# Studies

<Error title="Important">
  The Studies API has rate limits in place to prevent researchers from launching too many studies with low numbers of participants.
  If your study URLs each represent a variant of the same task, with a specified number of participants accessing each variant, please consider using our Taskflow product, which is tailored for this and does not have a publishing limit.

  <br />

  <Button intent="primary" href="https://researcher-help.prolific.com/en/articles/445143-taskflow-ai-dataset-annotation?_gl=1*13rr7cs*_gcl_au*ODg5MjU0ODM4LjE3NjE5MzQyMjM.">
    Take me to the taskflow documentation
  </Button>
</Error>

To recruit participants for your research, you create a draft study with your audience filters and cost and then publish the study to start recruiting.
This is a two step process because publishing a study to participants requires many different and complex steps:

* Checking if your account has sufficient balance to pay participants
* Locking the amount required
* Launching our algorithm to find the best suitable participants for you
* Sending emails and more

By separating it into 2 steps, researchers can be confident that their study is created, no information is lost and it can be updated before publishing.

[Quick guide to using Prolific](https://researcher-help.prolific.com/en/article/6de1aa?_gl=1*19h792c*_gcl_au*ODg5MjU0ODM4LjE3NjE5MzQyMjM.)

<img src="https://assets.prolific.com/assets/img/api/study.jpg" alt="Study flow" />