Compared to conversational AI tools, AI tools for academic information searching can help you find relevant, and existing, sources of information, such as articles. They do not hallucinate sources, but utilise content from library databases and articles freely available online, for example.
Using AI tools for academic information searching requires special attention from the user compared to conventional database and web searches:
A variety of AI tools developed for article search can be used for academic information searching. There are many AI tools for academic information searching, below are examples of the most commonly used tools.
Keenious is an AI-based tool for finding article recommendations, either by article or by written text. Keenious works both in a web browser and in Word and Google Docs word processors.
Students and staff of Seinäjoki University of Applied Sciences have access to the fee-based Keenious plus tool. Access to the Keenious plus is activated with a Microsoft login. Use your SEAMK email address to create an account. After creating an account, the tool is available at https://keenious.com. Once logged in, you can use all the features of Keenious plus. There is a separate guide on Keenious plus AI search tool available for SEAMK students and staff. The guide contains detailed instructions on how to use it.
Other than students and staff of SEAMK can create a free account at https://keenious.com. The free version has more limited features. Keenious works without a separate login for now, but it is recommended to create an account for oneself, as one can save bookmarks there and export them to reference manager programs.
For word processing software (MS Word and Google Docs), you can download the Keenious plug-in, which allows you to search for sources related to the text you are writing.
Watch the video tutorial on how Keenious works:
Semantic Scholar does not require a login, but offers more tools for registered users. The service is available at https://www.semanticscholar.org/
The search is focused on scientific articles. The search is based on word search, but does not use Boolean searches or Boolean operators. Instead, it identifies a topic based on context by looking at the relationship between words in close proximity to each other. Linking to Open Access articles only.
Semantic Scholar displays article citations and tries to find not only the most cited articles but also the most relevant ones. It also makes article recommendations based on the articles selected by the user.
Watch the tutorial video on how Semantic Scholar works:
Watch more tutorial videos.
Starting to use the service (Basic) is free of charge, but registration is required. The service searches for scientific articles. You can use a natural language phrase or an abstract of the article as a search term.
There is also a fee-based of the service (Plus). The service is available at https://elicit.com
This tool searches and summarises scholarly articles based on a given research question or an article. On the search results page, Elicit does not display the number of results (like traditional search services) but shows the top eight most relevant articles.
Watch the video tutorial on how Elicit works:
Watch more tutorial videos.
AI-assisted information seeking is becoming increasingly common in higher education. Several large publishers have therefore started to include AI clauses in their licensing agreements. This means that publishers themselves determine the purposes for which AI applications can be used in their services. For example, one of the conditions is that articles from the publisher's service cannot be fed into a free AI application because they are used to train AI.
Instead, many e-resource publishers and vendors have started to develop and integrate AI-based assistants and tools into their conventional e-book and e-journal databases. The benefit is that they often make it easier to search for information than the complex search terms of traditional databases. There is also the advantage that AI can be used to find scholarly, reliable, peer-reviewed sources of information, such as international articles. AI assistants use the service's own content as a source, so there is no need to worry about hallucinating sources.
The assistants allow you to search for information sources using natural language. Sources can be searched for by using a question or your own text, for example. Some tools also provide a summary of the article found, allowing the user to find out more quickly what the article is about.
Below there are resources available at SEAMK which use AI functionalities.