Start Your Literature Review Here! || Elicit AI Research Assistant Literature Review Tool Tutorial

In today’s video, I want to walk you through Elicit which is an AI research assistant. This assistant is a combination of a summarization tool like TLDR and something similar to Lateral. I find it incredibly cool, and I want to share it with you today.

This is the home page of Elicit. You do have to create an account initially to get started. However, it is completely free, and I haven't noticed any paid services at this time, which is quite unique compared to other similar tools.

Main Features of Elicit

The main task Elicit performs is a form of literature review where you can ask a research question. For example, one of the questions I searched for was, "How does ion mobility spectrometry separate steroid isomers?" This was a topic from my graduate school research.

Although Elicit claims to be more geared towards biomedical and related fields, I’ve found it to be more robust.

Upon searching, Elicit typically returns about seven relevant articles, similar to Google Scholar. It provides paper titles related to your research question. Initially, the search results can be a mix, but you can filter by keywords, ensuring relevancy.

Customizing Searches

For instance, with my search on ion mobility spectrometry and steroid isomers, I was able to filter the results to include only those papers containing the keyword "steroid" in their abstracts. Additionally, you can control the publication date to get the most recent studies.

Elicit delivers an abstract summary, allowing you to quickly skim through the information. From personal experience, the summaries were accurate representations of the paper contents. This makes Elicit particularly useful for learning about your field or starting a literature review.

Additional Features

You can sort papers by title, abstract summary, PDF availability, year, and citations. Although sorting by citations can reduce relevance, it remains a helpful feature.

Elicit offers functionalities akin to Lateral, allowing you to add metadata. This includes journal information, populations studied, interventions studied, and even detailed results. These features are handy, especially in biomedical and psychological studies.

For chemistry-related queries like mine, the detailed features worked surprisingly well, providing specific information like the type of ion mobility used.

Exporting Data

You can export your gathered data into a CSV file for further organization. The export includes titles, abstracts, authors, publication years, and more. Importing this CSV into tools like Notion or Zotero can streamline your literature review process.

Elicit’s Other Functions

Elicit offers a wide range of public tasks beyond literature reviews. You can brainstorm, reframe critical statements, and even identify variables in your hypothesis. For instance, if you struggle with finding dependent and independent variables, Elicit can identify these for you.

The main task remains the literature review, which I find the most useful. Elicit combines functionalities from Google Scholar, Research Rabbit, Lateral, AI, and possibly Scholarcy, into a single tool.

If you've never tried Elicit, I encourage you to give it a go. The link is provided below. Let me know your experience with it in the comments. For those interested in finding connections between papers, check out Research Rabbit with the provided tutorial link.

Conclusion

In conclusion, Elicit is a remarkable tool that can notably enhance the efficiency of your research. If this tutorial was helpful, please like it and subscribe for more research tips and tutorials.

Links:

Keywords

AI Research Assistant
Elicit
Literature Review Tool
Summarization Tool
Google Scholar
Ion Mobility Spectrometry
Steroid Isomers
Filtering Keywords
Exporting Data
Public Tasks
Research Rabbit
Notion
Zotero

FAQ

1. What is Elicit? Elicit is an AI research assistant that combines summarization and search functionalities to assist with literature reviews.

2. Is Elicit free to use? Yes, Elicit is completely free to use. At present, there are no paid services.

3. How accurate are the article summaries provided by Elicit? Based on personal experience, the summaries provided by Elicit are highly accurate and can effectively help in understanding the paper contents.

4. Can I filter search results in Elicit? Yes, you can filter results by keywords and publication dates to ensure relevance to your research question.

5. Is it possible to export data from Elicit? Yes, you can export your data as a CSV file, which includes titles, abstracts, authors, and more.

6. Apart from literature reviews, what other tasks can Elicit perform? Elicit offers various public tasks such as brainstorming, reframing critical statements, identifying variables in hypotheses, and more.

7. Can I sort search results by citations? Yes, you can sort search results by citations, although it may affect relevance.

8. How does Elicit compare to tools like Google Scholar and Lateral? Elicit combines features from Google Scholar, Lateral, Research Rabbit, and others, providing a comprehensive research assistance tool.