AI tools are not just transforming the Generative AI space, but they are also being used to discover and analyze academic research papers. The AI boom has led to many AI-powered search engines for research, citation generation, finding key insights, and more. The AI tools for research can help you find relevant research papers and check emerging trends. On that note, find our list of best AI tools for research.
1. Consensus
If you are doing research for academic work, Consensus is the best AI tool you can use. It’s an AI-powered academic search engine that collates millions of research papers from various fields. The best part about Consensus is that it has a Consensus Meter which shows where the research leans for your question or research study. It shows ‘Yes’, ‘Possibly,’ or ‘No’ based on published data from various papers. It can analyze up to 20 papers at once.
Apart from that, Consensus shows a quick AI-powered Study Snapshot from the scientific literature to show key information about the study. Not to mention, you get AI-powered summaries, key takeaways, and insights.
Finally, you can chat with Copilot and ask questions or get assistance to draft your research. Simply put, to find relevant studies and aid in research work, Consensus is the best AI tool out there.
2. Scite
Scite is another powerful AI-powered tool that is ideal for students and researchers. It evaluates scientific studies to answer your questions, backed by real research and citations. Scite is widely used by universities, publishers, and corporations across the world. The feature called Smart Citations adds context to each citation and checks references to provide reliability of studies.
For each topic, you can find research papers that support or dispute the claim. It helps researchers quickly find scientific literature relevant to their area of study. Moreover, for those unaware, Scite is funded by the National Institutes of Health (NIH), and the National Science Foundation (NSF).
3. SciSpace
If you wish to understand research papers in simple words, I strongly recommend giving SciSpace a try. It offers a ‘Chat with PDF’ tool that explains and summarizes research papers. Next, you can ask questions, and it generates AI-powered insights from the top five research papers.
Right below, SciSpace displays all the top papers with the journal name, key findings, PDF access, external links, and more. There are also tons of filter options that can help you narrow down recent publications, find papers based on citation count, and more. What I find interesting is that you can add multiple columns to display results, summarized abstracts, limitations, and much more next to research papers.
4. Semantic Scholar
Next, we have Semantic Scholar, the free AI-powered research tool to find scientific literature and academic research papers to back your claim. It has a vast database of more than 200 million papers from various fields. It offers a deep search functionality and shows the citation count below every research paper. You can further filter out the field of study and find papers based on journals, publication dates, authors, and more.
Furthermore, you can check out all the references and move to the DOI link to find the paper. The standout feature of Semantic Scholar is that it can perform advanced citation analysis across its large library of databases to provide relevant papers. If you want to discover scientific literature, Semantic Scholar is a great free AI tool.
5. Elicit
In academic research, the process of literature review takes up a lot of time. Elicit is one such AI tool for research that automates summarizing papers, extracting data, and evaluating new findings seamlessly. You can search, ask research questions, and get relevant papers from its massive library of 125 million research papers.
The best part about Elicit is that you can extract details in a tabular format. Next, you can choose a relevant paper and find more papers like it. Not to mention, Elicit can generate AI-powered abstract summaries to quickly get the gist of the paper.
Apart from that, it can connect concepts across various domains and show papers backing the claim. Finally, you can also upload your PDF research papers and chat with them.
6. ScholarGPT
ScholarGPT is one of the best custom GPTs for ChatGPT that you can use for research purposes. It’s the top-ranking GPT on OpenAI’s GPT store. It researches on your behalf and answers questions backed by various research papers from leading journals and publications. The GPT connects to the internet to find high-quality sources to generate a response.
And now that OpenAI has opened access to GPTs for all, free ChatGPT users can also chat with ScholarGPT or any other GPT without subscribing to the paid plan. So to find answers to your research questions, you must check out ScholarGPT.
7. Coral AI
If you are looking for an AI tool that allows you to upload research papers and lets you chat with the document, meet Coral AI. It’s widely used by researchers to process local papers. Coral AI uses AI to generate summaries and translations in 90+ languages. The best part about Coral AI is that it gives you citations with page numbers.
You can upload multiple documents and find key information by collating information from all of the papers. To conclude, if you have several local research papers, and want to analyze them using AI, Coral AI is the best tool out there.
8. ResearchRabbit
ResearchRabbit is heavily used by researchers for literature search and review. It allows you to search through papers and visualize them interactively. You can visualize citations among networks of papers, and find authors neatly.
You can create a collection of research papers, and ResearchRabbit learns from your preferences and improves its recommendation engine. Not only that, it also has Zotero integration, which means you can easily manage your existing research materials.
9. Connected Papers
Connected Papers is not an AI tool per se, but it’s incredibly useful for researchers. It helps students discover new and relevant academic papers that might be under the radar. This is done through a visual graph of papers, showing a starting point and connections based on similarity.
You can see the trends and find where the research area is heading using this platform. On top of that, along the connected points, you can also find important research papers to stay updated on emerging trends. If you are doing literature review, Connected Papers is an impressive tool you must use.
10. ChatGPT and Perplexity
Although ChatGPT and Perplexity are general-purpose AI chatbots, you can use them for research purposes as well. The ChatGPT API is particularly used by many research AI tools to generate summaries, key insights, and more.
ChatGPT lets you upload files, and it can also connect to the internet to find the latest papers on a research subject. And the best part is that now you can use all these features for free.
Perplexity, on the other hand, is very good at combing through the internet and finding relevant information on any subject. It cites sources from where it collates the information, which can be pretty useful for researchers. I would suggest getting the paid Perplexity Pro subscription if you intend to do heavy research. The free plan tends to hallucinate a bit.
So these are the best AI tools for research that students and researchers can check out. Most of the tools are free while some are paid ones. If you want to check out more free AI tools for various use cases, go through our linked article. And if we have missed out on your favorite AI tool for research work, let us know in the comments below.
