Literature Review
30 Best Online Research Tools Essential For All Researchers
Discover the 30 best online research tools essential for all researchers. Explore top research tools to enhance your productivity and accuracy.
Aug 10, 2024
Finding reliable sources is a crucial part of writing a research paper. But as any student can tell you, the process can be overwhelming. You may encounter a lot of articles that all look the same, not to mention the pressure to find the most relevant materials to meet your assignment's scope and requirements. Fortunately, this guide will help you whittle down the process. You’ll learn about valuable literature search tools to help you write efficient papers and get excellent study material with AI.
One of the most influential research tools to help you narrow down your literature search is Otio's AI research and writing partner. This solution enables you to find and summarize academic sources relevant to your research topic so you can write your paper faster.
Table Of Contents
Why is Research Important
Research can help solve various health, engineering, and personal issues. For example, if you are experiencing a problem with your health, studies can help you understand what might be happening. If you’re looking for information online, you might find a reliable academic paper outlining your symptoms and suggesting possible solutions or treatments.
Research is Like a Workout for Your Brain
Research can be a complex process that challenges your thinking and imagination. It involves using your mental faculties to investigate an area of interest (like a theory) through logical processes such as inductive and deductive reasoning. It’s no wonder that research is often at the top of the list of activities that promote learning and cognitive development.
Research Expands Our Knowledge
Humans have always been curious. In astronomy, research has helped us learn more about our planet and the universe over time. Because of the vast nature of the universe’s components, constant research is fundamental for continuous knowledge. Another instance is climate change, where research is helping us understand it better and how to tackle it.
Research Creates Jobs
Research has played an essential role in creating jobs for a significant part of human history. Important breakthroughs in research often lead to the establishment of new industries and the creation of millions of jobs.
An example is the internet, which began as a research project and has since helped establish new sectors such as web design, programming, digital marketing, eCommerce, copywriting, and many others. Another good example is the aviation industry, which emerged after the efforts of pioneer aviators such as the Wright brothers.
Research Helps Gauge Public Opinion
Some forms of research, such as opinion polls, market research, and other surveys, gather helpful information. This information can help the researchers analyze and predict the population of interest (provided the sample is representative enough). Such predictions may only sometimes come to pass since human nature is dynamic rather than static.
Research Validates Existing Knowledge
The research breaks new ground and helps concretize, modify, or nullify existing knowledge. It is a good way of testing the real-life applicability of educational principles and theories. Such tests can modify existing theories or act as building blocks for new ones.
Which Tool is Best For Research?
Discovering Otio: The Solution to Research Overload
Researchers today face overwhelming amounts of content. Otio is designed to help you cut through the noise. With its one AI-native workspace, Otio enables you to gather, understand, and create research materials in one place.
Collect: Gather Information From Multiple Sources
Otio helps you assemble research materials from numerous sources. You can collect bookmarks, tweets, PDFs, articles, videos, and more. Instead of spending hours organizing your research materials, let Otio help you gather data efficiently so you can move on to more critical tasks.
Extract: Key Takeaways Without the Busywork
Once you’ve collected information, Otio helps you make sense of it. The app uses AI to generate notes on your sources, summarizing critical takeaways for you. You can even chat with Otio about individual links or entire collections to extract relevant details for your project. This helps you quickly get up to speed with your research without reading every word.
Create: Draft Your Paper or Essay Faster
Otio doesn’t just help you collect and understand research. The app also enables you to write papers and essays faster. You can create first drafts using the notes and summaries from your research materials. Instead of starting from scratch, let Otio help you kickstart your writing process.
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What Are The Tools Used In Research?
Data analysis tools, such as statistical software like SPSS, SAS, R, and Python, are crucial for making sense of collected data. Data visualization tools like Tableau, Power BI, and Excel can help researchers present their findings clearly and understandably.
Knowledge Management Tools Keep Researchers Organized
Knowledge management tools, including literature databases like PubMed, Scopus, and Web of Science, are essential for staying up-to-date with the latest research. Collaboration platforms like Google Drive, Microsoft Teams, and Slack facilitate teamwork and knowledge sharing among researchers.
Other Research Tools to Consider
Other valuable tools for researchers include reference management software, research management software, data mining tools, and ethical research tools.
Choosing the Right Research Tools for Your Study
The choice of research tools depends on the study's specific research objectives, methods, and requirements. By selecting appropriate tools, researchers can enhance the efficiency and effectiveness of their work.
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15 Best Research Tools For Efficient Academic Research
1. Otio: Revolutionizing Research Workflows
Otio is designed to help researchers streamline their workflows and manage research materials and content overload. With Otio, you can collect data from many sources, including bookmarks, PDFs, articles, YouTube videos, tweets, and more. It helps you extract key takeaways with detailed AI-generated notes and source-grounded Q&A chat to help you understand what you read. Finally, Otio can help you organize your research and create draft outputs to help you write research papers and essays faster.
2. Bit AI: Collaborative Document Editing
Bit AI is an AI program designed to help teams collaborate on documents, wikis, and knowledge bases. It goes beyond just text and images, allowing users to create interactive documents containing videos, cloud files, and audio. It works much like Google Drive, allowing for real-time collaboration on documents. Multiple people can work on documents simultaneously and chat with one another within the interface.
Pros
Built-In AI Writing Assistant: AI Genius is the perfect tool for generating documents, wikis, and other information based on a text prompt
Multiple Use Cases: Bit AI is excellent for researchers and marketers, but also for product management, startups, and Human Resources due to its document development features
Collaboration Tools: Bit.ai allows multiple users to simultaneously collaborate on documents, notes, wikis, and other content in real-time
Wide Range of Integrations: Bit AI integrates with a large number of third-party tools, including YouTube, Google Sheets, Figma, GitHub, and more
Cons
Limited Customizations: Bit AI would be better if it had text formatting or options to customize the appearance of documents, such as matching company branding
3. Semantic Scholar: Smart Academic Literature Search
Semantic Scholar is one of the top AI tools for research, and it is widely used by students pursuing computer science, biomedical science, and neuroscience. It uses natural language processing to analyze academic papers and find relevant literature. Besides, Semantic Scholar offers detailed overviews of research topics and can identify the most critical parts of a paper, making it a valuable AI tool for research.
Pros
Refine search results for greater efficiency and relevance.
Continuously improves the tool based on user feedback and provides a personalized user experience.
Cons
The summary has accuracy issues and AI-generated citations.
It only gives you access to the full text of some papers.
4. Scite: Smart Citations for Academic Research
Scite is one of the most popular AI-powered academic research tools that improve academic research in one go. Its own natural language processing and machine learning help users do better research on scholarly articles and analyze citations.
Moreover, Scite allows researchers like you to assess the dependability of references in any particular context. It helps in evaluating the quality and impact of the research. It also provides better visualizations and metrics to understand the citation landscape of a specific paper or topic. If you have missed out on using this tool, try it today.
Pros
Innovative Citations: Scite analyzes how an article is referenced in other research. It can tell if the citing article supports, contradicts, or simply mentions the original article.
Citation Context: Scite shows you how different sections of an article are being cited in other research, which helps you to understand how the original research is being used and interpreted by other researchers
Citation Reports: Generates reports that show you citation patterns and trends, which helps users to identify articles and authors in a related field
Large Dataset: Scite was training on more than 187 million articles, books, preprints, and other datasets, making it a solid choice for researchers
Cons
Not All Articles Cited Are Accessible: Although Scite offers full-text access for most articles cited, some publishers have not.
6. Google Scholar: Search Engine for Academic Literature
Google Scholar is a beacon for academic research, offering a straightforward platform akin to its browser counterpart. It’s a treasure trove of recent articles, research papers, and scholarly literature, simplifying the quest for up-to-date information with easy-to-identify tags for quick access.
Pros
Use natural language searching to find academic and literature topics.
Allow your search for gray literature for systematic reviews.
Cons
The content you find will not be reviewed thoroughly, and there are concerns about source credibility.
You should have shown significant literature topics.
7. PDFGear Copilot: ChatGPT for PDF Research
PDFgear Copilot is an AI-powered assistant that extracts and summarizes information in PDF documents. It utilizes OpenAI’s ChatGPT language model to help users locate important information in documents while conducting research. It lets you chat with a document, ask questions about its contents, and quickly summarize entire PDFs.
Pros
Interact With PDFs: Summarize, analyze, and interact with PDF content through natural language processing.
ChatGPT Integration: Find critical information and get answers by using built-in ChatGPT functionality
Streamline PDF Workflows: Complete tasks, such as converting, printing, and saving PDFs with natural language processing
Support for Multiple Languages: PDFgear Copilot supports over 100 languages, making it accessible to a large number of users
Cons
No Dark Mode: PDFgear doesn’t come with an option to switch to dark mode, potentially alienating those who prefer it
8. Consensus: AI Research for Scientific Literature
Consensus is a research tool that gathers information from published material and peer-reviewed articles. It is helpful for those who want to understand scientific subjects thoroughly by scanning for trustworthy and accurate research articles. This tool is handy for students and researchers in STEM and business fields.
Pros
Natural language processing is used to analyze data and verify the source.
Generate a summary of research queries and help get information for the early research stage.
Cons
It is favored only for STEM and business, not the humanities and fine arts.
Not suitable for rigorous and reproducible research works.
9. Trinka: Academic Writing Improvement Tool
It is one of the most commonly used AI tools for scholars and students. It helps with grammar and language correction for academic and technical writing. It has 3000+ grammar checks and tone and style enhancements, which help scholars write better theses and projects without errors.
Trinka enables you to document scientific findings and allows you to have a more technical tone and style without any difficulty. Therefore, Trinka is the most promising tool for academic research, as it helps better document research papers and white papers.
Pros
Save time in checking grammar while doing academic writing.
Let you check grammar and correct spelling and offer context suggestions based on your writing style.
Cons
The response time of the tool could be faster, which would cause a hindrance to quick feedback needs.
It may be challenging to understand the technical jargon.
10. Connected Papers: Visualize Academic Paper Connections
Connected Papers is an innovative research tool that helps scientists and scholars efficiently explore relevant literature by providing a visual, similarity-based mapping of related academic papers. It uses circles to represent different papers. The size of the circle corresponds to the frequency of citations by other researchers.
Papers that closely resemble the original paper you provided are positioned closer together and connected by lines. The thickness of the line indicates the strength of the relationship between the documents. By following the connections between papers, you can use Connected Papers to explore new research areas within your field.
Pros
Similarity Graphs: Connected Papers produces a visual graph displaying related papers. However, unlike a traditional citation tree, it emphasizes semantic similarity, meaning that documents with shared citations and references are more connected.
Prior and Derivative Works: Connected Papers identifies influential prior works that have shaped the current research landscape. Additionally, it can reveal derivative works that build upon the original paper’s ideas.
Multi-Origin Graphs: You can enter multiple papers as a starting point so that CP can create a combined graph highlighting the relationships between them
Save Papers and Graphs: Save papers and graphs to revisit and explore topics further.
Cons
Limited Citation View: Unlike citation trees, Connected Papers doesn’t directly show how papers cite each other
11. Mendeley: Research Management and Collaboration Tool
Mendeley is a user-friendly AI tool for organizing, sharing, and citing your research papers in one place. It also helps you easily manage PDFs, create better bibliographies, and annotate documents.
Moreover, this tool enables researchers to collaborate on projects and discover relevant articles based on their interests. Mendeley’s powerful features and integration into academic workflows make it a practical tool. It helps streamline your management and enhance collaboration within the scholarly community.
Pros
Offer citation styles for journals and boost citation efficiency.
Organize and share references for collaborative research.
Cons
Do not make PDF annotations as expected.
Users commonly face server downtime and syncing errors.
12. Litmaps: Literature Mapping Tool
Litmaps is a literature mapping tool that helps researchers discover new and relevant research papers, visualize the relationships between papers, and share their research. It works by using connectedness theory, which allows researchers to quickly scan Litmap’s network of academic papers around the documents they know, discovering vital related papers they may not know about. Litmaps can also generate reading lists and notify users when relevant newspapers are published, making it easier to stay up-to-date on the latest research.
Pros
Search Academic Papers: Litmaps allows you to search a vast database of over 260 million academic papers to find relevant articles.
Mind Mapping: Litmaps lets you visualize your research by creating a map of interconnected articles and annotating them for a better understanding
Explore Research From Various Angles: Dynamic Exploration allows users to explore research from different angles by rearranging how papers are positioned on the map.
Collaboration Features: The platform allows you to share your research maps with colleagues, students, or advisors to facilitate collaboration
Cons
Limited Free Plan: Some features, like unlimited searches, are only available on paid plans.
13. Scholarcy: Automated Research Summarizer
Scholarly is an AI tool that improves academic research by automating the process of reading, summarizing, and extracting information. It can help you recognize figures, tables, and references from articles and grasp the main concepts. Additionally, this tool has citation extraction features that allow users to organize and cite the sources used in the research. It also provides the literature review process, which enables you to save valuable time and effort.
Pros
Summarize the topics of research papers to save time and effort.
Offer links to the cited resources to access the research material.
Cons
The essay summary may need to be more precise, which may result in plagiarism.
The AI-generated summary will only cover some of the critical points of the research paper.
14. Jenni: AI Research and Writing Assistant
The following AI tool for research on our list is Jenni. It’s an AI-powered writing assistant designed to help students and researchers with academic writing tasks. It uses machine learning and natural language processing (NLP) to provide content suggestions, writing feedback, and research assistance. It’s beneficial for writing essays, research papers, literature reviews, and more. Jenni can also help with citations and references and check for plagiarism.
Pros
AskJenni: Use an AI research assistant that can help answer research questions and provide document-related clarifications
Citation and Reference Assistance: Jenni can properly format citations and references in styles like APA, MLA, and Chicago
AI Commands: Jenni can perform tasks like paraphrasing, rewriting, and simplifying existing text
AI Autocompletion: Jenni can suggest and complete sentences to help you write faster
Cons
Limited Content Types: Compared to other AI writing tools like Copy.ai and Jasper, Jenni.ai only offers a limited number of content types such as blogs, essays, emails, and free-flow writing
15. Knewton: AI-Driven Personalized Learning
Using artificial intelligence and machine learning algorithms, Knewton allows users to deliver personalized educational content. You can tailor the tool for the educational content according to individual needs and learning styles. This is a one-stop and easy-to-use tool in the academic learning phase. Knewton also allows users to analyze student performance data, strengths, weaknesses, and progress. By leveraging the benefits of AI, Knewton seeks to improve engagement, making it one of the best online learning platforms.
Pros
Provide you with a personalized learning experience with the help of adaptive learning.
Offer student interaction to keep cheating at bay by offering different questions to each student.
Cons
The problems in the tool are generic and need to align with the curriculum.
Offer feedback and flexible assessment options that impact students’ learning.
Benefits of Using Online Research Tools
Research Tools Speed Up Information Collection
The information needed to conduct online market research is fixed in one place. The World Wide Web. All one needs to access it is a personal computer and an internet connection. This eliminates the need to travel around seeking information, saving quality time.
Research Tools Are Affordable
This benefit covers conducting research online with the above-listed tools and using online survey software because creating a questionnaire for online distribution costs nothing. With a Microsoft Word application, a business organization can easily make the needed materials for distribution, while most survey software comes free or at very affordable update prices.
Research Tools Improve Accuracy
The ability to receive information directly from your audience eliminates the tendency to make errors when conducting research. Using online research tools such as questionnaires and customer reviews provides market research with the exact information or data it needs directly from the “horses' mouth.”
Research Tools Encourage Honesty
A survey conducted for market researchers showed that the average marketer believes customers are more upfront and honest when filling out a survey form online. This is because the computer acts as a third party, thereby screening the customer from seeing the reaction on an interviewer’s face when they have unpleasant things to say.
Supercharge Your Researching Ability With Otio — Try Otio for Free Today
Knowledge workers, researchers, and students today suffer from content overload. The internet is flooded with research papers, articles, blogs, YouTube videos, podcasts, and tweets. Today, finding relevant information is easy. But getting through all this content to produce a research paper or essay is overwhelming. And what’s worse, the problem is only going to get worse. Otio solves this problem by providing researchers with one AI-native workspace.
Let Otio be your AI research and writing partner — try Otio for free today!
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