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AI in Research

This guide offers advice on AI-powered tools and functionality created for or used in academic research.

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Digital Scholarship Services

DSS fosters the use of digital content and transformative technology in scholarship and academic activities. We provide consultative and technical support for a wide range of tools and platforms. We work with the campus community to publish, promote, and preserve the digital products of research through consultation, teaching, and systems administration. Our areas of expertise include data curation, research data management, computational research, digital humanities, and scholarly communication.

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Note

Use of AI is fraught with complications involving accuracy, bias, academic integrity, and intellectual property and may not be appropriate in all academic settings. This guide is meant more for academic researchers looking to utilize AI tools in their research.

Students are strongly advised to consult with their instructor before using AI-generated content in their research or coursework. For information on Generative AI take a look at the Generative AI and Information Literacy guide.

Intro

There are many AI tools coming out, this is just an example list of the types of tools available. These lists are a mix of free, trials, and premium. We do not endorse the use of one tool over another, instead researchers should evaluate tools to see if they fit their needs.

Searching with AI Tools

Important notes:

  • Most tools search one or more open indexes of scholarly literature such as Semantic Scholar, CrossRef, OpenAlex, and others. Some of these sources have >200 million records and others are more restricted. None of the sources are as comprehensive as Google Scholar, which is estimated to have almost 400 million records. Check the tool's help documentation for information about its sources. See this Wikipedia page for a sortable list of the largest literature indexes, and the SearchSmart website for a handy disciplinary comparison tool.
  • Access to citation/abstract metadata and the full-text of open access articles still omits a vast amount of scholarly research contained in full-text paywalled articles. When crafting answers and summaries, tools without access to full-text will base their answers on abstracts.
  • These tools can suffer from poor metadata in the indexed of scholarly literature they search, which can lead to less than comprehensive search results.
  • Tools with a connection to scholarly literature do not tend to make up fake citations, but they may cite a real reference in a way that misrepresents its contents.
  • None of these tools are appropriate for systematic review searching, which requires explicit search strategies that are documented and reproducible. For recommendations and help with systematic review searching, and to get in touch with the UC Irvine Libraries' Evidence Synthesis Service.

AI "research assistants"

Other Tools