NotebookLM’s Mind Map function offers researchers a powerful way to quickly grasp the structure and key findings of any uploaded PDF, from academic papers to policy reports. By automatically generating an interactive visual overview, users can explore a study’s objectives, methods, results, and conclusions at a glance. Clicking
We tested the new OpenAI Agent to assess its usefulness in academic research tasks, comparing it directly with Manus.ai and Perplexity’s research mode. Our aim was to evaluate how effectively each tool finds relevant scholarly and policy sources, navigates restricted websites (including captchas and Cloudflare protections), and allows
These tools provide dedicated spaces for creating, refining, and managing content alongside artificial intelligence interactions, facilitating tasks from data visualisation to manuscript drafting. This guide, tailored for researchers, examines their practical applications, operational mechanisms, distinctions, version control capabilities, memory management, and availability in other models. By leveraging these interfaces, researchers
Academia.edu has recently introduced an AI-based Reviewer tool, positioned as a solution for generating structured feedback on academic manuscripts. While the concept is promising, our evaluation revealed a number of significant limitations. We encountered recurring technical issues during both file uploads and Google Docs integration, often requiring multiple attempts
High-quality feedback is essential for researchers aiming to improve their work and navigate the peer review process more effectively. Ideally, such feedback would be available before formal submission—allowing authors to identify the strengths and weaknesses of their research early on. This is precisely the promise of OpenReviewer, an automated
In this post, we examine the performance of Manus’s newly updated slide generation tool when applied to a peer-reviewed scientific article. The developers claim recent improvements focused on enhancing the tool’s ability to support academic communication. To test these capabilities, we selected a published study in political science
As AI-assisted tools become increasingly embedded in academic publishing, most major journal platforms now offer automated systems that claim to recommend suitable outlets based on a manuscript’s abstract. But how well do these tools perform in practice? To explore this, we tested five journal finder platforms — four developed by
Integrating Google’s Gemini assistant into Google Docs offers a lightweight yet effective solution for academic and professional editing tasks. Rather than relying on traditional spelling and grammar checkers, users can now issue custom prompts to Gemini—transforming the assistant into a real-time editorial aid capable of producing high-quality revisions
Academic writing increasingly relies on consistent, machine-readable formatting—especially when preparing manuscripts for digital publication, automated parsing, or citation indexing. This post demonstrates how the Mistral Le Chat can accurately convert plain-text bibliographic entries into structured HTML, generating both inline (short-form) citations and full bibliographic records with cross-linked anchors. This
Academic writing demands clarity, precision, and often the ability to work across multiple languages. In recent years, AI-powered writing tools have become indispensable aids for researchers looking to improve their manuscripts. Two popular options are Grammarly and DeepL, each offering distinct strengths. Grammarly is known for refining English writing (catching
Following our previous evaluations of the FutureHouse Platform’s research agents this post turns to Owl, the platform’s tool for precedent and concept detection in academic literature. Owl is intended to help researchers determine whether a given concept has already been defined, thereby streamlining theoretical groundwork and avoiding redundant
Having previously explored the FutureHouse Platform’s agents in tasks such as identifying tailor-made laws and generating a literature review on legislative backsliding, we now directly compare its Falcon agent and OpenAI’s o3. Our aim was to assess their performance on a focused literature search task: compiling a ranked
