Resources
AI tools for literature search
An increasing number of AI-powered tools are available to facilitate literature research, providing innovative features and new search strategies. They can effectively complement research conducted in traditional library catalogs and literature databases. Unlike “general-purpose AI tools,” they rely on scientific databases as their sources. AI tools can be a valuable addition to traditional literature research, but they cannot fully replace it. Their results depend on the quality of the underlying data and may therefore be inaccurate or incomplete. For this reason, all AI-generated content should be critically evaluated and cross-checked against one’s own expertise and the current state of research.
Copyright: When using AI tools, copyright must always be carefully considered. While bibliographic information can be used freely, this does not apply to other types of content. In particular, uploading articles, e-books or other protected materials into AI systems may constitute a copyright infringement if these works are not available as Open Access. To prevent legal issues, the applicable license agreements should always be reviewed in advance.
Available pricing models vary considerably: In addition to fully free applications, there are tools with limited free features and optional paid upgrades. Furthermore, there are paid services that often begin with a free trial period or a limited number of initial credits before further use becomes chargeable.
Examples of AI-supported literature research tools can be categorized as free, partially free, or fee-based:
Free Tools
| Semantic Scholar | Is an AI-powered academic database that enables advanced search and citation analysis and helps users build a focused, foundational set of essential readings. |
| Open Knowledge Maps | Is a visual discovery tool that maps academic literature and helps users quickly identify key topics, research areas, and thematic clusters. |
Partially free tools
| Consensus | Is an AI-powered search engine that summarizes scientific, peer-reviewed content and indicates the reputation of the journals. However, it also includes disputed or retracted studies and does not assess their reliability. |
| SciSpace | Is an AI-powered tool that explains and summarizes scientific articles and supports users in reading and research. |
| Undermind.ai | Is an AI tool that uncovers connections between studies, identifies key papers, and supports structured literature research. |
| Elicit | Provides article suggestions and summaries for literature reviews, answers research questions, and helps identify key “seed papers” or gaps in searches. However, it does not cover all available articles. |
| Keenious | Is a research tool that automatically recommends relevant scientific articles based on a text or document. |
| R Discovery | Is an app that simplifies literature research, delivers relevant scientific articles, and provides daily recommendations from sources such as PubMed, CrossRef, and Microsoft Academic. |
| Connected Papers | Is a visual research tool that maps scientific literature related to a topic or seed paper and is also available in a free version. |
| Litmaps | Creates interactive maps of relevant scientific articles based on a seed paper and sends alerts about new publications. |
| Research Rabbit | Uses AI to recommend similar articles based on a starting text, visualizes relationships between studies, displays co-authorship networks, and provides alerts for newly published papers. |