Top AI Tools for Literature Review 

As researchers, one of the most important steps in conducting a comprehensive study is to perform a literature review. Some of the common challenges researchers face include the overwhelming volume of literature, difficulty in identifying relevant studies, synthesizing findings, and keeping up with the latest research. Fortunately, AI tools for literature reviews are helping researchers overcome these challenges by providing efficient and effective ways to search, filter, and analyze literature.  

In this blog post, we’ll explore some of the top AI tools for literature review and how they can help streamline the research process.  

Top five AI tools for literature review 

Conducting literature review is a long and arduous task where researchers have to closely go through vast information sources. However, with these five AI literature review tools, sifting large volumes of information easy.  

R Discovery 

R Discovery is one of the largest scholarly content repositories allowing you access to 250M+ research papers. R Discovery accelerates your research discovery journey, with latest and relevant content in your area of interest. Below are a few benefits of R Discovery tailored to students and researchers to enhance their research finding and reading experience:  

1. Personalized Research Reading Feeds – R Discovery curates an academic reading library based on the user’s interests. It provides personalized reading recommendations with daily alerts on top papers, ensuring that users are always updated with the latest and most relevant research in their fields.
2. Multiple reading lists – You can create and manage separate reading lists for different literature reviews you’re conducting, keeping your research organized.
3. Multilingual & Full-Text Audio Features – R Discovery offers audio versions of research abstracts or full-text articles in more than 30+ languages. This feature is particularly beneficial for non-native English speakers, allowing them to listen to or read research papers in their preferred language, thus enhancing accessibility and comprehension 
4. Smart Research Alerts – The app sends targeted research alerts and notifications to users based on their reading habits and preferences. Users receive no more than three research paper notifications per day to avoid information overload. The notifications include curated lists of top research papers, updates from preferred journals, and alerts on full-text articles available for reading.  
5. Integration with Reference Managers – The platform offers auto-sync capabilities with reference managers like Zotero and Mendeley, ensuring that users’ libraries are up to date with the papers they save or remove 

Mendeley 

Mendeley is a comprehensive reference management software that serves as an essential tool for researchers, academics, and students engaged in literature review and research management. Founded in 2007 by PhD students and acquired by Elsevier in 2013, Mendeley has evolved into a multifaceted platform that facilitates the organization, sharing, and discovery of research papers.   

Below are the detailed features of this AI tool for literature reviews: 

1. Reference Management – Mendeley allows users to store, organize, and search all their references from a single library. This feature simplifies the process of managing a vast amount of literature, making it easier to access and cite these references in future research.
2. Viewing and Annotation – Users can open PDFs directly within Mendeley’s PDF viewer, where they can add highlights and notes to the document. These annotations are stored in the user’s Mendeley account, and a new PDF file containing all annotations can be exported, facilitating collaborative review and personal notetaking.
3. Collaboration and Sharing – Mendeley supports collaboration through the creation of private groups, allowing users to share references and annotated documents with co-workers or research team members. This feature enhances the collaborative aspect of literature review by enabling shared access to key resources.
4. Literature Search and Discovery – While a dedicated literature search feature was removed from the latest version of Mendeley, the platform still offers capabilities for discovering relevant research. Users can import references from other sources and utilize Mendeley’s academic social network to find and share literature.
5. Citation and Bibliography Generation – Mendeley simplifies the citation process with Mendeley Cite, an add-in for Microsoft Word that automates the generation of citations and bibliographies in various citation styles. This feature significantly reduces the time and effort required to accurately cite sources during a literature review. 

Zotero 

Zotero is an open-access, easy-to-use reference management tool designed to assist with the collection, organization, citation, and sharing of research sources. It serves as a personal research assistant for students, researchers, and academics, helping them manage their literature review process efficiently.  

1. Reference Management – Zotero allows users to collect citations from various sources, including books, articles, media, webpages, and more. It provides a centralized library where users can organize these references into collections, tag them with keywords, and create saved searches that automatically populate with relevant materials.  
2. PDF Viewing and Annotation – Zotero has a built-in PDF viewer that enables users to highlight text, add sticky notes, and take snapshots of images or charts within PDFs. Annotations made in the PDF viewer are saved within Zotero and can be extracted as notes, making them fully searchable and easier to organize. 
3. Collaboration and Sharing – Zotero’s Groups feature allows users to collaborate with other Zotero users through shared libraries. Users can create private, public closed, or public open groups to work on collaborative research projects, distribute course materials, or build collaborative bibliographies 
4. Citation and Bibliography Generation – Zotero integrates with word processors like Microsoft Word, LibreOffice, and Google Docs to insert citations and bibliographies directly into documents. It supports over 10,000 citation styles, allowing users to format their work to match any style guide or publication 

Scholarcy 

Scholarcy is an innovative tool designed to assist researchers, students, and academics in managing the often-overwhelming task of conducting literature reviews. It leverages artificial intelligence to automate the extraction of key information from academic papers, creating structured summaries that make it easier to evaluate and understand research articles. Below are the detailed features of Scholarcy that are particularly useful for conducting literature reviews:  

1. Flashcard Summaries – Scholarcy generates interactive summary flashcards from research papers, book chapters, and other documents. These flashcards highlight key information, providing a compact and easy-to-read overview of the text. This feature is perfect for skim reading or getting to the key points of an article before reading it in full.  
2. Smart Highlighting and Analysis – The tool guides users to important sections of text and helps interpret them through smart highlighting and analysis. Scholarcy identifies factual statements and findings, highlighting them in different colors (blue for factual statements and orange for findings) to facilitate quick understanding of the content.  
3. Access to Full Text and Cited Papers – Scholarcy provides convenient access to the full text of articles and cited papers. It uses icons to link directly to the full text and to services like Libkey, which provides access via institutional subscriptions. Additionally, clicking on the Scholarcy icon shows the key findings from cited articles, offering a quick overview of the citation context.
4. Literature Discovery and Screening – Scholarcy aids in the discovery and screening of new literature. It can source, screen, and store academic literature more efficiently than traditional methods. The Scholarcy browser extension provides a detailed Synopsis and Highlights for a more comprehensive screening than what an abstract alone can offer. This process can take as little as five minutes, allowing readers to absorb the underlying points of the literature quickly 
5. Reference Management Integration – Scholarcy allows for the export of flashcards to reference management software like Zotero. This integration enables users to see not only the reference of the article in their Zotero library but also the key highlights and structured summaries generated by Scholarcy.  

Unpaywall 

Offering open access to scholarly articles, Unpaywall is a free database built from over 50,000 publishers and repositories globally.  They also leverage open data sources like PubMed Central, DOAJ, Crossref, and DataCite. Major databases including Dimensions, Scopus, and Web of Science have incorporated Unpaywall. For users with Digital Object Identifiers (DOIs), Unpaywall provides various tools to find open access and full-text articles. Data access is available through REST API, R API Wrapper, the Simple Query Tool, or by downloading the entire dataset. Below are the features of this AI tool for literature review  

1. Simple Query – The Simple Query Tool offered by Unpaywall helps users to determine if there is an open access (OA) version of a list of articles they are interested in. It is particularly useful for users with a list of Digital Object Identifiers (DOIs) for articles and are seeking free, full-text versions of these articles are available through Unpaywall’s extensive database.
2. Browser Extension – The Unpaywall browser extension automatically searches for legally available, free versions of scholarly articles as you browse. When you come across a research article online, the extension checks Unpaywall’s database for an open access version. If such a version is available, a green tab appears on the side of your browser, which you can click to access the full text of the article directly. This feature is powered by an index of over 20 million free, legal full-text PDFs, making it a powerful ally in the quest for open access literature.  

There are many AI tools for literature review available for your assistance. However, the best tool for you depends on your specific needs. Do you prioritize comprehensive search and full-text access? Easy organization and citation management? Or perhaps AI-powered summaries to grasp key findings quickly?  

Evaluate the functionalities of each tool and choose the one that best complements your research workflow. With the right AI tool, your literature review can become a breeze.  

R Discovery is a literature search and research reading platform that accelerates your research discovery journey by keeping you updated on the latest, most relevant scholarly content. With 250M+ research articles sourced from trusted aggregators like CrossRef, Unpaywall, PubMed, PubMed Central, Open Alex and top publishing houses like Springer Nature, JAMA, IOP, Taylor & Francis, NEJM, BMJ, Karger, SAGE, Emerald Publishing and more, R Discovery puts a world of research at your fingertips. 

Try R Discovery Prime FREE for 1 week or upgrade at just US$72 a year to access premium features that let you listen to research on the go, read in your language, collaborate with peers, auto sync with reference managers, and much more. Choose a simpler, smarter way to find and read research – Download the app and start your free 7-day trial today!