The resources described in this table of AI research tools were selected because (1) they have free versions that deliver relevant results and (2) they were some of the most often referenced tools. The resources in this table are of two kinds for literature search, citation-based and language- or semantic-based.
The citation-based literature search tools start with you entering a citation, doi, or author which the AI tool uses to map connections. These tools provide visualization of the relationships between published scholarship and authors.
Language-based literature search tools start with a prompt which the AI tool uses to share published scholarship that appears to match. These tools summarize key themes in the literature it finds (usually from 4-10 articles) and summarize each article.
This guide was adapted from Artificial Intelligence (Generative) Resources, Georgetown University Library.
AI tools can help us explore and analyze scholarly literature, identify citations through graphic visualizations, and expand search strategy beyond keywords to investigate the connections between scholarly articles based on a variety of additional factors.
| TOOL | WHAT IT DOES | UNDERLYING DATA | IS IT FREE? | MORE INFORMATION |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Connected Papers | Like Research Rabbit (see below), Connected Papers focuses on the relationships between research papers to find similar research. You can also use Connected Papers to get a visual overview of an academic field. | Semantic Scholar database | Free with paid subscriptions available. |
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| Consensus | Consensus uses large language models (LLMs) to help researchers find and synthesize answers to research questions, focusing on the scholarly authors' findings and claims in each paper. Works best with a well-crafted prompt (see tab for How to Craft Prompts). | Open Alex, Semantic Scholar, and "crawling the scholarly web" | Free with paid subscriptions available. | How Consensus works |
| Elicit | Elicit uses large language models (LLMs) to find papers relevant to your topic by searching through papers and citations and extracting and synthesizing key information. Works best with a well-crafted prompt (see tab for How to Craft Prompts). | Semantic Scholar database | Free with paid subscriptions available. | |
| Research Rabbit | Research Rabbit is a citation-based mapping tool that focuses on the relationships between research works. It uses visualizations to help researchers find similar papers and other researchers in their field. Works best by entering relevant citations. | Open Alex, Semantic Scholar, and other databases | Research Rabbit is currently free. |