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It’s no secret Artificial Intelligence (AI) has become increasingly popular in today’s day and age. It is used as marketing chatbots, virtual booking agents, social media monitoring, self-driving cars, manufacturing robots, smart assistants, and so much more. AI has tools such as imaging, coding, language, and more that can benefit the education system by improving teaching and learning practices. AI has the ability to mimic natural human language by having vast amounts of text data that allow it to predict phrases and words in that specific context, and this is beneficial to aid students in language-related tasks.
AI can serve as a powerful tool and resource for educators and students alike. Those involved with academic research can use AI in the research process of finding relevant articles. AI improves time allocation by cutting the search time in half and allowing students to put their time and energy into other impending tasks. AI can also help with correcting grammatical errors and identifying any plagiarism which will help to strengthen the quality of the academic research paper.
Despite the wondrous benefits of AI in academic research, there has also been speculation as to whether or not it actually helps students in completing assignments as there is concern for originality, authenticity, and academic integrity. While these are realistic concerns, it is important for the human population to learn how to use these emerging powerful AI technologies to benefit society rather than bring about deterioration. At the end of the day, AI was created not to disrupt established practices but to improve the efficiency of these established practices.
This blog discusses 5 AI tools to boost academic research.
Zotero
Zotero is a personal research assistant that collects, cites, organizes, annotates, and shares research. As you browse the web, Zotero has the automatic ability to sense the research you are looking into which makes this AI tool accessible as long as there is a web connection. It allows you to organize your research into collections that can be tagged with keywords, and you can also save your searches so that relevant research will automatically show up.
Here are just a few things Zotero can do for you:
- Automatically sense your research as you browse the web to pop up relevant materials a you work
- Organize your research the way you want
- Create saved searches
- Instant creation of references and bibliographies
- Format work to meet over 10 000 citation styles
- Synchronize your data across different devices
- Access your research from any web browser
- Collaborate freely and share a Zotero library with as many people as you’d like
- Data security
Learners engaged in academic research never fail to have a reference of their sources, and Zotero instantly creates references and bibliographies for various different text editors such as Microsoft Word, Google Docs, and more. It also has over 10 000 citation styles which allows you to format your work in the way that fulfils your academic institutions requirements.
Zotero also has the ability to synchronize your data across different devices you may have such as iPads, iPhones, Macbooks etc, and this helps to keep your notes and files up to date. Academic research commonly involves collaboration to peer review or co-write a paper and so Zotero offers a collaborative aspect that distributes materials to build a collaborative bibliography. Not to mention, your Zotero library can be shared with as many people as you would like to. If you’re looking for a reputable and consistent AI tool to boost your academic research, make sure to check out Zotero.
Pricing: Free
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Mendeley
Mendeley wants you to make an impact on tomorrow, so it brings your research to life. It allows you access to your library everywhere as it allows you to add papers from your browser or desktop. Mendeley also operates on various devices such as Windows, Mac, browser and Linux which makes it variably accessible to fit the specifics you may have.
Mendeley reference manager is part of this AI tool that helps you to focus on achieving your goals by simplifying your workflow. It uses researcher’s feedback to provide you with what you need to sort your references. You can build your own personal Mendeley library to store all of your references in one place so that you can easily access it as you work on your academic research. Mendeley Notebook is another aspect of this AI tool that allows you to keep your thoughts together by enabling you to create highlights and notes across multiple PDFs. Mendely also allows you to create citations which can easily be added into Microsoft Word that will cut the time it takes for you to create your own reference list and create more time for you to invest your time into other tasks.
Here are just a few things Mendeley can do for you:
- Includes instructions and video tutorials to aid with installation and use of Mendeley
- Store your references in one place by building your own Mendeley Library
- Keep all your thoughts together through your Mendeley Notebook that allows you to collate all of your notes and highlights
- Various citation styles
- Automatic generation of bibliographies
- Collaborate easily with other researchers
- Easy importation of papers from other research software
- Find relevant papers based on your current research
- Access your papers from anywhere online
As Mendeley allows you to create citations, it also allows you to edit and share these citations by clicking on the citation title that opens the abstract where you can view the documents attached, email your colleague, and view the edit citation details and tags. If you’re looking for a reference manager to simplify your workflow and allow you to achieve your goals, make sure to check out Mendeley.
Pricing: Free, Charges for additional cloud storage space varies
Consensus
Consensus is an AI search engine that is used for research. Consensus promises to responsibly use AI to conduct effective research which will help to strengthen the quality of your work. It has the ability to search through over 200 million scientific research papers which brings a good range of diversity into your academic research. The more research papers that are included in your academic research, the more reliable your content will be as it draws from well grounded research. Consensus will cite the scientific resources you use.
Here are just a few things Consensus can do for you:
- Use AI to find insights in research papers
- Extensive coverage over 200 million scientific papers
- Results you can trust that are tied to scientific studies
- Cite your sources
- Doesn’t show advertisements
- Instant analysis that summarizes results for you by using GPT4 and other LLMs
Consensus is an instant analysis as it draws from its features of GPT4 and other LLMs to bring about purposeful research and summarize results for you. This AI tool is also used by researchers at the world’s top institutions such as Harvard University, Northwestern University, Johnson & Johnson and so much more. More than one million students, doctors, professionals, and researchers have engaged with Consensus to help them with their research. Consensus has also been featured in The New York Times, Nature, The Boston Globe and so much more which showcases its moral integrity. If you’re looking for a reputable AI tool to boost your academic research, make sure to check out Consensus.
Consensus has also been compared against ChatGPT since it allows for the conduction of effective research that pulls results directly from peer-reviewed studies. This allows for the accessibility and consumption for expert knowledge when you are working on your academic research.
Pricing: Free, Premium ($6.99/month)
Scite
Scite is a very popular AI-powered academic research tool that will take your academic research to new lengths. It allows for better research on scholarly papers and it analyzes citations because of its machine learning and language processing ability. This is how Scite has made research intuitive and trustworthy for all those engaging with academic research. Scite evaluates the quality of the research and also allows you as the researcher to assess the dependability of the context of the references. This is how any AI tool should function, by working alongside the researcher in the academic research process and encouraging active participation rather than completing specific tasks without human engagement.
Here are just a few things Scite can do for you:
- Smart Citations to make research intuitive
- Search citation statements
- Create custom dashboards to build and manage your collection of articles
- Reference check to screen manuscripts to ensure your references are high quality
- Journal metrics to view the publication, authors, scite index rankings, and more
- Assistant grants you power to LLM (large language model) which enhances your research experience
Scite has had 1.2 billion citation statements extracted and analyzed from 187 million papers, datasets, preprints and more. It is also trusted by leading universities, publishers, and corporations across the globe. Scite has gained the title as an award-winning platform that helps learners to discover and evaluate scientific research papers through Smart Citations.
Smart Citations allows the learner to view how the paper has been published by seeing the context of the citation and classification if this paper brings support of conflicting evidence for the claim that was originally cited. Scite is visually pleasing and has basic metrics that make maneuvering across the page easy to do. If you’ve missed out on using this AI tool to boost your academic research, make sure to check out Scite.
Pricing: $20.45/month
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Trinka
Trinka is a commonly used AI tool for aspiring students and scholars since it helps with grammatical corrections. Trinka offers over 3000 different grammar tones, checks, and style enhancements that can enhance the quality of your academic research writing. Its goal is to ensure holistic language is being used which will help to express learning in a meaningful way. It also offers Spanish and German grammar checks which will help those who use those languages. Trinka will also provide advanced writing tips to make the learner aware of any errors that need to be corrected in their writing.
Here are just a few things Trinka can do for you:
- Designed for technical and academic writing
- Highly-advanced language and grammar correction
- Paraphrasing tool
- AI content detector
- Proofreading tools to assess sentence structure, tone, punctuation, consistency and more
- Finds tricky errors that other academic writing tools fail to find
Trinka can be used for all subjects and allows you to document scientific findings with a style and tone that is technical and well sounding. This will make your academic writing easier to write. Trinka also finds unique errors in your academic writing that other grammar checking tools don’t commonly look for which allows Trinka to stand out among all the other competing AI academic research tools. This will make your academic writing process stress-free.
Trinka’s grammar correction tool was tested online for accuracy, conciseness, spelling checks, and style preferences among other online grammar checkers, and was deemed to offer one of the best enhancements. It can easily be installed on various platforms such as Microsoft Word, Google chrome, Safari Browser, Mozilla Firefox and more. If you’re looking for an AI tool to boost your academic research, make sure to check out Trinka.
Pricing: Free
Sources
Ai search engine for Research. Consensus. (2023, November 23). https://consensus.app/
AI for Research. scite.ai. (2023.). https://scite.ai/
AI tools in teaching and learning. Teaching Commons. (2023.). https://teachingcommons.stanford.edu/news/ai-tools-teaching-and-learning
Your Personalresearch assistant. Zotero. (n.d.). https://www.zotero.org/
Reference management software. Mendeley. (2023.). https://www.mendeley.com/
Advanced grammar checker for Academic & Professional Writing. Trinka. (2023.). https://www.trinka.ai/