Research with Elcit
Overview
Elicit is an AI-powered research assistant designed to help students, educators, and researchers streamline academic tasks—especially literature reviews and evidence synthesis. It uses advanced language models to search, summarize, and extract data from over 125 million academic papers, making research faster and more efficient.
Key Features:
Natural language search:
Ask questions in plain English and get relevant academic papers.
Summarization:
Quickly understand the main findings of multiple papers.
Systematic reviews:
Automate the process of screening and synthesizing research.
Transparency:
Every AI-generated answer is backed by quotes from the original sources.
Privacy Note
This tool has not undergone a privacy impact assessment at TRU and should be used with caution. Ensure you understand how your data is collected and used before using this tool. Also, ensure the use of this tool abides by the expectations set by your instructor for your assignment.
Check Your Understanding
Compare Research Findings with Elicit
Objective: Learn to synthesize academic findings using AI tools.
Instructions:
- Go to https://elicit.com and create a free account.
- Search for a research question (e.g., “What are the effects of mindfulness on academic performance?”).
- Review the summaries of at least three papers.
- Create a table comparing:
- Main findings
- Methodologies
- Populations studied
- Reflect:
- What patterns or contradictions did you find?
- How did Elicit help you understand the topic faster?
Build a Mini Systematic Review
Instructions:
- Choose a topic you’re currently studying.
- Use Elicit to:
- Search for relevant papers.
- Extract key data (e.g., results, sample sizes, interventions).
- Organize the data into a table.
- Write a short summary of your findings.
- Share your mini review with your study group or instructor.
Objective: Practice evidence-based research using AI to automate and enhance your workflow.
