Paper Pilot

Updated: August 2025

Research Resources

Explore — find and map the right papers

  • Elicit — AI assistant for lit review; surfaces papers, extracts key data into quick evidence tables.
  • Consensus — Ask a research question in plain English; returns summarized answers with citations.
  • Perplexity — Research-oriented web answers with citations; great for scoping and quick fact-finding.
  • Semantic Scholar — Smart academic search with one-sentence paper takeaways and citation context.
  • Google Scholar — Broad academic search; quick coverage and citation trails.
  • ResearchRabbit — Visualize literature networks; discover related work via citation maps.
  • Connected Papers — Graph of papers similar to your seed; spot clusters and influential work fast.
  • Litmaps — Interactive citation maps and alerts to track topics over time.
  • OpenAlex — Open catalog of papers, authors, and venues; great metadata and IDs.
  • scite — See how a paper is cited: supporting, disputing, or mentioning.
  • R Discovery — Personalized feed of new papers; mobile-friendly reading.
  • Inciteful — Explore citation graphs; find bridge papers between topics.
  • Open Knowledge Maps — Topic maps that cluster top papers by sub-area.
  • The Lens — Patent + scholarly search with analytics for institutions and authors.
  • Dimensions — Large scholarly database with citations, grants, and trends.
  • BASE — Multi-disciplinary academic search from Bielefeld University.
  • PubMed — Biomedical literature (MEDLINE and more) with powerful filters.
  • arXiv — Preprints in CS, math, physics, and beyond.
  • bioRxiv — Life sciences preprints; early look at emerging results.
  • medRxiv — Health/clinical preprints; non-peer-reviewed — read accordingly.
  • CORE — Aggregates open access research outputs from repositories worldwide.
  • DOAJ — Directory of Open Access Journals; browse OA journals and articles.

Understand & Read — summarize, chat with, and digest papers

  • Unriddle — Upload PDFs; get highlights, summaries, and linked concepts across your library.
  • NotebookLM (Google) — Upload sources (PDFs, Docs, transcripts); ask questions; get cited answers.
  • Otio — Organize into a literature matrix, extract key points, prep structured notes for writing.
  • Scholarcy — Turns papers into flashcard-like summaries with key points, tables, and refs.
  • explainpaper — Paste a dense paragraph; get a plain-language explanation.
  • ChatPDF — Chat with any PDF; ask targeted questions and jump to the right page.
  • Humata — Ask questions across long PDFs and get concise answers with context.
  • Readwise Reader — Save web + papers, highlight, and let AI summarize/query your library.
  • Paper Digest — AI-generated summaries of research articles for quick skimming.
  • Perplexity — Cited answers across the web; useful for scoping a topic before deep reads.
  • PaperQA2 — Agentic Q&A over papers (from Future House platform); sources included.

Write — draft, edit, cite, and polish

  • Jenni AI — Academic-focused drafting with inline AI suggestions and citations.
  • Paperpal — Drafting + editing tuned for research; find and insert citations as you write.
  • Writefull — Academic grammar/style feedback trained on scholarly text.
  • Trinka — Formal academic English checker for technical manuscripts.
  • Grammarly — Grammar, clarity, and tone; good final polish across apps.
  • QuillBot — Paraphrasing and summarizing to vary phrasing and tighten prose.
  • Overleaf — Collaborative LaTeX with templates and reviewer-friendly outputs.
  • Zotero — Free reference manager with web clipper and built-in PDF reader.
  • ZoteroBib — One-off bibliographies in many styles; no account needed.
  • Mendeley — Reference manager with PDF annotation and collaboration.
  • EndNote — Robust citation manager widely used in institutions.
  • Paperpile — Clean reference manager built for Google Docs/Drive workflows.
  • Citationsy — Fast bibliographies; paste DOIs/URLs and export in common styles.
  • RefWorks — Cloud reference management (often available via university access).

All-in-One — end-to-end research workspaces

  • SciSpace — Search hundreds of millions of papers, chat with PDFs, and draft with citations in one place.
  • ReadCube Papers — Library, discovery, annotation, and citation across devices.
  • Sciwheel — Collect, annotate, collaborate, and write (F1000Workspace heritage).
  • Rayyan — Manage screening/decisions for systematic reviews with collaboration.
  • Covidence — PRISMA-friendly screening and data extraction for systematic reviews.
  • EPPI-Reviewer — Rigorous systematic review platform from UCL’s EPPI-Centre.
  • Iris.ai — AI literature review and domain mapping; knowledge extraction tools.
  • Future House — Nonprofit AI-for-science lab; agentic systems + platform (PaperQA2) for scientific workflows.

Note — Inclusion here isn’t endorsement. Some tools are freemium/paid. Handle sensitive data carefully, and always read/verify original sources before citing.