We collaborate every day. In distributed teams, open-source projects, participatory research, co-design workshops with communities. And yet, every time a new project kicks off, the same questions come up: which method fits this situation? Which tool works at this scale? Has anyone done something like this before — and what happened?
The answers exist. They’re scattered across academic papers, technical documentation, field reports, and forum threads. CollabAtlas was born from that frustration: what if we brought them together in one place?
CollabAtlas is an open catalogue of collaborative solutions. Tools, methods, theoretical frameworks, real-world case studies — classified, cross-linked, and freely accessible. Not a static encyclopedia: a living atlas, built by the community, for the community.
A catalogue built for discovery
CollabAtlas currently indexes over 130 entries across six content types:
- Tools — platforms and software that enable collaboration (Miro, Jupyter, Zotero, Discord…)
- Methods — structured approaches like Participatory Design, the Delphi Method, or Action Research
- Frameworks — theoretical lenses such as CSCW, Activity Theory, or Open Innovation
- Case Studies — real-world examples from the Apache Software Foundation to CERN, Galaxy Zoo to the Linux kernel
- Datasets — pointers to research data on collaborative phenomena
- Resources — books, articles, and courses to go deeper
Every entry is tagged across multiple dimensions: domain (healthcare, education, software engineering…), collaboration type (distributed, co-design, open-source…), scale (pair to community), modality (remote, hybrid, in-person), and maturity level.
This taxonomy isn’t just for browsing. It powers a comparison tool, a decision wizard to help you pick the right method, and an interactive graph that reveals unexpected connections between entries — a framework you know might lead you to a case study you’d never have found otherwise.
Built to be used — and improved
CollabAtlas is designed for practical decision-making and research. Looking for a method that works at community scale, in a hybrid setting, in the healthcare domain? Filter the catalogue. Not sure whether to use CSCW or Activity Theory for your research? Try the decision wizard. Want to see how Participatory Design connects to Action Research and the case studies that used both? Open the graph view.
Everything is free, open, and requires no account.
But CollabAtlas is only as good as what the community puts into it. Every entry was submitted, reviewed, and enriched by researchers and practitioners who recognised something worth sharing. If you know a tool that belongs here, a method that’s missing, or a case study that others should learn from — you can submit it directly via a GitHub issue. No technical knowledge required.
The catalogue is here to grow with your help. As more people contribute, it becomes a richer resource for everyone — a shared map of the collaborative landscape that we can all navigate together.