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Using Generative AI Tools in Academic Work: Literature searching with AI

This guide is aimed at students who wish to know how generative AI tools may be used to help with academic work. It currently covers using AI to help with literature searching and summarising. It also covers how to use AI ethically and responsibly.

Which generative AI tools to use?

In this guide we use Copilot to conduct several different tasks related to literature searching.

Copilot 

Microsoft’s generative AI tool Copilot (formerly ‘Bing’) is available freely for all students and staff via their University Microsoft account.

Staff and students are strongly advised to use Copilot rather than other generative AI tools, as doing so does not require you to enter any personal details when you first sign up - simply your QMU username and password.

Copilot is powered by ChatGPT4, which is currently the most powerful generative AI tool. 

Getting a University Microsoft account

If you are a member of staff or a current student of QMU you are entitled to free downloads of the latest version of Microsoft Office. Both Windows and Apple versions can be installed on up to 5 concurrent devices.

  • To access the download, log into webmailLinks to an external site..
  • Once logged in click on “Office 365” at the top left and you will be redirected to the Office 365 home page. The “Install Office apps” button will be visible at the top right.
  • Be aware that this is your own personal copy of Office and is not supported by QMU IT.

Other AI literature searching tools

There are several other AI literature searching tools you might want to explore. Please note that some of these may require payment to use all the features:

  • Elicit is an AI tool created specifically to help with research. You will need to create an account to use Elicit. It works on a credit system, where each task you do in Elicit uses credits. You get 5,000 free credits but once you have used these you will need to upgrade to a paid account.
  • Gemini (formerly known as Bard) is a generative AI tool developed by Google. It can understand and operate across different kinds of of information, including text, images, audio, video, and code. Gemini can be used fo free by logging in with your Google account. Gemini's advanced features can be accessed trough a premium paid account. 

Writing good prompts for generative AI

Getting the best results from any AI tool requires you to write effective prompts. The guidance below from the University of Edinburgh's Bayes Centre provides some tips on how to write good prompts.

Next steps

Your next step is to learn how AI tools may help with summarising research.Next page arrow

  1. Using AI tools to support your work
  2. Literature searching with AI
  3. Summarising research with AI
  4. Using AI responsibly
  5. Using AI ethically
  6. Suggested resources
  7. QMU rules and regulations around the use of generative AI

Using Elicit to find research papers

Elicit: What is it?

Elicit is an AI research assistant. Elicit uses language models to help you automate research workflows, such as undertaking parts of literature reviews.

Elicit can find relevant papers without perfect keyword match, summarize takeaways from the paper[s] specific to your question, and extract key information from the papers. [@elicit-research].

Get started with Elicit:
  • Go to: elicit.com
  • Click on 'Sign Up'
  • Create a Basic* (free) account - add your email address and create a password.

Elicit Basic accounts include:

  • Unlimited search across more than 125 million papers
  • Unlimited Chat with Papers and paper summaries with 4 papers at once
  • Data extraction from 10 uploaded PDFs per month
  • Add 2 columns to your tables at a time.

* Elicit Basic is free to use (user can upgrade to a paid plan for access to more features - see: Elicit.com or more details).

Find papers in Elicit

  • Use: Find papers to search across the Elicit database
  • Enter natural language queries to look for concepts across papers (Elicit typically searches for relevant concepts in title and abstract)
  • Elicit provides a summary of papers, ranked by relevance
  • Use Notebooks workflows to 'chat' with papers.

View YouTube videos below for demonstrations on how to find papers in Elicit.

Support resources: