Guide

Research and sources

Back your idea with evidence. Ask research questions, bring your own documents, and let IPGuru compare what they say with what the Idea claims. Nothing changes the Idea until you accept it.

Research

Ask a question, get a cited answer

Ask

Open Research and use the wizard to ask a question, with a website to focus on if you have one. Suggested questions come from the Idea and from gaps the checks have found. The search knows your Idea, so the answer addresses your invention's use, materials and limits.

Read

A finished answer shows a short summary on its row. View answer opens the full answer with its sources. You can check why each source is relevant.

Use it

Ask Nova to relate a finding to your idea, attach it to a message, or use it to seed an expansion. Nova's answer keeps a link back to the research.

A search result is evidence to read, not proof that the invention works. Prior-art searching belongs to projects, not to brainstorm scenarios.

Source material

Bring your own documents

A source does work once it has a kind and has been read. The kind decides which questions the source is asked.

  • File what you have. Drop a file onto one of the named kinds on Source material. The drop files it, ready to read.
  • Fix a kind. Research and uploads are filed automatically by what they look like. If the kind is wrong, choose another on the card. Your choice always stands.
  • Add a web page. Paste the address of one public page, such as competition rules or a grant call. Only that page is read, and a copy of it is kept in the Vault.
  • File the challenge. A scenario started from a science fair, hackathon, assignment, grant or crowdfunding campaign offers kinds for its rules or brief. A document filed as the challenge is checked against the Idea (see Fit to the challenge).
  • Ideas and early thinking. Your own notes, workshop notes and inspiration from another field have kinds too.

What your documents say

Read sources into the Idea

Hand filed sources to the read. It compares what they say with what the Idea already claims, and writes each finding as a suggestion:

  • Contradictions come first: what the record says beside what the document says, in the document's own words.
  • Then what the document fills in, what it backs up, and what it raises that nobody has answered.
  • Adopt what you accept, park what you are not ready to decide, and dismiss what does not apply. Nothing changes until you adopt it.
  • Every finding keeps its place in the document, so you can check it later.

The Vault

Each scenario keeps its files in its Vault, with versions and details. Every upload is security-checked first. A file still being checked cannot be used yet, and a file the check holds stays in Quarantine with the reason shown. Exports of your documents are kept here too.

My Library

My Library is a shelf for material that serves more than one idea: a standard you design against, a specification, a supplier list, a paper. Publish a document to it from Source material. Taking a copy into a scenario gives that scenario its own copy, stamped with where it came from, so it keeps citing what the document said when it was taken.

Next

Test the idea against what you have found.