LibGuides: How to Write a Literature Review: Tools to support the Lit Review

Overview

The tools listed below are companions (and not replacements) for writing a literature review. They help in a variety of ways from helping form the research question, find background information, similar articles and important citations to consider. For more information and support related to AI tools for research, please consult Using Generative AI for Library Research or the Library Guide on Artificial Intelligence.

Tools

Elicit ($$)
Elicit is an AI-powered research assistant designed to support the literature review process. It automates the process of searching, screening and extracting information from academic papers. It works on a credit system and there is limited functionality in the free version.
Semantic Scholar
Semantic Scholar is a free, AI-powered research tool designed to help researchers find and understand scientific literature. It uses AI to summarize a paper and provide key insights (see the TLDR summary below the article). It is primarily aimed at scientific literature and includes limited social sciences and arts and humanities topics.
ResearchRabbit
ResearchRabbit is a free citation mapping tool to help users discover new titles relevant to an original article. It utilizes AI to recommend relevant papers, authors, and topics based on user interests and citation patterns.
Connected Papers
Connected Papers is another citation mapping tool powered by AI. Enter an article DOI and through citation and co-author networks, ConnectedPapers will create a visual map to find new articles.
Inciteful
It offers related papers to essential articles and visually demonstrates the connections between various papers in the literature. This tool is particularly beneficial for multidisciplinary research.