a heading such as References, Bibliography, Works Cited, Literature Cited, or Citations in what you paste. If there's no such heading it will let you know it couldn't find a references section. It's a best-effort reader of messy PDF text, so expect to tidy up a few entries — the ones it can't parse are always shown to you rather than dropped quietly.

Tip: If you opened this tool from a document you're writing, confirming the import can also drop the matched citations into that document for you. A version snapshot is kept first, so it's fully undoable, and if that document happens to be open elsewhere Nomia handles it safely rather than overwriting your work.

Discovering and searching for papers#

Nomia can search the world's research databases and let you add results with a single click. This feature is available if external paper search is enabled for your workspace — if you don't see the Search PubMed and Discover papers buttons, it isn't turned on for you.

Searching PubMed (biomedical literature):

  1. Click Search PubMed.
  2. Type a query — plain words like covid-19 anosmia 2024, or a specific DOI.
  3. Click Search. Results show the PMID, DOI, title, authors, and journal.
  4. Click Add on any result to bring it into your library. Once added, the button changes to Added, and it won't create a duplicate if it's already there.

Discover papers (OpenAlex — a broad catalogue of 250M+ works across every field):

  1. Click Discover papers.
  2. Type your search and click Search.
  3. Each result shows how many times it's been cited, an Open access badge where it applies, a journal impact figure when available, and the DOI.
  4. Click Add to import it, the same way as PubMed.

Matching a whole citation list. When you use the Paste from PDF tool, the preview also offers Match citations. This checks each citation you pasted against — in order — your project's own library, then external databases, and marks each one as Matched, Pick a match, or No match. For anything ambiguous you get a dropdown to choose the right paper, keep it as you pasted it, or skip it. This citation matching also relies on external paper search being enabled for your workspace.

Saving papers from the web with the browser extension#

The Web Importer is a browser add-on that lets you save a paper into your project library with one click, straight from the page you're reading — a journal site, a preprint server, anywhere.

  1. Install the Nomia Web Importer extension in your browser.
  2. While viewing a paper, click the extension to save it. Its citation details are added to your chosen project's library, and where possible an open-access PDF is fetched and attached for you.
  3. You can point the save at a specific collection within the project.

Because it's keyed on the DOI, clicking save again on the same paper won't create duplicates — it simply keeps the one you already have.

Connecting Zotero and importing your library#

If you use Zotero, you can connect it once and then pull your library into any project.

Connect Zotero (once):

  1. Go to Account → Connections.
  2. In the Zotero card, paste an API key generated from zotero.org/settings/keys and submit it. Nomia checks it's valid and confirms with Zotero connected as [your username]. Your key is stored encrypted and is only ever sent back to Zotero.

Import your library into a project:

  1. In a project, open the Reference Manager and click Import.
  2. Under More import methods, click Import from Zotero. (If you haven't connected yet, you'll see Connect Zotero to import instead, which takes you to the Connections page.)
  3. Nomia pulls in your most recent Zotero items and reports the result — for example "Zotero import: 34 added, 8 already in the library."

Re-importing is always safe: anything already in the project (matched by DOI) is counted as already present rather than duplicated. Attachments and notes in Zotero are skipped — only real bibliographic items come across.

Note: Mendeley appears in the same More import methods area but is marked unavailable, because Mendeley has closed its service to new connections. To bring Mendeley references in, use its own BibTeX or RIS export with the file import above.

Editing a reference#

  1. Open a reference by clicking its title, then click Edit (editors only).
  2. Update any field: Type, Title (required), Authors, Year, Journal, Volume, Issue, Pages, DOI, URL, and Abstract.
  3. In the edit form, the Authors box uses a slightly different shorthand than the add form — separate authors with semicolons and write each as Family, Given, for example Smith, J; Liu, W; Patel, R. The hint under the box reminds you.
  4. Click Save, or Cancel to discard your changes.

If you change the DOI to one another reference in the project already uses, Nomia will stop you with a clear message.

Archiving and restoring#

Archiving keeps your working library focused without deleting anything.

  1. On any reference card (in the Active tab), click the Archive icon and confirm the prompt.
  2. To see archived references, switch to the Archived tab. Each shows when it was archived.
  3. To bring one back, click the Restore icon in the Archived tab.

Archived references free up their DOI, so you can add a fresh reference with the same DOI while the old one stays archived. If you try to restore a reference whose DOI is now used by an active one, Nomia will let you know rather than create a clash.

Exporting your references#

You can take your library out of Nomia at any time to use in other tools:

Both are the standard formats that Zotero, Mendeley, EndNote and reference tools understand.

If your library is empty#

When there's nothing to show, the page tells you why — whether the project simply has no references yet (with a nudge to add or import one), or your current search or filter just isn't matching anything, or there are no archived references. Clearing your search and filters brings the full list back.

Research Library & My Library#

Nomia gives you two places to keep the papers you care about. The Research Library lives inside a project and is shared with everyone on that project — it is where your team curates the project's references into reading lists and attaches PDFs. My Library is your own personal shelf that follows you across every project you belong to. This section walks through both, button by button.

Note: The Research Library is an optional module. If you open a project and don't see a Library section in the workspace menu, it simply hasn't been enabled for your workspace yet — ask your workspace administrator to turn it on. My Library (under /library) is always available to every signed-in user.

Part 1 — The project Research Library#

Open a project and choose Library from the workspace menu. You'll land on a page headed Research Library with the note "Organize your project's references into collections and attach PDFs."

An important thing to understand up front: you don't create references on this page. References are added on the project's References screen. The Library is the place to organize references you already have — sort them into collections, put them in reading order, attach a PDF, and search across everything. The + Add references link in the top-right corner takes you straight to the References screen whenever you need to add more.

Who can do what#

Everything you can see here depends on your role in the project. Everything you can change requires editor access.

Your role You can…
Viewer (read access) Browse all collections and items, search and filter, open and read attached PDFs, download PDFs
Editor (write access) Everything a viewer can do, plus create and delete collections, add and remove references, reorder reading lists, and upload PDFs

If you try an editor-only action without the right access, Nomia simply tells you "You don't have permission to do that" and nothing changes.

Searching your references#

At the top of the page is a search box and a small Text / Smart switch beside it.

  1. Type into the search box. Results filter as you type (there's a brief pause so it doesn't jump on every keystroke).
  2. Use the Text / Smart switch to choose how the search works:
Mode What it does When to use it
Text Keyword search. Matches the words you type against each reference's title, abstract, and — if a PDF is attached — the full text extracted from that PDF. You know a word, phrase, author, or term that appears in the paper.
Smart Meaning-based ("semantic") search. Finds papers that are about what you describe, even if they don't contain your exact words. You want to describe a topic in your own words rather than guess the paper's wording.

The placeholder text inside the box changes to match the mode — "Search title or abstract…" in Text mode, and "Describe what you're looking for…" in Smart mode — so you always know which one is active.

Tip: Smart mode is great for questions like "randomized trials on post-operative pain in elderly patients" even when no single paper uses those exact words. If the smart-search service is briefly unavailable, Nomia quietly falls back to ordinary keyword matching so your search still returns something useful.

Note: Smart search ranks papers that have already been processed for meaning. A reference you just added may take a short while before it appears in Smart results; until then, Text search will always find it.

Filtering by type and by PDF#

Just below the search box are two more ways to narrow the list:

The available types are:

Type Meaning
article A journal article
book A whole book
chapter A chapter within a book
conference A conference paper or proceedings
preprint A preprint (not yet formally published)
dataset A published dataset
website A web page or online resource
misc Anything that doesn't fit the categories above

You can combine all of these freely — for example, Smart search and "Has PDF" on and a "preprint" chip selected all narrow the same list together.

Collections and nested collections (your reading lists)#

On the left is the Collections sidebar. A collection is a named reading list — a way to group references, such as "Background reading," "Methods papers," or "For the discussion section."

To create a collection (editors):

  1. In the sidebar, find the New collection box near the bottom.
  2. Type a name.
  3. (Optional) If you already have collections, a dropdown lets you choose a parent — pick Top level to make it a standalone list, or pick an existing collection to nest the new one inside it.
  4. Click the + button to create it.

Note: A collection needs a name. If you click + without typing one, Nomia reminds you to "Give the collection a name" and nothing is created.

To delete a collection (editors): hover over a collection row and click the small trash icon that appears. Nomia asks you to confirm first. Deleting a collection only removes the list — "References stay in your library," so none of your actual references are lost.

Putting references into a collection#

Each reference in the main list is shown as a card with its title, its authors (shown as the first author followed by "et al." when there are several), its year, and its type.

To add a reference to a collection (editors): every card has an Add to collection… dropdown at the bottom (it appears once you have at least one collection). Pick a collection from the dropdown and the reference is added immediately. Adding the same reference twice does nothing — it's simply already there.

To remove a reference from a collection (editors): first click the collection in the sidebar so you're viewing its contents, then click Remove on the reference's card. This only takes the paper out of that reading list; the reference itself stays in the project.

Ordering a reading list (move up / move down)#

When you select a specific collection and you have editor access, two small arrows — ↑ and ↓ — appear on each reference card. These let you set the reading order within that collection:

  1. Click a collection in the sidebar.
  2. Use ↑ to move a reference one step earlier in the list, or ↓ to move it one step later.
  3. Each click swaps the paper with its neighbour, so you can walk a paper up or down to exactly where you want it.

The arrows only appear inside a collection — the "All items" view has no manual order (it shows newest first). At the very top or bottom of a list, pressing the arrow toward the edge simply does nothing.

Tip: Reading order is per-collection. The same paper can sit near the top of one reading list and near the bottom of another — each collection remembers its own order.

Attaching a PDF to a reference#

Any reference can carry one uploaded PDF.

  1. On a reference that has no PDF yet, click Upload PDF (editors only).
  2. A small upload row opens on the card. Choose your file — it must be a PDF, up to 50 MB.
  3. Click Save. Nomia confirms with "PDF attached." (Click Cancel to back out without uploading.)

Once a PDF is attached, the reference automatically shows Read and Download instead of the upload button. Behind the scenes Nomia also reads the text out of the PDF so it becomes searchable in Text mode — that can take a moment after upload.

Reading a PDF in the app, and asking questions about it#

When a reference has a PDF, its card shows two links:

The Read view splits the screen. On the left is the PDF itself, shown exactly as it really looks using your browser's own PDF viewer — nothing is reflowed or reformatted. On the right is a chat panel. At the top of that panel is the paper's title and a ← Back to library link to return.

Chat-over-PDF lets you ask questions and get answers drawn from that specific PDF:

  1. Type a question into the box at the bottom — for example, "What was the sample size?" or "Summarize the main finding."
  2. Click Ask (or the box shows "Ask about this PDF…" to prompt you).
  3. The panel shows "Thinking…" while it works, then displays your question with its answer beneath. Ask as many follow-up questions as you like — each new answer appears below the last.

A short disclaimer sits under the box as a reminder that answers are AI-generated and grounded in the PDF's text. A few things worth knowing:

Note: The chat panel only appears when AI features are enabled for your workspace and the reference actually has a PDF. If you don't see it, one of those two things isn't in place.

Part 2 — My Library (your personal, cross-project shelf)#

My Library is your own private collection of papers, reachable at /library from anywhere in Nomia. Unlike the project Research Library, it isn't tied to a single project — it's yours alone, and only you can ever see it. The page is headed My Library with the note "Your personal, cross-project reading library."

How papers get into My Library#

There's no "add" button on this page itself — that's by design. You fill My Library from other screens:

Saved papers then appear here for you to search, annotate, and manage. Until you've saved anything, the page shows a friendly empty state: "Your library is empty — Save a paper from any project's References screen, or from citation-match results, and it will appear here."

Tip: Saving the same paper twice is safe. My Library recognises a paper you've already saved and won't create a duplicate.

What each saved paper shows#

Each entry is a card showing its title, then a line of details — authors, year, journal, and DOI where available — followed by any tags and notes you've added. A small coloured badge on the right tells you where the paper came from:

Badge Meaning
from a project You saved it from a project's References screen
a source name (e.g. crossref, openalex, pubmed) You saved it from an external discovery search of that source
manual It was added by hand

Searching My Library#

At the top is a single filter box: "Filter by title, author, journal, or tag…". Type into it and the list narrows instantly to entries whose title, author names, journal, or tags contain what you typed. Clear the box to see everything again. If nothing matches, Nomia tells you "Nothing matches your filter."

Adding notes and tags#

Every entry can carry your own private notes and tags — these are your overlay on the paper and don't change the paper's saved details.

  1. Click the pencil icon on the entry (its tooltip reads "Notes & tags").
  2. In the panel that opens, type free-form notes in the large box.
  3. In the tags field, type tags separated by commas — for example to-read, methods, key-paper. You can add up to 20 tags per entry; blanks and extra spaces are tidied up automatically.
  4. Click Save (Nomia confirms with "Saved."), or Cancel to discard your edits.

Your notes appear on the card afterward, and your tags show as small coloured chips. Because tags are searchable, they're a quick way to group papers across every project — filter by a tag to pull up everything you marked the same way.

Uploading your own PDF#

You can attach your own copy of a paper to any entry:

  1. On an entry with no PDF, click Upload PDF.
  2. Choose a PDF file, up to 50 MB.
  3. Click Save (or Cancel to stop). Nomia confirms with "PDF attached."

Once attached, the entry shows a PDF link instead — click it to open your copy in a new tab. This PDF is yours and stays with your personal entry.

Removing a paper#

To take a paper off your shelf, click the archive icon (its tooltip reads "Remove"). Nomia asks "Remove this paper from your library?" and, once you confirm, removes it and shows "Removed from your library." This only affects your personal library — it never touches the project's references or anyone else's library.

Note: My Library is strictly private. Every paper, note, tag, and PDF here belongs to your account only; no teammate and no project ever sees your personal shelf.

Tasks & Files#

Every project in Nomia Lab has its own Tasks board for tracking who is doing what, and its own Files area for keeping the documents, datasets, and references your team works from. Both live inside the project you open, and both are shared with everyone on that project. This section walks you through each of them, button by button.

Note: Nomia Lab is fully bilingual (English and Arabic). If your workspace is set to Arabic, every screen described here mirrors right-to-left — the layout flips, but all the same buttons, fields, and steps are in the same order.

Tip: What you can do on these screens depends on your role in the project. Everyone on a project can look at the Tasks board and the Files list; creating, moving, assigning, uploading, and removing are reserved for certain roles. Each subsection below tells you exactly who can do what.

Finding the Tasks board#

Open your project, then choose Tasks from the project menu. The board opens on the Tasks heading with two things at the top right: a view switcher (List / Kanban) and, when your project has more than one member, an assignee filter.

There are two ways to look at the very same tasks:

View What it looks like Best for
List (default) Tasks stacked in vertical groups, one group per status, each group labelled with a count Reading through everything and ticking tasks off
Kanban Five side-by-side columns you can drag cards between; scrolls sideways on a phone Seeing the flow of work and re-ordering by hand

To switch, click List or Kanban in the toggle at the top right. Your choice is saved into the page address, so you can bookmark or share a link that opens straight into the view you prefer.

Understanding statuses and priorities#

Every task has a status (where it is in the workflow) and a priority (how urgent it is).

There are five statuses. A task can move freely between any of them — there is no fixed order, so you can send a task back to To Do from Done if the work needs revisiting.

Status What it means Colour cue
To Do Not started yet Grey
In Progress Being worked on now Orange
In Review Waiting for a check or approval Blue
Done Finished Green
Blocked Stuck, waiting on something Red

There are three priorities, shown as a small coloured dot on the left of each task:

Priority Dot colour
High Red
Medium (default) Amber
Low Grey

Creating a task#

The new-task bar sits just under the heading. It appears only if you have editing rights on the project (Principal Investigator, Co-Investigator, or Fellow). If you don't see it, your role is view-only for tasks.

  1. In the field reading "Add a task — what needs to happen?", type a short title. This is the only required field. Titles can be up to 500 characters.
  2. Pick a priority from the dropdown — Medium (pre-selected), High, or Low.
  3. Optionally choose a due date with the date picker.
  4. If you are a project lead (Principal Investigator or Co-Investigator) and the project has members, an assignee dropdown appears. Choose Unassigned or a teammate's name. (Fellows see the task bar but not this dropdown — see Assigning tasks below.)
  5. Click Add Task.

The task appears immediately in the correct status group (new tasks start as To Do) and a "Task created." confirmation flashes at the top. New tasks always land at the bottom of their column.

Note: If you try to add a task without a title, you'll see "Task title is required." and nothing is created.

Assigning tasks to members#

Assigning a task tells everyone who is responsible for it. In this version, a task is assigned at the moment it is created, using the assignee dropdown in the new-task bar (see step 4 above). Only project leads — Principal Investigator and Co-Investigator — can set an assignee.

Once assigned, the teammate's name (or email) shows on the task in both views. The assignee also quietly gains the ability to move their own task along — see the next subsection.

Tip: Assigning a task to someone (other than yourself) lets them know it's now theirs — they'll see it in their notifications and in the project's upcoming-tasks list. Assigning a task to yourself doesn't trigger a notification.

Updating a task (List view)#

In List view, each task is a row with several controls, from left to right:

Who can change a task's status or tick it off:

If you don't have permission for a particular task, you'll see a short "You can't change this task." message and nothing changes.

Note: In this version, a task's title, priority, due date, and assignee are fixed once it's created — the interface lets you change its status and its order, which covers day-to-day tracking. If a task's core details are wrong, the simplest fix is to archive it and create a fresh one with the right information.

Reordering and moving tasks (Kanban view)#

Switch to Kanban view to see the five status columns side by side, each with a count of how many tasks it holds (empty columns still show, so you always see the full workflow). On a narrow screen the board scrolls sideways.

Your new arrangement is saved automatically. The same permission rule applies as in List view: editors can move any card, and an assignee can always move their own.

Tip: Kanban cards are compact on purpose — each shows the priority dot, the title, and (if set) the assignee and due date. Use List view when you want the tick-off checkboxes and the status dropdown.

Filtering by assignee#

When a project has more than one member, an All assignees dropdown appears at the top right. Pick a teammate to show only the tasks assigned to them; choose All assignees to clear the filter. The filter works in both List and Kanban views, and (like the view switch) it's reflected in the page address so you can share a filtered link.

Archiving a task#

Archiving tidies a task away without deleting your history. Only project leads (Principal Investigator, Co-Investigator) can archive.

  1. In List view, click the small archive (box) icon at the far right of the task row.
  2. Confirm when asked "Archive this task?".

The task disappears from the board and a "Task archived." message appears. Archived tasks no longer show in any status group or column.

Note: If you don't have permission, archiving is blocked with "Only project leads can archive tasks."

Finding the Files area#

From your project menu, choose Files. The Files screen shows, at the top: the heading, a count of how many files the project holds (a folder icon with a number), and a reminder chip reading "Max 100 MB per file."

Everyone on the project can open this screen and see and download its files. Uploading and removing are for members with editing rights.

What you can store#

Nomia Lab accepts the file types researchers actually work with:

File type Extensions
PDF documents .pdf
Microsoft Word .doc, .docx
Microsoft Excel .xls, .xlsx
Microsoft PowerPoint .ppt, .pptx
Comma-separated data .csv
Plain text .txt
BibTeX references .bib
ZIP archives .zip
Images .png, .jpg / .jpeg, .webp, .gif

Two limits apply:

Tip: If an upload won't go through even though the file is under 100 MB, your workspace's storage may be full. Remove files you no longer need, or ask whoever manages your workspace about a larger allowance.

Uploading files#

The upload zone — a dashed box reading "Drag files here or browse" — appears only if you have editing rights (Principal Investigator, Co-Investigator, or Fellow). Under it, a line reminds you of the accepted types: "PDF, Office, CSV, plain text, BibTeX, ZIP, images. 100 MB max."

You can upload in either of two ways:

  1. Drag and drop — drag one or more files from your computer onto the dashed box, or
  2. Browse — click anywhere in the box to open your computer's file picker and choose files.

Uploading starts as soon as you drop or choose the files. For each file you'll see its name, a progress bar, and a percentage counting up. You can upload up to 5 files at once.

When it finishes you'll see "File uploaded." (or "2 files uploaded.", etc.), and the new files appear at the top of the list.

Possible messages if something isn't right:

Message Meaning
File is too large (max 100 MB). The file is over the per-file limit
Too many files at once. You selected more than 5 files in one go
That file type isn't allowed. The file isn't one of the supported types above
Upload failed. The upload didn't complete (for example, the workspace storage allowance is full)

Note: If you don't have editing rights, you won't see the upload box at all — the Files screen is read-only for your role, and you can still download anything that's there.

The file list, downloading, and removing files#

Each file sits on its own row showing an icon for its type, the file name, and a details line with the file size, who uploaded it, and when. If a file was stored without a name it appears as "(untitled)".

Downloading

  1. Click the Download button on the file's row.
  2. The file opens in a new browser tab. Depending on the type, it either previews (for example a PDF or image) or downloads to your computer.

Any project member can download, regardless of role.

Tip: Each Download link is generated fresh when you click it and stays valid for about an hour. If you copy a download link and it stops working later, just come back and click Download again.

Removing (archiving) a file

Members with editing rights (Principal Investigator, Co-Investigator, Fellow) see an archive (box) button at the end of each row — you can archive any file, even one a teammate uploaded.

  1. Click the archive icon on the file's row.
  2. Confirm when asked "Archive this file?".

The file is removed from the list, its stored copy is cleared, and you'll see "File archived." If you try to archive without permission you'll get "You can't archive this file."

Note: Archiving frees up the space the file was using against your workspace's storage allowance.

Communication — Team Chat#

Every project in Nomia Lab has its own built-in chat, so your whole team can talk in one place instead of scattering across email and messaging apps. You'll find it under the Communication tab of any project you belong to. This section walks you through everything chat can do: group conversations, private one-to-one messages, replies, reactions, mentions, voice notes with automatic transcription, file attachments, search, and more. Chat works fully in both English and Arabic, including right-to-left layout.

Getting your bearings#

When you open Communication, the screen splits into two parts:

  1. The threads rail (on the left) — your list of every conversation in this project: the main project chat, any named channels, and your private direct messages.
  2. The conversation pane (on the right) — the messages in whichever conversation you've selected, with the message box at the bottom for writing.

On a phone or narrow screen, the rail is hidden to save space. Tap Show threads to slide it open and Hide threads to tuck it away again.

Tip: The conversation you had open is remembered when you arrive from a notification — clicking a chat notification drops you straight into the exact conversation that it came from.

The three kinds of conversations#

Chat has three types of conversations, each with its own privacy rules. The rail and the header of each conversation always tell you which kind you're in.

Conversation Who can see it How it's labelled
Project chat Everyone on the project can read and write. Created automatically with the project — there's always exactly one. "Project chat", shown with a # icon. Subtitle: "Everyone on this project can read & write here."
Channels Everyone on the project, same as project chat — but focused on one topic you name. The channel name with a # in front (e.g. #recruitment). Subtitle: "Project channel — visible to everyone on this project."
Direct messages (DMs) Only the two people in the conversation. Completely private. The other person's name, shown with a person icon. Subtitle: "Direct message — only the two of you can read this."

Note: Direct messages are only possible between people who share at least one organization with you. This keeps private messaging inside your own institution.

Sending a message#

  1. Select a conversation from the rail.
  2. Click into the message box at the bottom — it says Write a message….
  3. Type your message. Press Enter for a new line, or use ⌘/Ctrl + Enter to send.
  4. Click the round send button (the paper-plane icon on the right of the box) to send.

Your own messages appear on the right in a soft highlight; everyone else's appear on the left. Each message shows the author's name and the time it was sent. When there's nothing in a conversation yet, you'll see "No messages yet. Be the first to say something."

Tip: An empty message won't send on its own — but if you've attached a file with no text, that's fine; the message will carry the attachment.

Mentioning a teammate with @#

To get someone's attention, type @ followed by their name. A small list of project members pops up as you type — keep typing to narrow it, then pick the person. Their name is inserted into your message, and when you send it they receive a notification letting them know they were mentioned, even if they've muted the busier conversations.

Tip: Mentions are one of the surest ways to reach someone — a mention always notifies, so use it when you genuinely need a specific person to look.

Replying to a specific message#

When a conversation gets busy, you can reply directly to one message so everyone knows exactly what you're responding to.

  1. Hover or look under the message you want to answer and click Reply.
  2. A small Replying to [name] banner appears just above the message box, showing a preview of what you're answering. (Click the ✕ on the banner to cancel and go back to a normal message.)
  3. Type your reply and send it as usual.

Your reply appears in the normal flow of the conversation with a small quote-chip at the top showing who you replied to and a snippet of their message. Clicking that quote-chip jumps you straight up to the original message. If the original is far back in the history, you'll see a gentle note: "That message is further up — load older messages to jump to it."

Note: You reply to an original message — you can't reply to a reply. This keeps threads one level deep and easy to follow.

Reacting with emoji#

Sometimes a quick reaction says enough. Under any message, click React to open a small picker with six quick emoji:

👍 ❤️ 😆 🎉 👀 ✅

Click one to add it. Reactions collect into little chips beneath the message showing the emoji and a running count; your own reaction is highlighted. Click a chip again to remove your reaction (a toggle).

In a group conversation (project chat or a channel), if you're the author of the message, clicking a reaction chip on your own message opens a Reactions window that lists exactly who reacted with each emoji — handy for seeing who's on board. In direct messages, and on other people's messages, clicking a chip simply adds or removes your own reaction.

Editing and deleting your own messages#

You can fix or remove your own messages for a limited time.

Note: Both Edit and Delete are available for 24 hours after you send a message. After that, the options disappear and the message is final. If you try to save an edit past the window you'll see "Edit window expired (24 hours)."

Attaching files#

To share documents, images, PDFs, or other files:

  1. Click the paperclip icon to the left of the message box (Attach files).
  2. Pick up to 3 files — each up to 25 MB.
  3. Your chosen files appear as chips above the message box, each showing its name and size. Remove one before sending with its ✕.
  4. Add a message if you like, then send. The files appear as tidy chips under your message; anyone in the conversation can click a chip to open or download the file.

If a file is too big or its type isn't allowed, you'll get a clear message such as "File exceeds the 25 MB chat-attachment cap.", "That file type isn't accepted in chat.", or "You can attach up to 3 files per message."

Tip: If you attach an audio file, Nomia Lab treats it as a voice message — it gets its own bubble with an audio player (and, where enabled, a transcript), exactly like a recording made in the app.

Voice messages#

You can send a voice note two ways: record one right in your browser, or attach an audio file (as above).

To record in the browser:

  1. With the message box empty, click the round microphone button on the right (Record a voice message). Your browser will ask permission to use your microphone the first time.
  2. The message row turns into a recording bar: a red pulsing dot, a running timer (0:00), and Recording….
  3. When you're done, click the send (paper-plane) button to stop and send, or the ✕ to cancel and throw the recording away.

Recordings can be up to 5 minutes long. Once sent, the voice message appears in the conversation with a built-in audio player — press play to listen.

Automatic transcription. If transcription is enabled for your workspace, Nomia Lab automatically turns each voice message into text. While it's working, the message shows (transcribing…); when it's ready, a compact Transcript (N words) link appears. Transcription understands both English and Arabic.

Opening a transcript. Click the Transcript link to open the full text in a focused window, so a long voice memo never clutters the conversation. In that window you can:

Note: If transcription isn't enabled for your workspace, voice messages still send and play perfectly — they simply arrive as audio only, with no transcript link.

Seeing who's typing#

When someone in the conversation is writing, a small line appears just above the message box — for example "Dr. Salim is typing…", "Dr. Salim and Aisha are typing…", or "3 people are typing…". It clears on its own a few seconds after they stop.

Read receipts — who's seen your message#

Chat shows you when your messages have been read, so you know they've landed.

Who's online#

In your Direct messages list, a small green dot next to a person's icon means they're currently online in this project, so you know when you're likely to get a quick reply.

Reading older messages and jumping to the latest#

Long conversations don't all load at once. When there's more history above what's shown, a Load older messages button sits at the top — and as you scroll up, older messages load automatically, so you can keep scrolling back through the whole conversation.

When you've scrolled up and new messages arrive, a round down-arrow button appears in the corner. Click it to jump straight back to the latest message.

Searching a conversation#

Every conversation has its own search box in the top-right of the header (Search this conversation).

  1. Start typing — results appear live as you type.
  2. Each result shows who wrote it, when, and a short snippet around your search term.
  3. Click the ✕ beside the box to close the results and return to the full conversation.

Search looks through everything in the open conversation — including the text of voice-message transcripts — and works equally well in English and Arabic. If nothing matches, you'll see "No messages match your search."

Tip: Search covers whichever conversation you have open. To search a different channel or DM, open that conversation first, then search there.

Named channels — creating and archiving#

Channels let you split a busy project into focused, topic-named spaces (for example #ethics-approval or #data-collection). Everyone on the project can see and post in every channel.

To create a channel (available if creating channels is enabled for your role):

  1. In the rail, click the + next to the Project heading.
  2. Type a Channel name (up to 200 characters) and press Enter.
  3. The new channel opens right away and appears in your rail with a # in front of its name.

To archive a channel:

  1. Open the channel and click Archive in its header.
  2. Confirm "Archive this channel? Its history is kept but it leaves the sidebar."

Archiving is available to the person who created the channel and to project members who can manage members. An archived channel disappears from everyone's rail (anyone viewing it is gently moved back to the main project chat), but none of its history is lost — and its name becomes free to use again. If you don't have permission, you'll see "You don't have permission to do that."

Note: The main Project chat can't be archived — it's always there as the project's home conversation.

Starting a direct message#

  1. In the rail, click the + next to the Direct messages heading.
  2. In the Start a direct message window, search by name or email. The list shows people who share an organization with you.
  3. Click a person to open (or reopen) your private conversation with them.

If something isn't possible you'll get a clear reason: "You can't DM yourself.", "That user isn't in any of your organizations.", or "User not found." Before you've started any, the DM list simply reads "No direct messages yet."

Unread badges and notifications#

Each new message you're notified about counts on its own, so your notification badge reflects how many messages are waiting — not just how many conversations.

Read-only conversations#

If your role on a project doesn't include posting to chat, you can still read everything, and the message box is replaced with a short note: "You have read-only access to this chat."

Tip: If you believe you should be able to post but can't, ask a project owner or administrator to check your role for this project.

Meeting Minutes#

Every project in Nomia Lab has its own Meetings space — a running, searchable timeline of your team's meetings. You can write minutes by hand (agenda, discussion notes, decisions, and action items), invite people from your project team as attendees, turn any action item into a real task with a single click, and — if it's enabled for your workspace — upload an audio recording and let Nomia transcribe it and draft the structured minutes for you. This section walks through everything on the page, step by step.

Note: Most of what follows (creating meetings, adding action items, uploading recordings) is available to project members who can contribute. A few buttons only appear when you have the matching access — those are called out where they come up. If a button isn't visible to you, you likely don't have permission for that action on this project.

Opening the Meetings space#

  1. Open your project and go to its Meetings section.
  2. At the top you'll see the heading Meetings with a short reminder that minutes are "searchable by keyword, date, and attendee."
  3. On the right is the New meeting button (visible if you're able to contribute to the project).
  4. Below the heading are a search box and an attendee filter, and beneath those, the meeting timeline itself.

If the project has no meetings yet, the timeline shows: "No meetings yet. Create the first one to start the project timeline."

Creating a meeting#

  1. Click New meeting. A form opens directly on the page.
  2. Fill in the fields:
Field Required? What it's for
Title Yes A short name for the meeting (up to 300 characters).
Date & time Yes When the meeting was (or will be) held — pick a date and a time.
Agenda No The planned topics. Free text, multi-line.
Discussion notes No What was actually discussed. Free text, multi-line.
Decisions made No The conclusions the team reached. Free text, multi-line.
Attendees No Tick the project members who took part (see below).
  1. Under Attendees, you'll see a checkbox for each current member of the project team. Tick everyone who attended. Only people who are members of this project appear here — that keeps your attendee list scoped to the actual team.
  2. Click Create meeting to save. The new meeting appears at the top of the timeline and opens up automatically so you can review it.

Tip: You don't have to fill everything in up front. Title and date/time are the only required fields — you can leave agenda, notes, and decisions blank and come back to fill them in later, or (if AI drafting is on for your workspace) let a recording fill them for you.

Note: The agenda, notes, and decisions fields each hold a large amount of text (tens of thousands of characters), so you're free to paste in full write-ups. Dates and times are shown in a plain 24-hour format like 2026-07-09 14:30.

If something can't be saved, a short message appears in red at the bottom of the form (for example, if the title is empty). Click Cancel at any time to close the form without saving.

The meeting timeline#

Every meeting shows up as a card in the timeline, newest meeting first (ordered by the date and time you entered).

Inside an expanded meeting, sections that are empty are simply hidden — so if you never filled in "Decisions," that heading won't clutter the card.

Searching and filtering meetings#

Two controls above the timeline let you narrow things down, and they work together:

  1. Search minutes — start typing in the search box. Results filter as you type (after a brief pause), matching your keyword against the meeting title, agenda, discussion notes, decisions, and even the text of any transcript. So you can find a meeting by a phrase someone said on the recording, not just by its title.
  2. All attendees dropdown — pick a person to show only the meetings they attended. Choose All attendees again to clear it.

You can combine both — for example, search for "budget" and filter to meetings that a specific colleague attended. Clear the search box to see the whole timeline again.

Tip: Because the timeline is always sorted with the most recent meeting on top, you can browse chronologically without any filter — just scroll.

Action items#

Action items are the follow-ups captured for a meeting. They live inside the expanded meeting card, under Action items.

Adding an action item

  1. Expand the meeting.
  2. In the Add an action item… box at the bottom of the action-items list, type the follow-up (up to 2,000 characters).
  3. Press Enter or click Add. It appears in the list immediately.

Removing an action item

Turning an action item into a task (one click)#

Any action item can become a real, trackable task in your project's task list — no retyping.

  1. Expand the meeting and find the action item under Action items.
  2. Click Create task next to it.
  3. Nomia creates a project task using the action item's text as the task title, links the two together, and shows a brief "Task created." confirmation. The item then displays a green Task created label instead of the button.

Note: The Create task button only appears if you have permission to create tasks in this project. If you don't see it, you can still add and keep action items — you just can't convert them yourself.

Tip: Conversion happens once per item. After an action item shows Task created, clicking around won't make a duplicate task — the link is kept, so the item and its task stay tied together.

Recordings and automatic minutes#

Instead of writing everything by hand, you can upload an audio recording of the meeting. Nomia will transcribe it to text automatically, and — if your workspace has AI minutes turned on — draft the structured minutes for you.

Uploading a recording

  1. Expand the meeting and find the Recording section.
  2. Choose an audio file, then click Upload & transcribe.
  3. You'll see a confirmation — "Recording uploaded — transcribing…" — and the meeting picks up a status badge while it's processed.

Accepted files are audio only: WebM, MP3, M4A, and WAV, up to 100 MB. There's one recording per meeting; uploading again replaces the previous one.

Note: If AI minutes drafting is not enabled for your organization, you'll see a small line under the upload button: "AI minutes drafting is off for your organization — you'll get the transcript only." In that case Nomia still transcribes your audio to searchable text; it just won't auto-write the agenda/notes/decisions draft.

What happens next — the "analysing" state

While Nomia works through your recording, the meeting card shows a status badge so you always know where things stand. During this analysing phase the badge sits in amber and updates on its own — you don't need to refresh the page.

Badge What it means
Transcribing… (amber) Your audio is being turned into text.
Drafting minutes… (amber) The transcript is being written up into structured minutes (only if AI drafting is on).
Minutes ready (green) Finished — the transcript (and the AI draft, if enabled) are ready to read.
Transcription failed (red) Something went wrong. Your recording stays attached so you can review or try again.

A meeting with no recording and nothing in progress simply shows no badge at all.

Reading the transcript and the drafted minutes

Tip: This "fill the blanks only" behaviour means you can safely jot a few notes by hand and upload a recording. Your notes stay put, and the AI just fills in whatever you left empty and suggests action items — which you can then turn into tasks with one click.

Editing and deleting a meeting#

At the bottom of an expanded meeting card (if you have permission to contribute) you'll find:

Note: Everything you do here — creating, editing, deleting a meeting, and converting action items — is recorded in your project's activity history, so there's always a clear trail of who changed what.

Smart Lab Notebook#

The Smart Lab Notebook is your private research workspace inside each project — a single, scrollable feed where you capture ideas the moment they happen and let the AI help turn them into something you can share with your team. You reach it from a project's Notes section. At the top you'll see the title Smart Lab Notebook and the reminder "Your private research workspace · AI-powered insights."

Everything you write starts out visible only to you. You decide, entry by entry, what (if anything) the rest of your team ever sees.

Note: Adding, editing, sharing, and deleting entries are available when you have permission to contribute to the project. If you have read-only access, you'll still see the feed and can open cards, but the creation tiles and action buttons won't appear.

Your Private Workspace#

Right under the heading is a highlighted banner: "Private Workspace. Everything here is private until you choose to share. Capture ideas freely — AI will help you turn them into polished updates for your team." That banner is the promise the whole notebook is built on.

At the very bottom of the feed you'll also see a quiet reminder: "Entries are private to you until shared. AI analysis runs in-region."

The three tabs#

The feed has three tabs. Click a tab name to switch; the one you're on is underlined.

Tab What it shows
Mine Your own private entries — everything you've captured, newest first. This is your day-to-day workspace.
Team The shared feed — snapshots that you or your teammates have chosen to share. Visible to everyone on the project.
Archived Entries you've set aside. A small number next to the word Archived tells you how many are in there.

Tip: Empty tabs tell you what to do next — "No private notes yet — add one above," "Nothing shared with the team yet," or "Nothing archived yet."

Adding an entry: the four capture tiles#

On the Mine tab, four tiles sit near the top. Each opens its own simple pop-up window (a "modal") for one kind of capture:

Tile Use it for Note
Text Note — Quick thoughts A written note or idea
Insert Picture — Upload or camera A photo, screenshot, or diagram Take a photo or upload a file
Insert Link — URL or DOI Saving a web page, paper, or dataset Add a note on why you saved it
Voice Note — Record audio Talking through an idea hands-free Record live or upload an audio file

Every capture window has a Tags field at the bottom — type comma-separated tags (for example mice, dosing, week3) to make entries easy to find later. Press Save & Analyze with AI to keep the entry, or Cancel (or the ✕, clicking outside the window, or the Esc key) to close without saving.

Text Note#

  1. Click Text Note.
  2. Type a Title and/or a Note. (Formatting like Markdown is supported in the note body.)
  3. Add Tags if you like.
  4. Press Save & Analyze with AI.

Note: A text note needs at least a title or some note text. If both are empty you'll see "Add a title or a note first."

Insert Picture#

  1. Click Insert Picture.
  2. Choose a source:
    • Take Photo — "Opens the camera on mobile." On a phone or tablet this launches the camera so you can snap a bench setup, a whiteboard, or a gel image on the spot.
    • Upload Image — pick an existing file. Accepted formats are PNG, JPEG, GIF, and WEBP.
  3. Optionally add a Caption (this becomes the entry's title) and a Description.
  4. Add Tags if you like, then Save & Analyze with AI.

Tip: You can attach up to 8 images, each up to 10 MB. As each file uploads you'll see its name and a percentage; click the ✕ beside a file to remove it before saving. If a file is the wrong type or too big, a clear message tells you (for example "Image is too large (max 10 MB)" or "Only PNG, JPEG, GIF, or WEBP images").

Note: You can also save a picture entry with just a caption and no image, and add photos to it later — see Adding more images to a picture entry below.

  1. Click Insert Link.
  2. In URL or DOI, paste the web address or DOI you want to keep. It must be a normal http:// or https:// web address.
  3. In Why is this relevant / what to remember, jot a sentence about why this link matters — this note is saved with the link and shown as "Why saved."
  4. Add Tags, then Save & Analyze with AI.

The notebook automatically fetches the page's title and description in the background, so a link you save with a bare URL fills in with a readable title and summary shortly after.

Note: For your safety, links must point to real, public web addresses. Private, internal, or local addresses are refused with a plain message (for example "Private/internal URLs aren't allowed," "Localhost URLs aren't allowed," or "URL must use http:// or https://").

Voice Note#

  1. Click Voice Note.
  2. Choose a source:
    • Record — "Up to 10 min; AI transcribes on stop." Press Start recording; a red dot and a running timer appear. When you're finished, press Stop & transcribe (or Cancel to discard). The recording uploads and is automatically turned into text.
    • Upload Audio — "m4a, mp3, or wav." Choose an existing audio file; "the upload starts immediately and is transcribed like a recording."
  3. That's it — there's no Save button for voice. Once the audio arrives, the entry is created for you and transcription begins.

Tip: Recordings can run up to 10 minutes; uploaded audio can be up to 25 MB. If your browser blocks the microphone you'll see "Microphone access was denied," and older browsers that can't record show "Recording isn't supported in this browser" — in that case, use Upload Audio instead.

Reading your feed: collapse and expand#

The notebook is a single-column feed of collapsible cards, newest at the top. Each card shows an icon for its type, its title, a short preview, any tags, and the time it was created.

Tip: Opening an image or voice card loads its pictures and transcript on demand, so the feed stays fast even with lots of entries.

Searching your notebook#

Use the Search notebook… box in the toolbar to filter the current feed as you type (results update after a brief pause).

Tip: Because search reaches into AI-extracted text, transcribing a voice note or analysing an image effectively makes that content searchable.

What the AI does with your captures#

Two kinds of AI reading happen right on your entries. Both show a spinning "Analysing…" indicator while they work, and both save their results onto the entry so they never have to run again.

Voice transcription (automatic). Every voice note is transcribed for you. While it's working the open card shows "Analysing…"; when it's done, the text appears under a ✦ AI Transcript heading. If transcription ever fails, the card shows the reason and a Retry transcription button so you can try again — your original audio is never lost.

On a voice card you may see What it means
Analysing… Your audio is uploading or being transcribed — hang tight.
✦ AI Transcript + text Transcription finished; the words are ready (and searchable).
An error message + Retry transcription Something went wrong; press the button to run it again.

Image reading / OCR (one click). Open an image entry and, beneath each picture, press Analyse. The AI reads the image — including any text in it (OCR) — and shows the result under a ✦ AI read (OCR) label. The button then becomes Re-analyse if you ever want a fresh read, and shows Analysing… while it works.

Note: Image analysis appears if AI assistance is enabled for your workspace. If it isn't, the Analyse button simply won't show, and pressing it (if forged) is safely refused.

Adding more images to a picture entry#

  1. Open the picture card.
  2. Press Add images.
  3. An uploader appears — choose one or more files (same formats and limits as above).
  4. Each image attaches to the card. Hover an image and click the ✕ to remove it (you'll be asked to confirm).

The ✦ Ask AI menu#

Open any of your entries and, if AI assistance is enabled for your workspace, you'll find a ✦ Ask AI button at the bottom of the card. It gives you a research assistant focused on that one entry — it answers using only that entry's own content (its title, note text, transcript, and any image reading), so replies stay grounded in what you actually captured.

  1. Press ✦ Ask AI to open the panel ("How can I help with this?").
  2. Choose one of the quick actions, or type your own question:
Option What it does
Explain Explains the entry in plain language.
Critique Points out weaknesses, gaps, methodological concerns, and what to check next.
Ask anything about this entry… A free-text box — type any question about the entry and press Ask.
  1. While the assistant works you'll see "Thinking…". The answer then appears in a running thread right inside the card, with your questions and the AI's replies stacked in order, so you can keep a conversation going about that entry.

Note: The assistant is a research aid, not a medical device — it won't give diagnostic or clinical-decision advice, and it only ever discusses the single entry you opened, never your other notes.

Editing an entry#

  1. On the Mine tab, open (or find) the entry and press Edit on its row.
  2. The same capture window reopens, pre-filled with your existing content.
  3. Make your changes and press Save changes.

Note: Editing changes your private copy. If you had already shared the entry, the team keeps the earlier snapshot — your edits don't rewrite what they've seen.

Sharing, archiving, deleting, and restoring#

Each of your entries moves through a simple lifecycle, and the buttons on the card change to match its state. On the Mine tab, active (non-archived) entries show an Edit button plus the actions below.

State What it means Available actions
Private Only you can see it Share (send a snapshot to the team) · Delete (remove permanently)
Shared A snapshot is on the Team feed (a small Shared badge appears on the card) Archive (set it aside while keeping the team's copy) · Unshare (on the Team tab, within 24 hours)
Archived Set aside and hidden from Mine Restore (bring it back)

Share to the team

  1. Press Share on a private entry.
  2. You'll see "Shared to team," a Shared badge appears on the card, and a snapshot shows up on the Team tab for everyone on the project.

Delete (private entries only)

  1. Press Delete on a private entry.
  2. Confirm "Delete this private entry permanently?" — this cannot be undone, and it also removes the entry's attached images.

Note: Delete is deliberately available only for private entries. If an entry has been shared, you'll be told "Shared entries can't be deleted — archive instead to keep team history," and an archived entry asks you to "Restore the entry before deleting it." This protects the record your team relied on.

Archive (once shared)

  1. Press Archive on a shared entry.
  2. It moves to the Archived tab (the team's shared snapshot stays put). You'll see "Entry archived."

Restore

  1. Go to the Archived tab.
  2. Press Restore on the entry. You'll see "Entry restored" and land back on your Mine tab.

Unshare (a short grace period)

If you shared something by mistake, you can pull it back — but only for a limited time.

  1. Go to the Team tab and find the entry you shared.
  2. If you're still within 24 hours of sharing, an Unshare button appears (only on entries you shared).
  3. Press it and confirm "Unshare this entry from the team feed?" — it disappears from the team feed.

Note: After 24 hours the Unshare button is gone, and you'll be told "Unshare window has closed (24h after share). Archive the source entry instead." This keeps an honest record of what the team has already seen.

Voice notes in progress#

If you record or upload voice while other transcriptions are still running, a "Voice notes in progress" banner appears near the top of the feed, listing each one as either Transcribing (a spinning indicator) or Pending upload. It's there so you never lose track of a recording that's still being processed — and it rebuilds itself even if you refresh or briefly lose your connection. When a transcription finishes, its card updates on its own and you'll see "Transcription complete."

Comments & Sharing Documents#

Writing a paper is a team sport. Nomia Lab lets your collaborators leave comments right on the text of a document — pinned to the exact words they're reacting to — and lets you hand a document to someone outside your project (a supervisor, a co-author, a journal reviewer) through a simple web link, with no Nomia account required on their end. This section walks through both: commenting inside the editor, and sharing a document out.

Everything here happens inside the document editor (open a project, then the Editor tab). Two buttons in the editor's toolbar do the work: a Comments button (a speech-bubble icon) and a Comment on selection button next to it. Sharing has its own Share button (a chain-link icon), which appears only if you're allowed to share.

Part 1 — Commenting on a document#

Who can comment#

Anyone who can open the project can read and take part in comment threads. The finer permissions depend on your role on the project:

What you want to do Who can do it
Read comments, start a thread, reply Anyone on the project (any role)
Resolve or reopen a thread The person who started the thread, or an editor (Principal Investigator, Co-Investigator, Fellow)
Edit a comment Only the person who wrote it
Delete your own comment You (its author)
Delete someone else's comment Principal Investigator or Co-Investigator

Note: Statisticians and Coordinators can comment and reply freely — commenting isn't the same as editing the document. They can resolve or reopen only the threads they started themselves.

Leaving a comment on a piece of text#

Comments are always anchored to the text you select, so everyone reading the thread can see exactly what it refers to.

  1. In the document, highlight the words, sentence, or paragraph you want to comment on.
  2. A small floating toolbar appears over your selection. Click Comment on it. (You can also click the Comment on selection button up in the editor toolbar — it does the same thing.)
  3. The Comments panel slides in from the right, already in "new thread" mode. At the top of it you'll see your selected text shown as a grey quoted snippet, so you can confirm you highlighted the right thing.
  4. Type your comment in the Add your comment… box.
  5. Click Post comment. Your comment appears as the first message in a new thread, marked Open.

Tip: If you click Comment on selection without highlighting anything first, Nomia gently reminds you: "Highlight some text in the document to start a comment thread." Highlight, then try again.

Tip: The highlighted words stay marked in the document as the thread's anchor. If you later edit or delete that exact text, the comment isn't lost — see "When the highlighted text changes" below.

Mentioning a teammate#

Inside any comment or reply box you can pull a colleague's attention directly:

  1. Start typing @ followed by a name.
  2. A small list of your project's active members appears — pick one.
  3. When you post, their name becomes a link in the comment, and they'll be notified (unless they've muted the thread).

Reading and replying in a thread#

Open the Comments panel any time with the speech-bubble Comments button in the toolbar. A small number on that button (its "pill") tells you at a glance how many threads exist — for example 3 means three open threads, and 3 / 5 means three open and five resolved.

Inside the panel:

To reply, type in the Reply… box at the bottom of an open thread and click Reply. Your reply is added to the bottom of the thread.

Note: You can only reply to Open threads. If a thread has been marked Resolved, its reply box disappears; reopen it first (see below) to continue the conversation.

Editing or deleting your own comment#

Under any comment you wrote, you'll see Edit and Delete:

Note: A Principal Investigator or Co-Investigator can also delete a comment written by someone else (for example, to remove something posted in error). The same "(comment deleted)" placeholder is shown.

Resolving and reopening a thread#

When a point has been addressed, tidy it away:

  1. In the thread header, click Resolve.
  2. The thread is stamped Resolved, shaded grey, and its reply box closes.

Changed your mind, or the issue came back? Click Reopen on a resolved thread to make it Open and repliable again.

The Resolve / Reopen button only shows up if you're allowed to use it — that is, if you started the thread or you're an editor (PI, Co-Investigator, or Fellow).

Tip: Resolving is the natural way to work through reviewer feedback: reply to discuss, then resolve once the change is made. The resolved threads stay on record (and are counted in the pill) rather than vanishing.

Muting a thread#

If a busy thread isn't yours to follow, you can stop its notifications without leaving the conversation:

Muting is personal to you — it doesn't change the thread for anyone else.

When the highlighted text changes#

Because a comment is pinned to specific words, editing the document can move or remove those words. Nomia handles this gracefully:

AI-generated review comments#

If your workspace has the AI review feature turned on, running a review can add its own comment threads directly into this panel. They look like normal threads but carry a purple AI · Major or AI · Minor badge to mark how important the AI thinks each point is. You resolve, reopen, and reply to them exactly like any other thread — and your decisions on them are kept even if you run the review again.

Live updates#

The Comments panel stays current on its own. When a collaborator posts, edits, resolves, or deletes a comment in the same document, it appears in your panel without you refreshing the page.

Good to know#

Share links let someone outside your project open a document in their browser — read-only, or read-and-comment — without signing in or having a Nomia account.

Who can share#

Only project editors — Principal Investigator, Co-Investigator, and Fellow — can create or revoke share links, because sharing sends your work outside the project. If you don't see the Share button in the toolbar, your role doesn't include sharing. (Any project member, though, can see that a document has active links.)

  1. In the editor toolbar, click the Share (chain-link) button. The Share document panel slides in from the right.

  2. Under New link, choose an Access level:

    Access What the recipient can do
    View only Read the document. Nothing else.
    View + comment Read the document and leave comments and replies on it.

  3. Optionally set an Expires date and time (shown in your own local time). Leave it blank to keep the link working until you revoke it.

  4. Click Create link.

The new link appears in the Active links list below, ready to copy.

Note: The panel reminds you plainly: "Anyone with the link can open this document — no Nomia account required." Treat a share link like a key — anyone who has it can open the document, so only send it to people you trust, and set an expiry or revoke it when you're done.

Tip: A document can have up to 50 active links at once — handy when you want to give different reviewers their own link (and revoke them individually). If you hit the limit, revoke a few old ones first.

Each entry in Active links shows you:

To cut off access at any time:

  1. Find the link in Active links.
  2. Click Revoke and confirm ("Revoke this link? Anyone holding it will lose access.").

The link stops working immediately — anyone who tries to open it afterward is told the share link is no longer available.

Note: Expiry does this for you automatically. Once a link passes its expiry time, Nomia retires it on its own, and it stops opening the document. If you (the person who created links) ever have your account closed, all the links you created are revoked as part of that.

Some links can be made extra-private by carrying a secret key as part of their web address — you'll notice these have an extra ?s=… piece on the end. With one of these, the public part of the address alone won't open the document; the recipient needs the complete address, secret key included, or they'll simply see "This share link is no longer available."

Tip: Rotating a secret is the "change the locks" move: if a secret-key link was forwarded to the wrong person, rotate it and re-send the new address to the people who should still have access. Everyone holding the old address is locked out at once.

Part 3 — What your guest sees#

When someone opens your link, they land on a clean, distraction-free page — just the document, no project menus and no sign-in wall. What they can do depends on the access level you chose.

The guest gets the same reading view, labelled Shared for review, plus a Comment on selection button in the header and a Comments side panel.

  1. Introducing themselves — the first time a guest tries to comment, a small pop-up asks "Tell us who's reviewing." They enter their name (required), and optionally an email (never required). Their name is then shown next to every comment they leave, marked as a guest (e.g. "Dr. Amara (guest)").
  2. Commenting — they highlight text and click Comment on selection, exactly like a project member, then type and post. They can also reply to any open thread.
  3. The panel header greets them with "Reviewing as [their name]" so they know how they'll be attributed.

What a guest cannot do (these controls simply aren't shown to them):

Note: Guests can reply only to Open threads. If your team resolves a thread, the guest sees it marked Resolved and can no longer reply to it — reopen it on your side if you want the conversation to continue. Guest comments flow into the very same Comments panel you use inside the editor, and updates pass both ways in real time — a guest's new comment shows up in your editor without a refresh, and vice-versa.

Tip: If a link expires or is revoked while a guest is mid-visit, Nomia catches it: the moment they try to post, they're told the link has expired and are sent away, so no comment is ever posted to a document you've stopped sharing.

Part 4 — Publishing a document#

Sharing sends a private link to specific people. Publishing puts a read-only snapshot of a finished document on a stable public page — useful for a preprint-style link you can hand to anyone. Publishing is available only when a workspace administrator has enabled publishing for your organization.

  1. In the editor, open the Share modal and switch to the Publish tab.
  2. Work the pre-publish checklist — each co-author confirms, the document must have no unresolved review flags, and a sign-off is recorded. The Publish button stays disabled until the checklist passes.
  3. Click Publish. Nomia renders the document once into a snapshot and gives you a public URL. The published page shows the title and a member byline; edits you make afterward do not change the published page until you Republish.
  4. Unpublish is instant and takes the page down immediately.

What readers can and can't do: a published page is a static, read-only snapshot — no editing, no comments, no access to your project. It is served with no-index headers by default, so it won't appear in search engines. A short changed-since-publish notice reminds you when your live document has moved on from what's published.

Learning hub#

Nomia has a built-in learning hub — short, practical tutorials (with real-app screenshots) that walk you through the platform, one task at a time.

Where to find it:

How it works: tutorials are grouped by area — Getting started, Writing & AI, References & Library, Review, and Collaboration & Sharing. Open any one to see numbered steps and a screenshot of the real screen. Mark a tutorial done and the hub tracks your progress (e.g. "3 of 5 completed") so you can see what's left.

The AI Assistant Suite#

Nomia Lab includes a set of AI helpers built for research writing: a chat that answers questions about your documents, a multi-step research assistant, writing help while you type, one-click editing and reviewing, chat with a PDF, image reading (OCR), and voice transcription. This section walks through every one of them.

Two things are true of the whole suite, so it helps to know them up front:

Note: Almost all AI features live in the document editor (open a project, then open a document). A few live elsewhere: chat-with-PDF is in the PDF reader, image reading and voice notes are in the notebook, and meeting transcription is in Meetings. Each is called out below.

Where to find AI in the editor#

When you open a document, look at the toolbar running along the top and right of the editing area. The AI tools appear as small icon buttons, each with a tooltip: AI edit selection, AI outline, AI chat, Suggest citations, AI review, and (in beta) Section prompts. Two small status chips also appear:

  1. An AI credits chip — hover it to see "AI credits remaining this period."
  2. A plan chip (e.g. Free) — "This project's AI plan — click to manage."

Tip: After many AI actions a tiny prompt appears asking "What was good?" with quick chips — Accurate, Well-written, Fast — plus a Dismiss (×). Tapping one sends anonymous feedback that helps tune the assistant. It's entirely optional.

Chat about your project#

AI chat opens a conversation panel about the document you're in. Unlike a generic chatbot, it is grounded in your own material: it reads the most relevant passages from your document and your project's indexed sources before answering, and it's told to say so plainly when your material doesn't contain the answer rather than inventing one.

  1. Click the AI chat button in the editor toolbar to open the chat panel.
  2. Type your question in the box at the bottom — placeholder "Ask about this document…"
  3. Press Send (or Enter).
  4. While it works you'll see "Thinking…"; the answer then appears in the thread.
  5. Under an answer, a Sources line lists what the answer was grounded in, so you can trace each point back.

A short disclaimer sits beneath the box as a standing reminder that answers are AI-generated writing assistance, not medical advice.

Note: Your chat threads are private to you, even on a document you share with collaborators. Teammates open the same document but never see your questions or the assistant's answers to you.

Deep research (multi-step research assistant)#

Deep research is a more powerful mode of the same chat box. Instead of a single answer, it works like a research assistant: it plans the question into several focused sub-questions, searches for each (in your library and, if you allow it, the web), then synthesises a single written report with inline citations.

  1. In the chat panel, type your question, then choose Deep research instead of the normal Send. (Its tooltip reads "Multi-step research: plan → search → cited report.")
  2. A short consent step appears first. If web search is available to your workspace, you'll see a Search the web toggle:
    • Leave it off to research using only your own library — nothing leaves your workspace.
    • Turn it on only if you want external sources included. A note spells out the trade-off: "Your question is sent to an external search provider."
  3. Click Run research.
  4. While it runs you'll see "Researching — planning, searching, writing…"
  5. The finished Research report appears with:
    • Inline citation markers linking each claim to a numbered finding.
    • A "How this was researched (N steps)" breakdown so you can see the plan it followed and which searches ran.
    • A Sources list.
    • A Dismiss (×) to close the report.

Note: Web search is consent-based per question — turning it on for one report does not leave it on for the next. If web search isn't enabled for your workspace, or you leave the toggle off, deep research simply runs on your library alone.

Autocomplete while you type#

When enabled, autocomplete offers a short, greyed-out continuation ("ghost text") as you write — a natural next clause or sentence.

  1. Just keep typing. When a suggestion appears in grey after your cursor, you can:
    • Press Tab to accept it (Accept autocomplete), or
    • Press Shift+Tab to try again — discard the suggestion and generate a fresh one at the same spot without retyping, or
    • Press Esc to dismiss it (Dismiss suggestion), or
    • Simply keep typing to ignore it.

Two things worth knowing:

Section prompts (beta — guide the autocomplete)#

If Section prompts is enabled (it's marked BETA), you can tell the assistant what each section of your document is meant to cover, and autocomplete will follow that guidance.

  1. Click Section prompts in the toolbar to open its panel.
  2. For each heading in your document, a box appears: "What should this section cover?" (If you have no headings yet, you'll be prompted to add some first.)
  3. Type a one-line brief per section — e.g. what the Methods section should include.
  4. Click Save.

The panel's helper text sums it up: "Tell the AI what each section should cover — autocomplete follows it."

Improve a selection (AI edit)#

AI edit rewrites a passage you've highlighted. Select some text and either use the toolbar's AI edit selection button or the AI edit action on the floating selection toolbar that appears over your highlight.

You then choose how to transform it — a one-click preset, or your own instruction:

Preset What it does
Paraphrase Rewrites in different words, keeping the meaning and academic tone
Simplify Makes it clearer and easier to read, without changing the meaning
Expand Adds detail and supporting explanation, in the same tone
Make concise Tightens it without losing any key information
More formal Rewrites in a more formal, academic register
Proofread Fixes only grammar, spelling, and punctuation, leaving your wording intact

To use a custom instruction instead, type it in the box — placeholder "Instruction, e.g. Rewrite in active voice" — and run it.

The result is shown as a suggestion; nothing changes until you decide:

  1. Review the proposed rewrite.
  2. Click Accept to replace your selection, or Discard to keep your original.

Tip: Reuse an instruction you type often by clicking Save a prompt — give it a Name and the Instruction text, then Save prompt. It then appears under Saved prompts for one-click reuse, and you can remove one anytime with Delete prompt. Saved prompts are private to you within your organization. See Saved prompts below.

Build an outline#

AI outline proposes an ordered structure of section headings for a topic — a scaffold to write into. It suggests structure only; it does not write the content.

  1. Click AI outline in the toolbar.
  2. Provide the topic.
  3. The assistant returns a logically ordered set of main sections and subsections (typically four to ten main sections).
  4. The headings are inserted into your document as real headings, ready for you to fill in.

Suggest citations#

Suggest citations (the Cite action on the selection toolbar) recommends references from your own project library to support the passage you're writing.

  1. Select the sentence or passage you want to support.
  2. Click Cite (or Suggest citations).
  3. A Suggested citations panel lists the most relevant references from your library, most relevant first.
  4. Pick one to insert a real citation marker into your text.

Note: This tool never makes up a reference. It only ever suggests references that genuinely exist in your library and that you're allowed to see — so a citation it inserts always points at a real source. If your library is empty (or you can't read it), you simply get no suggestions.

AI review — proofread, claim-grounding, and writing scores#

The AI review panel is a hub of independent review lenses — each runs on its own, in the background, so you can keep working while it thinks. Open it from the editor header: each lens shows a card with its status and when it last ran.

  1. Open the AI review panel (the lens cards).
  2. Run any lens on its own — or Full to run them together. A card shows "Reviewing…" with a live X of N sections counter while it works; you can navigate away and a notification arrives when it finishes. On failure you'll see "Couldn't complete the review. Try again."
  3. Tick "Review the selected passage only" first to scope a run to a highlight.

The lenses:

Lens What it shows
Proofread Grammar, punctuation, word choice, formality, passive voice, repetition, and formatting issues, each with a concrete suggestion and a major / minor label
Claim confidence Each substantive claim graded against your cited sources into six categories (misrepresented · contradicted · unsupported · weakly supported · overstated · unverifiable), with an explanation
Peer review A journal-reviewer-style pass plus a scorecard — writing-craft scores (0–10) with one-sentence rationales, weaknesses, strengths, and questions for the authors
Source quality Checks your references against retraction/preprint/rarely-cited signals — runs without spending AI credits
Tone of voice How consistently your writing matches a target style (see below)

Note: The scores are about your writing — how well claims are supported by your citations, how clearly the manuscript is organised, how well it states its contribution. They are explicitly not a judgement of clinical or scientific merit. An empty document is marked reviewed with nothing to flag, rather than spending a review on it.

Review Mode — triage suggestions in the document. After a run, enter Review Mode to walk the suggestions in place: the editor locks while you triage, Y accepts, N rejects, the arrow keys move between suggestions, and Esc exits. Accepting re-verifies the target text is still where the suggestion expects it before applying (so a suggestion that has since moved is flagged, never mis-applied).

Run history & feedback. The panel keeps a history of past runs (with their scores) that you can reopen read-only, and you can download a peer-review report. A 👍 / 👎 on any suggestion opens a short "What was good?" note so you can tell us what helped — the signal is stored, never silent.

Tone-of-voice review#

Beneath AI review, Tone of voice checks how consistently your writing matches a target style and suggests rewordings to move it there — without changing what any sentence means.

  1. In the Tone of voice panel, pick a target tone from the dropdown.
  2. Click Check tone.
  3. You'll see "Checking the tone…", then a match score plus a list of concrete rewrite suggestions. (On failure: "The tone check failed — try again.")
Tone Aims for
Academic Precise, hedged, formal scholarly register with disciplined terminology
Formal Professional and polished — no colloquialisms, contractions, or asides
Concise Short, direct sentences with redundancy and filler removed
Persuasive Confident active voice, strong topic sentences, a clear argument
Accessible Plain language a non-specialist can follow without jargon

Chat with a PDF#

In the PDF reader (open a reference PDF from your library), you can ask questions answered only from that document's text.

  1. Open a reference that has a PDF attached. (If none is attached, you'll be prompted to attach one from the library.)
  2. In the question box — "Ask about this PDF…" — type your question.
  3. Click Ask. The helper text notes: "answers are grounded in its text."
  4. If the PDF's text doesn't cover your question, the assistant says so plainly rather than guessing. If the PDF has no readable text yet, you'll see "This PDF has no extracted text to search yet."

Answers summarise what the document says, attributed to the document, with the standing reminder to verify against the source.

Read an image (OCR) and analyse figures#

In the notebook, you can attach images to an entry and have the assistant describe them and transcribe any text they contain (OCR).

  1. In a notebook entry, click Add images / Upload Image and choose your files (PNG, JPEG, GIF, or WEBP; up to 10 MB each).
  2. Add an optional Caption.
  3. Click Analyse on the image (Re-analyse to run it again). You'll see "Analysing…"
  4. The result appears under an ✦ AI read (OCR) label — a concise, factual description with any visible text transcribed verbatim.

Note: Notebook entries are private to you until you share them, and a line at the bottom of the notebook confirms "AI analysis runs in-region." See Privacy below.

Voice transcription#

Nomia can turn speech into text in three places. In each, recording and transcription only appear if the feature is enabled for your workspace (and your browser supports recording).

Meeting minutes#

In Meetings, upload a recording and Nomia transcribes it, then drafts structured minutes for you.

  1. On a meeting, click Upload & transcribe and choose the recording.
  2. You'll see "Recording uploaded — transcribing…", and the meeting moves through these states:
Status Meaning
Transcribing… Converting the recording to text
Drafting minutes… Structuring the transcript into minutes
Minutes ready The draft is available
Transcription failed Something went wrong — try uploading again

The draft is organised into Agenda, discussion Notes, Decisions made, and Action items — and you can view the full Transcript.

Note: The assistant only fills in blanks and appends action items — it never overwrites minutes you've already written, and it won't invent content the transcript doesn't support. You stay in control of the final minutes, including editing or removing any action item.

Saved prompts#

Saved prompts are your reusable AI instructions — a phrasing you find yourself typing often (e.g. "Rewrite in active voice, past tense"). They cost nothing; they're just stored text.

Saved prompts are private to you within your organization — no one else sees or can use yours.

Your monthly AI usage and credits#

AI runs on a monthly credit allowance tied to your organization's plan. To see where you stand, open AI usage (Account → AI usage, at /account/ai-usage). Its intro reads: "Your organization's AI credit balance, this month's spend, and recent activity."

The page shows:

Tile Meaning
Plan Your organization's current AI plan
Available Credits you still have this period
Used Credits used this period, and the percentage
This month Total credits spent in the current month

Below the tiles, a progress bar turns amber as you approach your limit and red once you reach it, and a banner appears:

A Recent activity table lists your latest AI actions — Feature, Model, Tokens, Credits, and When — so you can see exactly what each request cost. (If you're not in an organization with AI credits, the page says so.)

Tip: Higher plans get larger monthly allowances, more capable models, and faster turnaround on background jobs like AI review. Depending on your plan, running low may mean AI quietly switches to a lighter model rather than stopping — or pauses AI until the month resets. Everything you use is metered here regardless. Your allowance refreshes monthly.

Note: If you ever see "AI quota exceeded for this month" while doing something (for example, analysing an image), that's the same limit — check AI usage to confirm, and ask your administrator about a top-up or upgrade.

Privacy and the writing-assistant boundary#

A few reassurances that hold across every tool above:

Your Account, Billing & Settings#

This is your control centre for everything about you on Nomia Lab: how your name appears to collaborators, how you sign in, what notifications you get, how much AI you've used, a full download of your own data, and the plan that powers AI in a project. Almost all of it lives behind one menu, and every page works in both English and Arabic (including full right-to-left layout).

Opening your account menu#

Everything below starts from the same place.

  1. Look at the top-right corner of any screen for your account menu (the options button).
  2. Click it. A panel opens showing your name and email at the top, then two groups — Profile and Settings — and a red Log out button at the very bottom.
  3. The Profile group links to: Display name, Email & password, My private data, My Library, Notification preferences, and AI usage. The Settings group holds the Language and Appearance switches.

Tip: The Connected apps page (cloud storage and Zotero) isn't in this menu — you'll usually reach it from the References area of a project when you go to import references, or by visiting /account/connections directly.

Your display name#

Click Display name in the account menu. This controls how your name appears to collaborators in projects and comments.

Changing your name

  1. If you're on the edit form, type your Full name in the box (for example, Jane Smith).
  2. Click Save name (one-time).

Note: this is a one-time edit. You can change your display name only once from this page. After you save, the page switches to a read-only view showing your Current name. To change it again, you'll need to email support@nomialab.com from your account email with the new name you want — the page shows you this address when the one-time edit is used up.

Tip: Because it's a single edit, double-check the spelling before you save.

A quick security check. If you've been signed in for a while, the page may first ask you to Sign in again before it lets you edit your name. This is a normal protection for sensitive changes — click Sign in again, complete sign-in, and you'll return to the page ready to edit.

About your photo and affiliation: Your profile picture is drawn from your sign-in provider (Google or Microsoft) where one is available; otherwise collaborators see your initials. Your author affiliation (the institution shown next to your name on a manuscript's author list) is set per project in that project's author/members settings, not on this page.

Signing in and security (Email & password)#

Click Email & password in the account menu. This page — titled Account security — is where you manage how you sign in. It has three sections.

Security check first: For any change here, if your session is a little old, you'll see a "Re-authenticate to…" notice with a Sign in again button. Click it, sign in, and you'll come straight back. This keeps someone from changing your security settings at an unattended screen.

1. Your sign-in method#

At any time your account uses one sign-in method — either an email + password, or a third-party provider (Google or Microsoft). The page shows which one is active, and lets you switch.

If you currently use email + password and want to switch to Google or Microsoft:

  1. Open Switch to Google or Microsoft sign-in.
  2. Enter your current password.
  3. Click Switch to Google or Switch to Microsoft.

The third-party account's email must match your current Nomia Lab email. After switching, password sign-in is turned off for your account, and all your other browser sessions are signed out.

If you currently use Google or Microsoft and want to move to a password:

  1. The page lists the provider(s) your account signs in with.
  2. Open Switch to email + password sign-in.
  3. Enter a New password and Confirm new password.
  4. Click Switch to email + password.

Your linked providers are removed, third-party sign-in is disabled, and other browser sessions are signed out.

2. Your email address#

This section shows your current email (used for sign-in, password resets, and security notices).

  1. Enter a New email address and your Current password.
  2. Click Change email.
  3. We email a confirmation link to the new address — the change only takes effect once you click that link, and the link expires in 24 hours. We also notify your old address with a cancel link.

While a change is waiting, the page shows a Pending change banner with a Cancel pending change button if you change your mind.

Note: If your account signs in with Google or Microsoft, there's no email to change here — update it at your provider instead.

3. Change password (and "sign out everywhere")#

This section appears only if you sign in with a password.

  1. Enter your Current password.
  2. Enter a New password and Confirm new password.
  3. Click Change password.

Password requirements: at least 12 characters, including a lowercase letter, an uppercase letter, and a digit.

Tip — this is how you "sign out everywhere": Changing your password automatically signs you out of every other browser and device, keeping only the tab you're using. If you've ever left yourself signed in on a shared or lost computer, changing your password is the fastest way to end those sessions. (Changing your email or switching sign-in method does the same thing.)

Connected apps (cloud storage & Zotero)#

The Connected apps page lets you link outside services so you can pull files and references into your projects. Nomia Lab stores an encrypted access token, never your password, and you can disconnect anything here at any time.

Connecting cloud storage. If your workspace has it enabled, you'll see Connect buttons for services such as Google Drive, OneDrive, and Dropbox. Click one and follow the provider's sign-in and permission screens; you'll be returned to this page with the connection listed.

Connecting Zotero (your reference library).

  1. Go to zotero.org/settings/keys and create an API key.
  2. On the Zotero card, paste the key into the box.
  3. Click Connect. The key is checked live with Zotero before it's saved; on success you'll see "Zotero connected as [your username]."

Managing connections. Each linked service is listed with its status. To remove one, click Revoke and confirm.

Connection status What it means
Active Working normally
Reconnect needed The link stopped working — connect it again
Revoked You (or we) disconnected it

Notifications#

Nomia Lab keeps an in-app inbox and can email you, too. Two pages control this.

Your inbox#

Click the bell icon in the header (or open Notifications) to see your inbox, newest first, with unread items highlighted. Each row shows an icon, a short label, a preview snippet, and when it happened.

The inbox updates live — new items appear, and the bell's unread badge updates, without a refresh.

Notification preferences#

Click Notification preferences in the account menu. Every kind of notification is On by default; turn off any you don't want with its On/Off button.

Notification You're told when…
New reply Someone replies on a comment thread you started or joined
You were mentioned Someone @-mentions you in a comment
Thread resolved A comment thread you took part in is marked resolved
Task assigned A task is assigned to you
Task updated Someone moves a task you're assigned to
Share link viewed A document share link you created is opened
Version restored Someone restores an earlier version of a document you authored
New chat message / New reply in chat Activity in a project chat you're in
You were mentioned in chat Someone @-mentions you in chat
Direct message Someone sends you a direct message

Daily email digest. Lower on the same page, toggle Daily email digest on to get a once-a-day email summarising your unread notifications. It's off by default.

Tip: To silence a single conversation without turning off a whole category, use the bell icon next to that comment thread in the project itself.

AI usage#

Click AI usage in the account menu. If your workspace has AI features enabled, this page gives you a read-only picture of your organization's AI credits.

At the top you'll see four figures:

Figure Meaning
Plan Your organization's AI plan (Free, Pro, or Team)
Available Credits you can still use
Used Credits used this period, with the percentage
This month Credits spent this month

A coloured bar shows how much of your allowance is gone. Below it, Recent activity lists individual AI uses with the Feature, Model, Tokens, Credits, and When.

Note: When you cross 80%, a warning suggests upgrading before you run out. At 100%, new AI requests are blocked until the plan resets or is upgraded. If you aren't part of an organization with AI credits yet, the page simply says so.

Downloading your data & your privacy rights#

Click My private data in the account menu to open Your data — a self-service page for your rights under the Saudi Personal Data Protection Law (PDPL). We respond to formal requests within 30 days (with a possible one-time 30-day extension, with notice).

What you'll see first

The actions you can take

  1. Download all my data now — an instant ZIP file containing everything you've authored across all projects: documents, notes, references, tasks, comments, chat messages, and your audit history. (Your browser saves it as nomia-export.zip.)
  2. Request portable export (official record) — files a tracked, 30-day request. Use this when you need an auditable record of the request itself (for example, for regulator correspondence) rather than just the files.
  3. Request correction — click it, describe the field, its current value, and what it should be, then Send request. (For anything you can edit yourself, edit it directly instead.)
  4. Request destruction — anonymises your Nomia Lab account and signs you out. Project content owned by your institution is not affected. You'll be asked to confirm because this can't be undone.
  5. Withdraw consent — lists any consent-based features you've enabled (such as voice transcription) with a Withdraw button each. If you have none, the page says so.

Your requests. Every request you make is listed with its type, status, the date received, and its due date.

Request status Meaning
Open Received and being handled — you can still Cancel it
Fulfilled Completed
Cancelled You cancelled it
Refused Declined (with a reason shown)

Tip: For the full description of what we process and why, use the privacy notice link at the bottom of the page. Questions can go to privacy@nomialab.com.

Project plans & billing (Pro / Team)#

AI passes are bought per project, and a pass unlocks AI features for everyone in that project. Billing lives inside each project, not in your personal menu.

Getting there: Open the project, go to its Settings, then the Plan & billing tab (/projects/…/settings/billing).

Who can buy or cancel: Anyone in the project can see the plan, but only the project lead can check out or cancel. (This is enforced for real, not just by hiding buttons.)

Your current plan. The card at the top shows either:

Choosing a plan. If there's no active pass and you're the lead, a Choose a plan section appears with two options, each offered for 1 month or 12 months:

Plan What you get
Pro Higher AI credit allowance and priority processing
Team Unlimited feature caps and the largest credit allowance

Checking out.

  1. Click the 1 month or 12 months button on the plan you want.
  2. Depending on how payments are set up for your workspace, one of two things happens:
    • You're redirected to the payment provider's secure checkout page to pay, then returned to Nomia Lab; or
    • The plan activates immediately (you'll see "Plan activated."), or is recorded as an order awaiting payment confirmation.

Tip: You can click a checkout button confidently — the system is built so a double-click can never charge you twice, and if a checkout fails, nothing is charged.

Cancelling. On an active plan, the lead clicks Cancel plan and confirms. AI features then fall back to the organization's free allowance.

Order history. Every purchase is listed at the bottom with its Order number, Plan, Duration, Status, and Date.

Order status Meaning
activated Paid and in effect
pending Awaiting payment confirmation
cancelled Cancelled
failed Payment didn't go through — nothing charged

Switching to Arabic (right-to-left) and appearance#

Both live in the Settings group of your account menu.

Language. Under Language, click English or العربية. Choosing Arabic reloads the interface in Arabic and flips the entire layout to right-to-left, so menus, text, and controls all read naturally from the right. Your choice is saved to your account and used every time you sign in — switch back the same way at any time.

Appearance. Under Appearance, pick Light, Dark, or Auto (which follows your device's setting). This only changes how Nomia Lab looks to you; it doesn't affect anyone else.

Tip: Language and appearance are personal to your account — changing them never changes what your collaborators see.

The Admin Panel (for workspace administrators)#

Most of this tutorial covers the everyday Nomia app your researchers use. This section is different: it's for the small number of people who administer Nomia for their whole organization. The Admin Panel lives at its own separate web address (not the same as the main Nomia app), it has its own sign-in, and it's where you turn features on for your workspace, manage user accounts, choose the AI plan, and review the history of everything that's been changed.

If you're a researcher just getting started, you can skip this section — your workspace administrator handles all of it for you.

Note: The Admin Panel is a separate application from the main Nomia app. Your admin login here is not the same as a researcher's Nomia login, and your team will give you the panel's web address and your admin credentials directly.

Signing in#

  1. Open the Admin Panel address your team gave you. You'll land on a simple Nomia Admin sign-in page.
  2. Enter your Email and Password.
  3. Click Sign in.
  4. On success you'll see a short "Welcome back" greeting and land on the Users page, ready to work.

If the email or password is wrong, the page stays put and shows "Invalid email or password." — just try again.

Tip: Every page has a Sign out link in the top-right corner. Click it when you're done; you'll be returned to the sign-in page. If your session expires and you try to open a page, the panel simply asks you to sign in again ("Please sign in to continue.") — nothing is lost.

Finding your way around. A slim navigation bar runs across the top of every page with four destinations:

Menu item What it's for
Users View and manage individual people's accounts
Organizations Your workspaces — and the gateway to each one's features, roles, and AI plan
Audit The full, read-only history of admin actions
Embeddings The behind-the-scenes model that powers search (advanced)

Note: Three important tools — Feature flags, Org roles, and AI plan — aren't in the top bar. They live inside each organization, reached from the Organizations page (see below). That's on purpose: those settings always apply to one specific organization.

Users — viewing and managing people#

The Users page (also your home page after sign-in) lists everyone with a Nomia account so you can find and triage individual people.

Finding a person

  1. Type into the Search by email or name… box at the top.
  2. Results filter automatically as you type — there's no button to press.

Each person appears in a row showing their Name, Email, a Status badge, and the available Action buttons. If nobody matches, you'll see "No users found."

Understanding the Status badge

Status Badge What it means
active Green A normal, working account. The person can sign in and use Nomia.
deactivated Grey The account is switched off. The person can't sign in until it's reactivated.

Deactivating or reactivating an account

  1. Find the person's row.
  2. Click Deactivate (for an active account) or Reactivate (for a deactivated one) on the right.
  3. A confirmation box appears (for example, "Deactivate name@example.com?"). Confirm to proceed.
  4. The list refreshes and a brief "User updated." message confirms the change.

Tip: Deactivating is the safe, reversible way to suspend someone's access — for example when a researcher leaves — without deleting anything. You can reactivate them at any time.

Reset the name gate

In the main Nomia app, a person is allowed to set or correct their display name only once. After they've used that one edit, the option locks. If someone made a typo or needs a legitimate name change, you can reopen that one-time edit for them.

  1. Find the person's row and click Reset name gate on the right.
  2. A confirmation box explains exactly what will happen: "Reopen the one-shot name-edit gate… (They can change their display name once more.)" Confirm it.
  3. You'll see "Name gate reset" and the person can now change their display name one more time from their own account.

Note: Resetting the gate doesn't rename the person itself — it simply gives them the ability to make the change once more, from their own profile.

If the panel ever can't reach the main Nomia service, you'll see "Could not reach the Nomia API." at the top of the page — that's a connection issue, not something you did wrong; wait a moment and reload.

Organizations — your workspaces#

The Organizations page lists the workspaces (organizations) on your Nomia. Use the Search by name… box the same way as on the Users page — results filter as you type. If none match, you'll see "No organizations found."

Each organization row shows its Name, Type, and Status, followed by three Manage links on the right. These links are the doorway to everything you can configure for that one organization:

Manage link Takes you to
Feature flags Turn features on or off for this workspace
Org roles Grant or revoke administrative roles to that workspace's people
AI plan Choose the AI plan tier and top up AI credits

Each of the three is covered in its own part below. On any of those pages, a ← Organizations link at the top-left brings you back to this list.

Feature flags — turning features on or off for a workspace#

This is how features get switched on for a workspace. From an organization's Feature flags page you decide, feature by feature, what's available to everyone in that workspace.

The page shows the organization's name and a table with one row per feature. Each row has:

Column What it tells you
Flag The feature's name and a short description of what it does
Default Whether the feature is normally on or off across Nomia when you haven't made a specific choice
Override Your specific choice for this workspace — or a dash (—) if you haven't set one
Effective What's actually in force right now: an on (green) or off (grey) badge

Turning a feature on or off

  1. Find the feature's row.
  2. Click Enable to switch it on, or Disable to switch it off, for this workspace.
  3. The table refreshes and confirms with a short "Updated…" message.

Once you've made a choice, the Effective badge reflects it immediately, and a Clear button appears in that row.

Clearing your choice

  1. Click Clear in the feature's row (it only shows when you've set a choice).
  2. Your workspace-specific setting is removed and the feature returns to its Default behavior. You'll see "Cleared override…".

Tip: Think of it as three states. Default is Nomia's built-in behavior; Enable/Disable is you overriding that just for this workspace; Clear removes your override and lets the default take over again. The Effective badge always shows the true, current answer — read it if you're ever unsure.

Note: Elsewhere in this tutorial you'll see phrases like "if this is enabled for your workspace." This page is exactly where that's decided. If a researcher tells you a feature is missing, check its Effective badge here first.

Org roles — who administers a workspace#

From an organization's Org roles page you grant people administrative roles within that workspace. The table lists the workspace's members and anyone already holding a role, showing each person's Name, their unique user ID, their Email, and their Current roles.

The five roles

Role What it designates
org_admin The workspace's top administrator. Carries the ability to administer the organization's departments and its own single sign-on / identity provider settings.
department_head Head of a department within the workspace.
research_director Research director role for the workspace.
it_admin IT administrator role for the workspace.
compliance_officer Compliance officer role for the workspace.

Note: org_admin is the powerful one — grant it sparingly, and only to people who should administer the whole workspace's structure and login setup.

Granting a role to someone already listed

  1. Find the person's row.
  2. In the Grant a role dropdown on the right, choose a role.
  3. Click Grant. A "Granted…" confirmation appears and the role shows up as a small chip in their Current roles.

Removing a role

  1. In the person's Current roles, each role appears as a chip with a small ×.
  2. Click the × next to the role you want to remove.
  3. Confirm the "Revoke…?" prompt. The chip disappears and a "Revoked…" message confirms it.

Granting a role to someone not in the list yet

Sometimes you need to appoint an administrator who isn't a member of any project in the workspace yet (for example, seeding the very first org_admin). Use the form at the bottom of the page:

  1. In the User public ID field, paste the person's unique user ID (you can copy it from their row on the Users page, or from an existing row here).
  2. Choose a role from the dropdown.
  3. Click Grant.

Tip: If a grant doesn't go through, the message tells you why: the person already has that role here, or no user with that public ID exists (double-check the ID you pasted). If the workspace has no members or role-holders yet, the page simply says so.

AI plan — choosing an organization's plan and topping up credits#

From an organization's AI plan page you set which AI plan tier the workspace is on and manage its AI credits (the budget that AI features draw from). The page opens with four at-a-glance tiles:

Tile What it shows
Plan The workspace's current plan tier
Available Credits remaining to spend on AI features
Used Credits used so far, with a percentage
This period Spend in the current billing period

The plan tiers

Every AI feature is available on every tier — higher tiers simply give a larger credit allowance, access to stronger AI models, higher per-feature limits, and faster priority when the system is busy. The tiers currently offered are:

Tier In short
free Entry tier — a modest credit allowance and the standard models.
pro Standard paid tier — a much larger allowance, an additional higher-quality model, and higher limits.
enterprise Top tier — the largest allowance, access to the strongest models, and top queue priority.

Note: The dropdown always shows whatever tiers are available on your Nomia, and the four tiles above show that workspace's live numbers.

Switching the plan

  1. In the Switch plan dropdown, choose the tier you want.
  2. Click Set plan. A "Switched to…" message confirms it and the tiles update.

Tip: Setting a plan resets the workspace's credits to that plan's allowance — the page tells you this right next to the button. So switching is also how you reset the credit balance to a fresh, full allotment for the new tier.

Topping up credits

If a workspace runs low before its plan resets, you can add credits directly:

  1. In the Top up credits field, type a whole number (at least 1) — for example, 1000.
  2. Click Add credits. You'll see "Added … credits." and the Available tile goes up.

Note: Top-ups must be a positive whole number. If you leave it blank or enter something invalid, the panel declines with a short "positive integer required" reminder — nothing is charged.

Audit — the read-only history of admin actions#

The Audit page is Nomia's permanent, append-only history: a record of administrative actions that can be added to but never edited or erased. It's your accountability trail — who changed what, and when.

Each entry is shown in a table:

Column What it shows
When The date and time the action happened
Action What kind of action it was (for example, a feature-flag change)
Actor Who did it (or a dash if not applicable)
Resource What it acted on (or a dash)
Metadata Extra details about the action

Filtering the history

  1. Type into the Filter by action type box (it even suggests an example, like a feature-flag-set action).
  2. The list narrows automatically as you type. Clear the box to see everything again.

If nothing matches, you'll see "No audit events."

Tip: After making a change elsewhere in the panel — say, enabling a feature or switching a plan — you can come here and filter to confirm it was recorded. This history is a helpful reference when reviewing changes with your team or for compliance.

Embedding model — the engine behind search (advanced)#

The Embeddings page is an advanced setting most administrators never need to touch. It chooses the local model that powers Nomia's semantic search — the technology that lets people find documents by meaning, not just exact keywords. The default is already a sensible choice, and changing it is a deliberate, occasional action.

The page lists the available models in a table:

Column What it shows
Model The model's friendly name and its technical identifier
Dims A technical measure of the model's detail
Multilingual yes means it understands multiple languages (including Arabic); a dash means English-only
Footprint Roughly how much memory it needs and how fast it is (from fast, lightweight options up to heavier, higher-quality ones)
Status Whether this model is currently active, newly selected (waiting to take effect), or offers a Select button

Tip: Because Nomia is bilingual (English and full Arabic), if your workspace works with Arabic content, choose one of the models marked Multilingual: yes so search understands Arabic as well as English.

Selecting a different model

  1. Find the model you want and click Select in its row.
  2. You'll see a confirmation reminding you of the two remaining steps: restart Nomia, then re-embed.
  3. The model you picked now shows a selected badge (amber), while the one still running keeps the active badge (green).

Note: A model change does not take effect immediately. A prominent amber banner appears explaining that your selection is pending until Nomia is restarted. Restarting Nomia is a technical step your team handles — coordinate with them before changing this.

Re-embedding the library

After a restart with a new model, Nomia needs to re-process existing documents so search works correctly with the new model.

  1. Click Re-embed entire corpus near the top of the page.
  2. You'll see a confirmation that the re-processing has been queued (with a count of items). It runs in the background.

Tip: The safe order is always: Select the model → have your team restart Nomia → click Re-embed entire corpus. Skipping the re-embed after a model change can make search results unreliable until it's done. If you're unsure, leave this page on its default and ask your team before changing it.

Getting help#

Nomia Lab is a research and writing assistant. Its AI features help you write, organise, and reason about your work — they do not provide medical or clinical decision-making advice.