Simpson Library: Artificial Intelligence (AI) for Academic Research: Home

Ways to use AI for research

There are several ways to use AI tools to help you with academic research:

Topics - get ideas for topics for a research project
Overviews - generate a basic overview of a topic (but remember that AI can hallucinate false information)
Keywords - find the right words to type in search boxes
Searching - find articles and books
Summarizing - summarize the main ideas of a document or of multiple documents

Before you use any AI tools, make sure you understand their limitations.

Recommended tools

Tools for finding topics, overviews, and keywords

Best tool:

Microsoft Copilot (free with UMW login)
- What it does: Generates whatever you request, including research topics, overviews, search terms, and summaries of documents that you upload.
- More info: Copilot help & learning

Other tools:

ChatGPT
- What it does: Generates whatever you request, including research topics, overviews, search terms, and summaries of documents that you upload.
- More info: Open AI Help Center
Claude
- What it does: Generates whatever you request, including research topics, overviews, search terms, and summaries of documents that you upload.
- More info: Anthropic Help Center
Google Gemini
- What it does: Generates whatever you request, including research topics, overviews, search terms, and summaries of documents that you upload, including written summaries or audio summaries.
- More info: Gemini Apps Help
Perplexity
- What it does: Generates an answer to any question and cites the sources of its answer (mostly popular websites rather than scholarly books or articles).
- More info: Perplexity Help Center

Tools for searching

Best tools:

Consensus
- What it does: Interprets your natural-language query, generates an answer that cites sources, and provides a list of search results from Semantic Scholar and OpenAlex.
- More info: Consensus Help Center
SciSpace
- What it does: Interprets your natural-language query, generates an answer that cites sources, generates a list of relevant articles from Semantic Scholar, OpenAlex, and Google Scholar, with an AI-written summary of each article.
- More info: Getting Started

Other tools:

Ai2 Paper Finder
- What it does: Searches Semantic Scholar, using AI to interpret your natural-language queries.
- More info: Introducing Ai2 Paper Finder
Ai2 Scholar QA
- What it does: Generates literature reviews and cites its sources.
- More info: Introducing Ai2 ScholarQA
Elicit
- What it does: Interprets your natural-language query, generates a literature review that cites sources from Semantic Scholar, and generates tables for side-by-side comparison of similar articles.
- More info: Elicit Help Center
Keenious
- What it does: Lets you upload a paper to find similar papers, using the OpenAlex index.
- More info: Keenious Help Center
Perplexity
- What it does: Generates an answer to any question and cites the sources of its answer (mostly popular websites rather than scholarly books or articles).
- More info: Perplexity Help Center
R Discovery
- What it does: Interprets your natural-language query and generates an answer with citations to sources from many different databases.
- More info: R Discovery FAQs
Semantic Scholar
- What it does: Provides a free non-profit database of articles, mostly in the sciences, with an AI-generated "TLDR" summary for each article.
- More info: Frequently Asked Questions

NOTE: The library search box searches a much larger collection of items than any of these tools do. Don't just use the AI tools -- search the library too!

Tools for summarizing

Best tools:

Microsoft Copilot (free with UMW login)
- What it does: Generates whatever you request, including research topics, overviews, search terms, and summaries of documents that you upload.
- More info: Copilot help & learning
NotebookLM
- What it does: Stores your documents in an online library, lets you chat with your documents, uses your documents to generate conversational podcasts, study guides, FAQs, and timelines.
- More info: NotebookLM Help
Scholarcy
- What it does: Summarizes articles, lets you chat with articles (using the "Dig Deeper" feature).
- More info: Getting Started Guide

Other tools:

Anara
- What it does: Stores your documents in an online library and lets you chat with your documents.
- More info: Anara User Guide
ChatGPT
- What it does: Generates whatever you request, including research topics, overviews, search terms, and summaries of documents that you upload.
- More info: Open AI Help Center
Coral AI
- What it does: Lets you chat with any document or group of documents.
- More info: Coral AI Tutorials
Elicit
- What it does: Interprets your natural-language query, generates a literature review that cites sources from Semantic Scholar, and generates tables for side-by-side comparison of similar articles.
- More info: Elicit Help Center
Google Gemini
- What it does: Generates whatever you request, including research topics, overviews, search terms, and summaries of documents that you upload, including written summaries or audio summaries.
- More info: Gemini Apps Help
Humata
- What it does: Lets you chat with any document or group of documents.
- More info: Humata Docs
Illuminate, an experiment from Google Labs
- What it does: Generates conversational audio overviews (podcasts) from any document that you upload.
SciSpace
- What it does: Interprets your natural-language query, generates an answer that cites sources, generates a list of relevant articles with an AI-written summary of each article.
- More info: Getting Started