InfoGuides: Generative Artificial Intelligence (AI): AI Tools for Literature Reviews

Popular AI Research Tools

What tools can I use for my literature review?

Explore the future of research with our curated list of popular AI-powered tools designed to enhance literature discovery, streamline review processes, and simplify citation analysis. While Mason Libraries do not endorse any single platform, we offer these resources to empower you to choose the ones that best support your academic journey. These tools use artificial intelligence to generate paper summaries, visualize research networks, and extract data—features that can complement, but not replace human oversight.

Need expert support? Reach out to your subject librarian for personalized assistance in navigating your field’s research landscape.

Consensus
Consensus uses cutting-edge AI to extract direct answers from peer-reviewed research, focusing on scientific consensus rather than general web content. It provides a helpful “Consensus Meter” to show how much agreement exists on a specific question across published studies. This makes it an excellent tool for writing evidence-based papers and understanding where scientific confidence lies on a given topic.
Elicit
Elicit is designed to streamline literature reviews and evidence synthesis using AI-powered tools that summarize papers and extract data into clear, customizable tables. It searches millions of academic sources and allows you to upload PDFs for analysis, helping you quickly locate key information. With features like research notebooks and question-based search, Elicit is a powerhouse for students working on systematic reviews or thesis-level projects.
Research Rabbit
ResearchRabbit is a dynamic research discovery platform that helps you visualize connections between papers, authors, and research topics. Starting from a small group of papers, you can expand outward to uncover related works and trace academic lineages over time. Its intuitive visual maps and integration with tools like Zotero make it easy to organize your sources and explore the literature like a detective chasing clues.
Undermind
Undermind acts as an advanced AI assistant that reads thousands of scientific papers to generate thoughtful, citation-backed summaries on complex topics. It continuously adapts its search strategy as it uncovers new leads, following citation chains to find the most relevant and insightful material. Whether you're exploring cutting-edge research or tracing foundational studies, Undermind gives you clarity while staying transparent with source links.
Scite
Scite redefines how you interpret citations by showing not just where a paper is cited, but how it’s cited—supported, contradicted, or merely mentioned. Its Smart Citations provide context for each reference, helping you assess the strength and reliability of scholarly claims. Scite’s AI assistant can also answer research questions with sourced evidence, giving you confidence when crafting arguments and backing up your points.
Semantic Scholar
Semantic Scholar is a free, AI-powered academic search engine developed by the Allen Institute for AI, designed to help researchers discover and understand scientific literature more efficiently. It offers features like TLDR summaries (short, AI-generated overviews of papers), citation analysis to highlight influential studies, and personalized research feeds that recommend new papers based on your interests. With a database of over 200 million papers, customizable folders, and tools like “Ask This Paper” for natural language queries, Semantic Scholar makes it easier to find, organize, and digest scholarly content across disciplines.
Generative AI Product Tracker
The Generative AI Product Tracker lists generative AI products that are either marketed specifically towards postsecondary faculty or students or appear to be actively in use by postsecondary faculty or students for teaching, learning, or research activities. The Tracker is a living document, which we update regularly as new products enter the market or new information about existing products becomes available.

GenAI Tools for Literature Review

This graphic, titled 'GenAI Tools for Literature Reviews', is licensed under Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0) and was created by Aster Zhao at the Hong Kong University of Science and Technology Library. You can find the original work at Emerging AI Tools for Literature Review: Overview.

Hong Kong University of Science and Technology Library - Gen AI Tools for Literature Review