AI Tools for Academic Literature Research

Popular AI Chatbots, Searching for Information, & References: Basic Considerations

• Generative AI tools are affected by the information and data they have access to and the purpose(s) they have been optimized for.
  • When using a multipurpose tool like ChatGPT 5, because it has been trained on many types of data from the Internet, not just scholarly information sources, you may need to prompt it very specifically to get useful results.
  • In contrast, using an AI tool that has been designed to search for and retrieve information from open access research databases means you will avoid having to potentially sift through non-scholarly results (e.g. news web pages).
• Perplexity, and Google Gemini automatically offer links to sources that are relevant to the generated output. Meta AI does not include source information without specific prompting and then direct links to the sources may still be absent. When sources are provided, they may or may not be research-based, so you need to double check.

Try These GenAI Tools for Background Research

Note: In addition to responses to user prompts, these tools provide notes and/or links to source materials. You can ask for specific types of sources, and sometimes the results will align with those source types, but not always.

Deep Research Options

• Perplexity, OpenAI's ChatGPT, Claude.ai, Gemini, and others offer deep research, Search, or extended "thinking" options. 
• Generally, employing the deep research or extended thinking options can allow the model to review more sources before providing responses. 
• Remember, that unless they have brokered some type of publisher agreement, the AI chatbots do not pull from information sources that are behind paywalls, like many academic journals are. This is less of an issue with openly published research in the sciences, health, and other areas of federally funded grants.