AI Tools for Research

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, Dimensions, and others. Some of these sources have >200 million records and others are more restricted. None are as large as Google Scholar, which is estimated to have almost 400 million records (including a large amount of gray literature indexed by automated web crawlers). 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 full open access articles still omits a vast amount of scholarly research contained in full-text paywalled articles. An AI tool's responses and summaries will be limited by the exact nature of its access.
• 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 transparent, documented, and reproducible. For help with systematic review searching, contact our service team through the Evidence Synthesis & Systematic Reviews page.