When doing literature search and paper reading, the most fearful thing is not that there are not enough tools, but that the three things of finding papers, judging papers, and reading papers are mixed together. Elicit, Consensus, scite, and Perplexity have very different strengths. If you want to quickly build a literature pool and extract key information, you should prioritize Elicit; If you want to ask a research question in natural language first, and then look at the overview of academic answers, Consensus is more friendly; If you want to judge whether a paper has been supported, refuted, or just cited by subsequent research, scite is the most valuable; If you're still in the stage of figuring out the field, finding direction, and adding background, Perplexity is usually the fastest.
| tools | Core strengths | The most suitable person | Not for anyone |
|---|---|---|---|
| Elicit | Literature discovery, screening, and information extraction | Students and research assistants who need to build a research material sheet | People who just want to do daily web searches |
| Consensus | Use problem-driven research to check academic conclusions | First of all, people who want to know whether a certain proposition is generally supported by evidence | Those who need to do systematic review level screening |
| scite | See citation context and support/contrast relationships | People who want to judge the reliability and academic controversy of the paper | People who want to rely on one tool to do full-text reading |
| Perplexity | Quick review of papers across web pages | People who are new to a new topic and need to quickly fill in the background | Those who require strict academic screening and evidence grading |
If you are stuck in different stages now, the selection method is completely different
Just settled on the topic and still looking for direction: use Perplexity first. It is suitable for quickly figuring out what keywords, controversies, representatives, and entrance papers are on the topic, and can help you ask the question more like a research question.
If you already have a problem and want to start searching for literature systematically, use Elicit first. It's more like a research process tool, not just giving answers, but helping you pull relevant literature around a question and extract comparable information.
I want to know how the academic community generally answers a proposition:Consensus is lighter to play. For example, if you want to ask if an intervention is effective or if a certain method is common, it is a good idea to build intuition first.
If you are worried that you have caught an outdated or controversial paper, stop blindly searching and go directly to scite to see the citation context. Many people mistakenly think that the paper is stable when they see that the paper is highly cited; But what is really useful is to see how the follow-up research mentions it.
A more stable combination of usage
- Step 1: Quickly narrow down the research question with Perplexity or Consensus.
- Step 2: Organize candidate literature with Elicit to form your own reading pool.
- Step 3: Use scite to check the credibility and dispute of key papers.
Who is this type of tool least for? The least suitable for those who use them as a final conclusion generator. AI can help you find, classify, compare, and speed up reading, but it can't make research judgments for you. The really safe approach is to have different tools responsible for different stages, rather than relying on one toolkit to do everything.
