The following tools aim to help you find research on a topic. They all have AI- or machine learning-based features, such as semantic search, text summarization, conversational interfaces, and more.
Important notes:
Most tools search one or more open indexes of scholarly literature such as Semantic Scholar, CrossRef, OpenAlex, and others. Some of these sources have >200 million records and others are more restricted. None of the sources are as comprehensive as Google Scholar, which is estimated to have almost 400 million records. Check the tool's help documentation for information about its sources. See this Wikipedia page for a sortable list of the largest literature indexes, and the SearchSmart website for a handy disciplinary comparison tool.
Access to citation/abstract metadata and the full-text of open access articles still omits a vast amount of scholarly research contained in full-text paywalled articles. When crafting answers and summaries, tools without access to full-text will base their answers on abstracts.
These tools can suffer from poor metadata in the indexed of scholarly literature they search, which can lead to less than comprehensive search results.
Tools with a connection to scholarly literature do not tend to make up fake citations, but they may cite a real reference in a way that misrepresents its contents.
None of these tools are appropriate for systematic review searching, which requires explicit search strategies that are documented and reproducible. For recommendations and help with systematic review searching, and to get in touch with our service team through Temple Libraries' Evidence Synthesis & Systematic Reviews page.
Get the full text of paywalled articles using Temple Libraries' off-campus access bookmarklet. Add it to your web browser's bookmark bar. Click it to quickly reload any webpage through the Libraries' remote access proxy server.
A pay-only multifunctional research assistant with a substantial free trial. Searches ~126 million items from Semantic Scholar, which only includes open access full text. Extracts information from PDFs and has a Zotero integration. Works on a paid "credits" system, with 5000 free starter credits.
Multi-functional research assistant tool with a free tier. Includes AI summarizing, information extraction, personalization features, Chrome browser extension, Zotero integration, and other utilities. Literature search draws on a corpus of >150 million items. Writing assistant portion has a freemium model.
Use the SciSpace Chrome browser extension to enhance Google Scholar search results. The extension will put icons on your results page that allow you to chat with a search result, find similar papers, or run the same search in SciSpace.
A pay-only research assistant built on a database of citation statements drawn from a body of >187 million items from open repositories such as PubMed and Unpaywall and some indexed from commercial publishers. Can be used anonymously for free for literature discovery.
Searches Semantic Scholar database using a proprietary combination of semantic and keyword search. Uses AI to extract, aggregate, and summarize findings based on the top few search results. Free accounts can make unlimited searches and can bookmark articles and save searches.
The largest collection of linked data in a single database, including grants, publications, datasets, clinical trials, patents, policy documents. Has numerous AI-powered features, such as TLDR summaries, citation network maps.
Note: Temple users, choose "Sign in with your Institution," to enable full-text article access, save papers to your library, and create custom alerts.Semantic Scholar is a free and non-profit AI-powered academic search engine from the Allen Institute for AI with >200 million items covering all disciplines. Has many personalization features, AI-generated TLDR summaries, Semantic Reader with personalized annotation and skimming tools, Research Feed search alerts, easy citation manager exporting, and an Ask This Paper AI chatbot. Extensive help documentation in the FAQ.
