What is Elicit
Discover Elicit AI - a trusted research assistant that automates systematic literature reviews, data extraction, and paper analysis using 125M+ academic papers. Used by 400K+ researchers monthly for evidence-based decision-making.
Overview of Elicit
- AI-Powered Research Automation: Elicit is an AI research assistant designed to automate scientific workflows by summarizing papers, extracting data from PDFs, and synthesizing findings across 125 million academic papers.
- Specialized Academic Tool: Founded in 2023 as a public benefit corporation, Elicit focuses on empirical domains like biomedicine and machine learning, serving over 200k monthly users from institutions like Harvard and companies like OpenAI.
- Scalable Solutions: Offers tiered pricing plans (Basic/Plus/Pro) with enterprise customization, supporting tasks ranging from casual literature reviews to large-scale systematic analyses.
Use Cases for Elicit
- Accelerated Literature Reviews: Researchers rapidly surface relevant papers via semantic search beyond keyword matching while auto-generating comparative summaries of key findings.
- Meta-Analysis Preparation: Extract standardized data points (e.g., sample sizes/methodologies) from hundreds of PDFs monthly via bulk processing capabilities.
- Cross-Disciplinary Research: Identify understudied connections between fields through AI-generated concept maps derived from paper abstracts/full texts.
Key Features of Elicit
- Concept Discovery Engine: Identifies relationships across studies using language models to answer questions like 'What are all effects of creatine?' or 'Datasets used for logical reasoning research.'
- Guided Systematic Reviews: Pro plan includes workflow tools for screening papers, extracting data into customizable tables (up to 20 columns), and generating export-ready reports.
- Collaboration Hub: Notebook feature centralizes research materials with tagging/linking capabilities while maintaining document privacy through secure PDF processing.
Final Recommendation for Elicit
- Essential for Empirical Researchers: Ideal for academic teams conducting systematic reviews or meta-analyses needing structured data extraction from large paper volumes.
- Enterprise R&D Optimization: Pro plan's 2,400 annual PDF analyses suit pharmaceutical/tech companies requiring reproducible research workflows at scale.
- Cost-Efficient Exploration: Startups leverage Basic/Plus tiers ($0-$120/yr) to validate hypotheses using AI-curated paper insights without manual literature traversal.
Frequently Asked Questions about Elicit
What is Elicit?▾
Elicit is an AI research assistant web tool designed to help users find, summarize, and extract key information from academic literature to support literature reviews and research workflows.
How does Elicit find and summarize research?▾
You provide a research question or topic and the tool uses language-model-based analysis to retrieve relevant documents and synthesize concise summaries and extracted fields from those documents.
What types of research tasks can Elicit help with?▾
Common tasks include literature search, summarizing individual papers, extracting methods and results into structured fields, generating research questions, and organizing evidence for reviews or reports.
How reliable are the summaries and extracted data?▾
Automated summaries and extractions can speed up work but should be verified against the original papers, since the tool can miss nuances or make errors; treat outputs as starting points, not definitive conclusions.
Which sources does Elicit use to retrieve papers?▾
It typically draws from public academic sources and databases and processes available metadata or full text, but exact source coverage can vary, so complement it with direct searches in primary databases when needed.
How should I cite information produced by Elicit?▾
For formal citations, cite the original papers listed in the output; if you need to acknowledge the tool itself, follow your publisher’s or institution’s guidance for citing AI-assisted tools.
Can I export results or integrate them with reference managers and other tools?▾
Most research assistant tools offer export options like CSV, PDF, or BibTeX and let you copy summaries and citation lists into reference managers or documents, though specific export and integration features depend on the product and plan.
Is my uploaded or queried data kept private and secure?▾
Data handling policies vary by product; check the project's privacy policy and terms to learn how queries and uploads are stored, retained, or used to improve models and whether there are enterprise options for stricter data controls.
What languages does Elicit support?▾
Many tools perform best in English but may offer partial support for other languages; consult the product documentation for current language coverage and performance notes.
How do I get started and is there a cost to use it?▾
Start by visiting the web app and signing up to try sample workflows or tutorials; pricing models differ—there may be free access with limits and paid plans for advanced features, so check the project's pricing or sign-up page for details.
User Reviews and Comments about Elicit
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