Thinking Through Gen AI

Some Gen AI tools allow limited usage without creating an account. Specifically, these tools may allow you to ask one to three questions a day or provide access to an older LLM model. Here are three such tools as of June 2025:

1. ChatGPT
2. Consensus
3. Perplexity

These AI-enhanced tools work together to streamline different stages of the research process, helping you find, understand, and organize information more efficiently.

SciSpace

SciSpace helps you understand research papers faster. Instead of struggling through technical language, this tool provides plain-language explanations of complex research. When you upload a paper, SciSpace can:

1. Explain difficult concepts in simpler terms;
2. Extract key information like methods and findings;
3. Connect you to related papers you might have missed; and
4. Answer specific questions about the paper’s content.

Perfect for: Literature reviews, understanding unfamiliar research, extracting data from multiple studies, and exploring research networks.

Claude

Claude is a generative AI chatbot that can help with many aspects of academic work. It can:

1. Generate different outline options for your writing;
2. Explain complex concepts in different ways until you understand them;
3. Help you brainstorm research questions or approaches;
4. Assist with coding projects or data analysis; and
5. Translate content between languages.

Perfect for: Writing support, concept exploration, creative brainstorming, and organizing your ideas or research findings.

ResearchRabbit

ResearchRabbit is like “Spotify for academic papers.” Instead of keyword searching, it works by:

1. Learning from papers you select as interesting;
2. Showing networks of related papers and researchers;
3. Creating visual maps of how papers connect to each other; and
4. Sending updates when new related research is published.

Perfect for: Discovering unexpected connections between papers, finding influential researchers in your field, and keeping track of emerging research.

Before adopting any new Gen AI tool or research technology, consider:

1. Usability: Is the tool intuitive and accessible? Does it support your existing workflows and work with your preferred devices?
2. Privacy & Data: Who owns the content you create? Does the tool store your data? How is your information protected?
3. Company Values: Does the company’s approach to AI development align with your own values and ethical standards?
4. Support Resources: Are there tutorials, help documents, or customer service options if you encounter problems?
5. Compatibility: Does the tool work with other campus technology and resources you regularly use?

Remember that no tool is perfect, and the best tool today may disappear entirely next year. Furthermore, high quality performance in one aspect—such as compatibility—may result in poor performance in another. Your prioritization of these criteria may change based on the kind of work you’re doing and people you collaborate with. Choose the tool that best fits your particular needs, and use reviews from colleagues and experts to help you navigate eventual updates.

Although these tools claim to be able to discover sources, they do not in fact have access to all the sources library databases do. As such, if you choose to use Gen AI tools for literature discovery, it should be in supplement to your library database searching.

SciSpace

5 Tips for SciSpace

1. Expect Free Plan Limitations: The free plan doesn't allow file exports or full table copying. Work around this by copying one column or row at a time to capture the information you need.
2. Leverage the "Methods Used" Columns: Even when not analyzing research studies aka empirical papers, the "Methods Used" column is valuable for identifying theories, frameworks, and less common methodologies like reflection or reflexivity in your sources.
3. Add Citations Manually: SciSpace can't generate citations for uploaded PDFs due to limited metadata access. When exporting to a spreadsheet, create a new column and paste citations from your citation management software.
4. Use Section Summaries: The Summary feature, available in the Files column, creates helpful bullet-point summaries of each article section, maintaining the original headings in an outline format to help you quickly identify relevant content.
5. Choose the Right Question Format: Chat with individual PDFs or entire collections for quick 5-7 bullet point answers to simple questions. For more comprehensive responses, use "Ask a question / Get insights for questions from your files" search bar to get longer, mini-paper formatted insights that are approximately twice the length of Chat responses.

ResearchRabbit

5 Tips for ResearchRabbit

1. Academic Articles Only: ResearchRabbit works exclusively with scholarly journal articles. If you upload other source types (like blog posts or videos), you'll get an error code in the Selection panel. Simply delete these directly in ResearchRabbit without affecting your Zotero library.
2. Enable Abstracts: Always select the "Abstracts" box to see brief descriptions of each article. ResearchRabbit defaults to the "Comments" box, but abstracts provide much more valuable context about each paper's content.
3. Use Filters Strategically: The Filter bar is your friend! Refine your results with relevant keywords (like "slow" when researching slow technology) to focus on exactly what you need.
4. Sort by Citations: When exploring results, sorting by citation count reveals the most influential papers in your field. This is especially helpful for identifying landmark studies that new researchers should definitely read.
5. Export Your Findings: Save your work by exporting directly from ResearchRabbit. You can save visualizations as PNG images and export paper lists in BibTeX, RIS, or CSV formats for your reference management system.