From claim to paper, together.

A research group is the one, two, three, four or five students working on the same research paper. Each group gets its own page at rainflower.world/research/group/your-group-name and, once approved, a private space for every file the work produces: survey data, interview recordings, photos, notes and drafts.

Several groups can work on the same paper at the same time, each in their own space. You do not compete with them; you each produce your own paper from your own neighborhood.

• Be a Rainflower student researcher with a confirmed account and a coordinator.
• Read the proposal all the way through. Every paper has its own page, and a PDF you can download and share with your family or teammates.
• Check the team size on the proposal. Some papers can be done alone; others need a group of 2 to 5.
• Talk to your teammates first. Agree who is in the group and who will lead it before anyone presses the button.
• Tell your parents or guardians what you plan to do. Field work needs their agreement.

Open the paper you want, scroll to Want to write this?, and choose how you'll work.

The student who presses the button becomes the group lead. Your teammates don't need to do anything: they're part of the group as soon as the claim is made.

No name? No problem. If you leave the name empty, your group gets a water-themed one like Lotus Petals or Monsoon Herons. The group lead can change it at any time.

As soon as you claim, you land on your new group page, marked Waiting for approval. Your claim now appears for:

• Rainflower admins, who approve or decline every claim, sometimes with a short note to your group.
• Your coordinator (and the coordinator of each teammate), who can see it in their list of research groups.

While you wait, the group lead can rename the group, write a description, add a cover photo, and add or remove members. Use the time to plan: read the proposal again and agree who does what.

Your page at /research/group/your-group-name is your group's home. At the top: your cover photo, group name, the paper you're working on, your description, the researchers (the lead is marked) and your coordinator.

Signed-in Rainflower members can see an approved group's name, description and members. Your files are never public.

Who can do what

Renaming changes your page's address too, but the old address keeps working, so links you've already shared don't break. Edit everything under Edit group details at the bottom of the page.

Everything your group collects lives in Group files on your page.

1. Add files. Drag them onto the upload box, or press choose files. Up to 20 at a time, each up to 100 MB.
2. Pick a folder (optional), like survey or photos/week-3. New folders appear as soon as you use them.
3. Say what changed in a few words: “First 15 survey responses”, “Interview with a tube-well mechanic”. Your teammates will thank you.
4. Press Upload. That's one new version of your group's work, saved under your name.

You can keep documents (Word, PDF, text), data (CSV, Excel), photos (JPG, PNG, HEIC), audio and video interviews (MP3, M4A, MP4, MOV), slides and ZIP files.

Nothing is ever lost

Your group space keeps every version of every file. Upload a file with the same name in the same folder and it becomes the new version; the old one is still there.

• Press Versions next to any file to see who changed it, when, and why. Download any earlier version with one click.
• History at the bottom of the page shows every change your group has made, newest first.
• Remove takes a file out of the current list, but it stays in the history. If you remove something by mistake, download it from the history and upload it again.

A clear set of folders makes your final evidence package easy to put together. Here is a layout that works for every Rainflower paper:

Good habits

• Upload after every field visit, not at the end. Small, frequent uploads make a clear history.
• Keep a file's name the same when you update it (survey.csv), so its versions line up. Use new names only for genuinely new files.
• Name files by date and what they are: 2026-11-02_tubewell-lane3.jpg sorts itself.
• Write what changed every time. “Added 9 responses from Lane 2” beats “update”.
• Agree who uploads what. The survey lead owns survey/, the photo lead owns photos/, and so on.

Your proposal's timeline follows the seven stages of every Rainflower paper. Here's what usually goes into your group space at each one:

Your coordinator reviews your plan before field work and again before you submit; an advisor reviews your first sample. They can open your group space to see exactly what you've done, which is why it's worth keeping it complete and tidy.

Every research paper page has a Questions section, for questions about that paper: its method, survey, interviews, budget, team, timeline, ethics, writing or submission. Press Ask a question near the top of the paper to jump to it.

• Thunder answers straight away when the proposal itself covers your question, like how many households to survey or what a survey question says.
• Otherwise it waits for a person. Your coordinator and Rainflower are emailed, and you're emailed when someone answers.
• Keep it about the paper. Questions on other topics aren't posted here; ask Thunder at /ask instead.
• Changed your mind? Until it's answered, you can edit or withdraw your own question.
• Questions are tagged by topic (budget, survey, submission…), so you can filter them and read what others asked first.

• Someone wants to join: the group lead opens Add members on the group page, any time, as long as the paper's team size allows it.
• Someone wants to leave: before approval the group lead can remove them. After approval, ask your coordinator (any member's coordinator can add or remove people) or Rainflower.
• Can't continue? The group lead can press Withdraw the group at the bottom of the page. Your files are kept, and an admin can bring the group back if you return to the work.

Coordinators find every group that includes one of their students under Dashboard → Research Groups, with claims waiting for approval marked. You can rename a group, edit its description and cover, and open its files and history to follow the work.

Admins review claims at Admin → Research Groups: approve or decline (with an optional note to the group), reopen a declined or withdrawn group, change members, and see every group's files.