Overview
Here you will find a list of librarian picks of useful tools, resources, blogs, and more! Each entry will have a brief description, including advantages and limitations when present.
Note: These lists are not designed to be comprehensive and instead the most helpful resources our librarians have for you. Expect them to be added/edited every semester!
There are many tools now too specialized for academic research, especially supporting literature reviews. Make sure to analyze your outputs - verify and validate to ensure trust in the results as many are not quite fully mature yet.
VT Trials through February 12th: (details from VIVA available, including intro webinars)
- Consensus: powered by ChatGPT, this AI-powered search engine specializes in extracting and condensing scientific insights from peer-reviewed sources, VT email provides subscription access (feedback form)
- scite.ai: similar to Perplexity, but is designed for researchers, providing journal articles and more as sources (feedback form)
More academic AI tools:
- Connected Papers: visualization options based on keywords, title, DOI, etc. to explore literature, based on Semantic Scholar database, free and subscription options
- elicit.com: another academic-focused tool, can even upload papers to analyze, free and subscription options
- Google Notebook LLM: a tool for managing your research literature that is designed to not learn and keep your information private, free and subscription options
- Litmaps: designed to support literature reviews using citation networks to promote literature discovery and research gap identification plus automated alerts, includes research network visualization, very limited free starter and subscription options
- Perplexity.ai: works to give up to date information with sources from academic literature, news, websites and more, free and subscription options
- Research Rabbit: specializes in analyzing citations and helping users explore related publications, free and subscription options
- SciSpace (formerly typeset.io): designed to support reading research articles with connections to other papers, can search or ask a question with articles included to support answers, free and subscription options
- Undermind.ai: designed to be a personal research assistant for specific research topics, will walk you through asking a research question and provide curated results, free and subscription options
Coming soon: Web of Science's research assistant AI - see here clarivate.com/blog/beyond-discovery-ai-and-the-future-of-the-web-of-science/ for details.
Also of note that includes machine learning: Covidence - free for Virginia Tech users, designed for literature reviews, especially those in evidence synthesis, learns from your screening of papers as you use it.
Looking to just analyze and/or visualize literature? There are also many options outside of the above AI tools such as Biblioshiny (designed for non-coders too) or VOSviewer, which allow for more customization and detailed analysis.
- AI in Education by Teresa Hartman: collection of information by a information sciences professor in Nebraska, includes news, reports and more
- The A-Z of AI by BBC News: over 30 terms to know related to AI
- A Simple Guide to Help You Understand AI by BBC News: overview of AI and how it works with animations, featuring how AI reads image
- MIT Technology Review - Artificial Intelligence: aggregated news stories on AI, covering many different aspects of this technology
- How does ChatGPT really work? by the NY Times**: step-by-step overview of how models like ChatGPT are built and tested
- What makes AI chatbots go wrong? by the NY Times**: find out how AI can work oddly or even "hallucinate"
- We asked GPT-3 to write a paper about itself - then tried to get it published: poses ethical questions too about the process and includes considerations of citations
- Artificial Intelligence pages by major news sources:
- NY Times**: https://www.nytimes.com/spotlight/artificial-intelligence
- Associated Press: https://apnews.com/hub/artificial-intelligence
**See here for Virginia Tech's Library access to the NY Times: https://guides.lib.vt.edu/new_york_times
- Impact, Opportunity and Challenges of Generative AI (2023): report from India that covers many popular AI models plus provides an overview of the technology
- Tips and Trends - AI Developments and Resources for Academic Librarians (2024): although this is listed as being for librarians, it is a great list and overview for anyone in education with resources to learn and discover all about AI
- Speed Dating With Databases & Tools (2023): overview videos of ChatGPT, Google Bard, Perplexity.ai, scite.ai, elicit.org and Research Rabbit from engineering librarians nation-wide
- Project Cora - Understanding Algorithmic Bias (2022): workshop materials for academics on bias and discrimination that can be present in algorithms employed across different technologies
- Using Generative AI Tools In Engineering Education (2023): joint workshop by Andrew Katz (Virginia Tech) and Aditya Johri (George Mason), includes an overview of AI, tools and prompting
- Syllabi Policies for GenAI Tools: includes statements from the USA and world-wide institutions
- (More) Syllabi Policies - Collection: over 140 syllabi included in this blog-style resource
- Guides/Pages by other universities: these are some of our favorites, but there are many more...
- MIT: AI basics for anyone including an effective prompts guide, non-technical overview of how ChatGPT works and more
- University of Virginia: even has a Zotero group library with the sources featured in their guide
- UCLA: highlights ethical considerations, and they also have a self-paced Introduction to AI Chatbots
- FIU: very comprehensive in coverage, includes videos, tutorials and more for students through faculty
- University of Maryland: includes a link to access their Canvas module to add the material to a course
- University of Wisconsin-Madison: succinct overview, includes a video on how chatbots work by one of their computer science professors
- University of Sydney: covers assessment considerations for teachers
- Emsley, R. ChatGPT: these are not hallucinations – they’re fabrications and falsifications. Schizophr 9, 52 (2023). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41537-023-00379-4:
- Nature editorial covering one researcher's experience testing ChatGPT in their field
- Mitchell, M. How do we know how smart AI systems are?. Science 381, eadj5957 (2023). https://doi.org/10.1126/science.adj5957
- Overview by a National Academies expert, see NASEM's recent public lecture too on The Future of Artificial Intelligence
- Naddaf, M. ChatGPT generates fake data set to support scientific hypothesis. Nature 623, 895-896 (2023). https://doi.org/10.1038/d41586-023-03635-w:
- Highlights how data analysis with ChatGPT can generate outputs that are hard to recognize as artificial and produced the wrong conclusion upon human analysis
- Conroy, G. Scientists used ChatGPT to generate an entire paper from scratch – but is it any good? Nature 619, 443-444 (2023). https://doi.org/10.1038/d41586-023-02218-z:
- Nature journal news story covering where scientists had ChatGPT produce a research paper in less than an hour
- Hosseini, M., Rasmussen, L., and Resnik, D. Using AI to write scholarly publications. Accountability in Research (2023). https://doi.org/10.1080/08989621.2023.216853
- Discusses drafting AI authorship or not policies and rationale
Be sure to check out the new prompt library for help developing your inputs: promptlibrary.cdrs.lib.vt.edu
- (VT access) Microsoft Copilot (previously Bing Chat): designed for many tasks including generating media, understanding topics, creating task lists and more, free at Virginia Tech, approved only for low-risk data (see link for details on access)
- ChatGPT (includes DALL-E 3): probably the most well-known GenAI tool today and can handle everything from writing a bio to helping with code, but may give incorrect information (hallucinate) when asking about searching, free and subscription options
- Claude: another GenAI tool, although is designed around complex tasks like multi-lingual content and higher-order math, free and subscription options
- Google Gemini (formerly Bard): be sure to check their FAQs, similarly to ChatGPT, it can get things wrong sometimes, but can still be a powerful tool, free and subscription options for personal Google accounts only (in select countries)
And for a more comprehensive list see this from information science professionals, by Ithaka S+R:
(Plus check out There's an AI for That)