Utilizing AI Tools for Research
Artificial Intelligence can be a useful tool to support your research process. It is not a replacement for the researcher, but rather a tool that can help save time, do analysis and summaries, and connect resources. If you have used a web-based repository that collects and organizes scholarly content, you have likely been benefitting from AI, perhaps without realizing it.
Some of the most beneficial uses of AI tools in research involve the ability to summarize or paraphrase content. This can save a lot of time when doing research, and be especially useful when preparing for things like a literature review. They also have the ability to help you discover research gaps, and to see how research on a topic has evolved over time. These tools can respond to specific questions you may ask, extract key information, explain implications, summarize methods, highlight important phrases, extract key words, paraphrase, and, in general, summarize entire documents or specific sections within them. They can also be used to gather and organize research related to your topic, or by a certain author.
Advantages and Limitations
AI research tools have multiple advantages compared to traditional databases. They usually are intuitive to use, they can present the information in graphic or visual formats, and they can act as a single place to do multiple tasks such as finding literature, summary and analysis, reference management, and writing assistance. They can also analyze based on the actual content of the papers, rather than just by titles, key words, and citations.
There are also some limitations. For one, the tools may have limited access to full text versions of papers and the results can be based on abstracts alone. Some tools require that you create an account and while some tools are free, others require paid subscriptions. They can also mislead you into thinking that you don't need to do your own reading, summary and analysis, and critical assessment of your sources. Finally, there is a lack of transparency as to how these tools produce their results and recommendations. It is useful to remember that these are tools you can use to support your own research, but you should always take a critical view of any AI results and not become to overly dependent on them.
Tips for AI Research Tools
These tools can be most helpful in the early stages of research to gather sources, get an idea of existing research on your topic or related topics, and to work on a literature review. They can be used hand in hand with other databases, where full text versions of the research papers are available, and specialized journals on your topic area.
It is good to already have some relevant research sources that you can upload or input into these tools so that they can begin to find related and relevant sources for you. When doing so, it is good to include more than one or two examples because the more you add the more precise your results will be.
There are many different tools available now for utilizing AI in research, with new ones being released regularly. They each have different features, strengths, and weaknesses. The one(s) that are best suited for you will depend on your particular needs. Below is a list of popular tools that can be a starting place to test out some of the features, and see which ones may be right for you.
- SciSpace
- Inciteful
- Wizdom AI
- Research Rabbit
- Scite
- Connected Papers
- Consensus
The information on this page draws from a presentation by Mihaela Micu from NSU's Alvin Sherman Library. To view the entire presentation and learn more about AI for research and more details on AI research tools please click the link below. You will be asked to fill out a short registration form to gain access to the video and resources.