Smarter workflows for your research office — from funder scan to final report
ForgeDocs gives your university research office a single workspace for pre-award proposals, ethics applications, post-award reporting, and institutional analytics — grounded in your knowledge, your funders, and your institutional policy.
Built for African research universities. Pre-loaded with 30+ funders relevant to your work. Deployable on-premise or in-region.
Six focus areas of AI in research administration
Each focus area shows how a research office, ethics committee, or principal investigator would set up the workspace, add the right knowledge, and use Ask and Agent modes to move work forward.
AI-supported pre-award services
Each call for proposals opens as a workspace pre-loaded with the funder's templates and eligibility rules. Researchers and pre-award officers collaborate on the same draft, the system flags ineligibility before submission, and the final proposal is generated as a versioned Word + Excel budget pair.
AI-enabled post-award management
When a grant is awarded, the proposal workspace transitions to a post-award workspace. Milestones become trackable tasks with automated reminders. Progress reports are generated from grounded project data in the funder's preferred format, and every version is archived for audit.
AI for ethics and research integrity
A researcher kicks off an ethics workspace pre-filled with the institution's IRB / EUREC application form. The AI drafts each section grounded in the linked proposal, runs a similarity check, and surfaces missing elements (consent forms, data plan, vulnerable-population sections). The committee secretariat triages, assigns reviewers, and tracks state — Submitted → Triage → Reviewer → Approved.
AI-powered institutional analytics
Every workspace tagged by funder, faculty, and PI rolls up into the institutional dashboard. The DVC for Research opens a single view and sees the active grant pipeline, the funders with the best historical win rate, faculties with falling milestone health, and recommendations for where to focus pre-award support.
AI for administrative automation
The secretariat records ethics committee and pre-award meetings — transcripts and action items appear automatically in the right workspace. Emails to researchers (deadline reminders, revision requests, award notifications) are drafted in the institution's voice. Records are auto-sorted by proposal, project, or ethics-application workspace, and recurring forms (declarations, COI, indirect-cost certifications) are pre-filled from workspace context.
AI-supported researcher assistance
A PhD candidate uploads recent literature into their workspace and asks the assistant to map themes, identify gaps, and suggest a research question. They draft a concept note with Agent mode, iterate based on supervisor feedback, run a manuscript through editing for clarity, and use journal-match to shortlist credible venues — avoiding predatory ones.
Built for the research office, not generic AI chat
ForgeDocs pairs grounded AI with the workflows your research office already runs — pre-award, ethics review, post-award reporting. Instead of switching between Outlook, Word, Excel, OneDrive, and a paper ethics file, your team lives in one workspace per grant.
Pre-award proposal studio
Funder Library, eligibility checks, proposal drafting, and budget XLSX generation grounded in the funder's own rulebook — one workspace per call for proposals.
Ethics & integrity workflow
Draft IRB / EUREC applications from study details, run similarity checks, surface missing consent or data-management sections, and track the approval state.
Post-award milestone tracking
Milestones, donor reports, and compliance evidence stay in the same workspace as the original proposal — no re-keying, no lost context.
Versioned audit trail for everything
Every proposal, report, and ethics revision is versioned. Reviewers see what changed; auditors see when and why.
What research offices use ForgeDocs for
- AI proposal drafting grounded in the funder's RFP and your institutional strategy
- Eligibility verdicts before researchers commit weeks to a dead-end application
- Budget XLSX that follow funder rules — indirect costs, partner shares, restricted categories
- IRB / EUREC ethics application drafting with built-in similarity and compliance checks
- Donor-ready progress reports generated from grounded post-award data
- Portfolio dashboards for the DVC (Research) — pipeline, win rates, milestone health
From call for proposals to submitted report
One workflow that carries a grant from the funder's RFP through to the final donor report — without leaving the workspace.
- Step 1
Open a workspace for a call, grant, or ethics application
Every proposal, awarded grant, and ethics application gets its own workspace so files, chats, decisions, and generated documents stay grouped.
- Step 2
Pre-load funder rules, institutional policy, and the team's CVs
The Funder Library, institutional research strategy, and reusable templates ground every answer the assistant gives and every document it drafts.
- Step 3
Run an eligibility check or compliance screen
Use Ask mode against the funder's rulebook or your institution's ethics policy before you commit weeks to a draft.
- Step 4
Generate the proposal, budget, ethics form, or report
Agent mode produces the deliverable in the funder's or committee's required format — Word narrative, Excel budget, and supporting PPTX.
- Step 5
Iterate with reviewers and supervisors, version by version
Each round of feedback becomes a new version. Lineage is preserved so the audit trail tells you what changed, when, and why.
- Step 6
Submit, track milestones, generate progress reports
Once submitted, the workspace becomes your post-award home — milestone reminders, donor reports, and compliance evidence all live together.
Why research offices choose ForgeDocs
Generic AI tools won't pass a donor audit, won't track an ethics application, and won't ground a proposal in your institution's strategy. ForgeDocs is built around the documents, deadlines, and decisions your research office actually owns.
Submit more grants, win more often
Eligibility screening, funder-specific templates, and grounded drafting raise the floor on every proposal that leaves the office.
Ethics approval cycles shrink
Applications arrive at the committee already screened for missing sections and similarity issues — fewer triage rejections, faster approvals.
Compliance and audit, not paperwork
Version history means every decision has a paper trail. Donor audits become a workspace export, not a six-week archaeology project.
Leadership sees the portfolio in real time
Because every grant lives as a workspace, the institutional dashboard builds itself — no annual roll-up exercise required.
Who in the institution gets value
Director of Research / DVC Research
A real-time portfolio view across every faculty, funder, and grant — without waiting for annual roll-ups from each department.
Pre-award officers and grant managers
Funder Library, eligibility checks, and proposal templates that mean less time re-keying donor rules and more time on quality review.
Ethics committee and secretariat
A real workflow from submitted application to approved verdict — with similarity checks and section-by-section compliance built in.
Principal investigators
A grounded research assistant for literature mapping, manuscript editing, and journal matching — alongside the proposal and ethics tools.
Roadmap
Pre-Award + Ethics modules
- Funder Library with 30+ curated funders
- Proposal Studio (DOCX) and Budget Builder (XLSX)
- Ethics application drafting + workflow tracking
- Workspace-grounded chat for Ask + Agent modes
Post-Award + Analytics
- Milestone tracker with email reminders
- Donor report templates per funder
- Institutional grant-portfolio dashboard
Self-hosted + integrations
- On-premise deployment with your own LLM endpoint
- SSO (SAML / OIDC) and role-based reviewer workflow
- Plagiarism / similarity-check provider integration
- Calendar + email integrations for committee secretariats
Frequently asked questions
What is ForgeDocs for research administration?
ForgeDocs is a workspace-based platform for university research offices. It supports the full lifecycle — pre-award proposal development, ethics applications, post-award reporting, and institutional analytics — with AI grounded in each workspace's knowledge.
Which funders are in the Funder Library?
30+ funders curated for African research universities: NIH Fogarty, Wellcome, Gates, Carnegie, Mellon; pan-African intermediaries like AAS, AERC, ARUA, AGNES, RUFORUM; bilateral donors (FCDO, SIDA, GIZ, NORAD, IDRC); EU calls (Horizon Europe, ERC, MSCA); and national funders (NACOSTI, NRF South Africa, TETFund, NRF Kenya, UNCST). Custom funders can be added per institution.
How does ForgeDocs help speed up the ethics approval cycle?
Researchers draft ethics applications grounded in your institution's IRB / EUREC template. The system flags missing sections (consent, data plan, vulnerable populations), runs a similarity check, and routes the application through a real workflow — Submitted → Triage → Reviewer → Approved — instead of email threads.
Is researcher and institutional data kept private?
Yes. Workspaces are isolated. The desktop edition keeps data local. The hosted edition supports your choice of LLM provider — Anthropic, OpenAI, Gemini, Azure OpenAI, Bedrock, or a self-hosted endpoint — and data residency in your region.
Can the platform be deployed on-premise for our university?
Yes. The Enterprise tier supports self-hosted deployment with your own LLM endpoint, SSO, and a dedicated success contact. Suitable for institutions with strict data-residency or research-integrity requirements.
How does institutional pricing work?
Pricing is per-institution, not per-seat. A pilot is free for the first six months in exchange for being a public reference customer. Annual licenses are tiered by institutional size and module mix.
Ready to bring AI to your research office?
Pilot is free for the first six months for reference-customer institutions. Talk to the team about deployment, funder library customisation, and the ethics workflow at your university.