Cranfield Libraries: AI and Generative AI: Tools for research

Tools for research

AI tools for research cover a range of functions that can support the start of your research process, from keyword generation to summaries, mapping and writing. This guide will outline some of the available tools along with some general guidance on their use.

You may also find the UKRIO (UK Research Integrity Office) AI guide useful.

Please note that this guide does not endorse any particular tool and you are required to think carefully before using AI in your work.

All tools are free to use at a basic level but may charge for premium services.
For more information about products, try the Generative AI Product Tracker.

Consensus
Consensus can provide a summary of the research in any field and will also answer closed questions with a yes/no ‘consensus’ based on its survey of the research. You can ask follow-up questions to create a ‘thread’ of dialogue about the research
Elicit
Elicit is a systematic review tool which will generate a summary of papers based on your question. It has an easy-to-use interface and will extract data from text and tables. Users can upload papers, ask questions of the papers and get an overview of the research area.
Keenious
Keenious allows users to upload papers or other text to find connected research. This can be for the whole document or a specified section. Keenious does not store any of the uploaded material, which means copyright shouldn’t be an issue.
Litmaps
Litmaps helps you discover, visualize, share and monitor relevant academic papers faster and easier. Users can create 2 Litmaps per month for free.
NotebookLM
Documents can be uploaded to NotebookLM to generate summaries and a chat function powered by Google Gemini. This can be useful for users to make sense of their own notes or source documents. It can also create podcast-style summaries of sources.
Rayyan
Streamlines, enhances and speeds up the process of conducting a systematic literature review. You can import data from tools such as Mendeley, Zotero, Google Scholar etc. It annotates, removes duplicates and extracts data, and can be downloaded as a mobile app. Paid version uses the PICO framework to enable you to structure your question by Population, Intervention, Comparison, and Outcome.
ResearchRabbit
Maps out connected papers, allowing users to group research papers into shareable playlist-style collections which the tool can then make recommendations for. It provides a digest of new connected research based on what has been added.
SciSpace
SciSpace covers a range of functions, and can be used to generate summaries of research, giving users the option to ask questions about the paper in a ‘chat’ function, and will generate a podcast-style audio of the research.