Artificial Intelligence and Research: AI Tools for Literature Review

Using AI for Research and Literature Review

This page explores how AI can assist with conducting research for a literature review, highlighting a selection of tools that aid in article discovery, research summarization, article comparison, and organization. Although these tools can be helpful, they also have limitations regarding their capabilities and the articles available in searches. Remember to use these tools in conjunction with the resources available through the PSU Library, and to verify all information.

PSU Library Links:

This page has only a small selection of AI related research tools, for a broader list of AI tools:

AI Academic Search and Analysis Tools

This is a selection of available tools that aid research projects and literature reviews through research discovery, paper summarization, and concept organization and comparison. Each tool offers varying services.

Description: NotebookLM uses AI to help you understand and synthesize your own documents, generating summaries and answering questions. It's not a web search; it functions exclusively with your uploaded content. Get started with NotebookLM

Cost: Free, account can be accessed while signed in with your ODIN account. PSU OIT page on NotebookLM

Description: Consensus is an AI search engine that specializes in summarizing academic research and providing relevant paper suggestions, making it ideal for research-driven questions, not basic factual searches. Consensus How it works and FAQ

Cost: Free and premium versions available. Pricing page

Description: Elicit enables researchers to search for and upload papers, and employs AI to organize data into a customizable matrix, assisting with review, comparison, and synthesis of research. Elicit support articles

Cost: Free and pay versions available. Pricing page

Description: SciSpace assists researchers by summarizing academic topics, locating papers, extracting key concepts from searched or uploaded documents, and organizing those concepts into a matrix. It also offers a range of AI-assisted writing features. SciSpace YouTube channel

Cost: Free and pay versions available. Pricing page

AI Literature Mapping Tools

Literature mapping tools aid in research discovery by analyzing citations and references, visually mapping the connections between papers.

Description: Users can upload and create a collection of papers to create citaiton maps, allowing users to locate additional sources connected through citations, shared authors, and other relationships.

Cost: Free 

Zotero Integration: Yes

Description: Users can search and upload papers to create citation maps allowing users to locate additional sources and see connections through citations, authors, and other relationships. Introduction to Litmaps

Cost: Free and pay versions avaialble. Pricing page

Zotero Integration: Yes

Description: Uers can search for papers and then create citation maps based on any of the results, allowing users to locate additional sources and see connections through citations, authors, and other relationships. This site does not allow users to upload documents.

Cost: Free and premuim versions avaialble. Pricing page

Zotero Integration: No