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The best AI tools for research papers and academic research (Literature review, grants, PDFs and more)

As our collective understanding and application of artificial intelligence (AI) continues to evolve, so too does the realm of academic research. Some people are scared by it while others are openly embracing the change. 

Make no mistake, AI is here to stay!

Instead of tirelessly scrolling through hundreds of PDFs, a powerful AI tool comes to your rescue, summarizing key information in your research papers. Instead of manually combing through citations and conducting literature reviews, an AI research assistant proficiently handles these tasks.

These aren’t futuristic dreams, but today’s reality. Welcome to the transformative world of AI-powered research tools!

The influence of AI in scientific and academic research is an exciting development, opening the doors to more efficient, comprehensive, and rigorous exploration.

This blog post will dive deeper into these tools, providing a detailed review of how AI is revolutionizing academic research. We’ll look at the tools that can make your literature review process less tedious, your search for relevant papers more precise, and your overall research process more efficient and fruitful.

I know that I wish these were around during my time in academia. It can be quite confronting when trying to work out what ones you should and shouldn’t use. A new one seems to be coming out every day!

Here is everything you need to know about AI for academic research and the ones I have personally trialed on my Youtube channel.

Best ChatGPT interface – Chat with PDFs/websites and more

I get more out of ChatGPT with HeyGPT . It can do things that ChatGPT cannot which makes it really valuable for researchers.

Use your own OpenAI API key ( h e re ). No login required. Access ChatGPT anytime, including peak periods. Faster response time. Unlock advanced functionalities with HeyGPT Ultra for a one-time lifetime subscription

AI literature search and mapping – best AI tools for a literature review – elicit and more

Harnessing AI tools for literature reviews and mapping brings a new level of efficiency and precision to academic research. No longer do you have to spend hours looking in obscure research databases to find what you need!

AI-powered tools like Semantic Scholar and elicit.org use sophisticated search engines to quickly identify relevant papers.

They can mine key information from countless PDFs, drastically reducing research time. You can even search with semantic questions, rather than having to deal with key words etc.

With AI as your research assistant, you can navigate the vast sea of scientific research with ease, uncovering citations and focusing on academic writing. It’s a revolutionary way to take on literature reviews.

• Elicit –  https://elicit.org
• Supersymmetry.ai: https://www.supersymmetry.ai
• Semantic Scholar: https://www.semanticscholar.org
• Connected Papers –  https://www.connectedpapers.com/
• Research rabbit – https://www.researchrabbit.ai/
• Laser AI –  https://laser.ai/
• Litmaps –  https://www.litmaps.com
• Inciteful –  https://inciteful.xyz/
• Scite –  https://scite.ai/
• System –  https://www.system.com

If you like AI tools you may want to check out this article:

• How to get ChatGPT to write an essay [The prompts you need]

AI-powered research tools and AI for academic research

AI research tools, like Concensus, offer immense benefits in scientific research. Here are the general AI-powered tools for academic research. 

These AI-powered tools can efficiently summarize PDFs, extract key information, and perform AI-powered searches, and much more. Some are even working towards adding your own data base of files to ask questions from. 

Tools like scite even analyze citations in depth, while AI models like ChatGPT elicit new perspectives.

The result? The research process, previously a grueling endeavor, becomes significantly streamlined, offering you time for deeper exploration and understanding. Say goodbye to traditional struggles, and hello to your new AI research assistant!

• Bit AI –  https://bit.ai/
• Consensus –  https://consensus.app/
• Exper AI –  https://www.experai.com/
• Hey Science (in development) –  https://www.heyscience.ai/
• Iris AI –  https://iris.ai/
• PapersGPT (currently in development) –  https://jessezhang.org/llmdemo
• Research Buddy –  https://researchbuddy.app/
• Mirror Think – https://mirrorthink.ai

AI for reading peer-reviewed papers easily

Using AI tools like Explain paper and Humata can significantly enhance your engagement with peer-reviewed papers. I always used to skip over the details of the papers because I had reached saturation point with the information coming in. 

These AI-powered research tools provide succinct summaries, saving you from sifting through extensive PDFs – no more boring nights trying to figure out which papers are the most important ones for you to read!

They not only facilitate efficient literature reviews by presenting key information, but also find overlooked insights.

With AI, deciphering complex citations and accelerating research has never been easier.

• Open Read –  https://www.openread.academy
• Chat PDF – https://www.chatpdf.com
• Explain Paper – https://www.explainpaper.com
• Humata – https://www.humata.ai/
• Lateral AI –  https://www.lateral.io/
• Paper Brain –  https://www.paperbrain.study/
• Scholarcy – https://www.scholarcy.com/
• SciSpace Copilot –  https://typeset.io/
• Unriddle – https://www.unriddle.ai/
• Sharly.ai – https://www.sharly.ai/

AI for scientific writing and research papers

In the ever-evolving realm of academic research, AI tools are increasingly taking center stage.

Enter Paper Wizard, Jenny.AI, and Wisio – these groundbreaking platforms are set to revolutionize the way we approach scientific writing.

Together, these AI tools are pioneering a new era of efficient, streamlined scientific writing.

• Paper Wizard –  https://paperwizard.ai/
• Jenny.AI https://jenni.ai/ (20% off with code ANDY20)
• Wisio – https://www.wisio.app

AI academic editing tools

In the realm of scientific writing and editing, artificial intelligence (AI) tools are making a world of difference, offering precision and efficiency like never before. Consider tools such as Paper Pal, Writefull, and Trinka.

Together, these tools usher in a new era of scientific writing, where AI is your dedicated partner in the quest for impeccable composition.

• Paper Pal –  https://paperpal.com/
• Writefull –  https://www.writefull.com/
• Trinka –  https://www.trinka.ai/

AI tools for grant writing

In the challenging realm of science grant writing, two innovative AI tools are making waves: Granted AI and Grantable.

These platforms are game-changers, leveraging the power of artificial intelligence to streamline and enhance the grant application process.

Granted AI, an intelligent tool, uses AI algorithms to simplify the process of finding, applying, and managing grants. Meanwhile, Grantable offers a platform that automates and organizes grant application processes, making it easier than ever to secure funding.

Together, these tools are transforming the way we approach grant writing, using the power of AI to turn a complex, often arduous task into a more manageable, efficient, and successful endeavor.

• Granted AI – https://grantedai.com/
• Grantable – https://grantable.co/

Free AI research tools

There are many different tools online that are emerging for researchers to be able to streamline their research processes. There’s no need for convience to come at a massive cost and break the bank.

The best free ones at time of writing are:

• Elicit – https://elicit.org
• Connected Papers – https://www.connectedpapers.com/
• Litmaps – https://www.litmaps.com ( 10% off Pro subscription using the code “STAPLETON” )
• Consensus – https://consensus.app/

Wrapping up

The integration of artificial intelligence in the world of academic research is nothing short of revolutionary.

With the array of AI tools we’ve explored today – from research and mapping, literature review, peer-reviewed papers reading, scientific writing, to academic editing and grant writing – the landscape of research is significantly transformed.

The advantages that AI-powered research tools bring to the table – efficiency, precision, time saving, and a more streamlined process – cannot be overstated.

These AI research tools aren’t just about convenience; they are transforming the way we conduct and comprehend research.

They liberate researchers from the clutches of tedium and overwhelm, allowing for more space for deep exploration, innovative thinking, and in-depth comprehension.

Whether you’re an experienced academic researcher or a student just starting out, these tools provide indispensable aid in your research journey.

And with a suite of free AI tools also available, there is no reason to not explore and embrace this AI revolution in academic research.

We are on the precipice of a new era of academic research, one where AI and human ingenuity work in tandem for richer, more profound scientific exploration. The future of research is here, and it is smart, efficient, and AI-powered.

Before we get too excited however, let us remember that AI tools are meant to be our assistants, not our masters. As we engage with these advanced technologies, let’s not lose sight of the human intellect, intuition, and imagination that form the heart of all meaningful research. Happy researching!

Thank you to Ivan Aguilar – Ph.D. Student at SFU (Simon Fraser University), for starting this list for me!

Dr Andrew Stapleton has a Masters and PhD in Chemistry from the UK and Australia. He has many years of research experience and has worked as a Postdoctoral Fellow and Associate at a number of Universities. Although having secured funding for his own research, he left academia to help others with his YouTube channel all about the inner workings of academia and how to make it work for you.

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LITERATURE REVIEW SOFTWARE FOR BETTER RESEARCH

“This tool really helped me to create good bibtex references for my research papers”

Ali Mohammed-Djafari

Director of Research at LSS-CNRS, France

“Any researcher could use it! The paper recommendations are great for anyone and everyone”

Swansea University, Wales

“As a student just venturing into the world of lit reviews, this is a tool that is outstanding and helping me find deeper results for my work.”

Franklin Jeffers

South Oregon University, USA

“One of the 3 most promising tools that (1) do not solely rely on keywords, (2) does nice visualizations, (3) is easy to use”

Singapore Management University

“Incredibly useful tool to get to know more literature, and to gain insight in existing research”

KU Leuven, Belgium

“Seeing my literature list as a network enhances my thinking process!”

Katholieke Universiteit Leuven, Belgium

“I can’t live without you anymore! I also recommend you to my students.”

Professor at The Chinese University of Hong Kong

“This has helped me so much in researching the literature. Currently, I am beginning to investigate new fields and this has helped me hugely”

Aran Warren

Canterbury University, NZ

“It's nice to get a quick overview of related literature. Really easy to use, and it helps getting on top of the often complicated structures of referencing”

Christoph Ludwig

Technische Universität Dresden, Germany

“Litmaps is extremely helpful with my research. It helps me organize each one of my projects and see how they relate to each other, as well as to keep up to date on publications done in my field”

Daniel Fuller

Clarkson University, USA

“Litmaps is a game changer for finding novel literature... it has been invaluable for my productivity.... I also got my PhD student to use it and they also found it invaluable, finding several gaps they missed”

Varun Venkatesh

Austin Health, Australia

Mastering Literature Reviews with Litmaps

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Top 21 must-have digital tools for researchers

Last updated

12 May 2023

Reviewed by

Jean Kaluza

Research drives many decisions across various industries, including:

Uncovering customer motivations and behaviors to design better products

Assessing whether a market exists for your product or service

Running clinical studies to develop a medical breakthrough

Conducting effective and shareable research can be a painstaking process. Manual processes are sluggish and archaic, and they can also be inaccurate. That’s where advanced online tools can help. 

The right tools can enable businesses to lean into research for better forecasting, planning, and more reliable decisions. 

• Why do researchers need research tools?

Research is challenging and time-consuming. Analyzing data, running focus groups , reading research papers , and looking for useful insights take plenty of heavy lifting. 

These days, researchers can’t just rely on manual processes. Instead, they’re using advanced tools that:

Speed up the research process

Enable new ways of reaching customers

Improve organization and accuracy

Allow better monitoring throughout the process

Enhance collaboration across key stakeholders

• The most important digital tools for researchers

Some tools can help at every stage, making researching simpler and faster.

They ensure accurate and efficient information collection, management, referencing, and analysis. 

Some of the most important digital tools for researchers include:

Research management tools

Research management can be a complex and challenging process. Some tools address the various challenges that arise when referencing and managing papers. 

.css-32cyld{-webkit-align-items:center;-webkit-box-align:center;-ms-flex-align:center;align-items:center;background:transparent;border:0;color:inherit;cursor:pointer;display:inline-block;-webkit-flex-shrink:0;-ms-flex-negative:0;flex-shrink:0;-webkit-text-decoration:underline;text-decoration:underline;} Zotero

Coined as a personal research assistant, Zotero is a tool that brings efficiency to the research process. Zotero helps researchers collect, organize, annotate, and share research easily. 

Zotero integrates with internet browsers, so researchers can easily save an article, publication, or research study on the platform for later. 

The tool also has an advanced organizing system to allow users to label, tag, and categorize information for faster insights and a seamless analysis process. 

Messy paper stacks––digital or physical––are a thing of the past with Paperpile. This reference management tool integrates with Google Docs, saving users time with citations and paper management. 

Referencing, researching, and gaining insights is much cleaner and more productive, as all papers are in the same place. Plus, it’s easier to find a paper when you need it. 

Acting as a single source of truth (SSOT), Dovetail houses research from the entire organization in a simple-to-use place. Researchers can use the all-in-one platform to collate and store data from interviews , forms, surveys , focus groups, and more. 

Dovetail helps users quickly categorize and analyze data to uncover truly actionable insights . This helps organizations bring customer insights into every decision for better forecasting, planning, and decision-making. 

Dovetail integrates with other helpful tools like ​Slack, Atlassian, Notion, and Zapier for a truly efficient workflow.

Putting together papers and referencing sources can be a huge time consumer. EndNote claims that researchers waste 200,000 hours per year formatting citations. 

To address the issue, the tool formats citations automatically––simultaneously creating a bibliography while the user writes. 

EndNote is also a cloud-based system that allows remote working, multiple-user interaction and collaboration, and seamless working on different devices. 

Information survey tools

Surveys are a common way to gain data from customers. These tools can make the process simpler and more cost-effective. 

With ready-made survey templates––to collect NPS data, customer effort scores, five-star surveys, and more––getting going with Delighted is straightforward. 

Delighted helps teams collect and analyze survey feedback without needing any technical knowledge. The templates are customizable, so you can align the content with your brand. That way, the survey feels like it’s coming from your company, not a third party. 

SurveyMonkey

With millions of customers worldwide, SurveyMonkey is another leader in online surveys. SurveyMonkey offers hundreds of templates that researchers can use to set up and deploy surveys quickly. 

Whether your survey is about team performance, hotel feedback, post-event feedback, or an employee exit, SurveyMonkey has a ready-to-use template. 

Typeform offers free templates you can quickly embed, which comes with a point of difference: It designs forms and surveys with people in mind, focusing on customer enjoyment. 

Typeform employs the ‘one question at a time’ method to keep engagement rates and completions high. It focuses on surveys that feel more like conversations than a list of questions.

Web data analysis tools

Collecting data can take time––especially technical information. Some tools make that process simpler. 

For those conducting clinical research, data collection can be incredibly time-consuming. Teamscope provides an online platform to collect and manage data simply and easily. 

Researchers and medical professionals often collect clinical data through paper forms or digital means. Those are too easy to lose, tricky to manage, and challenging to collaborate on. 

With Teamscope, you can easily collect, store, and electronically analyze data like patient-reported outcomes and surveys. 

Heap is a digital insights platform providing context on the entire customer journey . This helps businesses improve customer feedback , conversion rates, and loyalty. 

Through Heap, you can seamlessly view and analyze the customer journey across all platforms and touchpoints, whether through the app or website. 

Another analytics tool, Smartlook, combines quantitative and qualitative analytics into one platform. This helps organizations understand user behavior and make crucial improvements. 

Smartlook is useful for analyzing web pages, purchasing flows, and optimizing conversion rates. 

Project management tools

Managing multiple research projects across many teams can be complex and challenging. Project management tools can ease the burden on researchers. 

Visual productivity tool Trello helps research teams manage their projects more efficiently. Trello makes product tracking easier with:

A range of workflow options

Unique project board layouts

Advanced descriptions

Integrations

Trello also works as an SSOT to stay on top of projects and collaborate effectively as a team. 

To connect research, workflows, and teams, Airtable provides a clean interactive interface. 

With Airtable, it’s simple to place research projects in a list view, workstream, or road map to synthesize information and quickly collaborate. The Sync feature makes it easy to link all your research data to one place for faster action. 

For product teams, Asana gathers development, copywriting, design, research teams, and product managers in one space. 

As a task management platform, Asana offers all the expected features and more, including time-tracking and Jira integration. The platform offers reporting alongside data collection methods, so it’s a favorite for product teams in the tech space.

Grammar checker tools

Grammar tools ensure your research projects are professional and proofed. 

No one’s perfect, especially when it comes to spelling, punctuation, and grammar. That’s where Grammarly can help. 

Grammarly’s AI-powered platform reviews your content and corrects any mistakes. Through helpful integrations with other platforms––such as Gmail, Google Docs, Twitter, and LinkedIn––it’s simple to spellcheck as you go. 

Another helpful grammar tool is Trinka AI. Trinka is specifically for technical and academic styles of writing. It doesn’t just correct mistakes in spelling, punctuation, and grammar; it also offers explanations and additional information when errors show. 

Researchers can also use Trinka to enhance their writing and:

Align it with technical and academic styles

Improve areas like syntax and word choice

Discover relevant suggestions based on the content topic

Plagiarism checker tools

Avoiding plagiarism is crucial for the integrity of research. Using checker tools can ensure your work is original. 

Plagiarism checker Quetext uses DeepSearch™ technology to quickly sort through online content to search for signs of plagiarism. 

With color coding, annotations, and an overall score, it’s easy to identify conflict areas and fix them accordingly. 

Duplichecker

Another helpful plagiarism tool is Duplichecker, which scans pieces of content for issues. The service is free for content up to 1000 words, with paid options available after that. 

If plagiarism occurs, a percentage identifies how much is duplicate content. However, the interface is relatively basic, offering little additional information.  

Journal finder tools

Finding the right journals for your project can be challenging––especially with the plethora of inaccurate or predatory content online. Journal finder tools can solve this issue. 

Enago Journal Finder

The Enago Open Access Journal Finder sorts through online journals to verify their legitimacy. Through Engao, you can discover pre-vetted, high-quality journals through a validated journal index. 

Enago’s search tool also helps users find relevant journals for their subject matter, speeding up the research process. 

JournalFinder

JournalFinder is another journal tool that’s popular with academics and researchers. It makes the process of discovering relevant journals fast by leaning into a machine-learning algorithm.

This is useful for discovering key information and finding the right journals to publish and share your work in. 

Social networking for researchers

Collaboration between researchers can improve the accuracy and sharing of information. Promoting research findings can also be essential for public health, safety, and more. 

While typical social networks exist, some are specifically designed for academics.

ResearchGate

Networking platform ResearchGate encourages researchers to connect, collaborate, and share within the scientific community. With 20 million researchers on the platform, it's a popular choice. 

ResearchGate is founded on an intention to advance research. The platform provides topic pages for easy connection within a field of expertise and access to millions of publications to help users stay up to date. 

Academia is another commonly used platform that connects 220 million academics and researchers within their specialties. 

The platform aims to accelerate research with discovery tools and grow a researcher’s audience to promote their ideas. 

On Academia, users can access 47 million PDFs for free. They cover topics from mechanical engineering to applied economics and child psychology. 

• Expedited research with the power of tools

For researchers, finding data and information can be time-consuming and complex to manage. That’s where the power of tools comes in. 

Manual processes are slow, outdated, and have a larger potential for inaccuracies. 

Leaning into tools can help researchers speed up their processes, conduct efficient research, boost their accuracy, and share their work effectively. 

With tools available for project and data management, web data collection, and journal finding, researchers have plenty of assistance at their disposal.

When it comes to connecting with customers, advanced tools boost customer connection while continually bringing their needs and wants into products and services.

What are primary research tools?

Primary research is data and information that you collect firsthand through surveys, customer interviews, or focus groups. 

Secondary research is data and information from other sources, such as journals, research bodies, or online content. 

Primary researcher tools use methods like surveys and customer interviews. You can use these tools to collect, store, or manage information effectively and uncover more accurate insights. 

What is the difference between tools and methods in research?

Research methods relate to how researchers gather information and data. 

For example, surveys, focus groups, customer interviews, and A/B testing are research methods that gather information. 

On the other hand, tools assist areas of research. Researchers may use tools to more efficiently gather data, store data securely, or uncover insights. 

Tools can improve research methods, ensuring efficiency and accuracy while reducing complexity.

Get started today

Go from raw data to valuable insights with a flexible research platform

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• To remove a label from an article, click the “Label” button under it, deselect the label you want to remove, and click “Done”.
• To add, edit, or delete labels, click “Manage labels” in the left column of your library page.

Only you can see the articles in your library. If you create a Scholar profile and make it public, then the articles in your public profile (and only those articles) will be visible to everyone.

Your profile contains all the articles you have written yourself. It’s a way to present your work to others, as well as to keep track of citations to it. Your library is a way to organize the articles that you’d like to read or cite, not necessarily the ones you’ve written.

Citation Export

Click the "Cite" button under the search result and then select your bibliography manager at the bottom of the popup. We currently support BibTeX, EndNote, RefMan, and RefWorks.

Err, no, please respect our robots.txt when you access Google Scholar using automated software. As the wearers of crawler's shoes and webmaster's hat, we cannot recommend adherence to web standards highly enough.

Sorry, we're unable to provide bulk access. You'll need to make an arrangement directly with the source of the data you're interested in. Keep in mind that a lot of the records in Google Scholar come from commercial subscription services.

Sorry, we can only show up to 1,000 results for any particular search query. Try a different query to get more results.

Content Coverage

Google Scholar includes journal and conference papers, theses and dissertations, academic books, pre-prints, abstracts, technical reports and other scholarly literature from all broad areas of research. You'll find works from a wide variety of academic publishers, professional societies and university repositories, as well as scholarly articles available anywhere across the web. Google Scholar also includes court opinions and patents.

We index research articles and abstracts from most major academic publishers and repositories worldwide, including both free and subscription sources. To check current coverage of a specific source in Google Scholar, search for a sample of their article titles in quotes.

While we try to be comprehensive, it isn't possible to guarantee uninterrupted coverage of any particular source. We index articles from sources all over the web and link to these websites in our search results. If one of these websites becomes unavailable to our search robots or to a large number of web users, we have to remove it from Google Scholar until it becomes available again.

Our meticulous search robots generally try to index every paper from every website they visit, including most major sources and also many lesser known ones.

That said, Google Scholar is primarily a search of academic papers. Shorter articles, such as book reviews, news sections, editorials, announcements and letters, may or may not be included. Untitled documents and documents without authors are usually not included. Website URLs that aren't available to our search robots or to the majority of web users are, obviously, not included either. Nor do we include websites that require you to sign up for an account, install a browser plugin, watch four colorful ads, and turn around three times and say coo-coo before you can read the listing of titles scanned at 10 DPI... You get the idea, we cover academic papers from sensible websites.

That's usually because we index many of these papers from other websites, such as the websites of their primary publishers. The "site:" operator currently only searches the primary version of each paper.

It could also be that the papers are located on examplejournals.gov, not on example.gov. Please make sure you're searching for the "right" website.

That said, the best way to check coverage of a specific source is to search for a sample of their papers using the title of the paper.

Ahem, we index papers, not journals. You should also ask about our coverage of universities, research groups, proteins, seminal breakthroughs, and other dimensions that are of interest to users. All such questions are best answered by searching for a statistical sample of papers that has the property of interest - journal, author, protein, etc. Many coverage comparisons are available if you search for [allintitle:"google scholar"], but some of them are more statistically valid than others.

Currently, Google Scholar allows you to search and read published opinions of US state appellate and supreme court cases since 1950, US federal district, appellate, tax and bankruptcy courts since 1923 and US Supreme Court cases since 1791. In addition, it includes citations for cases cited by indexed opinions or journal articles which allows you to find influential cases (usually older or international) which are not yet online or publicly available.

Legal opinions in Google Scholar are provided for informational purposes only and should not be relied on as a substitute for legal advice from a licensed lawyer. Google does not warrant that the information is complete or accurate.

We normally add new papers several times a week. However, updates to existing records take 6-9 months to a year or longer, because in order to update our records, we need to first recrawl them from the source website. For many larger websites, the speed at which we can update their records is limited by the crawl rate that they allow.

Inclusion and Corrections

We apologize, and we assure you the error was unintentional. Automated extraction of information from articles in diverse fields can be tricky, so an error sometimes sneaks through.

Please write to the owner of the website where the erroneous search result is coming from, and encourage them to provide correct bibliographic data to us, as described in the technical guidelines . Once the data is corrected on their website, it usually takes 6-9 months to a year or longer for it to be updated in Google Scholar. We appreciate your help and your patience.

If you can't find your papers when you search for them by title and by author, please refer your publisher to our technical guidelines .

You can also deposit your papers into your institutional repository or put their PDF versions on your personal website, but please follow your publisher's requirements when you do so. See our technical guidelines for more details on the inclusion process.

We normally add new papers several times a week; however, it might take us some time to crawl larger websites, and corrections to already included papers can take 6-9 months to a year or longer.

Google Scholar generally reflects the state of the web as it is currently visible to our search robots and to the majority of users. When you're searching for relevant papers to read, you wouldn't want it any other way!

If your citation counts have gone down, chances are that either your paper or papers that cite it have either disappeared from the web entirely, or have become unavailable to our search robots, or, perhaps, have been reformatted in a way that made it difficult for our automated software to identify their bibliographic data and references. If you wish to correct this, you'll need to identify the specific documents with indexing problems and ask your publisher to fix them. Please refer to the technical guidelines .

Please do let us know . Please include the URL for the opinion, the corrected information and a source where we can verify the correction.

We're only able to make corrections to court opinions that are hosted on our own website. For corrections to academic papers, books, dissertations and other third-party material, click on the search result in question and contact the owner of the website where the document came from. For corrections to books from Google Book Search, click on the book's title and locate the link to provide feedback at the bottom of the book's page.

General Questions

These are articles which other scholarly articles have referred to, but which we haven't found online. To exclude them from your search results, uncheck the "include citations" box on the left sidebar.

First, click on links labeled [PDF] or [HTML] to the right of the search result's title. Also, check out the "All versions" link at the bottom of the search result.

Second, if you're affiliated with a university, using a computer on campus will often let you access your library's online subscriptions. Look for links labeled with your library's name to the right of the search result's title. Also, see if there's a link to the full text on the publisher's page with the abstract.

Keep in mind that final published versions are often only available to subscribers, and that some articles are not available online at all. Good luck!

Technically, your web browser remembers your settings in a "cookie" on your computer's disk, and sends this cookie to our website along with every search. Check that your browser isn't configured to discard our cookies. Also, check if disabling various proxies or overly helpful privacy settings does the trick. Either way, your settings are stored on your computer, not on our servers, so a long hard look at your browser's preferences or internet options should help cure the machine's forgetfulness.

Not even close. That phrase is our acknowledgement that much of scholarly research involves building on what others have already discovered. It's taken from Sir Isaac Newton's famous quote, "If I have seen further, it is by standing on the shoulders of giants."

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Top 10 AI Academic Research Tools

In the ever-evolving world of academic research, staying ahead of the curve is crucial. Artificial Intelligence (AI) has emerged as a game-changer, offering innovative tools that transform how researchers interact with data and literature. Here's a list of the top 10 AI-powered academic research tools that are revolutionizing the field:

1. Consensus: The AI-Driven Research Index

Consensus leverages AI to swiftly find solutions to scientific inquiries. It scans peer-reviewed research, extracting main conclusions efficiently. This AI tool offers quick access to scientific community insights without the clutter of advertisements.

2. Julius.ai : Your Comprehensive Data Analysis Solution

Experience the power of advanced data analysis with Julius.ai. This versatile tool is not just limited to basic tasks; it's equipped to perform complex analyses such as regression, time series, cluster analysis, Principal Component Analysis, and sentiment analysis, among others. Whether you're forecasting trends, uncovering hidden patterns, simplifying intricate data sets, or gauging public opinion, Julius.ai is your go-to resource for insightful, data-driven decisions.

3. Elicit: Automating Research with AI

Elicit employs machine learning to automate research processes. It finds relevant articles and extracts key information without relying on specific keywords. This tool also assists in brainstorming and summarizing pertinent points.

4. SciSpace: AI-Driven Scientific Publishing

SciSpace offers an AI-driven platform for reading, understanding, and submitting scientific articles. With a vast database and various paper templates, it simplifies the publishing process for researchers.

5. Scite: AI Assistant for Research Collaboration

Scite's Assistant aids users in collaborating on essays and research papers. It helps find supporting evidence and refutes claims using full-text research publications. This tool is invaluable for finding reliable information and drafting grant proposals.

6. Bit.ai: Organizing the Information Overload

Bit.ai addresses the challenge of finding and organizing vast amounts of data available online. It helps researchers efficiently manage information from various formats, streamlining the research process.

7. Trinka: The AI Language Editor

Trinka AI is an online grammar checker and language editor tailored for technical and academic writing. It detects errors often missed by other checkers, ensuring technical accuracy and professional tone in writing.

8. OpenRead: Interactive Literary Analysis

OpenRead is an AI-driven platform that allows users to organize and analyze various literary forms. Features like the Q&A system and Paper Espresso function aid researchers in writing literature reviews and digesting publications.

9. Semantic Scholar: Beyond Google Scholar

While Google Scholar is widely known, Semantic Scholar offers an AI-powered alternative for scientific research. It provides access to over 200 million academic publications, making it an essential tool for researchers.

10. ChatPDF: Interactive PDF Conversations

ChatPDF allows users to interact with any PDF, including books and research papers, without logging in. Utilizing an advanced AI model, it comprehends PDF content and provides relevant responses, enhancing user understanding.

In the digital age, AI-powered tools are indispensable for academic researchers. From organizing data to enhancing writing, these tools offer innovative solutions to traditional research challenges. The landscape of academic research has been transformed by the advent of AI-powered tools. These innovative solutions offer a wide range of functionalities, from efficient data management to in-depth analysis, catering to the diverse needs of researchers. With capabilities such as regression analysis, time series analysis, cluster analysis, Principal Component Analysis, and sentiment analysis, these tools have become indispensable in the modern research process. They enable researchers to navigate through vast amounts of data with ease, uncovering insights and patterns that might have been overlooked. By integrating these tools into your research workflow, you can enhance the efficiency, accuracy, and depth of your studies, paving the way for new discoveries and advancements in your field.

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• Research paper

How to Write a Research Paper | A Beginner's Guide

A research paper is a piece of academic writing that provides analysis, interpretation, and argument based on in-depth independent research.

Research papers are similar to academic essays , but they are usually longer and more detailed assignments, designed to assess not only your writing skills but also your skills in scholarly research. Writing a research paper requires you to demonstrate a strong knowledge of your topic, engage with a variety of sources, and make an original contribution to the debate.

This step-by-step guide takes you through the entire writing process, from understanding your assignment to proofreading your final draft.

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Table of contents

Understand the assignment, choose a research paper topic, conduct preliminary research, develop a thesis statement, create a research paper outline, write a first draft of the research paper, write the introduction, write a compelling body of text, write the conclusion, the second draft, the revision process, research paper checklist, free lecture slides.

Completing a research paper successfully means accomplishing the specific tasks set out for you. Before you start, make sure you thoroughly understanding the assignment task sheet:

• Read it carefully, looking for anything confusing you might need to clarify with your professor.
• Identify the assignment goal, deadline, length specifications, formatting, and submission method.
• Make a bulleted list of the key points, then go back and cross completed items off as you’re writing.

Carefully consider your timeframe and word limit: be realistic, and plan enough time to research, write, and edit.

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There are many ways to generate an idea for a research paper, from brainstorming with pen and paper to talking it through with a fellow student or professor.

You can try free writing, which involves taking a broad topic and writing continuously for two or three minutes to identify absolutely anything relevant that could be interesting.

You can also gain inspiration from other research. The discussion or recommendations sections of research papers often include ideas for other specific topics that require further examination.

Once you have a broad subject area, narrow it down to choose a topic that interests you, m eets the criteria of your assignment, and i s possible to research. Aim for ideas that are both original and specific:

• A paper following the chronology of World War II would not be original or specific enough.
• A paper on the experience of Danish citizens living close to the German border during World War II would be specific and could be original enough.

Note any discussions that seem important to the topic, and try to find an issue that you can focus your paper around. Use a variety of sources , including journals, books, and reliable websites, to ensure you do not miss anything glaring.

Do not only verify the ideas you have in mind, but look for sources that contradict your point of view.

• Is there anything people seem to overlook in the sources you research?
• Are there any heated debates you can address?
• Do you have a unique take on your topic?
• Have there been some recent developments that build on the extant research?

In this stage, you might find it helpful to formulate some research questions to help guide you. To write research questions, try to finish the following sentence: “I want to know how/what/why…”

A thesis statement is a statement of your central argument — it establishes the purpose and position of your paper. If you started with a research question, the thesis statement should answer it. It should also show what evidence and reasoning you’ll use to support that answer.

The thesis statement should be concise, contentious, and coherent. That means it should briefly summarize your argument in a sentence or two, make a claim that requires further evidence or analysis, and make a coherent point that relates to every part of the paper.

You will probably revise and refine the thesis statement as you do more research, but it can serve as a guide throughout the writing process. Every paragraph should aim to support and develop this central claim.

A research paper outline is essentially a list of the key topics, arguments, and evidence you want to include, divided into sections with headings so that you know roughly what the paper will look like before you start writing.

A structure outline can help make the writing process much more efficient, so it’s worth dedicating some time to create one.

Your first draft won’t be perfect — you can polish later on. Your priorities at this stage are as follows:

• Maintaining forward momentum — write now, perfect later.
• Paying attention to clear organization and logical ordering of paragraphs and sentences, which will help when you come to the second draft.
• Expressing your ideas as clearly as possible, so you know what you were trying to say when you come back to the text.

You do not need to start by writing the introduction. Begin where it feels most natural for you — some prefer to finish the most difficult sections first, while others choose to start with the easiest part. If you created an outline, use it as a map while you work.

Do not delete large sections of text. If you begin to dislike something you have written or find it doesn’t quite fit, move it to a different document, but don’t lose it completely — you never know if it might come in useful later.

Paragraph structure

Paragraphs are the basic building blocks of research papers. Each one should focus on a single claim or idea that helps to establish the overall argument or purpose of the paper.

Example paragraph

George Orwell’s 1946 essay “Politics and the English Language” has had an enduring impact on thought about the relationship between politics and language. This impact is particularly obvious in light of the various critical review articles that have recently referenced the essay. For example, consider Mark Falcoff’s 2009 article in The National Review Online, “The Perversion of Language; or, Orwell Revisited,” in which he analyzes several common words (“activist,” “civil-rights leader,” “diversity,” and more). Falcoff’s close analysis of the ambiguity built into political language intentionally mirrors Orwell’s own point-by-point analysis of the political language of his day. Even 63 years after its publication, Orwell’s essay is emulated by contemporary thinkers.

Citing sources

It’s also important to keep track of citations at this stage to avoid accidental plagiarism . Each time you use a source, make sure to take note of where the information came from.

You can use our free citation generators to automatically create citations and save your reference list as you go.

APA Citation Generator MLA Citation Generator

The research paper introduction should address three questions: What, why, and how? After finishing the introduction, the reader should know what the paper is about, why it is worth reading, and how you’ll build your arguments.

What? Be specific about the topic of the paper, introduce the background, and define key terms or concepts.

Why? This is the most important, but also the most difficult, part of the introduction. Try to provide brief answers to the following questions: What new material or insight are you offering? What important issues does your essay help define or answer?

How? To let the reader know what to expect from the rest of the paper, the introduction should include a “map” of what will be discussed, briefly presenting the key elements of the paper in chronological order.

The major struggle faced by most writers is how to organize the information presented in the paper, which is one reason an outline is so useful. However, remember that the outline is only a guide and, when writing, you can be flexible with the order in which the information and arguments are presented.

One way to stay on track is to use your thesis statement and topic sentences . Check:

• topic sentences against the thesis statement;
• topic sentences against each other, for similarities and logical ordering;
• and each sentence against the topic sentence of that paragraph.

Be aware of paragraphs that seem to cover the same things. If two paragraphs discuss something similar, they must approach that topic in different ways. Aim to create smooth transitions between sentences, paragraphs, and sections.

The research paper conclusion is designed to help your reader out of the paper’s argument, giving them a sense of finality.

Trace the course of the paper, emphasizing how it all comes together to prove your thesis statement. Give the paper a sense of finality by making sure the reader understands how you’ve settled the issues raised in the introduction.

You might also discuss the more general consequences of the argument, outline what the paper offers to future students of the topic, and suggest any questions the paper’s argument raises but cannot or does not try to answer.

You should not :

• Offer new arguments or essential information
• Take up any more space than necessary
• Begin with stock phrases that signal you are ending the paper (e.g. “In conclusion”)

There are four main considerations when it comes to the second draft.

• Check how your vision of the paper lines up with the first draft and, more importantly, that your paper still answers the assignment.
• Identify any assumptions that might require (more substantial) justification, keeping your reader’s perspective foremost in mind. Remove these points if you cannot substantiate them further.
• Be open to rearranging your ideas. Check whether any sections feel out of place and whether your ideas could be better organized.
• If you find that old ideas do not fit as well as you anticipated, you should cut them out or condense them. You might also find that new and well-suited ideas occurred to you during the writing of the first draft — now is the time to make them part of the paper.

The goal during the revision and proofreading process is to ensure you have completed all the necessary tasks and that the paper is as well-articulated as possible. You can speed up the proofreading process by using the AI proofreader .

Global concerns

• Confirm that your paper completes every task specified in your assignment sheet.
• Check for logical organization and flow of paragraphs.
• Check paragraphs against the introduction and thesis statement.

Fine-grained details

Check the content of each paragraph, making sure that:

• each sentence helps support the topic sentence.
• no unnecessary or irrelevant information is present.
• all technical terms your audience might not know are identified.

Next, think about sentence structure , grammatical errors, and formatting . Check that you have correctly used transition words and phrases to show the connections between your ideas. Look for typos, cut unnecessary words, and check for consistency in aspects such as heading formatting and spellings .

Finally, you need to make sure your paper is correctly formatted according to the rules of the citation style you are using. For example, you might need to include an MLA heading  or create an APA title page .

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Checklist: Research paper

I have followed all instructions in the assignment sheet.

My introduction presents my topic in an engaging way and provides necessary background information.

My introduction presents a clear, focused research problem and/or thesis statement .

My paper is logically organized using paragraphs and (if relevant) section headings .

Each paragraph is clearly focused on one central idea, expressed in a clear topic sentence .

Each paragraph is relevant to my research problem or thesis statement.

I have used appropriate transitions  to clarify the connections between sections, paragraphs, and sentences.

My conclusion provides a concise answer to the research question or emphasizes how the thesis has been supported.

My conclusion shows how my research has contributed to knowledge or understanding of my topic.

My conclusion does not present any new points or information essential to my argument.

I have provided an in-text citation every time I refer to ideas or information from a source.

I have included a reference list at the end of my paper, consistently formatted according to a specific citation style .

I have thoroughly revised my paper and addressed any feedback from my professor or supervisor.

I have followed all formatting guidelines (page numbers, headers, spacing, etc.).

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Top 15 Academic Research Tools For Scholars And Tutors

Using specialised tools has become more important in the ever changing field of academic research. These tools reference management, data visualisation, survey design, literature search, writing, and editing, are essential for improving the efficiency of the research process and the quality of scholarly output. Researchers can smoothly collect, assess, and share data using the top 15 academic research tools we are sharing, which will ultimately change the way research is carried out and done.

 We will examine the essential resources for successful research in this guide, offering insightful analyses of the top three resources in each category—all discussed in simple language for a general audience. So let us start this discussing the ultimate top 3 for all the categories we have today.

Top 3 Academic Research Tools For Reference Management

Table of Contents

Reference management tools, also known as citation managers, are programs or online services that help researchers collect, organise, and cite references. These tools offer features such as storing references in a searchable database, attaching PDFs and other files, and auto-generating citations and bibliographies in the preferred citation style. They also allow users to share collections of references with others and sync references across multiple devices. Some popular reference management tools include EndNote, Mendeley, Zotero, and RefWorks.

Zotero is a free, open-source research management program that has been a game-changer for many researchers, including myself. Here are some benefits of using Zotero in academic research, drawn from personal experience:

• Time-saving : Zotero’s web browser plugins make it easy to save item information from the web, eliminating the need to manually copy and paste citations. It saves time and effort, especially while dealing with multiple sources.
• Automatic PDF downloading : Zotero is good at capturing and downloading full-text PDFs from databases, which can be particularly useful when working with limited access to certain resources.
• Built-in tools : Zotero has a built-in tool to extract source information from PDFs, making it easier to manage and organise your research materials.
• Citation style flexibility : Zotero supports virtually all citation styles, allowing you to format your citations consistently and according to your institution’s guidelines.
• Word processor integration : Zotero’s word processor plugins let you “cite as you write,” making it easier to insert citations directly into your paper without having to switch between different applications .

EndNote is a popular citation management tool used by researchers, faculty, and students to store, organise, and cite references. Here are some benefits of using EndNote in academic research:

• Organisation: EndNote allows you to organise your research materials by creating folders, adding notes, and tagging citations, making it easier to locate and manage your sources.
• Better Time Management: By using EndNote, you can manage your research more efficiently, making it easier to meet deadlines and stay organised throughout the research process.
• Full-text PDF downloading: EndNote enables you to automatically attach and download full-text PDFs to saved references, making it easier to read, review, and annotate articles without having to switch between different applications.
• Collaboration: EndNote allows you to share your research with others, facilitating collaboration on research projects and group assignments.
• Bibliography: When it comes time to create a bibliography, EndNote sprinkles some magic. It seamlessly integrates with Word, turning your list of references from a headache-inducing task into a point-and-click breeze.

For researchers and journal editors among all the reference management tools Mendley is very popular. Other than its feature of ease of use here are few other features of it:

• Free of Cost: Best of all, Mendeley doesn’t cost anything. It’s free and all of us love these free tools as they are budget friendly and do not cost anything. Library Superpower: Mendeley is like a superhero library for your computer. It keeps all your research papers and articles in one organised place.
• Teamwork Friendly: If you’re working on a project with friends, Mendeley makes it easy to share your library. Teamwork just got a whole lot simpler.
• Highlight and Scribble: If you find something cool in a paper, you can highlight it and write notes on your computer. It’s like doodling on your homework but way more useful.
• Discover New Things: Mendeley even helps you discover new articles based on what you like. It’s like a friend suggesting cool stuff to read.

Top 3 Academic Research Tools For Data Visualisation And Analysis

Data visualisation and analysis tools are software or online platforms that help users create visual representations of data, making it easier to understand and interpret complex information. These tools enable users to generate various types of visualisations, such as charts, graphs, and maps, from their data sets. By presenting data visually, these tools facilitate quicker and more effective decision-making, allowing users to examine trends and information that is not immediately apparent from the raw data. Also it offers features for customising and sharing visualisations, making them valuable for both individual analysis and collaborative work. Some of the popular tools are as:

In academic research, Tableau is a data visualisation and analysis application that is becoming more and more popular. Using Tableau in academic research has several advantages, which I have personally experienced:

• Easy to use: Tableau is simple to use and intuitive to understand, making it available to researchers of all experience levels.
• Data visualisation: Tableau makes complex data easier to understand and analyse by enabling you to build dynamic, eye-catching charts, graphs, and maps.
• Integration with different data sources: Tableau facilitates the work with a variety of data types by helping you to access a vast range of data sources.
• Real-time data analysis : With Tableau’s ability to analyse data in real-time, you can act quickly and decisively based on up-to-date knowledge.
• R (Programming Language)

R is a programming language and software database used for statistical computing and graphics. It’s like a super-smart tool for crunching numbers, making cool charts, and handling data in a way that even non-computer wizards can understand. Following are some of the features of it:

• Flexibility and Extensibility : R’s flexible nature allows researchers to create custom functions, tailor analyses to specific needs, and interface with other programming languages like C, Python, and Java, enhancing its extensibility.
• Community Support: The R community is basically my online superhero squad. Whenever I got stuck on some coding conundrum, forums and groups were there with advice and solutions. It’s like having a 24/7 coding help hotline.
• Advanced Visualisations and Quick Implementation : R offers advanced visualisations and allows for the quick implementation of new theoretical approaches, which can be highly beneficial for researchers working with complex data.
• Continuous Evolution: R is always evolving. New packages, updates, and features keep popping up. It’s like your favourite app that keeps getting better with each update.
• Cost-Free Awesomeness: R doesn’t cost a cent. In a world where software can drain your wallet, R is the ultimate budget-friendly genius. It’s like getting a high-end software package without the hefty price tag.
• Python (Having Libraries Like Matplotlib And Seaborn)

Python is an adaptable and user-friendly programming language. It’s like a friendly guide for beginners, helping them write code effortlessly. With a vast library ecosystem, Python is a go-to language for tasks ranging from simple scripts to complex machine learning projects. Here is a short list of features of Python:

• Coding Zen: Python is like the cool kid in coding class. It’s easy to learn, which is a big relief when you’re juggling research and a gazillion other things.
• Open-Source and Cost-Effective : Python is open-source, platform-independent, and does not require fees or licences, making it a low-risk and cost-effective option for academic research.
• Versatile Toolbox: Python has a toolbox full of libraries. If we need to do something specific there’s probably a library for it. It’s like having a Swiss Army knife for data tasks.
• Machine Learning Marvel: Python is the superhero of machine learning. With libraries like TensorFlow and scikit-learn, it’s like having Iron Man’s suit for training models and making predictions.
• Data Analysis Capabilities : Python offers a large range of statistical tests, models, and capabilities, and it is mainly opted for machine learning and data analysis.

Top 3 Academic Research Tools For Survey Design And Data Collection

Survey design and data collection tools are software or online platforms that help researchers gather information from a specific group of people about their views, interests, or understandings. These tools offer various methods for creating surveys, such as questionnaires, e-surveys, telephone interviews, face-to-face interviews, focus groups, and electronic (e-mail or website) surveys. These tools offer features like customizable templates, question types, and data analysis capabilities, making them essential for conducting effective surveys and collecting valuable data for research purposes. Top 3 survey design and data collections tools are as:

Qualtrics is an online survey platform that helps you create and analyse surveys. It’s like a digital survey wizard, making it easy to collect and understand data. With user-friendly features, Qualtrics simplifies the survey process for everyone.

• Super Easy Surveys: Qualtrics turns survey-making into a piece of cake. You drag, drop, and boom – your survey is ready. No need for a PhD in tech.
• Data Heaven: When the replies start coming in, Qualtrics is a data wizard. It handles calculations and organisation like an expert. No more getting lost in a pile of info.
• Real-Time Feedback : Qualtrics allows researchers to listen to real-time feedback from students, faculty, and staff, making it easier to understand and improve the educational experience
• Student Budget Friendly: Qualtrics won’t cost you a lot. It’s like getting a premium   survey experience without losing some weight of your wallet. 
• Surveymonkey

SurveyMonkey is an online platform that creates and analyses surveys. It’s like having a survey guru in your pocket, simplifying the process with a user-friendly interface and tools for gathering insights. Some of the main features are as:

• User Friendly: SurveyMonkey takes the headache out of making surveys. It’s so user-friendly that even a middle school child could create a survey without asking for tech support.
• Mobile Friendly: In a world glued to phones, SurveyMonkey is mobile-friendly. Respondents can tap away on any device, making my surveys accessible and cool.
• Confidentiality: SurveyMonkey provides high-security features and ensures that it is in the right hands and there is no breach of security. SurveyMonkey is like the superhero security guard, ensuring your data stays locked and safe.
• Feedback Buffet: SurveyMonkey isn’t just for surveys; it’s a feedback buffet. From opinions to reviews, it gathers feedback like a pro, turning me into a feedback platter.
• Data Playground: SurveyMonkey transforms data into a playground once the responses start rolling in. Spreadsheet making is a thing of the past; insights are the rollercoaster of a data carnival.
• Redcap (Research Electronic Data Capture)

REDCap (Research Electronic Data Capture) is a user-friendly, secure, and web-based application for data collection and management in research. It’s like having a digital assistant that simplifies the process of gathering and organising research data efficiently and safely. Some of the attractive features of Redcap are as:

• User-Friendly Interface : REDCap offers a user-friendly web-based interface that puts researchers in total control of their work, allowing them to manage their own projects whenever and however they wish, through any browser on any device.
• Cost-Effective : REDCap is a cost-effective choice for academic research because it is a free, safe, web-based application that allows data capture for research studies.
• Wide Range of Forms: REDCap offers a versatile solution for creating surveys, whether they are straightforward or intricate. It’s akin to having a variety of forms at your disposal, allowing you to select and customise according to your specific needs, just like choosing items from a buffet.
• Customizable Surveys : REDCap allows researchers to customise their surveys to meet their local security policies and personalise features/functionality to address user needs.
• Secure Data Collection : REDCap provides a secure data collection tool that meets HIPAA compliance standards, making it a reliable and safe option for data collection.

Top 3 Academic Research Tools For Literature Search

Literature search tools are software or online platforms that help researchers find, organise, and analyse relevant information via different sources, such as educational articles, books, and other journals. These tools offer features like search engines for research papers, literature review software based on citation networks, tools for locating open access scientific papers, and more. Some of the best literature search tools are as:

PubMed is a free, easy-to-use search engine that lets you find and read articles on life sciences and biomedical topics. It has more than 35 million citations and abstracts, with links to full-text articles when available. It is managed by the National Library of Medicine and is a reliable source for researchers and students. Some of its main features are as:

• Free Access : PubMed is freely accessible, making it a cost-effective option for academic research.PubMed is like a scholarship for information, supporting my academic journey without draining my student budget. 
• Abstract Summaries: Reading full articles can be time-consuming, but PubMed spoils me with abstracts. It’s like having a trailer before committing to the whole movie – efficient and smart.
• Historical Journey: PubMed is a time machine for research. It’s like flipping through the pages of history, seeing how studies evolved over time. Each article tells a story.
• Integration with Other Sources : PubMed can integrate data from other sources, making it easier to analyse and interpret data ensuring that different data sets will react collectively.
• Ease of Use : PubMed offers a user-friendly interface that allows researchers to search for articles using keywords or Medical Subject Headings (MeSH), making it easy to find relevant information.
• Google Scholar

Users can locate academic resources and scholarly literature, such as books, articles, theses, abstracts, and court opinions, using the free Google Scholar search engine. It searches many different sources, such as websites from universities, professional associations, academic publishers, and online repositories. Google Scholar attempts to organise papers according to researcher rankings. Some of its main features are as:

• No Membership Fee: Best of all, it’s free. Google Scholar is like a gift that keeps on giving, supporting my academic journey. It is freely accessible, making it a cost-effective option for academic research.
• Diverse Resource Hub: It’s not just articles; Google Scholar is a hub of diverse resources. It’s like a buffet of knowledge, offering books, theses, and conference papers on my research plate.
• Advanced Search Capabilities : Google Scholar offers advanced search capabilities, including filters and limiters, allowing researchers to refine their search results.
• My Virtual Bookshelf: Google Scholar is my digital bookshelf. It’s like having a tidy shelf where I can collect and revisit my favourite studies. No more going through piles of papers.

Scopus allows users to search both forward and backward in time for scientific, technical, and medical journal articles and the references included in those articles. Authors, researchers, students, librarians, universities, and others use the database to find, locate, and evaluate research output from around the world. Some of its main features are as: 

• Global Coverage : Scopus covers journals from multiple disciplines, like science, technology, medicine, social sciences, arts, and humanities, offering a broad spectrum of research fields and topics.
• Keyword Treasure Hunt: Searching Scopus for particular keywords is similar to going on a scavenger hunt. Similar to looking for hidden treasures, each keyword reveals a wealth of useful information.
• Graphical Journey: Visualizing research connections is like a graphical journey on Scopus. It’s like having a map that shows the academic world’s complex web of ideas and influences.
• Academic Evaluation : Scopus Indexed Journals are often considered in academic evaluation processes, such as tenure and promotion decisions, as a measure of a researcher’s scholarly output and impact.

Top 3 Academic Research Tools For Writing And Editing

Writing and editing tools are software applications that help writers and content creators improve the quality of their work. It offers different features such as grammar and spell-check, style and readability analysis, and plagiarism detection. It can also help you with real-time feedback and suggestions to increase the overall quality of the content. Writing and editing tools are widely used to streamline the writing process, ensure accuracy, and maintain high standards of professionalism in written work. Some popular examples of these tools include Grammarly, Hemingway Editor, and Latex

LaTeX is a document generation system with high-quality and it is commonly used for technical and scientific documents. It is free software and is distributed under the LaTeX Project Public License. LaTeX is not a word processor; instead, it encourages authors to focus on the content of their documents, leaving the typesetting to the system. Some of its main highlights are as:

• Elegant Formatting: LaTeX produces high-quality typesetting, making documents look professional and polished. LaTeX is the fashion designer of documents. It’s like dressing up your research in a sleek suit, making it look elegant and professional .
• Mathematical Expertise: If you are Dealing with equations then LaTeX is like a maths wizard. It weaves equations into your text seamlessly, so your formulas look as good as your arguments.
• Easy Management of References and Citations : LaTeX allows researchers to label any piece of information they would like to use later for citations or as a reference, only requiring them to remember the label, and LaTeX handles everything.
• Portable and Platform-Independent : LaTeX files can be opened and altered with any text editor, and its formatting is consistent and automatically employed once set.
• Hemingway Editor

The Hemingway Editor is a user-friendly online tool that helps improve writing by highlighting and correcting common errors. It focuses on enhancing readability by identifying and simplifying complex sentences, passive voice , and adverbs. The tool offers both writing and editing modes, making it easy to create and refine content. Some of its main features are as:

• Simple & Powerful: In the world of writing tools, Hemingway Editor is simple yet powerful. It’s like the minimalist ninja, cutting through complexity and leaving my research polished and potent.
• Active Voice Enthusiast: Hemingway Editor is an active voice cheerleader. It’s like a coach nudging me to ditch passive constructions, making my writing punchier and more engaging.
• Readability Whisperer: Ensuring readability is Hemingway Editor’s secret weapon. It’s like having a readability whisperer, making sure my research doesn’t sound like an ancient manuscript but flows effortlessly.
• Formatting Friend: Hemingway Editor is also a formatting friend. It’s like a design consultant, making sure my text isn’t just clear but visually inviting, making my research a pleasure to read.

Grammarly is a digital writing tool that acts like a friendly grammar coach. It’s your online proofreader, catching typos, suggesting better words, and ensuring your sentences are clear and error-free. It helps you in making sure that there is no plagiarism in your content. Some its key highlights are as:

• Error Detective: Grammarly is my error detective. It spots typos, punctuation crimes, and grammatical slip-ups like detectives, saving me from embarrassing blunders.
• Plagiarism Protector: If you are worried about your accidental plagiarism then Grammarly is my protector. It’s like a shield, scanning my text to ensure it’s authentically mine and saving me from citation threats.
• Customizable Settings : Grammarly offers customizable settings, allowing researchers to adjust the tool according to their objectives and preferences like type of audience, knowledge level and other.
• Improving Writing Skills : Grammarly helps improve writing skills by providing suggestions and explanations for errors, helping researchers learn from their mistakes.

In conclusion, the top 15 academic research tools offer valuable support for various aspects of the research process. For reference management, tools like Zotero, Mendeley, and EndNote provide efficient organisation and citation capabilities.

 In the realm of data visualisation and analysis, Tableau, Power BI, and Google Data Studio offer powerful solutions for interpreting and presenting research findings. Survey design and data collection are facilitated by Qualtrics, REDCap, and SurveyMonkey, which streamline the process of gathering and analysing data. 

When it comes to literature search, Google Scholar, PubMed, and Scopus stand out as comprehensive and reliable resources for accessing scholarly literature. Finally, for writing and editing, Grammarly, Hemingway Editor, and LaTex offer indispensable support in enhancing the quality, clarity, and professionalism of academic writing. These tools collectively contribute to the efficiency, accuracy, and impact of academic research endeavours.

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Best tools for screening and reading research papers

There’s a huge amount of relevant and high-quality research on any given subject, but researchers simply don’t have the time to absorb it all. It’s not just a question of discovering the best information, it’s understanding and applying it that matters. The risk is that important findings that could support new studies are being missed.To put this into context: there were more than 3 million articles published in 2018. And the problem isn’t limited to published research.  The number of preprint servers - which are increasingly becoming an important resource for researchers - have grown by over 300% since 2015. Researchers typically spend 45 minutes reading a paper. And the average researcher reads around 250 papers a year. Trying to narrow down the literature that’s going to be most useful to you and then digesting all of that information are now tasks that are almost impossible without the help of technology.So, we’ve pulled together a short review of some of the most useful tools out there for searching and screening research papers. All of the tools presented here are either open-source (free to use and with open-licensed source code) and/or open-access (free to use).

Tools to build a repeatable search strategy

At the heart of 2Dsearch is a graphical editor which lets you formulate search strategies using a visual framework where concepts are expressed as objects on a two-dimensional canvas. Search terms can be combined using Boolean operators into groups which can be expanded or collapsed to facilitate transparency and readability. This gives a more intuitive approach to search strategy development and validation. 2Dsearch consists of a query canvas and a search results pane, as shown below:

The application can take an existing search strategy and turn it into a visual structure. Take the following example: ((telemedicine |telehealth |"Internet based"|telecare|"web based"|"mobile phone"|telemedical|videoconferencing|"text messaging"|"e mail"|telephone|"cell Phone"|pda|"e health")(diabetes|diabetic|insulin))| Telediabetes Although relatively simple, this query is still difficult to interpret, optimise or debug. However, when opened with 2Dsearch, its structure becomes much more transparent:

Visual search structure in 2DSearch

You can also use its automated search suggestions to identify and include related concepts:

Automated search suggestions in 2DSearch

2Dsearch also provides support for automated translation to the syntax of other databases. For example, if you select the Query tab on the result pane, you’ll see our original query expressed as a Boolean string, along with a number of automated translations. Search strategies can be shared and exported as traditional Boolean strings.By offering new ways to for search strategies to be validated, shared and made reproducible, 2Dsearch can help academics search the world’s scientific literature in a systematic manner.

Tools for analysing search results

There’s a growing number of tools available for building and analysing citation networks. Here are just a few of the ones we’ve found to be effective when analysing a collection of articles.

Citation Gecko

Citation Gecko is an easy-to-use online tool that creates focused co-citation networks from seed papers. Seed papers can be added in the following ways:

• uploadinga BibTeX file
• connecting to your Zotero library
• connect to your Mendeley library
• select from search results

As you explore the cited-by and citing relationships, you can select these as new seed nodes to progressively build a citation map of the literature in your field

Similarity network tools make use of pre-built semantic indexes that are based on topic modelling or keyword co-occurrence. This allows semantically or thematically related papers to be clustered together. Search strategies can then be refined in a visual way which may reduce the cognitive load of filtering and reviewing a large number of search results.

Open Knowledge Maps (OKM)

OKM is an easy-to-use online tool that clusters search results according to semantic connections such as topics and keywords, which are automatically extracted from the source documents.Simply enter search term, choose a source repository (PubMed or BASE), and OKM will generate clusters that allow you to zoom in to explore semantically related papers.

Generated maps are given a persistent, shareable URL, and maps can be embedded on any web page.OKM helpfully shows which papers are Open Access via the unlocked padlock icon. When you select a paper in a cluster, OKM shows the article metadata and abstract in the margin, with a link to the full text article.

We can imagine a future tool that combines the functionality of Citation Gecko with OKM to show both citation and semantic relationships between papers.

As with Citation Gecko, Iris.ai starts with a seed paper (via a public URL). It differs from other tools in that the input can also be a research question, although this requires a minimum of a 100-word description to be added for context.Similar to Open Knowledge Maps, Iris then clusters the results by keyword/concept, and as with OKM, it also generates a persistent URL that you can bookmark and share.

Search result clusters in Iris.ai

You can then drill down into each concept cluster to view semantically related papers. Selecting a paper allows you to then run a new search using that paper as the seed.

Connected Papers

Connected Papers is a new tool that also gives you a more visual overview of an academic field. Add a paper and it will create a graph for you of similar papers on the subject. It lets you build multiple graphs for relevant papers so that over time you can build up a visual understanding of the field you’re interested in, including trends, popular works and dynamics.

Tools for text mining and summarizing articles

Once you have filtered promising papers using the approaches described above, the next step might be to automate extraction of the knowledge they contain, to help give you a greater understanding of their findings and relevance.

GATE (General Architecture for Text Engineering)

The open-source GATE platform allows you to assemble a pipeline of prebuilt text mining components (or build your own) which you can run over a collection of documents. The output can be exported to various formats (XML, CSV) for later analysis.Some of the benefits of GATE include:

• no programming ability required to build your own text-mining pipeline
• comprehensive documentation
• online and in-person training courses
• the number and variety of plugins that enhance the out-of-the-box functionality

Unlike GATE, spaCy does require programming skills in Python to use, although there are many tutorials online, including the excellent spaCy documentation at https://spacy.io/usage sciSpacy is a spaCy plugin that is useful for analysing biomedical papers, particularly for identifying concepts, abbreviations and negations.

For those who don't want to download, install and learn new software, or don't want to write their own code, we built Scholarcy . Part of our goal was 'text mining for the rest of us': a simple way that anyone could upload a paper, or collection of papers, and return structured information such as keywords, key concepts, section summaries, facts, findings, and bibliographic references. Scholarcy provides a number of Application Programming Interfaces (APIs) to extract this type information at scale from a collection of research papers, speeding up analysis.Scholarcy also has a web application which renders the information extracted from a paper as a summary flashcard, that can be saved to a library for review, sharing, annotation and export.

Open Access Article - NPJ

Scholarcy Summary Flashcard

Unlike the original PDF, the summary card is responsive, and automatically resizes to fit your current device, so you can keep up to date with research wherever you are. The card shows the main concepts in the paper, linking them to their definitions in Wikipedia to provide the background knowledge needed to get the most from the article.The summary flashcard also highlights important facts and findings, as shown here in a summary of the introduction:

Expanded Summary Flashcard with important points highlighted

The study aims and findings are also summarised in the 'Highlights' tab, and the figures are extracted and cross-referenced in the text.

Scholarcy Highlights

For more advice and tools to help you read and write research papers, visit our blog .

30 Tools and Resources for Academic Research

Merriam-Webster defines “research” as “careful or diligent search; studious inquiry or examination; the collecting of information about a particular subject”. It’s not easy to conduct academic research, so here we round up 30 tools that will facilitate your research in managing, indexing, and web scraping .

Looking for data resources for your research? Find it in  70 Amazing Free Data Resources you should know, covering government, crime, health, finances, social media, journalism, real estate, etc.

10 Research Management Tools

1. marginnote.

License: Commercial

MarginNote is a powerful reading tool for learners. Whether you are a student, a teacher, a researcher, a lawyer, or someone with a curious mind to learn, MarginNote can help you quickly organize, study and manage large volumes of PDFs and EPUBs. All-in-one learning app enables you to highlight PDF and EPUB, take notes, create the mind map, review flashcards, and saves you from switching endlessly between different Apps. It is available on Mac, iPad, and iPhone.

License: Free

Zotero is a free, easy-to-use tool to help you collect, organize, cite, and share research. It is available for Mac, Windows, and Linux. It supports managing bibliographic data and related research materials (such as PDF files). Notable features include web browser integration, online syncing, generation of in-text citations, footnotes, and bibliographies, as well as integration with the word processors Microsoft Word and LibreOffice Writer.

3. RefWorks

RefWorks is a web-based commercial reference management software package. Users’ reference databases are stored online, allowing them to be accessed and updated from any computer with an internet connection. Institutional licenses allow universities to subscribe to RefWorks on behalf of all their students, faculty, and staff. Individual licenses are also available. The software enables linking from a user’s RefWorks account to electronic editions of journals to which the institution’s library subscribes.

EndNote is the industry standard software tool for publishing and managing bibliographies, citations, and references on the Windows and Macintosh desktop. EndNote X9 is the reference management software that not only frees you from the tedious work of manually collecting and curating your research materials and formatting bibliographies, but also gives you greater ease and control in coordinating with your colleagues.

5. Mendeley

Mendeley Desktop is free academic software (Windows, Mac, Linux) for organizing and sharing research papers and generating bibliographies with 1GB of free online storage to automatically back up and synchronize your library across desktop, web, and mobile.

6. Readcube

ReadCube is a desktop and browser-based program for managing, annotating, and accessing academic research articles. It can sync your entire library including notes, lists, annotations, and even highlights across all of your devices including your desktop (Mac/PC), mobile devices (iOS/Android/Kindle), or even through the Web.

Qiqqa is a free research and reference manager. Its free version supports supercharged PDF management, annotation reports, expedition, Ad-supported, and 2GB free online storage.

Docear offers a single-section user interface that allows the most comprehensive organization of your literature; a literature suite concept that combines several tools in a single application (pdf management, reference management, mind mapping, …); A recommender system that helps you to discover new literature: Docear recommends papers which are free, in full-text, instantly to download, and tailored to your information needs.

9. Paperpile

Paperpile is a web-based commercial reference management software, with a special emphasis on integration with Google Docs and Google Scholar. Parts of Paperpile are implemented as a Google Chrome browser extension

JabRef is an open-source bibliography reference manager. The native file format used by JabRef is BibTeX, the standard LaTeX bibliography format. JabRef is a desktop application that runs on the Java VM (version 8), and works equally well on Windows, Linux, and Mac OS X. Entries can be searched in external databases and BibTeX entries can be fetched from there. Example sources include arXiv, CiteseerX, Google Scholar, Medline, GVK, IEEEXplore, and Springer.

10 Reference/Index Resources

1. google scholar.

Google Scholar is a freely accessible web search engine that indexes the full text or metadata of scholarly literature across an array of publishing formats and disciplines. It includes most peer-reviewed online academic journals and books, conference papers, theses and dissertations, preprints, abstracts, technical reports, and other scholarly literature, including court opinions and patents. You can extract these academic data easily by scraping Google Scholar search results .

arXiv (pronounced “archive”) is a repository of electronic preprints (known as e-prints) approved for publication after moderation, that consists of scientific papers in the fields of mathematics, physics, astronomy, electrical engineering, computer science, quantitative biology, statistics, and quantitative finance, which can be accessed online. In many fields of mathematics and physics, almost all scientific papers are self-archived on the arXiv repository.

3. Springer

Springer Science+Business Media or Springer, part of Springer Nature, has published more than 2,900 journals and 290,000 books, which covers science, humanities, technical and medical, etc.

4. Hyper Articles en Ligne

Hyper Articles en Ligne (HAL) is an open archive where authors can deposit scholarly documents from all academic fields, run by the Centre pour la Communication Scientifique direct, which is part of the French National Centre for Scientific Research. An uploaded document does not need to have been published or even to be intended for publication. It may be posted to HAL as long as its scientific content justifies it.

MEDLINE (Medical Literature Analysis and Retrieval System Online, or MEDLARS Online) is a bibliographic database of life sciences and biomedical information. It includes bibliographic information for articles from academic journals covering medicine, nursing, pharmacy, dentistry, veterinary medicine, and health care. MEDLINE also covers much of the literature in biology and biochemistry, as well as fields such as molecular evolution.

Compiled by the United States National Library of Medicine (NLM), MEDLINE is freely available on the Internet and searchable via PubMed and NLM’s National Center for Biotechnology Information’s Entrez system.

6. ResearchGate

ResearchGate is a social networking site for scientists and researchers[3] to share papers, ask and answer questions, and find collaborators.[4] According to a study by Nature and an article in Times Higher Education, it is the largest academic social network in terms of active users.

7. CiteSeerx

Owner: Pennsylvania State University

CiteSeerx ( CiteSeer ) is a public search engine and digital library for scientific and academic papers, primarily in the fields of computer and information science. Many consider it to be the first academic paper search engine and the first automated citation indexing system. CiteSeer holds a United States patent # 6289342, titled “Autonomous citation indexing and literature browsing using citation context”.

Owner: Elsevier

Scopus is the world’s largest abstract and citation database of peer-reviewed research literature. With over 22,000 titles from more than 5,000 international publishers. You can use this free author lookup to search for any author; or, use the Author Feedback Wizard to verify your Scopus Author Profile.

9. Emerald Group Publishing

Emerald Publishing was founded in 1967, and now manages a portfolio of nearly 300 journals, more than 2,500 books, and over 1,500 teaching cases, covering the fields of management, business, education, library studies, health care, and engineering.

10. Web of Science

Owner: Clarivate Analytics (United States)

Web of Science (previously known as Web of Knowledge) is an online subscription-based scientific citation indexing service originally produced by the Institute for Scientific Information (ISI)

5 Information Survey Tools

1. google forms.

Google Forms is a simple option for you if you already have a Google account. It supports menu search, a shuffle of questions for randomized order, limiting responses to once per person, custom themes, automatically generating answer suggestions when creating forms, and an “Upload file” option for users answering to share content through.

Moreover, the response can be synced in Google Drive, and users can request file uploads from individuals outside their respective companies, with the storage cap initially set at 1 GB.

2. Survey Monkey

Survey Monkey is quite a well-known name in the field but is also costing. It is a great choice for you if you want an easy user interface for basic surveys, as its free plan supports unlimited surveys, however, each survey is limited to 10 questions.

3. Survey Gizmo

SurveyGizmo can be customized to meet a wide range of data-collection demands. The free version has up to 25 question types, letting you write a survey that caters to specific needs. It also offers nearly 100 different question types that can all be customized to the user’s liking.

4. PollDaddy

PollDaddy is online survey software that allows users to embed surveys on their website or invite respondents via email. Its free version supports unlimited polls, 19 types of questions, and even adding images, videos, and content from YouTube, Flickr, Google Maps, and more.

5. LimeSurvey

LimeSurvey is an open-source survey software as a professional SaaS solution or as a self-hosted Community Edition. LimeSurvey’s professional free version provides 25 responses/month with an unlimited number of surveys, unlimited administrators, and 10 MB of upload storage.

5 Web Data Collection Tools

1. octoparse.

Octoparse is the most easy-to-use web scraping tool for people without a prior tech background. It is widely used among online sellers, marketers, researchers, and data analysts. With its intuitive interface, you can scrape web data within points and clicks. It also provides ready-to-use web scraping templates to extract data from Amazon, eBay, Twitter, BestBuy, etc. If you are looking for a one-stop data solution, Octoparse also provides a  web data service . Or you can simply follow the Octoparse user guide to scrape website data easily for free.

Its free version offers unlimited pages per crawl, 10 crawlers, and up to 10,000 records per export. If the data collected is over 10,000, then you can pay $5.9 to export all the data. If you need to track the dynamic data in real time, you may want to use Octoparse’s premium feature: scheduled cloud extraction. Read its customer stories to get an idea of how web scraping enhances businesses.

2. Parsehub

Parsehub is another non-programmer-friendly desktop software for web scraping, which is available to various systems such as Windows, Mac OS X, and Linux. Its free version offers 200 pages per crawl, 5 public projects, and 14 days for data retention.

3. Docparser

Docparser converts PDF documents into structured and easy-to-handle data, which allows you to extract specific data fields from PDFs and scanned documents, convert PDF to text, PDF to JSON, PDF to XML, convert PDF tables into CSV or Excel, etc. Its starting price is $19, which includes 100 parsing credits.

Scrapy is an open-source and collaborative framework for extracting the data you need from websites. In a fast, simple, yet extensible way.

Feedity automagically extracts relevant content & data from public web pages to create auto-updating RSS feeds. Instantly convert online news, articles, discussion forums, reviews, jobs, events, products, blogs, press releases, social media posts, or any other Web content into subscribable or publishable notifications. The starter version offers 20 feeds and 6 hours update interval, with a cost of $9 per month.

Explore topics

• # Web Scraping 181
• # Knowledge 118
• # Octoparse 95
• # Big Data 59
• # Data Collection 53
• # Customer Reviews 21

Get started with Octoparse today

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11 Best Academic Writing Tools For Researchers

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For many people, the academic writing process can be a daunting and exhausting experience. Papers and reports can take hours or days to complete and require intense dedication to perfect. However, there are tools that can make the process much easier for those who need them most. 

If you find yourself struggling with long-form writing projects, these tools will help you work smarter instead of harder. 

This article is organized into roughly 3 stages of writing:

• Writing and editing a draft 
• Rewording/ Paraphrasing
• Organizing the manuscript

Table of Contents

I. Best Writing Software for Researchers 

#1. jasper (formerly jarvis) – game-changing ai writing bot.

Jasper is a clever AI that can help you with different parts of your writing. Jasper can identify the core argument in your writing and will provide an outline, create a title, and offer to write introductions and conclusions.

This tool is relatively new. And, I have become a heavy user. I can see how this tool will be VERY useful for knowledge work like professors and researchers. It takes a bit of a learning curve to master the tool. But, it’s absolutely worth it.

We recently negotiated a deal for our readers to get 10,000 words for free. You can grab it here.

But, let me say this first: this tool is great if you know when and how to use it (like most tools really…). And, no, this AI won’t replace you, yet… Your role as the researcher is to guide the AI. Be clear about the central thesis, arguments, and guide it through the process.  

Here is the deep dive review article on Jasper .

• The writing document comes with the basic editing functions e.g.., Grammar, Rephrase, and Explain-it-to-5th-grade
• Great tool for writing a cover letter or email to editors that show a bit of your personality (e.g., using its tone of voice function
• Help you promote your work on social media with the “Quora Answers” template
• Help you do polls and surveys with the “Poll Questions & Multiple Choice Answers” template
• Help you write an opening paragraph of a press release that people will want to read “Press Release Title” Template
• Flexible pay-as-you-go. To start with, Jarvis gives you some credits (5,000 in my case) for free. So, test Jarvis and pay for what you use
• This tool is not ready yet to stand on its own. As I said, you will need to guide it through the process, so you will have to be more involved than with some other tools.
• It does take a bit of learning like using a typewriter when most people are still using pen and paper. (Eventually, most people use a keyword to type. And, I believe it’s only a matter of time until most people realize they can do more and better with AI…)
• Unused credits are not allowed to carry over to the next month. I wish it’s more like the Audible model, where you can save up the credit later on. 
• The paraphrasing function only works for a short paragraph (<30 words) and often misses quite a lot of points once word count exceeds that

Update: Jasper is giving a one-off 10,000 words for free for five days to our readers. Check it out before it expires.

#2. ProWritingAid – Your paper enhancer before submission

As someone who works in academia, I understand the importance of producing quality writing that is clear, concise, and accurate. That’s why I love using ProWritingAid, an AI-powered writing tool that helps me perfect my work before submission.

The rephrasing tool allows me to improve any sentence in just a few clicks. The AI-powered grammar checker catches even the trickiest mistakes, ensuring my ideas shine without any easy-to-miss errors.

The learning tool for students provides in-depth analysis to get work publish-ready. ProWritingAid’s analytical language goals and power verb suggestions help me write professionally without sacrificing readability.

I would suggest you test this tool out using its guaranteed refund for 14 days.

One of the things I love is its unique 20 reporting functions from ProWritingAid (see image below), especially the Sticky, Overused, Pronouns, and Alliteration.

Overall, ProWritingAid is a powerful tool that can help you produce quality writing quickly and efficiently.

• Comprehensive grammar checker that can catch and fix even the trickiest issues
• Offers a rephrasing tool that allows you to improve any sentence in just a few clicks
• Learning tool for students that provides in-depth analysis to get your work publish-ready
• Analytical language goals and power verb suggestions to help you write clearly, concisely, and accurately
• Can be used by both students and professionals for all types of academic writing
• The free version has limitations, and you need to upgrade to access all features
• While I love the detailed report feature, some users may find these functions overwhelming at first 
• Can be time-consuming to use for long documents or research papers as this is not designed with the paper organization in mind

#3. Trinka – Designed for Academic and Technical writing

Trinka is an AI-powered English grammar and plagiarism checker, which we have covered in this article . It also doubles as a language enrichment writing assistant.

We have been testing Trinka recently and fell in love with it. Trinka is founded by Enago, an established academic service provider. So, they are well-versed in the needs of academic papers or technical writing. 

Using real-time writing recommendations, Trinka corrects contextual spelling problems and sophisticated grammatical issues.

It aids academics and professionals in ensuring that their writing is clear, succinct, and interesting.

Below is a comparison of its performance against Grammarly from a Trinka whitepaper. Trinka wins in Domain, Usage, and Style.

We are also delighted to see its Publication Readiness feature included in the free plan. If you have issues with publishing your paper, chances are something is wrong with your manuscript. This Publication Readiness Checker may just be that difference maker.

• More suited for academic and technical writing 
• Consistency Check that’s made for scientific writing
• Publication readiness check is a lifesaver (included in the free plan!)
• Flexible – credit-based pricing. Free-credits every month
• No desktop or mobile app
• Free version limits word count to 10,000 words/month

#4. Hemingway Editor – free and powerful

Hemingway Editor is one of my favorite writing tools. It helps you to simplify your writing. And, it’s free and easy to use.

It highlights problems with your writing based on the idea that dense, complex sentences are hard to understand. The program takes these long, winding sentences and breaks them into chunks with periods in between. 

This makes it easy to see where you can cut out unnecessary words or phrases. You can also use the Hemingway Editor mobile app, which is available for free on iOS devices!

• Helps you spot your prose’s pitfalls, e.g., passive voice and convoluted sentence structure
• Free tool that also checks grammar
• Software can be downloaded so you can access it without the internet
• Aids in finding alternatives for difficult sentences
• Can make a large difference to the clarity of your writing
• Helps improve reading comprehension and understanding  
• Is available as a free mobile app on iOS devices
• Great for essay writing
• Sometimes the alternatives require the reader’s attention 
• Can’t export to MS Word or PDF files
• There is no browser plugin for this great tool
• Not ideal for checking really long research or paper
• You need to know what is the right reading level to set it

II. Best Re-Writing Software

#1. quillbot – best paid option for the professional .

QuillBot is a cutting-edge paraphrasing software that may reword part of the text or the entire article. After you’ve entered a sentence or piece of text, hit the paraphrase button, and QuillBot will rephrase your material while preserving its original meaning.

One of the primary strengths of this tool is that it uses machine learning to understand, reword, restructure, and improve on the paraphrases it makes. Besides paraphrasing and cutting your writing time, QuillBot offers a built-in thesaurus function to help you find the perfect word every time and change individual words.

Writing modes are included to help you enhance clarity and meaning, and a Word Flipper helps you change your writing instantly. 

The free version can paraphrase up to 700 characters, but you can purchase a premium account and paraphrase up to 10,000 characters. The premium plan also paraphrases text faster, has more writing modes, and shows you a single sentence in multiple modes so you can compare results.

• High-quality results that preserve the original meaning
• Has a slider to adjust the level of synonyms and different writing modes to help you enhance clarity and meaning, as well as style, tone, and grammar tools
• Good interface that shows you the words that have been spun, not just shows you the result
• Works with the writing tools you already use, like Microsoft Office, Google Docs, and Google Chrome.
• Has a co-writer function that can rival Jarvis as a writing tool
• Has a Citation Generator that can be handy with your academic paper
• Has a Grammar Checker that rivals Grammarly with a one-click fix-it function
• The free version allows only 125 words (paraphraser) and 1,200 words summarizer
• The absolute price of $15 per month may scare many people off (until you have experienced the power of an AI writing tool, an editing tool like Grammarly, and a paraphrasing tool like WordTune – coming into one).
• Premium starts with $15 billed monthly and $9.99 per month (billed every 6 months)

#2. WordTune – The most convenient option

WordTune can generate rewrite suggestions by analyzing vast amounts of text and finding human language patterns. As a result, it may occasionally change the meaning to convey a more common idea or to include information it believes is implied. 

During the rewrite suggestions, Wordtune is learning to preserve the meaning of your input text as best as possible. It may occasionally, however, offer suggestions that seem to be out of context since the tool is built with some creative freedom. Sometimes, it may misinterpret your text and give incorrect or irrelevant suggestions. 

• Best onboarding process that allows you to feel the tool – has a floating W icon that follows
• Works as a Google Extension which I use for my daily needs
• Free version shows impressive rewording results with the highlighted changes
• Most rewarding options I have seen from a tool (vs. others that don’t offer options)
• Offers 40% discount to students and educators with a valid academic email address, or those who work for a non-profit or NGO 
• To change the tone to casual or formal requires an upgrade
• To use the shorten and expand function requires an upgrade
• Can’t work on a mobile or tablet function 
• The normal price of $10 a month may be too much for casual writers

We tested Wordtune and find the Quillbot to be a more powerful tool with more functions mentioned above. Who knows, Wordtune may change after seeing user feedback like ours one day.

#3. Spinbot – Best free option for starters

Spinbot is a free summarizing tool that converts the substance you paste or write directly into an editorial manager. When you submit a request, the Spinbot framework modifies the text automatically.

Spinbot does not capitalize words, which protects uppercase terms like titles, professional people, places, and things while also preserving the main phrase of each sentence. You may modify this setting by checking the Spin Capitalized Words box.

• Free version  that works up to 10,000 words which is quite amazing compared with QuillBot’s 125 words
• The interface is simple, spotless, and straightforward to use, but it includes offers. When you get past the commercials, though, the summarizing method is simple
• User experience is interrupted by ads sometimes
• The results is not as transparent as the QuillBot which shows you what has been changed
• The result can sometimes be quite bad (makes no sense) and you can’t adjust the rewording level like you can with QuillBot 

III. 3 Best Writing Organization Tools

#1. scrivener – best for academic researchers.

Scrivener is great for researchers who need to handle a large volume of research. Academic writing is more complicated than a grad school writing assignment. This tool costs a little bit of money. But, many top researchers use it for their research papers. 

It’s helpful that it has a mobile app, too. If you want to walk around and research ideas or write on your phone, Scrivener can sync with your device so everything is in one place.

Scrivener is very easy to use and helps you organize your writing. You can create chapters that have subpages for all of your research. You can also add images or text boxes that relate to your writing. It’s a great tool for organizing your research and thoughts, so you can produce a better academic research paper.

Scrivener also has a great free trial period – 30 days of use . So, if you use it 3 days a week, then you could have the trial for 10 weeks. Check the Discount here . 

PROS: 

• Ease of use – allows you to easily rearrange your chapters and organize your research paper later without worrying about the order
• Many guides along the research process 
• Free app trial that most students can access and test 
• Able to help you turn random articles and documents into a thesis and great research paper

CONS: 

• Interface in the documents can be a bit confusing for first-time users

Further reading: 

• Robin Nemesszeghy has written a great article on Scrivener vs. Dabble.

#2. Authorea – Best for Alternative Publication and Exposure

Authorea is this writing tool is a one-stop-shop for you to a) create/upload, b) disseminate your research paper, and c) get published in top journals. Authorea is great for young researchers who want to publish their academic work.

You can also use Authorea with Scrivener!

That’s right, you won’t have to leave your writing tool if you need to upload a research paper or just an article. 

One of the best features is that Authorea officials allow you to publish your work on their website, free of charge. You can also get a DOI from them so it’s easier for people to cite your original research paper.

• One-stop shop for creating, disseminating, and getting published in top journals
• Great tool for young researchers who want to do their academic work and publish their research paper without having to handle the document and other admin tasks
• Can use Authorea with Scrivener
• May be difficult to get published in top journals 

#3. Reedsy – Best for Aspiring Best-Selling Authors

Reedsy is a publishing company that helps authors and publishers connect with professionals to help them create beautiful books. They offer powerful tools and free educational content to help people become top researchers and have more academic success.

Reedsy’s Book Editor is a powerful digital tool used for writing and editing eBooks, print books, journals, and articles. It gives you all the features you need to write your manuscript, including unlimited revision history with comments sent via email; automatic backups; dynamic word count; advanced character filtering; track changes; export to .docx or .txt files; the ability to collaborate on your manuscript with several people at once; and much more.

Reedsy’s eBook Editor has all the features of an advanced word processor, meaning you can write your eBook with the same high-powered tools that are used by best-selling authors.

• Reedsy offers a wide range of professional services to help you create a beautiful book
• They have a lot of free educational content that can help you improve your research and writing skills
• The Reedsy Book Editor is a powerful, yet easy-to-use, tool for writing and editing manuscripts
• Reedsy is quite expensive compared to other publishing companies
• More of a next-level tool for people who have some success or resources 

#4. LaTeX – Great tool but difficult for non-coder  

LaTeX is one of the most widely used academic writing tools that are free and reliable. We have even created a LaTex tutorial, where we help with the minimal programming knowledge that you need to use this too. 

Use LaTex if you haven’t started writing your research paper, have some time to learn it, and want to learn one of the absolute classic writing tools.

Download the LaTeX program here , and don’t forget to check out our guide on how to use it here .

• LaTeX is free to use, which helps students on tight academic budgets.
• The ability to create your own bibliography using Latex’s site function saves time for you and your librarian.
• Creates a technical barrier for researchers who know how to use LaTex and those who don’t
• It takes some time to learn how to use Latex and can take a few hours or even months for beginner writers
• Certain word processing programs such as MS Word cannot be used with LaTex

#5. DraftIn – Minimalistic and free for laser-focus writing  

If Steve Jobs creates an academic writing tool, Draftin might be it. The tool is designed for people who just want to focus on words. It embraces Hemmingway’s motto of “Writer drunk. Edit Sober.”

I work with other people all the time, using Google Docs. But, sometimes there are issues with version control. This tool solves that problem by holding the version updated by the user in the user’s environment. So, you should review it first before accepting it. 

This is different from Google Docs’ showing the updated version and you figure out what has been changed. And, revert them one by one.  

The downside of being minimalist is that you can’t embed links in the text.

PROS : 

• One of the good free online writing tools
• Minimalist design with the Hemingway Mode that encourages “write first, edit later”
• Version control is very helpful for keeping track of edits and updates
• Great when you have co-authors to work on the same documents
• Help you focus on the quality of your writing and notes

CONS:  

• You can’t embed links in text in the document
• Limited functions (by design) compared with other tools 

Final Thoughts

The best academic writing tools don’t have to be expensive or complicated. 

The most important thing you can do is use your time wisely. 

We are also curious about your experience with what works and what doesn’t.

What are the top three things you wish someone had told you about academic writing when you were starting out? 

Share them with us below!

Why should I use LaTeX?

One important but less obvious benefit is that LaTeX allows you to clearly distinguish the substance of your academic papers from the format. As a writer (scientist, researcher or not), this frees you up to concentrate on “what” rather than “how” will it look when printed out on paper (that is the job of LaTeX document class designers).

One big caveat is that the learning curve is quite steep. So, be sure to check out our tutorial here .

What are the best tips for academic writing?

• 1. Make sure to spell-check and proofread 
• 2. It’s not enough to merely quote your references 
• 3. Try using different words than the ones you found in your research
• 4. You have to accurately summarize and synthesize their ideas in a new way 
• 5. Write clearly and simply 
• 6. Avoid cliches
• 7. Vary your SENTENCE STRUCTURE 
• 8. Mix it up in terms of PUNCTUATION 
• 9. Be CONCISE
• 10. Use the VOCABULARY that you know 
• 11. But also work on expanding your VOCABULARY 
• 12. ***Be open mind and learn to use the tool that you need, not what others recommend

What are the tools for effective writing?

The most important tool is your mind as a researcher.

Good academic writing relies on clear thinking, orderly presentation, and sustained focus.

To be an effective researcher, it’s important to have a set of clearly defined priorities for how you will spend your time in the library or office, what questions you’re devoting attention to, which ideas are worth pursuing in more depth. 

Brainstorming is often part of drafting a paper in rhetoric, but in these earliest stages, it is also about figuring out one’s attitude toward the subject at hand. Who am I writing this essay for? Who am I disagreeing with? What are they saying about my topic that I need to refute – all this has implications when deciding where to look next or what hypothesis to pursue. 

One major problem for researchers is to actually “see” how much they know. Scapple  can be a great tool for organizing knowledge and connecting the dots. You can find out more about how we reviewed >30 mind mapping software here .

There is more.

Check out our other articles on the Best Academic Tools Series for Research below.

• Learn how to get more done with these Academic Writing Tools  
• Learn how to proofread your work with these Proofreading Tools
• Learn how to broaden your research landscape with these Academic Search Engines
• Learn how to manage multiple research projects with these Project Management Tools
• Learn how to run effective survey research with these Survey Tools for Research
• Learn how get more insights from important conversations and interviews with Transcription Tools
• Learn how to manage the ever-growing list of references with these Reference Management Software
• Learn how to double your productivity with literature reviews with these AI-Based Summary Generators
• Learn how to build and develop your audience with these Academic Social Network Sites
• Learn how to make sure your content is original and trustworthy with these Plagiarism Checkers
• Learn how to talk about your work effectively with these Science Communication Tools

10 thoughts on “11 Best Academic Writing Tools For Researchers”

Does quiltbot,save the changed text on its server, and then creata the problem of plagerisim.

Here is what it says about its plagiarism checker: “QuillBot stores your content in order to run the plagiarism report, so you can access your reports in the future. Our third-party vendor, CopyLeaks, does not store your content. QuillBot will never share your content with any third parties outside of CopyLeaks.”

Please provide information on resources for systematic review and meta-analysis; for conducting literature review

No it does not

i am a research scholar.i request you to kindly let me share information on rewrite cum plagiarism check, removal tool for best performance. Thank you all

Thank you, Dear Writer. It’s very much helpful.

These are very important for research students. Thank you very much for this piece of information. Great work Joannah.

Thank you for the kind words!

Thanks for sharing this well-researched article.

Nice article, might I suggest Writefull also, they have a number of tools designed for academic/technical writing…

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Reference management. Clean and simple.

The top list of academic search engines

1. Google Scholar

4. science.gov, 5. semantic scholar, 6. baidu scholar, get the most out of academic search engines, frequently asked questions about academic search engines, related articles.

Academic search engines have become the number one resource to turn to in order to find research papers and other scholarly sources. While classic academic databases like Web of Science and Scopus are locked behind paywalls, Google Scholar and others can be accessed free of charge. In order to help you get your research done fast, we have compiled the top list of free academic search engines.

Google Scholar is the clear number one when it comes to academic search engines. It's the power of Google searches applied to research papers and patents. It not only lets you find research papers for all academic disciplines for free but also often provides links to full-text PDF files.

• Coverage: approx. 200 million articles
• Abstracts: only a snippet of the abstract is available
• Related articles: ✔
• References: ✔
• Cited by: ✔
• Links to full text: ✔
• Export formats: APA, MLA, Chicago, Harvard, Vancouver, RIS, BibTeX

BASE is hosted at Bielefeld University in Germany. That is also where its name stems from (Bielefeld Academic Search Engine).

• Coverage: approx. 136 million articles (contains duplicates)
• Abstracts: ✔
• Related articles: ✘
• References: ✘
• Cited by: ✘
• Export formats: RIS, BibTeX

CORE is an academic search engine dedicated to open-access research papers. For each search result, a link to the full-text PDF or full-text web page is provided.

• Coverage: approx. 136 million articles
• Links to full text: ✔ (all articles in CORE are open access)
• Export formats: BibTeX

Science.gov is a fantastic resource as it bundles and offers free access to search results from more than 15 U.S. federal agencies. There is no need anymore to query all those resources separately!

• Coverage: approx. 200 million articles and reports
• Links to full text: ✔ (available for some databases)
• Export formats: APA, MLA, RIS, BibTeX (available for some databases)

Semantic Scholar is the new kid on the block. Its mission is to provide more relevant and impactful search results using AI-powered algorithms that find hidden connections and links between research topics.

• Coverage: approx. 40 million articles
• Export formats: APA, MLA, Chicago, BibTeX

Although Baidu Scholar's interface is in Chinese, its index contains research papers in English as well as Chinese.

• Coverage: no detailed statistics available, approx. 100 million articles
• Abstracts: only snippets of the abstract are available
• Export formats: APA, MLA, RIS, BibTeX

RefSeek searches more than one billion documents from academic and organizational websites. Its clean interface makes it especially easy to use for students and new researchers.

• Coverage: no detailed statistics available, approx. 1 billion documents
• Abstracts: only snippets of the article are available
• Export formats: not available

Consider using a reference manager like Paperpile to save, organize, and cite your references. Paperpile integrates with Google Scholar and many popular databases, so you can save references and PDFs directly to your library using the Paperpile buttons:

Google Scholar is an academic search engine, and it is the clear number one when it comes to academic search engines. It's the power of Google searches applied to research papers and patents. It not only let's you find research papers for all academic disciplines for free, but also often provides links to full text PDF file.

Semantic Scholar is a free, AI-powered research tool for scientific literature developed at the Allen Institute for AI. Sematic Scholar was publicly released in 2015 and uses advances in natural language processing to provide summaries for scholarly papers.

BASE , as its name suggest is an academic search engine. It is hosted at Bielefeld University in Germany and that's where it name stems from (Bielefeld Academic Search Engine).

CORE is an academic search engine dedicated to open access research papers. For each search result a link to the full text PDF or full text web page is provided.

Science.gov is a fantastic resource as it bundles and offers free access to search results from more than 15 U.S. federal agencies. There is no need any more to query all those resources separately!

AI Research Tools

Qonqur is an innovative software that allows you to control your computer and digital content using hand gestures, without the need for expensive virtual reality

Consensus is an AI-powered search engine that helps you find evidence-based answers to your research questions. It intelligently searches through over 200 million scientific papers

Lumina Chat

Lumina Chat is an AI-powered search engine that lets you instantly get detailed answers from over 1 million journal articles and research papers. It allows

Avidnote is an AI-powered research tool that helps you organize, write, and analyze your academic work more efficiently. With this tool, you can easily upload

Samwell AI is an AI writing assistant that’s specifically designed to help students and academics effortlessly write essays, research papers, and other academic content. Its

GigaBrain is a resourceful search engine that uses AI to scan billions of comments across Reddit and other online communities to find the most useful

Genei is a research tool that automates the process of summarizing background reading and can also generate blogs, articles, and reports. It allows you to

scite is an AI-powered research tool that helps researchers discover and evaluate scientific articles. It analyzes millions of citations and shows how each article has

SciSummary is an AI-powered tool that uses language models like GPT-3.5 and GPT-4 to automatically summarize lengthy scientific articles and research papers. It’s ideal for

HyperWrite is an AI-powered writing assistant that helps you create high-quality content quickly and easily. It can also provide personalized suggestions as you write to

ChatPDF allows you to talk to your PDF documents as if they were human. It’s perfect for quickly extracting information or answering questions from large

ResearchRabbit

ResearchRabbit is an AI-powered research app that makes discovering and organizing academic papers incredibly easy. It allows you to view interactive visualizations and create collections

Discover the latest AI research tools to accelerate your studies and academic research. Search through millions of research papers, summarize articles, view citations, and more.

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Resources for scholars and researchers

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Frequently asked questions

Can i use generative ai to write and/or develop research papers.

Academic publishers have a range of policies on the use of AI in research papers. In some cases, publishers may prohibit the use of AI for certain aspects of paper development. You should review the specific policies of the target publisher to determine what is permitted.

Here is a sampling of policies available online:

• JAMA and the JAMA Network
• Springer Nature

How should AI-generated content be cited in research papers?

Guidance will likely develop as AI systems evolve, but some leading style guides have offered recommendations:

• The Chicago Manual of Style
• MLA Style Guide

Should I disclose the use of generative AI in a research paper?

Yes. Most academic publishers require researchers using AI tools to document this use in the methods or acknowledgements sections of their papers. You should review the specific guidelines of the target publisher to determine what is required.

Can I use AI in writing grant applications?

You should review the specific policies of potential funders to determine if the use of AI is permitted. For its part, the National Institutes of Health (NIH) advises caution : “If you use an AI tool to help write your application, you also do so at your own risk,” as these tools may inadvertently introduce issues associated with research misconduct, such as plagiarism or fabrication.

Can I use AI in the peer review process?

Many funders have not yet published policies on the use of AI in the peer review process. However, the National Institutes of Health (NIH) has prohibited such use “for analyzing and formulating peer review critiques for grant applications and R&D contract proposals.” You should carefully review the specific policies of funders to determine their stance on the use of AI

Are there AI safety concerns or potential risks I should be aware of?

Yes. Some of the primary safety issues and risks include the following:

• Bias and discrimination: The potential for AI systems to exhibit unfair or discriminatory behavior.
• Misinformation, impersonation, and manipulation: The risk of AI systems disseminating false or misleading information, or being used to deceive or manipulate individuals.
• Research and IP compliance: The necessity for AI systems to adhere to legal and ethical guidelines when utilizing proprietary information or conducting research.
• Security vulnerabilities: The susceptibility of AI systems to hacking or unauthorized access.
• Unpredictability: The difficulty in predicting the behavior or outcomes of AI systems.
• Overreliance: The risk of relying excessively on AI systems without considering their limitations or potential errors.

See Initial guidelines for the use of Generative AI tools at Harvard for more information.

• Initial guidelines for the use of Generative AI tools at Harvard

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Is AI ready to mass-produce lay summaries of research articles?

• Kamal Nahas 0

Kamal Nahas is a freelance science journalist based in Oxford, UK

You can also search for this author in PubMed   Google Scholar

Generative AI might be a powerful tool in making research more accessible for scientists and the broader public alike. Credit: Getty

Thinking back to the early days of her PhD programme, Esther Osarfo-Mensah recalls struggling to keep up with the literature. “Sometimes, the wording or the way the information is presented actually makes it quite a task to get through a paper,” says the biophysicist at University College London. Lay summaries could be a time-saving solution. Short synopses of research articles written in plain language could help readers to decide which papers to focus on — but they aren’t common in scientific publishing. Now, the buzz around artificial intelligence (AI) has pushed software engineers to develop platforms that can mass produce these synopses.

Scientists are drawn to AI tools because they excel at crafting text in accessible language, and they might even produce clearer lay summaries than those written by people. A study 1 released last year looked at lay summaries published in one journal and found that those created by people were less readable than were the original abstracts — potentially because some researchers struggle to replace jargon with plain language or to decide which facts to include when condensing the information into a few lines.

AI lay-summary platforms come in a variety of forms (see ‘AI lay-summary tools’). Some allow researchers to import a paper and generate a summary; others are built into web servers, such as the bioRxiv preprint database.

AI lay-summary tools

Several AI resources have been developed to help readers glean information about research articles quickly. They offer different perks. Here are a few examples and how they work:

- SciSummary: This tool parses the sections of a paper to extract the key points and then runs those through the general-purpose large language model GPT-3.5 to transform them into a short summary written in plain language. Max Heckel, the tool’s founder, says it incorporates multimedia into the summary, too: “If it determines that a particular section of the summary is relevant to a figure or table, it will actually show that table or figure in line.”

- Scholarcy: This technology takes a different approach. Its founder, Phil Gooch, based in London, says the tool was trained on 25,000 papers to identify sentences containing verb phrases such as “has been shown to” that often carry key information about the study. It then uses a mixture of custom and open-source large language models to paraphrase those sentences in plain text. “You can actually create ten different types of summaries,” he adds, including one that lays out how the paper is related to previous publications.

- SciSpace: This tool was trained on a repository of more than 280 million data sets, including papers that people had manually annotated, to extract key information from articles. It uses a mixture of proprietary fine-tuned models and GPT-3.5 to craft the summary, says the company’s chief executive, Saikiran Chandha, based in San Francisco, California. “A user can ask questions on top of these summaries to further dig into the paper,” he notes, adding that the company plans to develop audio summaries that people can tune into on the go.

Benefits and drawbacks

Mass-produced lay summaries could yield a trove of benefits. Beyond helping scientists to speed-read the literature, the synopses can be disseminated to people with different levels of expertise, including members of the public. Osarfo-Mensah adds that AI summaries might also aid people who struggle with English. “Some people hide behind jargon because they don’t necessarily feel comfortable trying to explain it,” she says, but AI could help them to rework technical phrases. Max Heckel is the founder of SciSummary, a company in Columbus, Ohio, that offers a tool that allows users to import a paper to be summarized. The tool can also translate summaries into other languages, and is gaining popularity in Indonesia and Turkey, he says, arguing that it could topple language barriers and make science more accessible.

Despite these strides, some scientists feel that improvements are needed before we can rely on AI to describe studies accurately.

Will Ratcliff, an evolutionary biologist at the Georgia Institute of Technology in Atlanta, argues that no tool can produce better text than can professional writers. Although researchers have different writing abilities, he invariably prefers reading scientific material produced by study authors over those generated by AI. “I like to see what the authors wrote. They put craft into it, and I find their abstract to be more informative,” he says.

Is ChatGPT making scientists hyper-productive? The highs and lows of using AI

Nana Mensah, a PhD student in computational biology at the Francis Crick Institute in London, adds that, unlike AI, people tend to craft a narrative when writing lay summaries, helping readers to understand the motivations behind each step of the study. He says, however, that one advantage of AI platforms is that they can write summaries at different reading levels, potentially broadening the audience. In his experience, however, these synopses might still include jargon that can confuse readers without specialist knowledge.

AI tools might even struggle to turn technical language into lay versions at all. Osarfo-Mensah works in biophysics, a field with many intricate parameters and equations. She found that an AI summary of one of her research articles excluded information from a whole section. If researchers were looking for a paper with those details and consulted the AI summary, they might abandon her paper and look for other work.

Andy Shepherd, scientific director at global technology company Envision Pharma Group in Horsham, UK, has in his spare time compared the performances of several AI tools to see how often they introduce blunders. He used eight text generators, including general ones and some that had been optimized to produce lay summaries. He then asked people with different backgrounds, such as health-care professionals and the public, to assess how clear, readable and useful lay summaries were for two papers.

“All of the platforms produced something that was coherent and read like a reasonable study, but a few of them introduced errors, and two of them actively reversed the conclusion of the paper,” he says. It’s easy for AI tools to make this mistake by, for instance, omitting the word ‘not’ in a sentence, he explains. Ratcliff cautions that AI summaries should be viewed as a tool’s “best guess” of what a paper is about, stressing that it can’t check facts.

Broader readership

The risk of AI summaries introducing errors is one concern among many. Another is that one benefit of such summaries — that they can help to share research more widely among the public — could also have drawbacks. The AI summaries posted alongside bioRxiv preprints, research articles that have yet to undergo peer review, are tailored to different levels of reader expertise, including that of the public. Osarfo-Mensah supports the effort to widen the reach of these works. “The public should feel more involved in science and feel like they have a stake in it, because at the end of the day, science isn’t done in a vacuum,” she says.

But others point out that this comes with the risk of making unreviewed and inaccurate research more accessible. Mensah says that academics “will be able to treat the article with the sort of caution that’s required”, but he isn’t sure that members of the public will always understand when a summary refers to unreviewed work. Lay summaries of preprints should come with a “hazard warning” informing the reader upfront that the material has yet to be reviewed, says Shepherd.

Why scientists trust AI too much — and what to do about it

“We agree entirely that preprints must be understood as not peer-reviewed when posted,” says John Inglis, co-founder of bioRxiv, who is based at Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory in New York. He notes that such a disclaimer can be found on the homepage of each preprint, and if a member of the public navigates to a preprint through a web search, they are first directed to the homepage displaying this disclaimer before they can access the summary. But the warning labels are not integrated into the summaries, so there is a risk that these could be shared on social media without the disclaimer. Inglis says bioRxiv is working with its partner ScienceCast, whose technology produces the synopses, on adding a note to each summary to negate this risk.

As is the case for many other nascent generative-AI technologies, humans are still working out the messaging that might be needed to ensure users are given adequate context. But if AI lay-summary tools can successfully mitigate these and other challenges, they might become a staple of scientific publishing.

doi: https://doi.org/10.1038/d41586-024-00865-4

Wen, J. & Yi, L. Scientometrics 128 , 5791–5800 (2023).

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Should You Use AI Tools like ChatGPT for Academic Writing?

AI has transformed academic writing for good. Generative AI tools like ChatGPT, Bard, and Claude have become increasingly popular due to their accessibility and versatility, from generating text to providing research assistance, making them valuable assets for students and researchers alike. 

However, are these general-purpose AI writing tools trained enough for academic writing? In this blog, we explore the limitations of general-purpose AI tools like ChatGPT for academic writing and provide you with an academic-focused AI writing tool that can help you write twice as fast.  

Table of Contents

• What are general purpose generative AI tools? 
• Dependency on Prompts 
• Limited Contextual Understanding 
• Data Security Concerns 
• LLM Technology 
• Built-In Academic Prompts 
• Data Security 

Ethical considerations in using tools like ChatGPT for academic writing

What are general purpose generative ai tools.

“General Purpose GenAI tools” refer to artificial intelligence (AI) tools that are designed to perform a wide range of tasks across various domains. These tools are typically versatile and adaptable, capable of being applied to different problems and scenarios. They are not tailored to a specific industry or use case but rather designed to be flexible and broadly applicable. Examples of such tools include ChatGPT, Bard, and Claude, among others. 

Limitations of generic AI tools like ChatGPT for academic writing

General Purpose GenAI tools such as ChatGPT, Bard, and Claude exhibit a tendency for hallucination due to their predictive text nature. Operating on Large Language Models (LLMs), they possess broad versatility, capable of generating diverse content types like text, images, code, and audio. Their predictive algorithms drive output generation from input data. However, this adaptability can lead to inaccuracies, notably in contexts where precision matters, such as scholarly content. 

General purpose AI writing tools may generate text that includes made-up or incorrectly quoted references, which can be problematic in academic or research settings where precision and factual accuracy are paramount. While these tools excel in creative writing or fictional content generation, their tendency for hallucination can be a drawback for scholarly content where accuracy is important  

The challenges with general-purpose AI tools stem from several factors. Some of them are:

Dependency on Prompts

A lot of the general-purpose tools often rely heavily on the input provided, typically in the form of prompts. However, using single-line prompts can result in poor outputs. Therefore, users need to navigate a steep learning curve and develop prompt expertise to extract the best results. 

Limited Contextual Understanding

While general-purpose AI tools aim to be versatile, they often lack deep contextual understanding, especially in specific domains or fields. Even with the emergence of fine-tuned models like GPT agents, which can be tailored to certain tasks, achieving contextual understanding still requires expertise and extensive training data. In specialized fields like environmental science, where precise terminology and context are crucial, these tools may struggle to provide accurate outputs. 

Data Security Concerns

Data security poses a significant concern. General-purpose AI models rely on large datasets for training, but in academic settings, sharing certain data may be prohibited as these datasets often contain sensitive information. Thus, users must exercise caution regarding the content they input into these tools to avoid potential breaches of data security policies. 

How is Paperpal different from general purpose AI tools?

Paperpal draws on 21+ years of experience in providing human editing services to support authors in getting published. By mechanizing the expertise gained over the years, Paperpal mimics the editing process conducted by human editors, ensuring high-quality outputs. 

Here’s how Paperpal differs from ChatGPT for academic writing by providing accurate, niche-specific writing support:  

LLM Technology

Paperpal offers real-time AI writing support tailored specifically for academic use. It takes broad-based language model (LLM) technologies and incorporates it with specialized training to cater to the unique needs of academic writing.  

Built-In Academic Prompts

In contrast to the extensive prompt writing prompts required by general-purpose tools, Paperpal simplifies the process by providing an objective form where users input select information. The prompts are fine-tuned in the backend to generate outputs tailored to the user’s requirements, whether it’s crafting an outline, composing a methods section, or drafting a cover letter or email. 

Data Security

Paperpal is mindfully designed with a keen understanding of the academic industry and domain-specific requirements. Unlike general-purpose tools that rely on data to train their models, Paperpal does not use user data for training its AI models. This approach allows users to have greater control over their data, ensuring data security and confidentiality. 

When using AI for academic writing, it’s essential to adhere to guidelines set by journals, universities, or other relevant entities. Incorporating their suggestions into your work ensures ethical and responsible AI usage . By incorporating these ethical considerations into our work, we can navigate the use of AI responsibly and ethically. 

Ultimately, researchers must weigh the benefits, limitations, and ethical implications before integrating AI tools into their academic work, ensuring that they enhance rather than compromise the integrity of their research. Embracing AI tools can indeed be transformative, but it requires a mindful approach. 

Paperpal is a comprehensive AI writing toolkit that helps students and researchers achieve 2x the writing in half the time. It leverages 21+ years of STM experience and insights from millions of research articles to provide in-depth academic writing, language editing, and submission readiness support to help you write better, faster.  

Get accurate academic translations, rewriting support, grammar checks, vocabulary suggestions, and generative AI assistance that delivers human precision at machine speed. Try for free or upgrade to Paperpal Prime starting at US$19 a month to access premium features, including consistency, plagiarism, and 30+ submission readiness checks to help you succeed.  

Experience the future of academic writing – Sign up to Paperpal and start writing for free! Image by Freepik

Related Reads:

What are the benefits of generative ai for academic writing.

• Webinar: How to Use Generative AI Tools Ethically in Your Academic Writing
• Addressing Your Queries on AI Ethics, Plagiarism, and AI Detection
• How to Cite Social Media Sources in Academic Writing? 

What is an Academic Paper? Types and Elements 

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Training videos   |   Faqs

Paraphrasing Tool – Academic Rephrase Tool for Researchers

Ref-n-write’s paraphrasing tool has a powerful AI (Artificial Intelligence) module that is specifically designed for academic writing. It is very important to avoid plagiarism when it comes to academic writing. You can no longer use your own text after it is published, it should be paraphrased manually or with a good rephrase tool, otherwise it will be considered self-plagiarism . Ref-n-write has been ranked as one of the best paraphrasing tools available out there. Ref-n-write’s legacy phrase templates feature offers the ability to rephrase sentences individually, while the newly added paraphrasing tool allows the users to rephrase paragraphs with one click. These tools work hand-in-hand with the academic phrasebank and rewording tools to provide a full suite of tools for researchers. This makes Ref-n-write one of the best research tools available for students and academics. In a recent survey of rewriter tools available to students and academics to reduce plagiarism, Ref-n-write was rated as the best scholarly paraphrasing tool . Click here to see the video of paraphrasing tool in action rephrasing a paragraph.

What is a Paraphrasing Tool?

A paraphrasing tool is used to rewrite or rephrase a sentence without altering its meaning. This is accomplished by substituting any number of alternate versions for specific words, phrases, sentences, or even whole paragraphs to create a slightly different variant.

How do you use the Ref-n-Write’s Paraphrasing Tool in Word?

You have to select a passage and click the ‘Paraphrase’ button in the Ref-n-write’s button panel. Ref-n-Write will rewrite the text and display the results in the panels below. Following figure demonstrates Ref-n-Write’s paraphrasing tool in action.

Can Ref-n-write’s Paraphrasing Tool correct grammatical errors in the text?

The Ref-n-Write’s paraphrasing tool functions as a grammar checker. In addition to rephrasing and rewording the text the tool can detect and correct grammatical errors. You don't have to spend extra money on a separate grammar check as these tools can be quite expensive and you have to sign up for an annual subscription.

How do you Rephrase a Sentence?

Rephrasing a sentence follows the same process as paraphrasing, but the most important consideration is to make the sentence clearer. Rephrasing may or may not be coupled with rewording or synonym adjustments. It may only entail rearranging the original sentence as long as clarity is obtained.

Can Ref-n-write Rephrase a Sentence?

Perfectly! It is an all-in-one tool that will assist you with every aspect of academic writing. Ref-n-write makes it very easy to rephrase, reword, rewrite, paraphrase, cite and avoid plagiarism.

Is it Okay to use a Paraphrasing tool?

Yes, it is okay to use a paraphrasing tool. However, there has been much debate about whether or not using a paraphrasing tool is a good practice. Some may argue that it prevents authors and students from improving their ability to express themselves in their own words. As with any invention, these paraphrasing tools can be misused. But that doesn’t mean using them is bad. These tools provide suggestions and ideas to help the user paraphrase, but the final product is still up to the user. Only when authors, students, or users see these paraphrasing tools as a direct substitute for citation does it become a bad practice.

How do you Paraphrase Correctly?

• • Read the text to get an understanding of its message and flow.
• • Identify and highlight keywords that must not be changed to retain the text’s meaning.
• • Identify words that can be rearranged or moved without changing the meaning or flow of the text.
• • Identify words and phrases that can be changed and replace them with appropriate synonyms.
• • Double-check that you included all of the vital information in the original text.

How do you Professionally Paraphrase?

You Paraphrase professionally by following our guidelines on paraphrasing correctly and appropriately citing and referencing the source materials. A paraphrasing tool (ideally Ref-n-write) will make the process quicker and faster, increase the overall quality of your work, and provide you with a greater variety of ideas to work with.

How do you Rephrase a Paragraph?

• • Paraphrasing each sentence that makes up the paragraph.
• • Ensuring there is an adequate flow from sentence to sentence
• • Ensuring every sentence is clear
• • Ensuring the meaning of each sentence and the overall message of the whole paragraph is not altered

How can I make a Sentence Better?

It is essential that a good sentence be clear, concise, appropriately punctuated, free of grammar errors, and have a proper flow. All of the elements stated above must be improved for a sentence to be better. Effective paraphrasing may help you improve a sentence, and employing the right paraphrasing tools can help you improve a sentence even more.

Can you use the Ref-n-Write’s Paraphrasing Tool Offline?

Most of the existing rephrase tools requires access to the internet. On the contrary, the Ref-n-write’s paraphrasing tool can be operated in both online and offline modes. Following images show the rephrased output of the paraphrasing tool when operating in online and offline modes. If you look at the rephrased paragraph, you will notice that the rephrased sentences are colour coded in offline mode indicating the confidence of each word replacement - green means very confident; blue means moderately confident and red means not very confident. There is no colour coding in the online mode, however the quality of rephrasing is much better in the online paraphrasing mode compared to the offline mode. It is highly recommended to use the paraphrasing tool in online mode since this is much more powerful than the offline mode.

How do you Paraphrase a file with Ref-n-Write?

Ref-n-Write allows users to paraphrase their file one passage at a time. This enables the author to learn and understand the paraphrasing process and do it without outside help in the future. Since Ref-n-write is a Microsoft Word add-in, paraphrasing can be applied directly to the document without losing the formatting.

What is the best free online paraphrasing tool?

There is no such thing as the best online paraphrasing tool. An excellent online paraphrasing tool should provide final paraphrased results that adhere to the steps recommended in our guideline to correctly paraphrasing. Ref-n-write provides a 15-day free trial period in which you can test the paraphrasing feature before charging a one-time fee.

Can I get the paraphrasing tool for free?

As the saying goes, “the great ones don’t come cheap.” Ref-n-write is the best academic paraphrasing tool available. It is a Microsoft Word add-in that is compatible with both Windows and Mac computers. If you are a scholar, student, researcher, author, or you have a job that requires a lot of writing, Ref-n-write is the best for you. Ref-n-write provides a 15-day free trial period before charging a one-time fee of around £29.99 for the full version. That is significantly less expensive than any other paraphrasing tool that charges a monthly fee. It aids in citation and allows you to import your source materials and conduct a full-text search to avoid plagiarism. Ref-n-write is the most affordable all-in-one paraphrasing tool available.

What is the difference between free and paid Paraphrasing tool?

Paraphrasing with a free or paid tool follows the same steps as mentioned above for correctly paraphrasing. However, when compared to the paid version of Ref-n-write, using a free tool has some limitations on the word count of the text being paraphrased.

Is Ref-n-write Paraphrasing Tool Safe?

Ref-n-write’s paraphrasing tools are secure and dependable. They take the security and privacy of their members seriously, and they operate in line with all relevant privacy and data protection legislation.

Is using Paraphrasing Tool Cheating?

Some may argue that employing paraphrasing tools is unethical because the information is not original and the tools do not acknowledge the original writer. Paraphrasing, on the other hand, is not plagiarism if adequately cited and referenced. Hence, utilising paraphrasing tools with correct citation and reference is not considered cheating.

Is Paraphrasing Tool Legit?

The utilisation of paraphrase tools determines their legitimacy. When used correctly, they are legal; nevertheless, when misused, they constitute plagiarism, which is illegal. True, these paraphrase tools make work easier and faster, especially when one is on a tight deadline, but they must be utilised correctly.

Can Turnitin Detect Paraphrasing Tool?

An excellent way to avoid plagiarism scanners is by paraphrasing. Turnitin’s algorithms do not detect paraphrasing. They are primarily concerned with recognising similar language structures, grammatical patterns, and phrases. This paraphrasing tool will not be flagged as plagiarised as long as it generates unique content that exhibits little or no similarity to anything in the Turnitin database.

Is Paraphrasing Tool Plagiarism?

As previously stated, combining paraphrasing tools with proper citation and referencing is a good practice. Yes, some of these paraphrasing tools can produce 100% unique content, but the source material should be acknowledged. As a result, if proper citation is not used, a paraphrasing tool can constitute plagiarism.

Is there a Website that can Paraphrase Sentences for you?

You can try the Ref-n-write paraphrasing tool on the website, however it is recommended to install the plugin on your Microsoft Word as it offers more options and is easy to use. If you conduct a Google search, you will be presented with an unending list of websites to consider. Many of these websites reword sentences; they do not adequately rewrite them.

What is the Best Paid Paraphrasing tool?

We are possibly the best paid paraphrasing tool available. Ref-n-write does more than just paraphrase; it also assists with citation and referencing and allows you to import all of your source materials and perform a full-text search to check for similarity and text overlap. Our academic phrase bank provides you with a variety of phrases related to your topic of interest from which to choose. Ref-n-write helps you enhance your writing to suit today’s standards. Oh, and did I forget to mention that it is very affordable compared to other paid tools? We give you good value for your money.

How do you Use the Paraphrasing Tool in Word?

Microsoft Word’s Web version now includes rewrite suggestions, but it is very basic. However, this is a new function and has not yet been implemented on the PC or mobile versions. There are various paraphrasing tools available as Microsoft Word add-ins on PC, including Ref-n-write and many others. These add-ins will assist you in rewording your texts in a variety of ways.

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