# Introduction

Alfred Scholar is an AI-powered academic research platform designed to help researchers, students, and academics manage every stage of their research workflow - from discovering and reading papers to writing manuscripts and submitting for peer review.

## What is Alfred Scholar?

Alfred Scholar brings together the tools researchers use every day into a single, unified platform:

- **Research Library**: Upload, organize, and annotate your PDF research papers.
- **AI Chat**: Ask Alfred questions about your documents and receive instant answers with exact citations.
- **Citation Management**: Import, organize, and format references in any academic citation style or create your own style.
- **Manuscript Editor**: Write academic papers with a rich text editor along with tables, images and built-in citation insertion.
- **Peer Review**: Share manuscripts with reviewers for structured feedback with inline comments and annotations.
- **Plagiarism Detection**: Check your work for unintentional similarity before submission.
- **Team Collaboration**: Create workspaces, invite colleagues and reviewers, and work together on shared research.

## Who is Alfred Scholar for?

Alfred Scholar is built for anyone involved in academic research:

- **Graduate students** managing coursework papers, thesis research, and literature reviews.
- **Postdoctoral researchers** juggling multiple projects and collaborating across labs.
- **Professors** supervising student work and reviewing manuscripts.
- **Research teams** that need a shared workspace for papers, citations, and manuscripts.
- **Independent researchers** who want a streamlined workflow from reading to writing.

## How it works

Alfred Scholar follows the natural flow of academic research:

1. **Gather** - Upload your research papers to build a personal library.
2. **Read & Understand** - Use the PDF reader to highlight, annotate, and take notes. Ask Alfred questions about your papers.
3. **Organize** - Sort papers into folders and manage your citations.
4. **Write** - Draft your manuscript in the built-in editor with one-click citation insertion.
5. **Review** - Share your draft with peers for structured feedback, then check for plagiarism.
6. **Submit** - Export your polished manuscript, confident in its originality and quality.

## Key concepts

Before diving in, here are a few terms you will see throughout Alfred Scholar:

| Term           | What it means                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                    |
| -------------- | ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- |
| **Workspace**  | Your private research environment. All documents, manuscripts, and citations live inside a workspace. You can have multiple workspaces and invite team members to collaborate.                                                                                   |
| **Plan**       | Your workspace starts with a 7-day Pro trial, then runs on Pro or Lab to determine usage limits for documents, AI messages, and plagiarism checks. Usage is shared among all workspace members. See [Plans & Billing](/docs/v1.x/plans-and-billing) for details. |
| **Document**   | A PDF research paper uploaded to your library. After upload, Alfred Scholar automatically extracts text, metadata and citations.                                                                                                                                 |
| **Manuscript** | A document you are writing in Alfred Scholar's built-in rich text editor. Manuscripts support citations, tables, images and text formatting.                                                                                                                     |

## What you will need

- A modern web browser (Chrome, Firefox, Safari, or Edge).
- An email address for account registration.
- PDF files of the research papers you want to work with.

## Next steps

Ready to get started? Head to the [Getting Started](/docs/v1.x/getting-started) guide to create your account and set up your first workspace.