5 Hottest FREE AI Tools for Research That Are ACTUALLY Useful!

Dr Amina Yonis
5 Sept 202311:22

TLDRThe video transcript discusses the use of five free AI tools that are beneficial for researchers and academics. Unriddle is highlighted for its ability to allow users to upload research papers and ask questions, providing tailored questions and explanations. Paperpal is praised for enhancing writing quality through its web app and Word add-in, offering features like language checks, synonyms, rewriting, and text trimming. Chat GPT is mentioned for improving titles by suggesting alternatives. Illicit is another tool that helps in understanding research papers by providing summaries and comparisons. Lastly, Connected Papers is introduced as a platform for creating a visual map of related academic papers, useful for identifying connections and related research. The video emphasizes ethical use of AI in academia, encouraging understanding and rewriting in one's own words rather than copying and pasting.

Takeaways

  • ๐Ÿ” **Unriddle**: An AI tool that allows you to upload a research paper and ask it questions, providing tailored responses to help understand the content better.
  • ๐Ÿ“ **Note-taking**: While using Unriddle, you can take notes and ask AI to summarize or improve the writing of the paper.
  • ๐Ÿ“š **Paperpal**: A platform to enhance writing quality, offering features like language correction, synonym suggestions, text rewriting, and trimming to improve conciseness.
  • โœ๏ธ **Writing Assistance**: Paperpal helps in identifying redundancy, rephrasing, and punctuation errors, and provides options to correct them.
  • ๐Ÿ“ˆ **Title Improvement**: Using AI like **Chat GPT** to generate and improve research paper titles, offering multiple options to choose from.
  • ๐Ÿ”— **Illicit**: A tool for uploading and comparing multiple research papers, providing abstracts, summaries, and critical analysis to assess paper trustworthiness.
  • ๐Ÿ“Š **Connected Papers**: A website that generates a visual map of related academic papers, helping to understand connections and find relevant research.
  • ๐Ÿค– **AI Ethics**: Emphasizes the ethical use of AI in academia, advocating for understanding the content and then writing in one's own words rather than copying and pasting.
  • ๐Ÿง **Critical Thinking**: Illicit helps in developing critical thinking by providing categories to assess the trustworthiness of a research paper.
  • ๐Ÿ“‹ **Abstract and Summary**: Illicit offers a quick abstract and summary feature, useful for skimming through papers and getting a comparative understanding.
  • ๐Ÿ”ฌ **Research Process**: AI tools can assist in various aspects of the research process, from proofreading and editing to finding papers and writing outlines.

Q & A

  • What is the controversy surrounding AI academic applications?

    -The controversy stems from ethical concerns about the use of AI in academic research, including issues of authorship, originality, and potential misuse of AI-generated content.

  • What is the primary function of Unriddle?

    -Unriddle allows users to upload a research paper, review it, and ask questions about the content, providing tailored questions and explanations to aid understanding.

  • How does Unriddle help in explaining complex concepts?

    -Unriddle simplifies complex concepts by asking questions in a basic manner and providing detailed explanations that relate to the importance and impact of the concepts within the research.

  • What is the ethical way to use AI in academic writing?

    -The ethical way to use AI is to understand the content it provides, then write in your own words and properly reference the source. Copying and pasting AI-generated content is not recommended.

  • What features does Paper Pal offer to improve writing?

    -Paper Pal offers features like language issue identification, synonym suggestions, text rewriting, and text trimming to help improve the quality and conciseness of writing.

  • How does the word choice feature in Paper Pal relate to research usage?

    -The word choice feature provides synonyms and indicates how often each word is used in research and published literature, helping users select the most appropriate and widely-used term.

  • What is the purpose of using Chat GPT for titles?

    -Chat GPT can be used to improve and generate alternative titles for research papers, allowing users to mix and match words from different suggestions to create a more effective title.

  • What does Illicit offer for users interested in understanding research papers?

    -Illicit allows users to upload multiple research papers for comparison, providing abstract summaries, detailed information on tested interventions, measured outcomes, and participant details.

  • How does Connected Papers help in research?

    -Connected Papers generates a visual map of related academic papers, arranged by similarity and other factors like citation count and publication year, to help users identify and understand connections between research works.

  • What is the significance of the node size and color in the Connected Papers map?

    -The node size represents the number of citations a paper has, and the node color indicates the publication year, with darker colors signifying more recent publications.

  • How can the research paper map from Connected Papers be used in academic work?

    -The map can be used to identify related research that may have been overlooked and could be important for understanding a topic. It can also be included in a literature review to visually represent the connections between papers.

  • What is the speaker's advice for using AI tools in academic research?

    -The speaker advises using AI tools to enhance understanding and writing quality but emphasizes the importance of not copying and pasting AI-generated content. Instead, one should use the insights gained to write original content and properly cite the sources.

Outlines

00:00

๐Ÿ˜€ Overview of AI Academic Apps

The paragraph discusses the increasing controversy surrounding AI academic apps and introduces five platforms aimed at assisting researchers. It highlights Unriddle as a platform allowing users to upload research papers, ask questions, and receive tailored explanations. The narration emphasizes the importance of understanding concepts and not simply copying text. Paper Pal is then mentioned for its writing improvement features, including language suggestions and rewriting options. Additionally, Chat GPT is briefly mentioned for title improvement suggestions. Other platforms like Elicit and Connected Papers are introduced for research paper analysis and mapping.

05:01

๐Ÿ”„ Writing Enhancement with Paper Pal

The paragraph introduces Paper Pal, a platform designed to enhance writing. It outlines features such as language correction, synonym suggestions, and text trimming. Users can identify redundancies, rephrase sentences, and shorten text. The narrator emphasizes the importance of reviewing and ensuring coherence after using such tools. Additionally, the platform's integration with Word is mentioned for convenience.

10:02

๐Ÿ’ฌ Chat GPT for Title Improvement

This paragraph briefly mentions Chat GPT's potential use for title improvement. The narrator explains how the tool offers alternative titles and suggests a strategy of combining different suggestions to create a suitable title. It underscores the utility of AI in generating ideas and overcoming creative blocks.

๐Ÿ” Analyzing Research Papers with Elicit

Elicit is introduced as a platform for analyzing research papers. Users can upload multiple papers for comparison and receive summaries, participant information, and analytical assessments. The platform provides abstract summaries, highlights key sections, and offers insights into paper trustworthiness. The narrator acknowledges the limitations of the question-asking feature but highlights the platform's usefulness for comparative analysis.

๐ŸŒ Mapping Research Papers with Connected Papers

Connected Papers is described as a website for generating research paper maps. Users can select an origin paper and visualize connections to related papers. The narrator explains the visualization elements, including node size indicating citations and node color representing publication year. The tool is suggested for discovering related research and enhancing literature reviews.

Mindmap

Keywords

AI Tools

AI Tools refer to software applications that utilize artificial intelligence to perform tasks more efficiently. In the context of the video, AI Tools are used for academic research to assist with proofreading, editing, finding research papers, and writing outlines, which are all integral parts of the research process.

Unriddle

Unriddle is an AI platform mentioned in the video that allows users to upload a research paper and interact with it by asking questions. It generates tailored questions to the paper, which can help researchers understand complex concepts in a simplified manner, as demonstrated by the example of explaining terms like 'membrane' and 'tkis' in the context of a specific experiment.

Proofreading

Proofreading is the process of reading through written work to identify and correct errors in grammar, punctuation, spelling, and style. In the video, it is mentioned as one of the functions that AI can assist with, which is particularly useful for academic writing to ensure clarity and professionalism.

Research Papers

Research papers are scholarly articles that present research results and are often a significant part of academic work. The video discusses how AI tools can help in finding and understanding research papers by summarizing, asking questions, and providing insights into the content.

Academic Twitter

Academic Twitter refers to a community of academics who use the social media platform Twitter for professional networking, discussion, and sharing of research. The video script mentions that controversy around AI academic apps is a topic of discussion within this community.

Paper Pal

Paper Pal is an AI tool highlighted in the video that helps improve academic writing by identifying language issues, suggesting synonyms, and offering rephrasing options. It is particularly useful for refining the language of research papers and ensuring that the writing is clear and concise.

Synonyms

Synonyms are words that have the same or nearly the same meaning as another word in the same language. In the context of the video, Paper Pal uses synonyms to help users enhance their writing by providing alternative word choices that are commonly used in research literature.

Chat GPT

Chat GPT is an AI language model that can generate human-like text based on prompts. The video discusses using Chat GPT to improve titles of research papers by suggesting alternative titles and allowing users to mix and match words from different suggestions to create a unique and effective title.

Illicit and Elicit

Illicit and Elicit are two platforms mentioned in the video for understanding research papers. Illicit allows users to upload multiple papers for comparison and provides summaries and critical analysis tools, which can be beneficial for systematic reviews or when assessing the trustworthiness of research.

Systematic Review

A systematic review is a type of research study that uses a well-defined method of identifying, evaluating, and interpreting all available evidence on a particular topic using explicit methods and criteria. The video mentions that Illicit can be useful for this type of review by summarizing and comparing multiple research papers.

Connected Papers

Connected Papers is a website that generates a visual map of research papers and their connections. It helps researchers understand the relationships between different studies and find related work that may be relevant to their research. The video describes how this tool can be used to create a research paper map, which can be visually included in literature reviews.

Highlights

Unriddle is an AI tool that allows users to upload research papers and ask questions about them, providing tailored responses.

Unriddle can simplify complex research concepts, explaining them in a basic way.

The platform generates specific questions related to the uploaded paper, aiding in understanding and critical thinking.

Users can write notes and ask AI to summarize or improve the writing of the paper.

AI should be used for understanding and not for copying and pasting content into academic work.

Paperpal is a tool for improving writing through language checks, word suggestions, and rewrite options.

Paperpal provides word usage statistics in research, helping users choose the most appropriate terms.

Chat GPT can be used to improve titles and generate multiple title options for academic papers.

Illicit is a platform for uploading and comparing multiple research papers, providing abstracts and summaries.

Illicit helps in assessing the trustworthiness of papers by analyzing various factors like funding and participant counts.

Connected Papers is a tool for visualizing the connections between academic papers, useful for literature reviews.

Each node in Connected Papers represents a related academic paper, with size indicating citation count and color the publication year.

The map generated by Connected Papers can be included in literature reviews for a visual representation of research connections.

These AI platforms are particularly useful for PhD students, researchers, and those new to academic writing.

The ethical use of AI in academia involves understanding concepts and then writing in one's own words with proper referencing.

The video provides a quick tutorial on five AI platforms currently favored by the speaker for their utility in research and writing.

The speaker invites viewers to suggest other AI tools and expresses willingness to create a follow-up video if there's interest.