What is Roam Research?

Roam Research presents more advanced way to take notes.

Networked thought is the premise that Roam is based from allowing users to network your ideas together - from notes to journal entries - all that collected knowledge can breed more ideas, more glimpses from the past and opportunity to have a ever-growing, smarter library of wonder from your notes in Roam.

This allows users to more easily see the connections between their ideas and develop a more nuanced understanding of complex topics. Additionally, Roam has powerful search and filtering capabilities, which makes it easy to find specific notes or connections between notes.

One of the key features of Roam Research is the ability to create "blocks" of text, which can be used to build out complex notes and ideas. Blocks can be easily rearranged or linked to other blocks, which makes it easy to see how different ideas are related to each other.

Overall, Roam Research is a powerful tool for anyone who needs to organize complex information and ideas, and it has become especially popular among knowledge workers, researchers, and academics.

Thomas Frank's outline of Roam is brilliant too:

Key Features of Roam Research

There are many features inside of Roam - they all focus more on the management of your blocks and creating a good library of notes that will re-surface later on for better decision-making and support when actively using your current notes.

• Networked note-taking: Roam allows you to create and connect notes in a non-linear manner, which helps you to see the relationships between your ideas more clearly.
• Block-level organization: You can create and organize notes at the block-level, which makes it easy to reorganize and rearrange your notes as needed.
• Bi-directional linking: Roam automatically creates links between notes as you write, which helps you to see connections between different ideas.
• Powerful search: Roam has powerful search capabilities that make it easy to find specific notes or connections between notes.
• Daily notes: Roam creates a new note for each day, which makes it easy to keep track of your daily tasks and notes.
• Backlinks: Roam shows you all the notes that link back to a particular note, which helps you to see how that note fits into the larger picture.
• Tags and filters: Roam allows you to tag and filter your notes, which makes it easy to find related notes and ideas.
• Integrations: Roam integrates with a variety of other tools, such as Todoist, Notion, and Trello, which makes it easy to incorporate Roam into your existing workflow.
• Collaboration: Roam allows you to share your notes with others and collaborate on notes in real-time.
• Privacy and security: Roam takes privacy and security seriously, and offers features like end-to-end encryption and two-factor authentication to keep your data safe.

Best Suited for?

Roam is more for hardcore note-taking experience. It comes with plenty of skilled features for the more specialist note-taker.

If you're looking at cheaper? Obsidian is much more suitable for those who don't want as many advanced features and want a more approachable price, starting at $0.

Roam is great for those looking for one of the best in-class PKM tool, but remember it will cost you a pretty penny monthly.