The resources included in this guide represent an incomplete list of AI tools available. The ones described in the table focus on tools geared for discovering and synthesizing research.
| NAME | WHAT IT DOES | UNDERLYING DATASETS | PRICING | FAQs |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| ChatGPT | ChatGPT is designed to generate conversational responses and engage in dialogue with users, simulating human-like conversation. It has been trained on a large corpus of text data to acquire knowledge and linguistic patterns. | The free version was trained on data last updated in January 2022 | Free with upgraded plans available | https://help.openai.com/en/collections/3742473-chatgpt |
| Connected Papers | Like Research Rabbit, this is a citation mapping tool highlighting relations between papers and researchers, and provides ability to find similar research. Visualization of an entire field of research. | Semantic Scholar database with additional links to arXiv and PubMed | Free with upgraded plans available | How It works: https://www.connectedpapers.com/about |
| Consensus | Search engine of LLMs for research papers; finds and synthesizes academic research papers | Over 214 million academic papers from Semantic Scholar database (https://www.semanticscholar.org/) | Free with upgraded plans available; upgrade to premium $6.99/month billed annually; 40% student discount | https://consensus.app/home/blog/welcome-to-consensus/ |
| Copilot | Microsoft AI. Conversational chat interface that searches for specific information, generates text, and creates imagesbased on text prompts. | Connects to the internet. | Free with upgraded plans available. Can be used in Microsoft365 apps for additional fees. | https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/bing?form=MG0AUO&OCID=MG0AUO#faq |
| Elicit | Discovery: searches for research papers; provides one sentence abstract summaries; extracts details from papers into a table. Synthesis: analyzes themes and concepts across multiple papers | Over 214 million academic papers from Semantic Scholar database (https://www.semanticscholar.org/) | Basic plan = Free trial; Plus plan = $10/month, billed annually | https://elicit.com/#FAQ |
| Google Gemini | Gemini (formerly Google Bard) is a large language model AI-powered chatbot that responds to natural language queries. | Connects to the internet through Google services. | Free with upgraded plans available; personal Google account required. | https://gemini.google.com/faq |
| GPT-4 | GPT-4 is a large multimodal model (accepting image and text inputs, emitting text outputs) that, while less capable than humans in many real-world scenarios, exhibits human-level performance on various professional and academic benchmarks | Connects to the internet and large multimodal datasets. | Free with upgraded plans available. Free version uses GPT-3.5 model. | |
| Paper Digest | Summary and synthesis of scientific and technical literature. Digests and one sentence summaries of technical and scientific literature; includes humanities and social science papers. Provides summaries and digests but not links to the actual papers. | Own LLM platform and 3rd party APIs. | Free subscription with search functions; paid subscription provides daily digests of research papers. | https://www.paperdigest.org/frequently-asked-questions/ |
| Perplexity | An answer engine that searches the web and cites sources. | Combines traditional search resources with large language models | Free with upgraded plans available | https://www.perplexity.ai/hub/faq |
| Research Rabbit | Citation mapping tool highlighting the relationships between research works. Uses visualization to help researchers find similar works and authors. | Searches multiple databases but does not identify them. Uses AI to make connections between papers and researchers. | Free; registation is required. | https://bit.ly/490UFij |
| Scholarcy | Reads and summarizes research articles, building a collection of cards with key points, findings, and references. | Uses only those articles uploaded or linked by the user; can import from Zotero; finds reference sources from uploaded papers, searching for open access PDFs from Google Scholar, aiXiv and elsewhere. | Free 7-day trial; Scholarcy Plus = $9.99/month | https://www.scholarcy.com/faq |
| scite | scite is a tool which offers a quantitative and qualitative insight into how scientific publications cite each other. Citation mapping tool. | Articles and citations come from multiple sources. A partial list is available. | Free 7-day trial available. $12-20/month. | https://help.scite.ai/en-us/ |
| Semantic Scholar | Searches scientific journals/papers for relevant content. Creates an AI-generation summary and key points of the papers. | Over 214 million academic papers using web indexing and partnerships with scientific journals, indexes, and content providers. Acts like a traditional database, providing citations, summaries | Currently a free resource; registation is required | https://www.semanticscholar.org/faq |
| SciSpace | Linked with Copilot. A way to find, understand, and learn any research paper. For every paper you read, get simple explanations and answers from AI and discover a network of connected and relevant papers. Includes a citation generator. | A repository of research papers across domains — with metadata of 200 million+ papers (Semantic Scholar resources) and 50 million+ Open Access full-text PDFs. | Basic plan = Free with upgrades available. | FAQs linked at bottom of page https://typeset.io/pricing?pricing_hook=header-hook |
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