I honestly envy today’s research students for all the incredible AI tools they have at their disposal. Back in our days, things were totally different. When I did my PhD, I had to do much of the tedious research work manually. I had to sift through endless paper, verify sources, format my writing, and so on.
The tools we had at the time were mainly reference managers, search engines, and tools for reading and annotating PDFs, that’s pretty much it.
Now, generative AI has opened learning and researching possibilities that to the recent past were unthought of. Unlike EdTech tools that we had to work with and which were mainly curation focused, generative AI tools are able to help enhance and augment your thinking.
They are trained on natural human language and can generate text that is so hard to distinguish from human written text. And not only that, they also empower users with capabilities to analyze information, summarize content, generate ideas, translate languages, enhance writing, and even engage in complex problem-solving.
I like to divide these generative AI tools into two main categories: general purpose tools such as AI chatbots (e.g., ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini, Copilot, DeepSeek, etc) and what Bowen & Watson (2024) called specialized AI tools.
The difference between the two lies in their intended use: while general purpose AI tools are broad in scope and can handle various tasks from answering questions and summarizing text to generating creative content and assisting with problem-solving across different domains, specialized AI tools are built with a narrower focus and are trained on a specific data set with the goal of performing a limited set of functions with high accuracy.
Specialized AI tools are the focus of our post today and more specifically a sub-branch related to academic research!
AI Research Tools You Should Know About
In today’s post, I am sharing with you a collection of specialized AI tools that are made especially for people in academia and more specifically for researchers. Think of them as AI-powered research assistants that you can use to speed up literature reviews, analyze data, generate citations, summarize research papers, and even assist with academic writing.
I am only sharing a select few, though. There are tons of AI academic research tools and I have covered many of them in previous posts. The ones I am sharing today are some of the best out there. Bowen and Watson (2024) have also included them in their book Teaching with AI.
1. Consensus
Consensus is an AI-powered tool that you can use to quickly synthesize key findings from academic papers without sifting through lengthy texts. Instead of reading entire studies, let Consensus do the heavy lifting for you and extract key claims directly from research papers. This is an excellent way to get reliable overviews of research papers to help you decide whether you want to commit time to reading the entire paper or not.
Consensus can also help you identify trends, gaps, and emerging insights within your research field. Simply enter your research question, and Consensus will analyze relevant academic papers to extract key findings. This allows you to quickly see what the scientific consensus is on a given topic, helping you spot patterns, contradictions, and areas that need further exploration.
2. Elicit
Elicit is another excellent AI tools for researchers. You can use it as an AI research assistant to help you perform various research related tasks including comparing methodologies, analyzing sample sizes, evaluating study designs, and finding relevant literature based on specific techniques or theories. Unlike traditional keyword-based search engines, Elicit understands the context of your research question and retrieves papers that align with your specific needs.
One of the features I like the most about Elicit is the ability to ability to break down and compare different studies based on specific variables, such as research methods or statistical approaches. This allows you to quickly identify which studies are most relevant to your work.
3. ResearchRabbit
ResearchRabbit is an AI-powered literature review assistant that can help enhance your whole academic research experience. The unique feature of this AI tool is that it helps you visualize connections between studies, authors, and research topics. It connects with databases like Semantic Scholar and PubMed, making it easy to track related papers, discover influential researchers, and map out trends over time.
And that’s not all! ResearchRabbit also offers a dynamic citation tracking and recommendation system. When you add papers to a collection, the tool finds other relevant studies based on citation patterns and research relationships. This means that instead of conducting multiple searches, you get continuous recommendations tailored to your area of study, making literature reviews more efficient and comprehensive.
4. ExplainPaper
ExplainPaper is an AI tool that is especially useful in simplifying complex concept. You can use it to enhance your reading comprehension: simply upload a research paper, highlight any confusing section, and the tool provides an easy-to-understand explanation in the sidebar.
This is particularly useful for complex topics filled with technical jargon and specialized terminology. If you struggling with academic reading (who does not!!), ExplainPaper makes the whole process more accessible and less time-consuming.
5. Papers App
I am new to Papers App and only learned about it through Bowen and Watson’s. This is basically a comprehensive reference manager that helps researchers organize, annotate, and cite research papers with ease.
Think of it as a one-stop research hub where you can store all your papers, highlight important sections, and add notes—all while keeping your citations automatically formatted for academic writing. One of its biggest advantages is its integration with citation tools like EndNote and Zotero, allowing seamless bibliography management.
6. Quivr
Quivr is an AI-powered knowledge management tool that acts as your second brain—storing, retrieving, and processing unstructured information for easy access to research insights. Whether you’re keeping track of academic papers, summarizing key findings, or organizing notes from various sources, Quivr helps you structure your knowledge in a way that makes it instantly retrievable.
Some of the features is provides include the ability to: index and connect pieces of information, automatically generate summaries, tag and categorize content, and retrieve relevant insights using AI-powered search. This makes Quivr an excellent tool for long-term research projects, where keeping track of large volumes of information is crucial.
Final thoughts
That was a quick round-up of some very AI tools to help you with your academic research. You may want to experiment with them and see which one works the best for you. Remember these AI tools are here to help amplify and augment your productivity and efficiency and not replace your creative thinking and critical analysis. Academic research is all about originality and authenticity and both of these constructs are purely human feats. Use AI responsibly and ethically!
Reference:
Bowen, A. J. & Watson, E. C. (2024). Teaching with AI: A practical Guide to a New Era of Human Learning. Hopkins University Press
