Introduction
It does seem like many AI tools for academic research are moving towards paid models. While there are still some free options available.
But the good thing is there are free tools that are available that are super powerful, and this list contains those tools as well as ones that have really generous free plans.
The process of speeding up the research for a satisfactory solution within long documents is known as information retrieval.
This involves using various techniques and tools to quickly locate relevant information from large volumes of text.
In this article, YAiToolBox will explore several remarkable AI tools that have proven to be invaluable assets for researchers. Whether you’re conducting experiments in the lab, writing scientific articles, publishing in journals, or working on your thesis or dissertation, these tools can greatly enhance your efficiency and productivity.
Heuristica – Freemium AI tools for Research
The first one you should know about is Heuristica.
And the one thing I love about this is that it’s AI-driven and it just gives you the ability to mind map a whole kind of research field.
Now what we can do, I’ve put in here organic photovoltaics, and you can see I’ve got what, the cons and pros, and I’ve also got examples down here.
The way this works is that when you first log in, you put in what you want to put in this middle bit and then you can ask for elaborate.
You’ve got all of these down the side that you can put in. So I can put in how if I click here and I click how, then it adds here.
Organic photovoltaics work by converting sunlight into electricity, and I can add it to my exploration.
And you can see here that I can add as many mind maps as possible.
I can click here, and I wanna know the concepts related to a specific input.
So here, I want solar cells. I want renewable energy. I want semiconductor it. I want it all. Oh, don’t lie. Beep that out. Alright.
And then we’ve got all of these concepts that come off it and it’s just so so good. And then I can say, okay. Well, actually, I wanna know about energy conversion.
So what is energy conversion? Mind map that can just get massive. It’s completely free. A really great way to start your literature review.
If you don’t know where you want to start, it’s really powerful and I think this is something that everyone should start with if they’re sort of like first into a research field.
Visit Site >> Heuristica
Open Read – Free 5 Per Month – AI for Academic Research
The second one you should know about is Open Read. Open Read has pricing plans for all your needs, but this is the one we’re interested in.
We get five paper expressals. We get five paper Q&A. We get five chat with Oat. We get AI summary times five a month.
So this is actually quite generous considering how powerful this is.
If I go in and I look for all of my files, so I can upload here a PDF document and all I have to do here is say, okay. Well, what PDF document do I want?
I’m going to drag and drop one of my papers right here. You can see that it’s uploaded and it’s got all of the things I wanna know about.
So it’s got basic information. It’s given me not only just like a little, summary of the thing, but I’ve also got the DOI and other basic information.
If I wanna know more about this, I can ask more questions about it. This is the little chatbot up here. Hi. I’m Oat and you can ask Oat anything.
And if I want to know more about this, where do I go?
I can go up here and ask for a paper espresso and I love this paper espresso because what it gives you is all of the bite-sized chunks for reading about this paper.
Please allow ten to twenty seconds. Brilliant. It took less than that. I love it. We’ve got the achievements and significant. We’ve got the background and context.
We’ve got the discussions, interpretation. We get five of these a month. But if you just sort of like use this on the papers that are big, that are chunky, or when you’re just tired and you don’t want to read it.
Up here, we can also ask paper Q&A which is brilliant.
We get five questions that we can ask about this paper.
For Example: Who is the best author on this paper? Is it Andy Stapleton?
Visit Site >> OpenRead
Explain Paper – Free forever for Everyone
The third one in AI Tools for academic research you should know about is Explain Paper. I absolutely love this. It’s completely free.
I’m amazed that it’s still completely free. But essentially, you upload a paper to it which is brilliant and then you just select text that you want explained.
So here if I want this stuff, I just simply select it all then it pops up here and I can explain this as a middle schooler, as a five-year-old, to a high schooler.
Let’s say middle schooler.
I click explain, and, ultimately here, we’ve got a little kind of undergrad explanation of all of the things.
We can ask as many follow-up questions as we want. It’s even got related resources that you may want to know about as well.
Really fantastic.
Completely free. Love it.
Visit Site >> Explainpaper
Paper Brain – 10 Credits Per Month Free
The fourth one that you should know about to help you read papers is Paper Brain.
Paper Brain is really fantastic. All we have to do is upload a paper. This is one of mine, accurate thickness measurement of graphene.
This is run by doctor Cameron Shearer, fantastic scientist.
I love you Cameron.
And here it’s side just asked it. What is this paper about? And it’s just giving me a little simple like, AI-generated response.
A great tool for asking questions about specific papers and receiving AI-generated answers back.
I’m gonna ask this one, who is the best author on this?
Please let it be me. Please let it be me. Please let it be me. Damn it.
Cameron Shearer is the best author on this paper. Cameron, I’m coming for you.
Visit site >> Paperbrian
Power Drill – Free AI Tools For Academic Research
The fifth one you should know about is Power Drill.
Power Drill has got an upgrade option, but it’s really powerful in this simple format. Down here, we’ve got chat but this is really easy.
What you have to do is upload data sets. If I’ve got my research, all I need to do is go in here and upload data sources.
These can be, text web pages or files. So I’m gonna put in my own research and here we are. It says need larger storage size.
Your current upload is two megabytes larger than data limit. That’s alright. I don’t wanna do that. Upload that. There we are. I’m gonna upload as much as I can for this data set for free.
And once it’s uploaded, I can go in and ask questions, about all of that data set which is super powerful and something that quite often you have to spend a lot of money to get.
To make the most of this small amount of space, you wanna put in review papers that contain a lot of information and that will help you sort of like use this to its strongest ability and power.
So once all our data is up there, all we need to do is go to simple chat, then we click new chat, talk to GPT
Visit Site >> powerdrill
SCISPACE – Limited – Free for Everyone
The sixth one is SCISPACE, I absolutely love.
Do hour’s worth of reading in minutes.
It’s brilliant. You can upload papers. You can do a literature review from SCISPACE papers or my library. You can extract data from PDFs.
You can read with AI Copilot. There’s all limits on this but it’s all quite generous.
But if I go to my library, the one thing I love about this is when you upload PDFs, it gives you a too long didn’t read, gives you conclusions, it gives you all of these different things that, you know, would take you hours to extract manually from these papers by just reading them.
But it’s a great way to get this massive table of too long didn’t read all of the conclusions, all of the stuff together.
Simple, easy and look. All you need to do here is open copilot. You can ask questions. It’s so easy. I can’t believe it’s free and yeah.
Check it out. SCISPACE but strangely, their URL is typeset dot IO.
NextNet – Biomedical Research
The seventh one you should know about is NextNet.
NextNet is fantastic if you’re in the drug and health space. So here all I need to do is click on discover, type in new drugs for example.
Completely free.
It will go away and search for all of the recent literature and stuff on like gene expressions and drugs and all that sort of stuff.
But NextNet, is an expressions and drugs and all that sort of stuff.
But NextNet, is a fantastic tool if you’re in this research space.
I just wish that it would, you know, have something similar in a different research space.
So here we are.
This tells you everything. New drugs and it’s got national drug law, anti-tumor effects, isolate, unsaid.
You know, clearly if you know what you’re doing, and you know the field you can put in something to search much better.
Ultimately, it gives you this super searchable graph on a research set based on your query. Brilliant. Go check it out. Get next net dot com. Boom.
The Classics: Gemini, Copilot and ChatGPT
The last ones that I want you to know about are all linked together and it’s just the old school general AI chat that I’ve been using for, I was gonna say years now but for like a year since it came out.
But these are ChatGPT, Gemini and Copilot. I use these all of the time.
If we go to Copilot chat, I use these all of the time as my go-to place. They are free. They are super powerful and you can ask it almost anything.
The problem with using these over like something that specifically for research is sometimes it can hallucinate.
Sometimes it can give you two broader of a response.
Sometimes it’s not like academic enough but these are all overlookable by chatting with it, asking for it, to change its response or for like asking it more detailed knowledge about a certain thing or just telling it’s wrong.
You say like, no. I actually don’t want that. I want you to do it in these ways.
These three tools have changed the world and they have changed research forever. So, Gemini and Copilot I love. That is my go-to for every day.
ChatGPT, I go there if I want it to give me references that I can sort of like do further information.
And I go to Copilot if I really want sort of like more, control over the sorts of response it gives me. I can ask for more creative. I can give balance.
I can ask for more precise stuff and, there are really sort of like a great number of ways you can manipulate the chat before asking the question in Copilot. I love it.
So those three tools are where I go all of the time.
They’re completely free. I love them. They’ve changed the world.
They’ve changed research forever.
Let me know in the comments which one you prefer. Chat GPT, Copilot or Gemini
FAQ for AI Tools For Academic Research
How to use AI for academic writing?
Use AI for research, drafting, editing, summarizing, and idea generation.
What is the best free ai academic writing tool?
Explain Paper, Gemini and Copilot are the best free AI academic writing tools.
How do these AI systems protect privacy?
AI systems protect privacy through methods like data anonymization, encryption, limited data collection, and user consent.
Additionally, techniques like differential privacy add noise to data, making it hard to identify individuals.
How accurate are these AI systems compared to human experts?
AI systems can often outperform humans in tasks requiring speed, data processing, and consistency.
For instance, they excel at analyzing large datasets, detecting patterns, and making predictions based on data.
However, humans still hold an edge in tasks demanding creativity, complex reasoning, emotional intelligence, and adaptability to novel situations.
Ultimately, the best results often come from a combination of AI and human expertise.
Final Takeaway
So there we have it. These are free AI tools that are the best for 2024.
Let me know in the comments if there’s any I’ve missed or ones that you prefer. I love to know about them.
And also, if you love this article, go check out the Twenty-Seven mind-blowing AI tools which is useful for students for research that you probably don’t know about. Go check it out.