Using AI in Academic Research

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Want to speed up your literature review or improve your writing process? Rapidly developing AI-powered tools can help. They can support your workflow, but remember to always verify your sources and ensure that the final interpretations remain your own work!

We would like to support your work and highlight several advanced, specialised scientific tools (free or paid) based on AI that students can use at various stages of their research:

 

 

Step I. Literature Search

SciSpace – search and understand papers with an AI research assistant Scite_ – provides the context for citations (how and why articles are cited and how they influence other research)
Elicit – helps locate relevant papers and compares findings across studies Semantic Scholar – AI-powered search with smart recommendations
Undermine – classifies articles according to specified criteria EBSCOhost – search suggestions and smart summaries as new features (AI Insights, Natural Language Search) on popular scholar platform
Consensus – shows where researchers agree or disagree on your topic Perplexity – data analysis and summaries

Step II. Literature Mapping – how the literature is linked

Research Rabbit – visualises connections between papers and authors Inciteful – explores author networks, journals, and related studies
Litmaps – maps research trends and helps identify gaps in the field Connected Papers – builds citation-based graphs of similar research

Step III. Reading and Taking Notes

SciSpace – automatically extracts the data from your uploaded PDFs LLM – publicly available applications based on large language models, like Chat GPT Canvas

Step IV. Writing and Editing

Paperpal – shortens and paraphrases the text, creates the structure of the work, and suggests further ideas SciSpace – stores notes and automatically formats manuscripts

This post was prepared on the basis of the online session ‘Artificial Intelligence (AI) in Scientific Research’ conducted by Razia Aliani and organised by the scientific publisher de Gruyter on 26 March 2025.

Responsible Use of AI at the College of Europe

However, it should be noted that despite the many helpful AI tools available for academic work, students at the College of Europe should familiarise themselves with the current regulations governing the use of artificial intelligence mechanisms in their studies and research.