Using AI tools for your literature review

There are a proliferation of AI tools that can help you organise your life, work and study. This post focuses on academic or scholarly tools that have been developed to enhance the literature searching process, whether for independent research, an assignment or thesis. Bear in mind that these predominantly relate to finding journal/research papers, and not technical, business or trade sources such as standards, market research, industry reports or financial data. So if you are looking for these types of technical, business or trade information, use our specialist library databases. Library staff have published guidance on the tools available to support your studies, as well as key considerations when using AI. 

Using AI tools

See Figure 1 for the do’s and don’ts of using AI.

Always use AI as a tool, not an author.  Further guidance on these areas can be found in the AI and Generative AI section of the Library website. 

Examples of some AI research tools 

Research Rabbit – a free tool which maps out connected papers, allowing users to group research papers into shareable playlist-style collections for which the tool can then make recommendations.

• Free to access – just create an account 
• Quickly finds relevant papers from a single starting paper  
• Visual maps show connections between studies  
• Reveals research trends over time  
• Helps organise your sources  
• Allows collaboration with others 
• Keeps you up to date with alerts  
• Core data providers: Semantic Scholar, OpenAlex, Crossref 

 

SciSpace – a tool for exploring academic literature, offering chat-based interaction, summarisation, and insight generation. Can also support writing and research output development.  

• Free version with restricted number of answers, uploads and reviews  
• type a research question and receive a synthesised answer with citations. 
• add papers to your library and run AI extraction columns that compare methodologies, conclusions, and limitations  
• Chat with PDF function lets you interrogate individual documents in natural language, with citations 
• Can convert research papers into AI-narrated video summaries 
• Core data providers: Semantic Scholar, OpenAlex, Google Scholar 

 

Consensus – a tool that brings you a yes/no ‘consensus’ of the literature in your research area, or in response to a closed question. 

• Free version with limited ‘pro’ questions allowed 
• Ask a yes/no question or for research in a particular area 
• Summarise research with links to source articles  
• Create a dialogue about the research by asking follow-up questions 
• Can draft tables, diagrams and literature reviews 
• Integrate with ChatGPT, Claude 
• Has a ‘medical mode’ for medical research 
• Literature review support including search strategy using ‘deep search’ mode 

 

Keenious – a tool to help find literature, as well as get summaries of uploaded or selected articles, notes and an interactive chat.

• Free version with limit to questions  
• Upload an article, draft or notes to get a summary and find related content 
• Ask follow-up questions in chat 
• Doesn’t store uploaded files or train on your data making it a good option for copyright issues. 

For further AI research tools, see AI tools for research

If you decide to use one of these tools, remember to use them alongside the Library databases.  Only the Library databases have access to journal articles that are behind pay-walls.

And if you are undertaking a systematic literature review, these tools might help with preliminary research and idea generation, but should be used with care as they are often non-transparent and non-reproducible, making it difficult to demonstrate a rigorous, auditable methodology that meets systematic review standards.  We recommend you always check with your supervisor before using them.

Other useful links

• Referencing the use of Generative AI in your work (full advice) 
• Referencing the use of generative AI in your work (short version – blog post) 
• Generative AI guidance from the University
• Digital Skills Hub: Artificial Intelligence (AI)

Still got questions about using AI in your literature review?  Contact library@cranfield.ac.uk and we’ll be happy to help you.

 

Banner image by Brian Penny from Pixabay.