AI Tools for Researchers: Save Hours on Papers, Data & Writing
The AI tools our scientists use to find papers, read PDFs, analyse data and write faster, plus the rules we follow to use AI in research responsibly.
The AI Advances team
9/23/20267 min read
Our team works in research every day, in geoscience, plant biology, medical imaging, physics and education. AI has not replaced any of that work, but it has changed how quickly we can get through the slow parts: finding papers, reading them, cleaning data and polishing text.
Here are the seven places where AI saves us the most time, the tools we use for each, and the rules we follow so it never puts our research at risk.
1. Finding relevant papers faster
Keyword search misses papers that use different words for the same idea. AI research search engines understand the meaning of your question and point you to papers that answer it.
Elicit: ask a research question in plain English and get a table of relevant papers with key findings extracted. Free plan available.
Consensus: searches peer-reviewed literature and summarises what studies say about a question.
Semantic Scholar: a free academic search engine with one-line AI summaries of papers.
Tip: treat these as a starting point, not a complete literature review. Always open and read the original paper.
2. Mapping a new field
When you move into a new topic, the hard part is knowing which papers matter. Citation-mapping tools show you how papers connect, so you can spot the key studies and the most recent work.
ResearchRabbit and Connected Papers: start from one paper you trust and explore a visual map of related work.
3. Reading and questioning your own PDFs
Tools that answer questions only from the documents you upload are very useful for long reports, theses and stacks of papers, because every answer points back to your sources.
Gemini Notebook (formerly NotebookLM): upload papers or notes, ask questions and get answers with citations to the exact passages. It can also create audio overviews you can listen to on the go.
General assistants such as ChatGPT and Claude can also read uploaded PDFs, which is useful for summaries, method comparisons and explaining unfamiliar techniques.
4. Writing and fixing analysis code
For many researchers, the biggest time saver is help with R or Python. Describe your data and the analysis you want, and an AI assistant can draft the code, explain error messages and suggest a better plot.
Ask it to explain every step, so you understand the analysis you are running.
Always run the code yourself on your data and check the results make sense.
Never paste confidential, patient or unpublished data into a public AI tool unless your institution allows it.
5. Editing your writing
AI is excellent at making clear text clearer: fixing grammar, tightening long sentences and adjusting tone for a journal, a grant or a public audience. This is especially helpful if English is not your first language.
Use it as an editor, not an author. The ideas, interpretation and conclusions must be yours. Check your journal’s or funder’s policy on AI use: most allow language editing, many require you to disclose it, and none accept AI as an author.
6. Making figures and diagrams
Diagram tools with AI features can turn a written description of your workflow or experiment into a first draft figure that you then refine. We reviewed one of them in Websites for presenting data: EdrawMax.
7. Keeping up with new research
Set up alerts on Google Scholar or preprint servers for your key topics, then use an AI assistant to summarise the new papers each week so you can decide which ones to read in full. It turns an overwhelming feed into a manageable reading list.
Our rules for using AI in research
Verify every citation. AI tools can invent references that look real. Only cite papers you have opened yourself.
Protect your data. Check what a tool does with uploaded files before using it with sensitive or unpublished material.
Disclose your use in line with your journal, funder and institution.
Keep the thinking yours. AI can speed up the work around research; it cannot do the reasoning for you.
Looking for more tools? See our list of AI tools we actually use, or read about how AI is changing biology and the life sciences.
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