5 Free Academic AI Tools That’ll Automate your Research Project and Save you Hours
No, I don’t mean ChatGPT
I imagine that you’re reading this because you’re an overwhelmed student like me who’s constantly looking for every means possible to get more done in less time.
If you want to be in the top 1% of students, I advise you to follow The Degree Diary!
If you’re anything like me, you probably have a million and one things to do and not enough time to do them.
You have deadlines, assignments, exams, and projects that keep piling up.
And you have to balance all that with ‘one more’ episode of Rick and Morty and a decent amount of sleep.
Almost unbelievable how much is expected of us, right?
Welp, that’s why I decided to look for some free ethical AI tools that could help you, us, automate some of the time-consuming tasks involved in any research project we come across.
Which admittedly, is a LOT.
Before we get to it, you need to understand that:
When I say free, I mean free for personal or academic use only.
Some of these tools may have limitations on the free plan i.e. on the number of requests, size of research article, and quality of output.
Also, by ‘automate’, I don’t mean that you can just sit back and let the AI do all the work for you.
You still need to use your own judgment, creativity and critical thinking to evaluate the results and make sure they meet your standards and expectations.
Disclaimer: these tools can help you save time and effort on some of the repetitive aspects of your research project, but they cannot replace your own original contribution or expertise.
1. Chat with any pdf
Function: for asking your PDF questions and getting summarized feedback.
Usage: Upload a Research Article PDF and extract information from it easily by asking it questions via the chatbot at the right side.
Bonus: It suggests relevant questions for you to ask. This can be helpful if you don’t know the right questions to ask or if you’re not sure where to start.
Limitation: Can only work with PDF research papers, no other format. And the free version has a limit on word count and number of requests.
→ Use Chat with any PDF for free with this link
2. Litmaps
Function: A glorified research paper search engine, for finding up to 20 research papers based on one keyword and finding other related research papers.
Usage:
→ Enter a keyword into a search bar.
→ Click on one of the research papers available which will serve as the seed article.
→ Click on the ones that seem relevant to your research either to view or to download them.
Bonus: It uses threads as seen in the image above to show which articles are somewhat related to each article, you can also share the articles with peers, and it gives you notifications when a new article is released based on your topic.
→ Use Litmaps with this link
3. scite_
Function: A high level search engine, for searching for a keyword or asking a research question and getting answers/ results based on existing research papers.
Usage:
→ Create an account and opt for the free account.
→ Enter a keyword, a question or anything at all related to your research into a search bar.
→ It’ll bring out an answer based on a research paper.
→ You can either view the full research paper and download it,
→ or just use the answer (extract) provided (along with the citation which you can get by clicking on ‘cite’).
Bonus: You can modify your search based on different parameters like author, year, topic, journal, pub type, and so on as seen in the menu bar in the photo above.
Limitation: The free plan only gives you one answer/ citation out of thousands.
→ Use scite.ai with this link
4. Scispace
Function: Combines the functions of scite.ai, Litmaps, and Chat with any PDF. (Crazy, innit?)
Usage:
→ Enter a keyword or a question or anything at all related to your research into a search bar.
→ It’ll bring out multiple answers as well as the research papers they were gotten from.
→ You can click on the most relevant research paper to your research, then you’ll have the option of
- asking it questions using ‘ask copilot’,
- finding other related research papers or topics,
- and so on as seen on the side bar in the photo above.
→ There’s an option to upload your own research paper pdf by clicking ‘upload pdf’ and then you can explore the options available in the side bar.
→ You can also generate citation using the ‘citation’ icon which is beside the ‘share’ icon as seen in the photo above.
Bonus:
→ It comes with a chrome extension which you can use to chat with research papers online.
→ It can explain concepts, tables, etc in a research paper to you (using copilot)
Limitation: Jack of all trades, master of none ;)
→ Use scispace with this link
5. Elicit
Function: Has 3 key functions:
- Provides a very solid analysis of your research paper and can compare it with other research papers.
- Provides a list of concepts that are important to a particular topic along with research paper sources for these concepts.
- Finds research papers based on a topic and summarizes the top 4 papers.
Usage:
→ Choose what function you want to use
→ Enter a keyword, a question or anything at all related to your research into the input space.
→ Depending on the function you choose, it’ll bring out suitable results i.e.
- a table providing different insights on various research papers or the research pdf(s) you uploaded
- a table containing various important concepts based on a topic,
→ You can view the full research papers suggested or make use of the insights provided solely.
Limitation: Can’t download csv file of analysis with free plan.
→ Use elicit with this link
Conclusion/ C-T-A
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