Artificial intelligence (AI) has the potential to transform scientific, marketing, and other types of research, making citation and information gathering a whole lot easier. With AI at their disposal, researchers from all walks of life can scan large datasets, enhance communication and fact-gathering amongst teams, and even improve their writing, making it easier to publish their findings. In this article, we’ll present our top selections of AI tools designed to improve your research.
Let’s dive in.
How AI Research Tools Work
AI research tools are built on machine learning and large language models (LLM) that help researchers gather information, conduct literature reviews, analyze citations, and more. They are trained on large amounts of data and allow you to search within publications to extract important information related to your research. Some of these tools can even help rewrite parts of a document, suggest grammar improvements, and summarize larger articles for easy digestion.
What Are the Benefits of Using AI for Research?
When tasked with rummaging through large amounts of data, implementing an AI tool for research is a good idea. By using these tools, users can drastically improve efficiency and productivity. AI research tools can automate tedious tasks like summarizing, organizing research materials into documents, and streamlining the process. AI-powered tools like Scite can help researchers quickly find relevant publications, analyze citation patterns, and stay current on the latest research.
Additional benefits include faster data analysis, thanks to AI and machine learning algorithms that can analyze large datasets much more quickly than manual methods. These tools can also foster idea generation by providing related keywords, phrases, and summaries of relevant literature.
Regardless of the research you plan to do, the tools on our list offer something for everyone.
11 Must-Have AI Tools to Enhance Your Research
Now that we’ve gone through the benefits of using AI research tools, let’s look at out top picks on the market today!
1. QuillBot
🥇 Essential for Simplifying Complex Content
While it’s not a traditional research tool, Quillbot has several features that will benefit researchers. First and foremost, Quillbot is an AI paraphrasing tool. It can help people understand complex research by rephrasing text in different ways. This is an effective method for researchers to simplify complex content. Secondly, Quillbot can help you rephrase sentences to avoid unintentional plagiarism if you’re summarizing source material in your research. That said, checking the facts before including content in your research is always a good idea.
Quillbot Offers Browser Extensions and Mobile Apps
Quillbot expands its features by offering a browser extension for major browsers like Chrome. It integrates seamlessly, so you can paraphrase content while on the go. In addition to browser extensions, Quillbot also offers desktop and mobile apps for summarization and grammar checking. That way, you can ensure your research is free of grammatical errors as you write. If you’re a Microsoft Word or Mac OS user, you’re in luck because Quillbot has extensions for those too.
What We Like About Quillbot
- Multiple Paraphrasing Modes: Quillbot offers different paraphrasing modes, allowing you to tailor paraphrased content to suit your needs
- Grammar and Plagiarism Tools (Paid plans only): Quillbot’s premium plan provides a grammar checker to identify and fix errors along with a plagiarism detector to ensure research is original
- Summarize Lengthy Text: This is the biggest perk for researchers as it can help condense larger amounts of text, making it easier to grasp
- Extensions For Google, MacOS, and Microsoft Word: Paraphrase and summarize on the go, thanks to mobile apps and browser extensions
What Could Be Improved
- No Fact Checking: Since Quillbot is mainly a summarization and paraphrasing tool, it doesn’t have a way to verify the information. Therefore, it’s important to ensure factual accuracy in your research
🥇 Why We Picked It
Quillbot is a versatile, handy tool every researcher should have. We picked it due to its ability to paraphrase complex topics. It can also improve writing clarity and summarize sources, especially when researching lengthy articles.
Who Is Quillbot Best For?
Quillbot is perfect for students and researchers who need assistance summarizing long text, checking for grammatical errors, or rephrasing text for better flow in writing. It can help rephrase content and deepen understanding of complex subjects.
Community Reviews and Ratings
Quillbot users say it’s easy to navigate and love the integration with Microsoft Word. However, some say it occasionally experiences technical issues.
Pricing
Quillbot offers a free plan with paid plans starting at $8.33 per month (billed annually).
2. Bit AI
🥈 Top Choice for Team Collaboration & Managing Research
Bit AI is designed as an AI-powered platform to help teams collaborate on documents, wikis, and knowledge bases. It goes beyond just text and images, allowing users to create interactive documents containing videos, cloud files, and audio. It works much like Google Drive, allowing for real-time collaboration on documents. Multiple people can work on documents simultaneously and chat with one another within the interface.
Create Multimedia Documents and Projects With Ease
In addition to document creation, Bit AI is an excellent tool for creating wikis, knowledge bases, projects, and more. Thanks to AI Genius, you can easily create custom templates and outlines, assist with research, and answer questions. A Smart Search feature also allows you to save and search all of your media and content assets, such as images, PDFs, links, cloud files, and more. The Smart Wiki tool allows team members to collaborate across documents, adding videos, spreadsheets, databases, and more from various third-party websites or importing their own content.
What We Like About Bit AI
- Built-In AI Writing Assistant: AI Genius is the perfect tool for generating documents, wikis, and other information based on a text prompt
- Multiple Use Cases: Bit AI is great for researchers and marketers, but also for product management, startups, and Human Resources due to its document development features
- Collaboration Tools: Bit.ai allows multiple users to simultaneously collaborate on documents, notes, wikis, and other content in real-time
- Wide Range of Integrations: Bit AI integrates with a large number of third-party tools, including YouTube, Google Sheets, Figma, GitHub, and more
What Could Be Improved
- Limited Customizations: Bit AI would be better if it had text formatting or options to customize the appearance of documents, such as matching company branding
🥈 Why We Picked It
Bit.ai’s comprehensive features, including media integration, cloud storage access, collaborative editing, organized workspaces, and smart document tools, make it a valuable platform for researchers to manage, share, and collaborate on research projects.
Who Is Bit AI Best For?
Bit AI is a multi-faceted AI-powered platform that caters to research teams. Thanks to its collaborative features, those in the research field, small businesses, or educational users will benefit the most from it. They can easily create, manage, share, and organize multimedia documents effeciently with AI.
Community Reviews and Ratings
Users say Bit.ai excels at generating content and creating multi-functional documents. However, the formatting and customization options could be better.
Pricing
Bit AI offers a free plan with paid plans starting at $12 per month.
3. Scite
🥉 Ultimate AI Solution for Citations
Scite is an AI tool for research that uses artificial intelligence to enhance the way researchers discover and analyze scientific articles. It goes beyond traditional citation counts by providing a tool called Smart Citations. Using AI, Scite analyzes the context in which an article is referenced, revealing whether the citing paper supports, contradicts, or mentions the earlier work. Scite’s vast database, which contains over 1.2 billion citations, allows researchers to better understand the conversation surrounding a particular subject. Scite provides the most relevant content for your research by taking this approach, saving time and effort.
Gain Insight Into Citations With In-Dept Citation Reports
Another useful feature of Scite is its Citation Reports. When researching a subject, Scite will provide an analysis of how the scientific community has received a research publication. These reports provide critical insight into how often a work has been cited and how the citing papers discuss it. Furthermore, each citation in the report is classified as supporting, contrasting, or just a mention, so you’ll have a clearer picture of whether to use it in your research.
What We Like
- Smart Citations: Scite analyzes how an article is referenced in other research. It can tell you if the citing article supports, contradicts, or simply mentions the original article
- Citation Context: Shows you how different sections of an article are being cited in other research, which helps you to understand how the original research is being used and interpreted by other researchers
- Citation Reports: Generates reports that show you citation patterns and trends, which helps users to identify articles and authors in a related field
- Large Dataset: It is trained on more than 187 million articles, books, preprints, and other datasets, making it a solid choice for researchers
What Could Be Improved
- Not All Articles Cited Are Accessible: Although Scite offers full-text access for most articles cited, some publishers have not
🥉 Why We Picked It
Researching complex topics can be daunting and time-consuming. Thanks to Scite, researchers can concentrate more on analyzing citations for relevancy rather than information retrieval. Scite dives deep into analyzing how research papers connect through citations. This quickly provides insight into the most relevant and impactful studies, saving time and effort and helping researchers focus on the right data faster.
Who Is It Best For?
Scite will benefit academic researchers, students, and businesses looking for AI-powerful citation analysis. By analyzing and comparing citations across a wide range of research papers, scientific studies, and literature, Scite helps researchers understand the significance and impact of prior research. This helps streamline content review and critical analysis of research topics.
Community Reviews and Ratings
Users love the Smart Citation feature, but having an onboarding tutorial for beginners would be nice.
Pricing
Scite offers a limited free trial with plans starting at $20 per month.
4. PDFgear Copilot
PDFgear Copilot, an AI-powered PDF assistant, extracts and summarizes information in PDF documents. It utilizes ChatGPT to help users locate important information in documents while conducting research. You can chat with a document, ask questions about its contents, and easily summarize complex PDFs.
PDFgear Copilot can also provide context or clear up confusing parts of your documents. It can also rewrite sections of documents and export PDFs into other file formats. Users can also perform actions, such as converting, printing, or saving PDF files, without manually navigating the software’s interface. Simply give PDFgear Copilot a command and watch as it effortlessly completes the task. PDFgear Copilot is an excellent tool for researchers who must scan through large amounts of PDFs to extract important, relevant information.
What We Like
- Interact With PDFs: Summarize, analyze, and interact with PDF content through natural language processing
- ChatGPT Integration: Find key information and get answers by using built-in ChatGPT functionality
- Streamline PDF Workflows: Complete tasks, such as converting, printing, and saving PDFs with natural language processing
- Support for Multiple Languages: PDFgear Copilot supports over 100 languages, making it accessible to a large number of users
What Could Be Improved
- No Dark Mode: PDFgear doesn’t come with an option to switch to dark mode, potentially alienating those who prefer it
Who Should Use It
PDFgear Copilot is a great tool for Windows and Mac users who want a faster way to interact with PDF documents. Users can summarize, extract, and search for info in the document, making gathering research much quicker and easier.
Community Reviews and Ratings
Although reviews are limited, users report that editing and altering PDFs is easy, thanks to the ChatGPT integration. However, some users want PDFgear to include a dark mode.
Pricing
PDFgear Copilot is available for free.
5. Consensus
Consensus is an AI-powered search engine that provides users with unbiased and accurate information from diverse and reliable academic sources. It can search through millions of academic publications to find relevant information to answer questions, provide references, and cite research studies. It uses GPT-4 technology to generate concise summaries of the top research papers related to your search. When asking a yes or no question, the Consensus Meter can provide an overall summary indicating the consensus among research and categorize it with yes, no, or possibly based on supporting evidence.
What We Like
- AI-Powered Academic Search: Quickly analyzes millions of peer-reviewed research papers and provide comprehensive, accurate answers to users’ questions
- Scientifically-Verified Results: Only consults previously published, scholarly works from leading global journals and authors, ensuring the information is reliable and unbiased
- Fast and Reliable Search: Allows users to quickly find the most important insights on a topic, saving time compared to traditional research methods
- GPT-4 Summary: Leverages GPT-4 to deliver concise summaries of the top 5-10 most relevant research findings for a given question
What Could Be Improved
- The Consensus Meter: Although Consensus is usually accurate, there may be times when the meter does not capture the specific nuance and context of research findings
Who Should Use It
Consensus is a great tool for researchers, content creators, or anyone needing reliable, up-to-date scientific literature information. It can generate summaries, make citations, and provide an overall reliable and informative solution for those tasked with gathering a lot of information quickly.
Pricing
Consensus offers a free plan with paid plans starting at $11.99 per month.
6. HubSpot Breeze AI
Summarizing CRM Data & Insights for Business Growth
HubSpot Breeze AI offers a suite of AI-powered assistants designed to boost productivity across multiple areas, such as sales, marketing, customer service, and more. It is also an invaluable research tool for securing qualified customers for your business. Its built-in summarization tool lets you take large amounts of CRM data and turn it into digestible insights. You can also use it to summarize customer interactions.
Moreover, the platform’s Breeze Intelligence links to your CRM and includes a database of over 200 million customer profiles. You can automatically enrich your CRM records, segment your list based on buyer intent, score leads according to various criteria, and so on.
Other notable features include the option to automatically match CRM records with your target buyer persona, ideal for streamlining sales outreach.
What We Like
- Multiple Use Cases: Aside from sales, Breeze also includes separate AI tools dedicated to content generation, customer service, and email marketing, for example.
- Built-in Prospecting: You can automatically spot and prioritize high-value leads, the generate sales email campaigns at scale.
- All-around Chatbot: Breeze includes a conversational chatbot that can perform basic tasks across multiple departments, like generating emails and social posts, summarizing CRM records, or repurposing content across numerous channels.
- Built-in Email Tools: Generate personalized email sequences, including follow-ups.
What Could Be Improved
Pricing Structure: Breeze CoPilot is available for free, but other department-specific tools will require you to subscribe to different plans, all separately. This can significantly bump up the cost.
Why We Picked It
Aside from summarizing CRM records and customer interactions, the Breeze Intelligence tool is also super useful for finding completely new data relevant to your business. Plus, Breeze’s sales tools make the platform a great all-around choice for streamlining sales activities.
Who Should Use It
HubSpot Breeze AI is best for busy sales departments looking to quickly leverage their CRM data to optimize sales processes and close more deals. Users can automatically enrich their CRMs via an ample database of company profiles and then use these details to prioritize leads, develop email campaigns, and more.
Community Reviews and Ratings
Although no reviews are available for Breeze specifically (it’s still new), HubSpot’s Sales Hub is generally regarded as striking a perfect balance between functionality and ease of use.
Pricing
You can get started for free. Paid plans are available via premium versions found throughout HubSpot’s product offering. Prices start at $15 per user per month.
7. Connected Papers
Connected Papers is an innovative research tool that helps scientists and scholars efficiently explore the literature relevant to their work by providing a visual, similarity-based mapping of related academic papers. It uses circles to represent different papers. The size of the circle corresponds to the frequency of citations by other researchers. Papers that closely resemble the original paper you provided are positioned closer together and connected by lines. The thickness of the line indicates the strength of the relationship between the documents. By following the connections between papers, you can use Connected Papers to explore new research areas within your field.
What We Like
- Similarity Graphs: Connected Papers produces a visual graph displaying related papers. However, unlike a traditional citation tree, it emphasizes semantic similarity, meaning that papers with shared citations and references are more connected
- Prior and Derivative Works: Connected Papers identifies influential prior works that have shaped the current research landscape. Additionally, it can reveal derivative works that build upon the original paper’s ideas
- Multi-Origin Graphs: You can enter multiple papers as a starting point so that CP can create a combined graph highlighting the relationships between them
- Save Papers and Graphs: Save papers and graphs to revisit and explore topics further
What Could Be Improved
- Limited Citation View: Unlike citation trees, Connected Papers doesn’t directly show how papers cite each other
Who Should Use It
Connected Papers is a valuable tool for researchers actively exploring their field, but it’s important to know its strengths and weaknesses to use it effectively. For example, because Connected Papers uses a semantic citation method, there may be better options for those who require an understanding of how specific papers influence each other.
Pricing
Connected Papers offers a free plan with paid plans starting at $10 per quarter.
8. Litmaps
Litmaps is a literature mapping tool that helps researchers discover new and relevant research papers, visualize the relationships between papers, and share their research. It works by using connectedness theory, which allows researchers to quickly scan Litmap’s network of academic papers around the documents they know, discovering vital related papers they may not know about. Litmaps can also generate reading lists and notify users when relevant new papers are published, making it easier to stay up-to-date on the latest research.
What We Like
- Search Academic Papers: Allows you to search through a vast database of over 260 million academic papers to find relevant articles
- Mind Mapping: Lets you visualize your research by creating a map of interconnected articles and annotating them for better understanding
- Explore Research From Various Angles: Dynamic Exploration allows users to explore research from different angles by rearranging how papers are positioned on the map.
- Collaboration Features: Allows you to share your research maps with colleagues, students, or advisors to facilitate collaboration
What Could Be Improved
- Limited Free Plan: Some features, like unlimited searches, are only available on paid plans
Who Should Use It
Litmaps, a powerful literature mapping tool, aids researchers in becoming more productive and staying ahead of the curve in their respective fields. It perfectly suits researchers, students, and early-career researchers who aim to write research papers more intelligently and productively.
Pricing
Litmaps offers a free plan with paid plans starting at $10 per month.
9. Jenni
Jenni is an AI writing assistant for writing research papers. It uses machine learning and natural language processing (NLP) to provide content suggestions, writing feedback, and research assistance. It’s particularly useful for writing essays, research papers, literature reviews, and more. Jenni can also help with citations and references and check for plagiarism.
What We Like
- AskJenni: An AI research assistant that can help answer research questions and provide document-related clarifications
- Citation and Reference Assistance: Formats citations and references in styles like APA, MLA, and Chicago
- AI Commands: Perform tasks like paraphrasing, rewriting, and simplifying existing text
- AI Autocompletion: Suggests and completes sentences to help you write faster
What Could Be Improved
- Limited Content Types: Compared to other AI writing tools like Copy.ai and Jasper, Jenni.ai only offers a limited number of content types such as blogs, essays, emails, and free-flow writing
Who Should Use It
Jenni AI best suits students, scholars, researchers, and writers who need help with high-quality, plagiarism-free writing tasks for research papers. It provides AI autocompletion for automatically filling in gaps in your writing, a citation and reference assistant, and various AI commands for paraphrasing, rewriting, and simplifying text.
Pricing
Jenni offers a free plan with paid plans starting at $20 per month.
10. Paperpal
Paperpal is an AI assistant for academic writing that helps researchers and students with real-time suggestions. It includes features such as a plagiarism checker so users can scan their documents for potential plagiarism to ensure academic integrity. It can also fix grammar, spelling, and styling concerns. Through generative AI, Paperpal can help users overcome writer’s block by providing outlines, titles, and other content. Another useful feature is the academic translation, which enables Paperpal to convert text from more than 25 languages to English, allowing researchers to find relevant research in other languages.
What We Like
- Plagiarism Check: Paperpal’s plagiarism checker allows users to scan their documents for potential plagiarism and ensure academic integrity
- Rewriting and Paraphrasing: Paperpal’s rewriting and paraphrasing tools allow users to rephrase sentences, trim wordy text, and improve the overall tone and clarity of their writing
- Generative AI: Paperpal Copilot, the generative AI feature, can help users overcome writer’s block by generating outlines, titles, abstracts, and other content to kickstart the writing process
- Academic Translation: Paperpal can instantly translate content written in over 25 languages into English, allowing users to focus on their research while the tool refines their writing
What Could Be Improved
- Grammar Checker: Although Paperpal includes a grammar checker, it’s not as robust as a dedicated solution like Grammarly
Who Should Use It
Paperpal is best suited for researchers, professors, and authors who need specialized AI-powered writing assistance to improve their chances of publishing success in academic and scientific fields.
Community Reviews and Ratings
Users say Paperpal does a great job with plagiarism but sometimes struggles with grammar.
Pricing
Paperpal offers a free plan with paid plans starting at $19 per month.
11. Research Rabbit
Research Rabbit is a free, web-based research tool that helps users discover and organize academic research. Users can create collections of research papers and get access to recommendations for similar works. Users can visualize the connections between research papers through graphs and timelines, allowing users to trace the evolution of a particular area of research.
What We Like
- Intuitive Exploration: Research Rabbit allows users to easily create collections of papers and discover new, relevant publications through personalized recommendations
- Powerful Visualizations: Offers interactive visualizations like citation networks and timelines to aid users in grasping the connections among publications and authors
- Collaboration Features: Users can share collections and collaborate with others, leaving comments and helping to kickstart each other’s research processes
- Citation Management: Research Rabbit supports citation management, allowing users to easily generate citations in various styles and organize their references
What Could Be Improved
- Navigation challenges: The cluttered interface may be difficult for some
Who Should Use It
Research Rabbit is ideal for graduate students, researchers, and other academic types. It can map citation networks, discover author collaborations, and more. This can help find connections that might otherwise be missed.
Pricing
Research Rabbit is completely free.
Comparing the Best AI Research Tools For Research
When choosing the right research tool for you, we know price, features, and user reviews should all come into play. Whether you need a tool for creating citations, writing research papers, or mapping similar research articles, the research tools on our list all offer something for everyone.
Feature Comparison Table (Top 3)
To help you better understand what our top three picks offer, we’ve created a comparison table outlining each tool’s top features and starting price.
| 🥇 Quillbot | 🥈 Bit AI | 🥉 Scite | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Free Version | ✔️ | ✔️ | ❌ |
| AI Writing Assistant | ✔️ | ✔️ | ❌ |
| Collaboration Tools | ✔️ | ✔️ | ✔️ |
| Integrations | ✔️ | ✔️ | ✔️ |
| Search Documents | ✔️ | ✔️ | ✔️ |
| Create Citations | ❌ | ❌ | ✔️ |
| Summarize Content | ✔️ | ❌ | ✔️ |
| Starting Price | $8.33/month | $12/month | $20/month |
| Get Quillbot | Get Bit AI | Get Scite |
Price Comparison Table
In addition to features, price is critical. Our list has free and paid tools, all with similar price points. Refer to the table below to view pricing for all ten on our list and average user ratings.
| Plugin | Starting Price | Free Option | User Reviews (avg) | ||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 🥇 | Quillbot | $8.33/month (billed annually) | ✔️ | ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐(4.5/5) | Visit |
| 🥈 | Bit AI | $12/month | ✔️ | ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐(4.5/5) | Visit |
| 🥉 | Scite | $20/month | ❌ | ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐(4.5/5) | Visit |
| 4 | PDFgear Copilot | Free | ✔️ | ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐(5/5) | Visit |
| 5 | Consensus | $11.99/month | ✔️ | N/A | Visit |
| 6 | Breeze AI | $15/month | ✔️ | ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐(4.75/5) | Visit |
| 7 | Connected Papers | $10/quarter | ✔️ | N/A | Visit |
| 8 | Litmaps | $10/month | ✔️ | N/A | Visit |
| 9 | Jenni | $20/month | ✔️ | N/A | Visit |
| 10 | Paperpal | $19/month | ✔️ | ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐(4.75/5) | Visit |
| 11 | Research Rabbit | Free | ✔️ | N/A | Visit |
Our Winning Pick: Quillbot
Whether you’re looking to organize how you collect research or generate citations, the AI research tools on our list can help. Quillbot is an excellent choice for researchers looking to summarize lengthy text, paraphrase content, and check for grammatical errors.
But all these tools are great. With a tool like Bit AI, you can easily create wikis, knowledge bases, and more through a drag-and-drop document builder. On the other hand, if you need a tool to analyze citations or suggest relevant sources, Scite is an excellent choice. No matter what type of research you do, any of the tools on our list will be a welcome addition to your workflow.
QuillBot
Bit AI
Scite
Hi Deanna,
Have you tried using MachineTranslation.com?
Have you tried OpenRead? It is much better than all of these combined.
Michael,
I have not, but I will check it out. Thanks for the tip!
Deanna