Generative AI tools can be powerful allies in your literature search, helping you discover relevant research, identify connections between papers, and streamline your review process. This guide introduces a selection of these tools and provides advice on how to use them effectively and responsibly.
Page last updated: June 2025
Elicit
Elicit automates time-consuming research tasks like summarizing papers, extracting data, and synthesizing your findings. It tends to work best for empirical domains that involve experiments and concrete results. It can assist in literature review, systematic reviews and meta-analysis.
Litmaps
Litmaps visualizes research papers as network graphs based on publication date, citations, citing relations, and title similarity. It suggests related papers based on the connections between papers. This tool helps explore a topic beyond your known literature and assists you in literature review.
ResearchRabbit
ResearchRabbit is a free online tool designed for literature exploration and mapping. By starting with one or more “seed papers”, it suggests and visualizes relevant literature and researchers. This tool is particularly useful when planning essays, projects, or literature reviews.
SciSpace
SciSpace is designed to help you explore, read and understand research papers. It can help you find connected papers, authors, topics, and more. It can assist in literature review, generating citations, paraphrasing texts, and detecting AI in scholarly writing.
scite.ai
scite.ai is designed for discovering and evaluating scientific articles via Smart Citations. Smart Citations allow users to see how a publication has been cited by providing the context of the citation and a classification describing whether it provides supporting or contrasting evidence for the cited claim.
Semantic Scholar
Semantic Scholar provides free, AI-driven search and discovery tools, and open resources for the global research community. It helps to extract meaning and identifies connections from within papers, then surfaces these insights to help scholars discover and understand research.
Use AI tools to complement library search methods, not replace them
Generative AI tools are designed to assist your research, not to do the work for you. While AI tools can expand your search, library databases and subject-specific resources often offer more comprehensive coverage and controlled vocabularies, ensuring that you don't miss crucial research.
Understand limitations of data sources
Many AI literature search tools primarily draw from open-access sources like Semantic Scholar or OpenAlex. This means they might not have access to articles behind paywalls, which are often crucial for comprehensive research.
Verify information generated by AI tools
AI models can sometimes "hallucinate" or produce inaccurate, biased, or outdated information. Always cross-reference any information generated by these tools with original, authoritative scholarly sources.
Protect privacy and intellectual property
Be cautious about uploading sensitive or confidential information, or copyrighted materials, into AI tools, as there are privacy and legal concerns to consider. The materials you upload may include content that should remain private and/or may be subject to restrictive licensing agreements. It is the responsibility of each user to carefully review the terms of services and related policies.
Be transparent about AI use and maintain academic integrity
Always disclose how you used AI tools in your coursework or research. This demonstrates academic integrity and allows others to understand the processes behind your work.
Ye Zhai
Reference and Research Services Librarian for Social Sciences & Economics
yz62@nyu.edu