AI Research Assistant for Academics
Last updated: January 7, 2026
AI for literature review—AI research assistant tools to summarize research papers, extract claims, and manage citations.
Perplexity: Research the web with sources and follow-ups
Fast research assistant with sourced answers and deep follow-up—great for exploring topics and collecting references.
"Best for rapid discovery—source-linked answers make it easy to verify and dig deeper."
"The best generalist researcher. 'Pro' search digs deep. Not strictly academic, but finds better sources than Google 100% of the time."
"Best general research assistant with web citations. Versatile beyond academia; verify sources for scholarly rigor."
"Sourced answers with deep search; choose for versatile, verifiable research beyond academia with excellent citations."
Consensus: Get citation-backed answers from papers
Search engine that answers questions using academic studies with citations—useful for quick evidence checks.
"Best for quick evidence—gives answers backed by papers and citations."
"Like Google for science. 'Yes/No' summary meter is brilliant for quick consensus checks. Citation accuracy is very high."
"AI-powered answers from peer-reviewed papers with citations. Great for evidence synthesis; best with specific queries."
"Citation-backed answers from peer-reviewed sources; choose for quick, verifiable evidence synthesis in research."
Paperpal: Polish academic writing with research-focused AI
Academic writing assistant for clarity, grammar, and journal-ready tone—useful after the literature review to draft clean prose.
"Best for academic polishing—improves clarity and tone without sounding generic."
"Grammarly for academics. Catches technical phrasing errors others miss. Great for non-native English speakers writing for journals."
"Academic writing assistant with grammar and style checks. Good for non-native speakers; less research discovery than Elicit."
"Specialized academic editing with citations; choose for clarity improvements and journal readiness in non-native writing."
Elicit: Speed up literature reviews with paper extraction
Research assistant that finds papers, extracts key claims, and builds structured literature reviews—great for evidence-backed summaries.
"Best for lit reviews—pulls papers + extracts key findings into a usable table fast."
"The extraction table is genius. Turns methodology/results into structured data. Hallucination-proof citation links are essential for academic rigor."
"Purpose-built for academic research with concept extraction. Excellent literature review aid; limited to academic databases."
"Accurate extraction for structured reviews; choose for rigorous, citation-verified synthesis that accelerates academic research."
scite: See how papers are cited (supporting vs disputing)
Citation context tool that shows whether studies support or dispute claims—helps validate sources for academic writing.
"Best for citation sanity-checks—see if papers support or dispute a claim."
"Critical for vetting sources. Seeing 'supporting' vs 'contrasting' citations prevents you from citing retracted or debated studies."
"Smart citations showing supporting/contrasting evidence. Unique citation analysis; smaller database than Semantic Scholar."
"Unique citation analysis for validation; choose for distinguishing supporting vs disputing evidence in scholarly work."