software for reading research papers

Your personal research assistant

Zotero is a free, easy-to-use tool to help you collect, organize, annotate, cite, and share research.

Available for Mac, Windows, Linux, and iOS

Just need to create a quick bibliography? Try ZoteroBib .

Meet Zotero.

Collect with a click..

Zotero automatically senses research as you browse the web. Need an article from JSTOR or a preprint from arXiv.org? A news story from the New York Times or a book from a library? Zotero has you covered, everywhere.

Organize your way.

Zotero helps you organize your research any way you want. You can sort items into collections and tag them with keywords. Or create saved searches that automatically fill with relevant materials as you work.

Cite in style.

Zotero instantly creates references and bibliographies for any text editor, and directly inside Word, LibreOffice, and Google Docs. With support for over 10,000 citation styles, you can format your work to match any style guide or publication.

Stay in sync.

Zotero can optionally synchronize your data across devices, keeping your files, notes, and bibliographic records seamlessly up to date. If you decide to sync, you can also always access your research from any web browser.

Collaborate freely.

Zotero lets you co-write a paper with a colleague, distribute course materials to students, or build a collaborative bibliography. You can share a Zotero library with as many people you like, at no cost.

Zotero is open source and developed by an independent, nonprofit organization that has no financial interest in your private information. With Zotero, you always stay in control of your own data.

Still not sure which program to use for your research? See why we think you should choose Zotero .

Ready to try Zotero?

Apps for Academics: Reading and Annotating

• Productivity
• Library Research
• Reading and Annotating
• Writing and Citing
• Audio and Video
• Visualizing Information

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Lisle: (630) 829-6057 Mesa: (480) 878-7514 Toll Free: (877) 575-6050 Email: [email protected]

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Annotate PDFs

• GoodReader Robust PDF reader with advanced annotating capabilities, excellent file manager, text file reader and editor, audio/video player, Safari-like viewer for MS Office and iWorks files. Syncs with Google Docs, Dropbox and more.
• iAnnotate Annotate, manage, search, and share PDF documents.
• Mendeley Mendeley is a free reference manager and academic social network. Make your own fully-searchable library in seconds, cite as you write, and read and annotate your PDFs on any device.

Follow Multiple Blogs in One Place

• Feedly The content of your RSS feeds, news sites and blogs are transformed into pocket-sized cards which load very fast and are easy to browse.
• Flipboard View news, blogs, and social network content in a magazine-layout that emphasizes linked content, videos, and photos.

Read eBooks

• BlueFire Reader Your go-to reading application for ePUB and PDF content, including BenU Library subscription eBooks from ebrary.
• iBooks iBooks is an amazing way to download and read books. iBooks includes the iBooks Store, where you can download the latest bestselling books or your favorite classics
• Kindle Read your Amazon Kindle books even if you don't have a Kindle. Automatically syncs your last page read between devices. Delete a book when you're done and Amazon keeps your copy online for later retrieval. Adjust text size, add bookmarks, and more.
• Overdrive and Libby ebooks Use your public library's Libby app through Overdrive to download free ebooks to your device.

Read Saved Webpages Offline

• Pocket Save articles, videos, recipes, and webpages you find online or from apps, like Flipboard and Feedly.
• Instapaper Save, read, and manage the things you find online. Instapaper syncs the articles and videos you save so that they’re waiting for you on all your devices. You can read anything you save, even offline. Highlight and comment on text in any article so you can store it, retrieve it, quote it and share it.
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• Last Updated: Jul 6, 2023 4:49 PM
• URL: https://researchguides.ben.edu/apps

Kindlon Hall 5700 College Rd. Lisle, IL 60532 (630) 829-6050

Gillett Hall 225 E. Main St. Mesa, AZ 85201 (480) 878-7514

A free, AI-powered research tool for scientific literature

• Bissera Pentcheva
• Chaos Theory
• Aztec Empire

New & Improved API for Developers

Introducing semantic reader in beta.

Stay Connected With Semantic Scholar Sign Up What Is Semantic Scholar? Semantic Scholar is a free, AI-powered research tool for scientific literature, based at the Allen Institute for AI.

RAxter is now Enago Read! Enjoy the same licensing and pricing with enhanced capabilities. No action required for existing customers.

Your all in one AI-powered Reading Assistant

A Reading Space to Ideate, Create Knowledge, and Collaborate on Your Research

• Smartly organize your research
• Receive recommendations that cannot be ignored
• Collaborate with your team to read, discuss, and share knowledge

From Surface-Level Exploration to Critical Reading - All in one Place!

Fine-tune your literature search.

Our AI-powered reading assistant saves time spent on the exploration of relevant resources and allows you to focus more on reading.

Select phrases or specific sections and explore more research papers related to the core aspects of your selections. Pin the useful ones for future references.

Our platform brings you the latest research related to your and project work.

Speed up your literature review

Quickly generate a summary of key sections of any paper with our summarizer.

Make informed decisions about which papers are relevant, and where to invest your time in further reading.

Get key insights from the paper, quickly comprehend the paper’s unique approach, and recall the key points.

Bring order to your research projects

Organize your reading lists into different projects and maintain the context of your research.

Quickly sort items into collections and tag or filter them according to keywords and color codes.

Experience the power of sharing by finding all the shared literature at one place.

Decode papers effortlessly for faster comprehension

Highlight what is important so that you can retrieve it faster next time.

Select any text in the paper and ask Copilot to explain it to help you get a deeper understanding.

Ask questions and follow-ups from AI-powered Copilot.

Collaborate to read with your team, professors, or students

Share and discuss literature and drafts with your study group, colleagues, experts, and advisors. Recommend valuable resources and help each other for better understanding.

Work in shared projects efficiently and improve visibility within your study group or lab members.

Keep track of your team's progress by being constantly connected and engaging in active knowledge transfer by requesting full access to relevant papers and drafts.

Find papers from across the world's largest repositories

Testimonials

Privacy and security of your research data are integral to our mission..

Everything you add or create on Enago Read is private by default. It is visible if and when you share it with other users.

You can put Creative Commons license on original drafts to protect your IP. For shared files, Enago Read always maintains a copy in case of deletion by collaborators or revoked access.

We use state-of-the-art security protocols and algorithms including MD5 Encryption, SSL, and HTTPS to secure your data.

Streamline Your Research Workflow

Seamlessly Search, Save and Organise findings across your papers. Complete your research up to 10x faster.

LOVED BY ACADEMICS

For literature reviews & collecting evidence

"Lateral is an AI-powered app for academics that will completely change the way you read and take notes."

"Lateral presents a visual table which not only allows me to quickly identify themes but also relevant quotes and phrases (with references!) that could have easily been overlooked without."

"Lateral is a necessary tool for academics! It has changed my research...I am good to go for all new opportunities."

"Lateral is an excellent tool for academics and one of the hidden gems among the many productivity tools available out there!"

SMART FEATURES

Your unified workflow

Take the stress out of document review. Find text fast. Stay organised.

Auto-Generated Table

Keep a clear overview of all your findings and never lose a reference.

AI-Powered Concepts

Name a Concept, and Lateral intelligently recommends relevant text across all your papers.

Super Search

Search across all your papers at once & see similar highlights for every search result.

Smart PDF Reader

Read & highlight in the browser. Find connections you may have missed.

Export Your Findings

From the Table View directly into a Word document or Excel file with references.

Find 30m+ research papers

Upload existing PDFs or find new papers through our integrated paper search.

Powerful OCR

Digitize text from documents from scanned PDFs to make the searchable & highlightable .

Collaborate & Share

Invite others to your workspace or share a limited public link of your project.

Zotero integration (coming soon)

Easily sync documents between Zotero and your project.

Literature Reviews

Find patterns and common themes across numerous papers quickly.

Dissertations

Organize thoughts and references to streamline the writing process.

Note-taking

Save text with notes and flags for more organized note-taking.

Collaborative Research

Work on shared project & documents and build on each other's findings.

Gather information across various sources for curriculum development.

Find connections and gather background information for stories.

Get to know Lateral for free.

500 Page Credits one-time

Speed up your research workflow.

21,600 Page Credits per year

Take your research to the next level.

60,000 Page Credits per year

Academic Discount

We offer a 20% Academic Discount on both Premium and Pro Tiers. Simply fill out the form on the pricing page in the app.

Team Pricing

Build a shared, AI supported knowledge repository or purchase multiple licenses.

1,800 Page Credits per month

5,000 Page Credits per month

What are Page Credits?

When you begin using Lateral and add PDF files, it uses up 'Page Credits' based on how many pages are in your PDFs. You start with 1,000 Page Credits when you join. Once you use them all, you’ll have to get a subscription plan, called Lateral Supreme, to get more Credits. If you delete any documents, this will not return Credits. If you have a Supreme subscription, you can buy extra Credits.

What is Lateral Supreme?

Lateral Supreme is a subscription that you can pay for every month or once a year. If you choose to pay each month, you can use up to 2,500 Page Credits within that month. If you decide to pay for the whole year at once, you can use up to 30,000 Page Credits for the entire year. Any unused Page Credits will expire; they don’t roll over to the next month or year.

When you add papers or documents to a project, Lateral does a lot of heavy lifting to make the content searchable and suggestible. Each page uses 1 page credit. Taking an average of 20 pages per paper for example, this means for Premium monthly 2,160 pages are around 108 papers and for Pro monthly 5,000 pages are around 250 papers.   Deleting documents does not re-add page credits, as the processing of the documents has already been completed.

Does Lateral use GPT?

No, Lateral does not use GPT. We have built our own machine learning technology (LIP API) to make content suggestions. Your content is not sent to Open AI servers.  

What happens to the documents I upload to Lateral?

When you upload documents, they stay private and only you can see them in your workspace. We don’t share them with other users. Also, we don’t use your documents to make our AI smarter. Our AI is already trained and it just helps you find related content across your documents.

What languages does Lateral support?

The app works best with English. You can keyword search for text in other languages, but the AI currently can only give suggestions if you're using English.

Does Lateral work on mobile?

Currently Lateral is only available on desktop.

Get into flow.

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Software for Research and Digital Notetaking

Most of us utilize a range of media when conducting research—we gather documents from online databases, as well as images, audio, and video files from the web. We review box after box of physical documents at the archives. We take notes from books as well as from journal articles we’ve downloaded as pdfs. Some of us conduct oral history interviews, by person or phone. It can be a challenge to keep so much diverse material organized, accessible, and easy to work with when you’re in the process of writing a major research paper or dissertation.

Fortunately, there are a wide array of digital tools for notetaking, generating citations, and organizing your research. Listed below are a few of the many available options:

A free, easy-to-use tool to help you collect, organize, cite, and share your research sources from your browser. Integrates with Word to generate bibliographies and citations quickly.

PhD dissertation writing software. Helps to retain, organize, and evaluate assertions, ideas, and concepts for your dissertation, prepares outline-structured notes and saves your time by eliminating tedious cut-and-paste work.

Scrivener is a powerful content-generation tool for writers that allows you to concentrate on composing and structuring long and difficult documents. Scrivener puts everything you need for structuring, writing and editing long documents at your fingertips. On the left of the window, the “binder” allows you to navigate between the different parts of your manuscript, your notes, and research materials, with ease. No more switching between multiple applications to refer to research files: keep all of your background material—images, PDF files, movies, web pages, sound files—right inside Scrivener.

Mendeley is a free reference manager and academic social network that can help you organize your research, collaborate with others online, and discover the latest research. The program automatically generate bibliographies, imports papers from other research software, helps you find papers based on what you are reading, and enables you to collaborate with other researchers online.

FileMakerPro

Powerful database software for organizing your research (available for Mac and PC). Take notes, import pdfs, images, videos, and audio files, cross-reference your documents, and more. FilemakerPro comes with built in templates for research notes, but it is completely customizable as well. Fully-searchable. Take advantage of a significant student discount by purchasing this software through the UVa bookstore.

Intuitive notetaking software that comes with Microsoft Office. OneNote is a digital notebook that provides a single place where you can gather all of your notes and information, with the added benefits of powerful search capabilities to find what you are looking for quickly, plus easy-to-use shared notebooks so you can manage information overload and work together with others more effectively. You can insert almost anything into a page, and create as many pages as you want in a notebook. Use to take notes and organize documents, images, websites and more in a user-friendly program with a great visual interface. (For PCs)

GrowlyBird Notes

The closest approximation to OneNote for the Mac--and it's free.Growly Notes lets you capture everything you’re interested in, all in one place. Pages can contain almost anything: formatted text, images, movies, audio clips, PDF files, tables, lists, web and file links, and drawings you create in Notes. There are no rules for where things have to go: put an image beside text or under it. Draw shapes on top of other notes. Put two snippets of text right next to each other. Click anywhere and start typing.

Omeka is a free, flexible, and open source web-publishing platform for the display of library, museum, archives, and scholarly collections and exhibitions. Its “five-minute setup” makes launching an online exhibition as easy as launching a blog.

A.nnotate is an online annotation, collaboration and indexing system for documents and images, supporting PDF and MS Office formats.

A reference manager for Mac and iOS users. Bookends can perform Internet searches to retrieve references and associated pdfs or web pages, or immediately find and import references for which you already have the pdf.

Something went wrong when searching for seed articles. Please try again soon.

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Author, year The title of the article goes here

Upcoming Litmaps Webinar

LITERATURE REVIEW SOFTWARE FOR BETTER RESEARCH

“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

As a full-time researcher, Litmaps has become an indispensable tool in my arsenal. The Seed Maps and Discover features of Litmaps have transformed my literature review process, streamlining the identification of key citations while revealing previously overlooked relevant literature, ensuring no crucial connection goes unnoticed. A true game-changer indeed!

Ritwik Pandey

Doctoral Research Scholar – Sri Sathya Sai Institute of Higher Learning

Using Litmaps for my research papers has significantly improved my workflow. Typically, I start with a single paper related to my topic. Whenever I find an interesting work, I add it to my search. From there, I can quickly cover my entire Related Work section.

David Fischer

Research Associate – University of Applied Sciences Kempten

“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

“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

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

Professor at The Chinese University of Hong Kong

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

Katholieke Universiteit Leuven, Belgium

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

KU Leuven, Belgium

“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

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

Swansea University, Wales

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

Ali Mohammed-Djafari

Director of Research at LSS-CNRS, France

“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

As a person who is an early researcher and identifies as dyslexic, I can say that having research articles laid out in the date vs cite graph format is much more approachable than looking at a standard database interface. I feel that the maps Litmaps offers lower the barrier of entry for researchers by giving them the connections between articles spaced out visually. This helps me orientate where a paper is in the history of a field. Thus, new researchers can look at one of Litmap's "seed maps" and have the same information as hours of digging through a database.

Baylor Fain

Postdoctoral Associate – University of Florida

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!

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.

My Top AI Tools for Researchers and Academics – Tested and Reviewed!

There are many different tools now available on the market but there are only a handful that are specifically designed with researchers and academics as their primary user.

These are my recommendations that’ll cover almost everything that you’ll want to do:

Want to find out all of the tools that you could use?

Here they are, below:

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
• Litmaps –  https://www.litmaps.com
• Research rabbit – https://www.researchrabbit.ai/
• Connected Papers –  https://www.connectedpapers.com/
• Supersymmetry.ai: https://www.supersymmetry.ai
• Semantic Scholar: https://www.semanticscholar.org
• Laser AI –  https://laser.ai/
• 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!

• Consensus –  https://consensus.app/
• Iris AI –  https://iris.ai/
• 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.

• Aetherbrain – https://aetherbrain.ai
• Explain Paper – https://www.explainpaper.com
• Chat PDF – https://www.chatpdf.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/
• Open Read –  https://www.openread.academy

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.

• Jenny.AI – https://jenni.ai/ (20% off with code ANDY20)
• Yomu – https://www.yomu.ai
• 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.

• PaperPal –  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/

Best 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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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 211
• # Knowledge 122
• # Octoparse 95
• # Big Data 59
• # Data Collection 54
• # Customer Reviews 21

Get started with Octoparse today

Related articles.

Audemic Scholar

Audemic Scholar enables PhDs and researchers to transform stale research PDFs into a time-saving reading and listening experience.

Learn more ➝

Audemic Insights

Audemic Insights app summarizes open research articles and reports into brief written and audio summaries for the non-academic.

Access any academic research via audio

A powerful tool that enables Ph.D. students and researchers to save time and organise their knowledge

• No credit card required
• Cancel anytime

Used by 10,000+ users at top leading institutions

Upload your paper

Upload the PDF of any academic paper or import it from your reference manager.

Listen to it

Listen to any academic paper. Choose between the full text or key statements.

Organise yourself

Built for researchers.

Speed up your reading

It will allow you to read and understand papers in much less time, especially for getting to grips with some of the knottier papers.

Inspiration

More 'Aha' moments

Need help reading academic papers, taking notes or organising your research? Audemic allows you to do all of this from one place, so you don’t miss a thing.

Multi-device

Accessible from anywhere

Audemic arrives with the ability to use across devices. Listen when you drive, exercise and even when you rest!

Text-to-speech

No robotic but neural voices

Well read, no stumbling over tricky words and with the possibility of choosing between different voices.

Translation

Language is no longer an obstacle

Scientific knowledge is mostly communicated in English, which may pose a barrier for non-native English speakers. Upload any paper and choose the language you want to translate it into*

* English to Spanish currently available

Need another language? Let us know

Crafted to be accessible

Reading papers can be challenging, especially for those with learning disabilities. We offer features that might support your reading style.

Want to go faster or slower? Not a problem! You can now change the speed of audio playback, sloth to cheetah!

VISUAL IMPAIRMENT

Order sections

Organise the sections of any paper you upload, according to your every whim, from the left-hand sidebar.

Background colour

Change your background colour to one of four handsome options. We know that little visual details can make a big difference.

COLOUR BLINDNESS

Dyslexic font

All of these changes will join our classic dyslexic font option, so you can set up your Audemic experience exactly the way you want it.

No hidden charges. Pick your plan.

Try it for free. If you like it, upgrade to Premium and enjoy unlimited access.

• Free forever
• Full interactive reader access
• Access to summaries
• 5-paper credit

• Unlimited highlights
• Up to 16 papers

• Dedicated account manager
• Potential integration with LMS or knowledge platform

billed at $118/yr 

• Unlimited papers

No unresolved doubts!

Things you probably wonder.

Get the most out of academic papers, whilst spending less time on them. Audemic allows you to ditch clunky PDFs to provide better listening with intuitive navigation across different sections of the paper, smart summaries, and gives you the ability to easily take and sync highlights across all your devices.

You can use Audemic for free , receiving 5 credits to start ! To use Audemic for more papers you can upgrade to premium.

PDF’s of research papers

Yes, it is currently available as a web app, so it can be accessed via mobile on Google Chrome, Safari and other browsers.

You can email [email protected] .

Not currently, but we are working hard on this!

You can email  [email protected] , or use the chat-bot available right on the App.

The best way to do this is through our Product Road site but you can also contact us at [email protected] or or tag us to a post on social media! (i.e. LinkedIn ,  Instagram , TikTok or X ).

You can request an invoice by emailing  [email protected] .

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Scholars need to keep up with an exponentially increasing flood of scientific papers. To aid this challenge, we introduce Scim, a novel intelligent interface that helps experienced researchers skim – or rapidly review – a paper to attain a cursory understanding of its contents. Scim supports the skimming process by highlighting salient paper contents in order to direct a reader’s attention. The system’s highlights are faceted by content type, evenly distributed across a paper, and have a density configurable by readers at both the global and local level. We evaluate Scim with both an in-lab usability study and a longitudinal diary study, revealing how its highlights facilitate the more efficient construction of a conceptualization of a paper. We conclude by discussing design considerations and tensions for the design of future intelligent skimming tools.

Publication

Scim: Intelligent Skimming Support for Scientific Papers Raymond Fok, Hita Kambhamettu, Luca Soldaini, Jonathan Bragg, Kyle Lo, Andrew Head, Marti A. Hearst, Daniel S. Weld . Proceedings of the 28th International Conference on Intelligent User Interfaces. 2022 .

Case Study: Iterative Design for Skimming Support . AI2 Blog. 2023. Cassidy Trier.

Top 13 Tools for Researchers in 2024!

Gone are the days of going to the library, studying numerous books, taking notes on paper, and doing research. Thanks to technology, we no longer have to do this tedious routine to do research. However, research is still a meticulous, painstaking process.

This is why we decided to uncover some of the best software tools for researchers that are going to help you conduct and maintain your research with ease. Read on…

List of Top 13 Best Tools for Researchers for better results:

Research today is dynamic. We often use the internet to browse websites, watch videos, study analytics, and conduct our research by exploring different types of digital content, making technology a major stakeholder in making our research success .

While the internet has made it easy for us to access worldly information with the click of a button (or mouse!), it has created a whole new set of problems.

Sorting through a seemingly infinite number of websites, verifying content, and curating only the best stuff can take a lot of time and effort. This is why we have brought you 13 essential research tools every researcher should use while working on the internet.

1. Bit.ai  

Online research means going through numerous websites, articles, blogs, images, videos, infographics, and more to find what you are looking for.

For our dynamic, interactive, and media-rich research, we need a tool that incorporates all facets of modern-day research under one roof. Simple text editors of the past just won’t cut it anymore! This is where Bit comes in.

Bit allows researchers and teams to collaborate, share, track, and manage all knowledge and research in one place.

It’s the perfect research tool to share multi-dimensional research with your peers and not just plain, boring text and slides.

Add articles, PDFs, videos, white papers, ebooks, audio samples- basically anything you can think of – and share it with your peers easily!

Other notable features of Bit include:

• An easy-to-use, minimal editor that supports Markdown.
• Collaborative, real-time editing, and communication with peers.
• Add any type of digital content (images, videos, etc) to your Bit document.
• A content library to save all your media files for quick access.
• Smart search, allows anyone to search and find any files, images, documents, links, etc quickly.

All-in-all, Bit is a must-have writing tool for researchers and authors!

Key Features of Bit: 

• Workspaces to store different research content easily
• Content library to store media assets
• Real-time collaboration with fellow researchers
• Free with limited functionality
• Paid plans start from Pro ($8/month), Business ($15/month), Enterprise (contact sales)

Read more:  How Bit.ai Can Help You Manage Your Academic Research?

2. elink.io

Research often involves going through hundreds of links and articles and compiling them in one safe space for future reference or publishing them for your audience.

This is why many researchers use bookmarking and curation tools like elink to quickly save their links under one roof and share them with their peers.

elink makes it easy for researchers to save content from around the web. They can save article links, videos, cloud files, social media posts, and much more!

Researchers have the option of saving content to their link library or adding them directly to content collections and sharing their research with their peers . To make the bookmarking process a breeze, elink also has a chrome extension .

Simply click on the extension or right-click on any webpage to save the content directly to your elink dashboard.

Researchers can edit the title and description to add their own voices or notes. They can even bundle links together and share their link collection with others as a newsletter or embed the collection on your blog/website!

Key Features of elink:

• Save links quickly using the chrome extension
• Create and share research links as a newsletter or embed it on your website
• Easy user-interface
• Paid plans start at Pro Monthly ($15/month), Pro 1 Year ($12/month), and Pro 2 years ($10/month).

3. GanttPRO

No matter what kind of research you do, you need to organize, plan, and stay focused on all of your activities.

Without a robust planning tool, researchers may fall behind the schedule and lose their progress.

GanttPRO project and task management tool makes it easy for single researchers and groups of any size to plan their tasks on a visually appealing Gantt chart timeline, follow their progress, and all the deadlines.

GanttPRO allows researchers to create a limitless number of tasks, groups of tasks, and subtasks on one timeline.

Besides, it’s a perfect planning tool for assigning tasks to your fellow researchers or creating virtual resources, whoever or whatever they may be. The software is a good choice for collaboration, time tracking, as well as sharing and exporting your schedules.

Key Features of GanttPRO:

• Dozens of ready-made templates.
• Real-time collaboration with fellow researchers.
• Elegant user interface with a short learning curve.
•   Free 14-day trial with all features available.
• Paid plans start from Team ($4.5/user/month), Individual ($15/month), Enterprise (contact sales).

4. Grammarly

Research work often involves hours of proofreading and spellchecking to make your research professional .

Grammarly, a writing enhancement tool will save you a ton of time and effort doing this dreaded task! Apart from basic spellchecking and corrections, Grammarly includes a grammar checker, a punctuation checker, a vocabulary enhancer, and even a plagiarism checker tool!

This awesome tool scans your research for more than 250 types of grammar mistakes in six distinct writing genres and leaves you with error-free writing. With thorough explanations for all your errors and weekly progress reports .

Grammarly is a must-have tool for researchers. It’s available as a browser extension, a desktop app, a web-based app, and a Microsoft add-in. Many of the Grammarly alternatives are also available in the market that is equally good.

Key Features of Grammarly: 

• Works with the majority of online tools like Word, Slack, etc.
• Plagiarism checker tool
• Tone detector
• Paid plans start from: Premium ($11.66/month), Business ($12.50/month)

Read more:   10 Best Writing Apps To Make You A Better Writer!

5. Typeset.io

With over 100,000+ verified journal formats to choose from, Typeform makes the process of research a bit too easy! Quickly copy-paste or upload your paper on Typeset and follow any citation style you need.

Typeset also has a plagiarism and grammar checker built in to ensure your writing is error-free. Once done uploading and citing, click on autoformat to generate your report in seconds.

You can also download your research in PDF , Docx, LaTeX file, or even as a Zip file. With collaboration features built-in, you can invite your fellow researchers to the platform and work together.

Key Features of Typeset: 

• Over 100,000+ journal formats to choose from
• Plagiarism and grammar checker tool
• Editing services to improve your publication chances
• Paid plans start from: Researcher ($8/month), Team($6/month), Journals / Publishers (contact sales)

6. Scrivener

Scrivener is another great tool for research writing and keeping your notes organized.

Used by researchers, screenwriters, novelists, non-fiction writers, students, journalists, academics, lawyers, translators, and more, Scrivener is a tool made for long writing projects.

On signing up, you are quickly presented with its editor, with a sidebar to keep everything in place. You can also break your content into manageable sections of any size and leave Scrivener to join them together.

For novelists and storytellers, there’s also a corkboard to visualize your storyline and move cards around as you like.

The outliner keeps a synopsis of what you have already written, along with word count data and metadata. Users can arrange their research articles and other files in folders and subfolders.

Key Features of Scrivener: 

• Desktop and mobile apps
• Outline creator
• Easy organization
• Paid plans start from $40.84/one-time fee

7. ProofHub

You must organize, prepare, and stay focused on all of your efforts, regardless of the type of research you conduct.

Researchers may go behind schedule and lose progress if they don’t have a good task management tool. ProofHub is an all-in-one project and team management application that allows research teams and organizations of any size to efficiently plan their research projects in one spot.

ProofHub allows you to create, assign and track tasks using effective task management features like Kanban boards and table view. Researchers can also get a visual idea of how their project is progressing using robust Gantt charts.

ProofHub also allows you to store and jot down all the data or information collected through your research in Notes. You can even create different notebooks and store your information according to the topic. Not just that, you can even share your research work with your team members.

Teams can also share and store files, documents, and images in ProofHub’s files section. Managers can track their team’s time spent on a specific research task using automatic and manual timers.

Team members can also brainstorm ideas or have real-time discussions in ProofHub’s discussions section and make way for better research work. 

Key features of ProofHub:

• Ready to use project templates
• Task management
• Time tracking and project reporting
• Team collaboration (chat, notes, and discussions)
• File management
• Online proofing
• 14-day free trial with all the features.

8. Google Scholar

Next up is an amazing research tool by Google called Google Scholar. Google Scholar provides a quick way to broadly search for scholarly literature from one location.

Look for articles, theses, books, abstracts, and court opinions, from professional societies, online repositories, universities, academic publishers, and other websites.

Researchers can also explore related works, citations, authors, and publications easily. Create a public author profile and see who’s citing your recent publication. Google Scholar also allows its users to keep up with recent developments in any area of research.

Key Features of Google Scholar: 

• Create a public author page
• Look for information across Google’s database
• Easy to use
• Free to use

Endnote wants you to research smarter by simplifying the tiresome work of formatting bibliographies, finding full text, and searching for references.

Endnote is collaborative in nature as it allows you to share selected groups of references, manage team access, and track activity and changes from one single dashboard.

With smarter insights, Endnote automatically finds the impact of your references and finds the best-fit journal for your papers.

The platform also enables users to automatically create, format, and update bibliographies. Quickly export your references and full-text PDFs into EndNote and start working instantly.

With a bunch of EndNote templates and plug-ins, researchers can enhance their Endnote experience and get the most out of the platform.

Key Features of Endnote: 

• Import filters for prior research
• Track your teammates’ activity on your shared library
• Automatic reference and link updating
• Paid plans start from $249

10. Evernote

Evernote is a note-taking app that can be very useful while conducting research . The app helps you store all your personal ideas, to-do listsm4, notes, and research links in one place.

Create separate tags and folders for the different types of information you are saving and keep it all organized.

Evernote auto-syncs across all your devices, including desktop, smartphone, and tablet, so you can switch between devices without losing your data.

Its Chrome browser extension called the Evernote web clipper is a great add-on for saving articles or other content on the internet while doing your research.

Just click the browser extension to save the entire page or highlights to your Evernote notebook along with any notes you have about that page.

Key Features of Evernote: 

• Keep notes, articles, and other content in one place
• Chrome extension for clipping content
• Set reminders
• Paid plans start from Plus ($34.99 per year or $3.99 per month), Premium ($69.99 per year or $7.99 per month), and Evernote Business (contact sales)

11. Mendeley

Mendeley is a reference management software that allows researchers to create references, citations, and bibliographies in multiple journal styles with just a few clicks.

Quickly access your library from anywhere – from anywhere. Windows, Mac, Linux, etc and add papers directly from your browser with a few clicks or import any documents from your desktop to your library.

With its research network, researchers connect and network with over 6 million users. Users can create groups to carry out discussions, discover research, and follow curated bibliographies.

There are also over 250,000 + science, technology, and health jobs to advance your career and grant info from over 5000 organizations to fund your next research !

Key Features of Mendeley: 

• Annotate and organize documents
• Find and create groups with fellow researchers
• Grant information from over 5000 organizations
• Paid plans start from $55/year for 5 GB to $165/year to unlimited storage

12. ContentMine

ContentMine offers a variety of text mining services to help researchers find, download, analyze, and extract knowledge from academic papers.

ContentMine builds its own open-source code to help out researchers find papers and not waste time on the internet doing so. They can also convert academic papers , PDFs to HTML, or to almost any format.

ContentMine can also extract data from tables and graphs, reducing the time taken to conduct a meta-analysis. The platform also offers consultancy as well as training workshops to educate people on the work they do and how.

Key Features of ContentMine: 

• Extract data from tables and graphs
• Quickly mine text from hundreds of papers
• Workshops and training
• Contact sales

13. ResearchGate

The last tool on our list of awesome tools for researchers is a platform called ResearchGate. ResearchGate gives you access to over 135 million publication pages, allowing you to stay up to date with what’s happening in your field.

With a built-in community, researchers can share their research, collaborate with peers, and discover new papers and bibliographies.

ResearchGate also provides deep analytics on who’s been reading your work and keeps track of your citations. With over 17 million users, ResearchGate is a research community to join!

Key Features of ResearchGate: 

• Share and find researchers
• Analytics to see who’s reading your work
• Citation tracking

Before you go!

Our team at  bit.ai  has created a few awesome templates to make your research process more efficient. Make sure to check them out before you go, y our team might need them!

• Case Study Template
• Research Paper Template
• Competitor Research Template
• Brainstorming Template
• SWOT Analysis Template
• White Paper Template

Final Words

There you have it folks, our list of amazing websites, apps, and software to use while conducting your research. Research is hard work- from finding and managing content to organizing and publishing- research takes a lot of time and effort.

However, with our awesome list of tools, researchers are surely going to get out the most of their time and effort and get work done more efficiently. Did we miss any awesome tool for researchers out there? Let us know by tweeting us at @bit_docs.

Further reads:

• Top 11 Code Editors for Software Developers
• Collaborative Research: Definition, Benefits & Tips!
• Best Resource Management Tools and Software
• How to Write a Research Proposal?

11 Best Link in Bio Tools in 2024!

Writing Vision Statement: Definition, Examples and Best Practices!

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Collaboration strategy: definition, benefits & process, team charter: what is it & how to create it, 11 gantt chart software you should check out, what is rental agreement and how to create it, format of a perfect case study (structure & instructions), 12 work management software and tools in 2023.

About Bit.ai

Bit.ai is the essential next-gen workplace and document collaboration platform. that helps teams share knowledge by connecting any type of digital content. With this intuitive, cloud-based solution, anyone can work visually and collaborate in real-time while creating internal notes, team projects, knowledge bases, client-facing content, and more.

The smartest online Google Docs and Word alternative, Bit.ai is used in over 100 countries by professionals everywhere, from IT teams creating internal documentation and knowledge bases, to sales and marketing teams sharing client materials and client portals.

👉👉Click Here to Check out Bit.ai.

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Personal user manual: enhance professional profile & team productivity, 9 document management trends every business should know, ai for social media marketing: tools & tactics to boost engagement, a guide to building a client portal for your online course, knowledge management vs document management, 11 must-try ai tools for market research in 2024.

10 Powerful AI Tools for Academic Research

• Serra Ardem

AI is no longer science fiction, but a powerful ally in the academic realm. With AI by their side, researchers can free themselves from the burden of tedious tasks, and push the boundaries of knowledge. However, they must use AI carefully and ethically, as these practices introduce new considerations regarding data integrity, bias mitigation, and the preservation of academic rigor.

In this blog, we will:

• Highlight the increasing role of AI in academic research
• List 10 best AI tools for academic research, with a focus on each one’s strengths
• Share 5 best practices on how to use AI tools for academic research

Let’s dig in…

The Role of AI in Academic Research

AI tools for academic research hold immense potential, as they can analyze massive datasets and identify complex patterns. These tools can assist in generating new research questions and hypotheses, navigate mountains of academic literature to find relevant information, and automate tedious tasks like data entry.

Let’s take a look at the benefits AI tools offer for academic research:

• Supercharged literature reviews: AI can sift through vast amounts of academic literature, and pinpoint relevant studies with far greater speed and accuracy than manual searches.
• Accelerated data analysis: AI tools can rapidly analyze large datasets and uncover intricate insights that might otherwise be overlooked, or time-consuming to identify manually.
• Enhanced research quality: Helping with grammar checking, citation formatting, and data visualization, AI tools can lead to a more polished and impactful final product.
• Automation of repetitive tasks: By automating routine tasks, AI can save researchers time and effort, allowing them to focus on more intellectually demanding tasks of their research.
• Predictive modeling and forecasting: AI algorithms can develop predictive models and forecasts, aiding researchers in making informed decisions and projections in various fields.
• Cross-disciplinary collaboration: AI fosters collaboration between researchers from different disciplines by facilitating communication through shared data analysis and interpretation.

Now let’s move on to our list of 10 powerful AI tools for academic research, which you can refer to for a streamlined, refined workflow. From formulating research questions to organizing findings, these tools can offer solutions for every step of your research.

1. HyperWrite

For: hypothesis generation

HyperWrite’s Research Hypothesis Generator is perfect for students and academic researchers who want to formulate clear and concise hypotheses. All you have to do is enter your research topic and objectives into the provided fields, and then the tool will let its AI generate a testable hypothesis. You can review the generated hypothesis, make any necessary edits, and use it to guide your research process.

Pricing: You can have a limited free trial, but need to choose at least the Premium Plan for additional access. See more on pricing here .

2. Semantic Scholar

For: literature review and management

With over 200 million academic papers sourced, Semantic Scholar is one of the best AI tools for literature review. Mainly, it helps researchers to understand a paper at a glance. You can scan papers faster with the TLDRs (Too Long; Didn’t Read), or generate your own questions about the paper for the AI to answer. You can also organize papers in your own library, and get AI-powered paper recommendations for further research.

Pricing: free

For: summarizing papers

Apparently, Elicit is a huge booster as its users save up to 5 hours per week. With a database of 125 million papers, the tool will enable you to get one-sentence, abstract AI summaries, and extract details from a paper into an organized table. You can also find common themes and concepts across many papers. Keep in mind that Elicit works best with empirical domains that involve experiments and concrete results, like biomedicine and machine learning.

Pricing: Free plan offers 5,000 credits one time. See more on pricing here .

For: transcribing interviews

Supporting 125+ languages, Maestra’s interview transcription software will save you from the tedious task of manual transcription so you can dedicate more time to analyzing and interpreting your research data. Just upload your audio or video file to the tool, select the audio language, and click “Submit”. Maestra will convert your interview into text instantly, and with very high accuracy. You can always use the tool’s built-in text editor to make changes, and Maestra Teams to collaborate with fellow researchers on the transcript.

Pricing: With the “Pay As You Go” plan, you can pay for the amount of work done. See more on pricing here .

5. ATLAS.ti

For: qualitative data analysis

Whether you’re working with interview transcripts, focus group discussions, or open-ended surveys, ATLAS.ti provides a set of tools to help you extract meaningful insights from your data. You can analyze texts to uncover hidden patterns embedded in responses, or create a visualization of terms that appear most often in your research. Plus, features like sentiment analysis can identify emotional undercurrents within your data.

Pricing: Offers a variety of licenses for different purposes. See more on pricing here .

6. Power BI

For: quantitative data analysis

Microsoft’s Power BI offers AI Insights to consolidate data from various sources, analyze trends, and create interactive dashboards. One feature is “Natural Language Query”, where you can directly type your question and get quick insights about your data. Two other important features are “Anomaly Detection”, which can detect unexpected patterns, and “Decomposition Tree”, which can be utilized for root cause analysis.

Pricing: Included in a free account for Microsoft Fabric Preview. See more on pricing here .

7. Paperpal

For: writing research papers

As a popular AI writing assistant for academic papers, Paperpal is trained and built on 20+ years of scholarly knowledge. You can generate outlines, titles, abstracts, and keywords to kickstart your writing and structure your research effectively. With its ability to understand academic context, the tool can also come up with subject-specific language suggestions, and trim your paper to meet journal limits.

Pricing: Free plan offers 5 uses of AI features per day. See more on pricing here .

For: proofreading

With Scribbr’s AI Proofreader by your side, you can make your academic writing more clear and easy to read. The tool will first scan your document to catch mistakes. Then it will fix grammatical, spelling and punctuation errors while also suggesting fluency corrections. It is really easy to use (you can apply or reject corrections with 1-click), and works directly in a DOCX file.

Pricing: The free version gives a report of your issues but does not correct them. See more on pricing here .

9. Quillbot

For: detecting AI-generated content

Want to make sure your research paper does not include AI-generated content? Quillbot’s AI Detector can identify certain indicators like repetitive words, awkward phrases, and an unnatural flow. It’ll then show a percentage representing the amount of AI-generated content within your text. The tool has a very user-friendly interface, and you can have an unlimited number of checks.

10. Lateral

For: organizing documents

Lateral will help you keep everything in one place and easily find what you’re looking for. 

With auto-generated tables, you can keep track of all your findings and never lose a reference. Plus, Lateral uses its own machine learning technology (LIP API) to make content suggestions. With its “AI-Powered Concepts” feature, you can name a Concept, and the tool will recommend relevant text across all your papers.

Pricing: Free version offers 500 Page Credits one-time. See more on pricing here .

How to Use AI Tools for Research: 5 Best Practices

Before we conclude our blog, we want to list 5 best practices to adopt when using AI tools for academic research. They will ensure you’re getting the most out of AI technology in your academic pursuits while maintaining ethical standards in your work.

• Always remember that AI is an enhancer, not a replacement. While it can excel at tasks like literature review and data analysis, it cannot replicate the critical thinking and creativity that define strong research. Researchers should leverage AI for repetitive tasks, but dedicate their own expertise to interpret results and draw conclusions.
• Verify results. Don’t take AI for granted. Yes, it can be incredibly efficient, but results still require validation to prevent misleading or inaccurate results. Review them thoroughly to ensure they align with your research goals and existing knowledge in the field.
• Guard yourself against bias. AI tools for academic research are trained on existing data, which can contain social biases. You must critically evaluate the underlying assumptions used by the AI model, and ask if they are valid or relevant to your research question. You can also minimize bias by incorporating data from various sources that represent diverse perspectives and demographics.
• Embrace open science. Sharing your AI workflow and findings can inspire others, leading to innovative applications of AI tools. Open science also promotes responsible AI development in research, as it fosters transparency and collaboration among scholars.
• Stay informed about the developments in the field. AI tools for academic research are constantly evolving, and your work can benefit from the recent advancements. You can follow numerous blogs and newsletters in the area ( The Rundown AI is a great one) , join online communities, or participate in workshops and training programs. Moreover, you can connect with AI researchers whose work aligns with your research interests.

Frequently Asked Questions

Is chatgpt good for academic research.

ChatGPT can be a valuable tool for supporting your academic research, but it has limitations. You can use it for brainstorming and idea generation, identifying relevant resources, or drafting text. However, ChatGPT can’t guarantee the information it provides is entirely accurate or unbiased. In short, you can use it as a starting point, but never rely solely on its output.

Can I use AI for my thesis?

Yes, but it shouldn’t replace your own work. It can help you identify research gaps, formulate a strong thesis statement, and synthesize existing knowledge to support your argument. You can always reach out to your advisor and discuss how you plan to use AI tools for academic research .

Can AI write review articles?

AI can analyze vast amounts of information and summarize research papers much faster than humans, which can be a big time-saver in the literature review stage. Yet it can struggle with critical thinking and adding its own analysis to the review. Plus, AI-generated text can lack the originality and unique voice that a human writer brings to a review.

Can professors detect AI writing?

Yes, they can detect AI writing in several ways. Software programs like Turnitin’s AI Writing Detection can analyze text for signs of AI generation. Furthermore, experienced professors who have read many student papers can often develop a gut feeling about whether a paper was written by a human or machine. However, highly sophisticated AI may be harder to detect than more basic versions.

Can I do a PhD in artificial intelligence?

Yes, you can pursue a PhD in artificial intelligence or a related field such as computer science, machine learning, or data science. Many universities worldwide offer programs where you can delve deep into specific areas like natural language processing, computer vision, and AI ethics. Overall, pursuing a PhD in AI can lead to exciting opportunities in academia, industry research labs, and tech companies.

This blog shared 10 powerful AI tools for academic research, and highlighted each tool’s specific function and strengths. It also explained the increasing role of AI in academia, and listed 5 best practices on how to adopt AI research tools ethically.

AI tools hold potential for even greater integration and impact on research. They are likely to become more interconnected, which can lead to groundbreaking discoveries at the intersection of seemingly disparate fields. Yet, as AI becomes more powerful, ethical concerns like bias and fairness will need to be addressed. In short, AI tools for academic research should be utilized carefully, with a keen awareness of their capabilities and limitations.

About Serra Ardem

Serra Ardem is a freelance writer and editor based in Istanbul. For the last 8 years, she has been collaborating with brands and businesses to tell their unique story and develop their verbal identity.