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AI and Information Literacy: AI for Research

Learn about the intersection of Artificial Intelligence (AI) and information literacy.

Introduction: AI for Research

This page highlights key generative-AI (GenAI) tools that help researchers find, analyze, evaluate, and summarize scholarly literature. The table below summarizes each tool's features, including its purpose, costs, data sources, and more so that you can see the differences at a glance. Our goal is to help you quickly identify which tools might support your research needs, while keeping their varying strengths and limitations in mind. 

GenAI Tools Comparison

  Consensus Elicit Perplexity Scite
Purpose/primary use Answers research or clinical questions from scholarly literature Evidence synthesis and literature review support.  Finds and summarizes information and cites sources. Marketed as a research tool for academics.  Analyzes how articles are cited.  
Cost, pricing tiers Free basic plan; Pro tiers start at ~ $9/month. Free for most features; optional team or enterprise plans.  Free basic plan; Pro accounts available starting at ~ $20/month. Free basic plan; Premium starts at ~ $10/month; institutional licenses.
Account Requirements Free account required; limited number of queries per day. Free account registration required.  Account registration is optional; free plan has daily query limits.  Free account required for basic use.
Data Sources Semantic Scholar, OpenAlex and web crawls. PubMed, Semantic Scholar, open-access PDFs. Real-time web search including academic repositories. Academic mode allows users to prioritize scholarly articles. Exact list of sources is not disclosed. Crossref, PubMed, preprints
Benefits Assigns relevance scores to papers to identify the most relevant.  Saves time screening/extracting and preparing tables.  Useful for summarizing literature and citing sources. Moderately easy to use. Helps verify claims; useful for literature mapping.
Exporting Options Copy citation and summaries to clipboard. Results can be saved in CSV or RIS format. CSV, RIS, BibTeX Exports PDF or Word documents. Other files types can be saved as text and converted. CSV, RIS, BibTeX; integrates with reference managers
Special Features Consensus meter shows overall agreement/disagreement in the literature. Extracts study characteristics, creates tables Real-time web search; easy to follow-up with questions. Classifies citations according to how a cited work is being used.
Accuracy/Reliability Links directly to supporting studies. Claims to use only peer-reviewed sources.  Pulls directly from papers and cites sources; shows extracted sentences.  As reliable as its web sources; cites each claim. Claims to provide full citation context; flags retracted papers.
Best Use Cases Summaries of the literature. Claims to be "an AI-native alternative to Google Scholar."  Assists with some steps during systematic review and meta-analysis. Quick background information searches, idea generation. Checking if a claim is supported or disputed in the literature. 

Information last verified September 15, 2025.