NVivo AI Cloud: Manage Sources

Data and Research Library

When you import, NVivo AI Cloud separates your files into two areas within the Sources page.

Data holds the information you analyze to answer your research questions, whether you collected it directly or obtained it from existing sources.

Research Library holds the existing research and publications that inform and support your study. You choose which area a file belongs to as you add it, and each area has its own empty state prompting you to upload files.

Finding literature with AURA

Alongside uploading your own research files, NVivo AI Cloud can search for published papers related to your study. AURA finds papers matched to your project's research questions and presents them under "Literature found for your research," each with a relevance fit score, citation count, and access details. You review each result and confirm the ones you want; confirmed papers are imported immediately.

Some results carry caveats you should read before confirming: a paper with no open-access PDF imports as metadata only, and a paper with no abstract is created as an empty source for you to fill in. Papers already in your project are marked so you do not import duplicates. You can ask AURA to Find more, or Skip the search entirely.

Organizing sources into folders

Folders let you group related sources within a project so a growing corpus stays navigable. A folder belongs to either the Data area or the Research Library area, and it holds only sources from that same area.

You can create a folder, rename it, and delete it. When you name a folder, NVivo AI Cloud checks whether that name is already taken within the same project and area, so you can avoid a clash before you commit. Deleting a folder does not delete the sources inside it: the folder is removed and its sources become ungrouped, remaining in the project. In the sources tree, each folder shows a count of the sources directly inside it so you can see how full it is without expanding it.

Moving a source into a folder only works when the source and the folder are in the same area. Attempting to move a Data source into a Research Library folder, or the reverse, is rejected as a corpus mismatch.

Deleting a source

Deleting removes a source from the project when you no longer need it. You can delete a source you have permission to remove.

Exporting a source with its coding

Exporting produces a Word document (.docx) that captures a source's text together with its coding, which is useful when you need to share or archive coded material outside NVivo AI Cloud. The export includes each excerpt and the codes applied to it.

Each excerpt in the export is attributed to whoever created it. Excerpts created by a human carry that user's initials, and excerpts generated by AURA carry the AI attribution marker instead.

Downloading the original file

For a source in the Research Library, you can download the original file exactly as you imported it, which matters when you need the source PDF or Word document rather than the extracted text. The download returns the stored original file.

This is available only for Research Library sources that still have a stored original file. If a source has no original file available, or is not a Research Library source, the download is not offered.