This post is part of a series of blogs looking at different types of AI tools. In this one we are looking at a selection of AI research tools designed to support academics, researchers, and students in UK higher and further education. These tools can help with tasks such as summarising papers, mapping literature, analysing student feedback, and organising research workflows. Some are built specifically for scholarly use, while others have broader applications.
This listing includes contributions from across the AI team.
We also have a selection of other blogs in this series:
Accessibility | Content Creation | Images | Learning, Skills & Training | Professional Services | Research | Search
Quick jump-to links
Research and Analysis
Annif
Description: Annif is an open‑source tool for automated subject indexing developed at the National Library of Finland. Annif uses a combination of existing natural language processing and machine learning tools, is multilingual and can support any subject vocabulary.
Getting Started: There is a free demo on their website; tutorials are available on the GitHub page. There is also an introductory video on YouTube.
Examples of use: None currently – we would welcome examples.
Key Information:
- Cost: A free plan is available with 100 credits per month, then it is 9 € (Scholar package) per month or 59.9 € per month for a team subscription
- Enterprise version available? Team subscriptions are 59.9 € per month.
- Privacy and IPR: Yes, Helsinki University data protection
- GDPR statement? Yes, Helsinki University data protection
- Accessibility statement or guidance: Yes, Annif accessibility page
- Age Restrictions: None
- AI Team? Yes, it is a very useful tool for transcribing and searching through documents.
(Entry created 26 November 2024)
Audemic
Description: Audemic Scholar enables PhD students and researchers to transform stale research PDFs into a time‑saving reading and listening experience. Audemic Insights app summarises open research articles and reports into brief written and audio summaries for the non‑academic.
Getting Started: Go to Audemic’s website to start a 7‑day free trial.
Examples of use: None currently – we would welcome examples.
Key Information:
- Cost: £16 per month – Audemic pricing
- Enterprise version available? No
- Privacy and IPR: Yes, see Audemic’s Privacy Policy
- GDPR statement? Yes, see Audemic’s Privacy Policy
- Accessibility statement or guidance: None.
- Age Restrictions: 18 years+
- AI Team? Tested by multiple members of the team.
(Entry created 15 October 2024)
Consensus
Description: An AI search engine for research.
Getting Started: Go to Consensus Website and either sign up or try out some of the demos without doing so.
Examples of use: None currently – we would welcome examples.
Key Information:
- Cost: Free version, $8.99 pm for Pro, $9.99 pm for Teams: Consensus pricing (40% discount for students)
- Enterprise version available? Yes, Consensus Pricing
- Privacy and IPR: Yes, Consensus Privacy Policy
- GDPR statement? None.
- Accessibility statement or guidance: None
- Age Restrictions: 18+
- Tried by Jisc AI Team? Tested and demonstrated to the team.
(Entry created 14 October 2024)
Cubby
Description: An AI workspace built for collaborative research, Cubby is an AI tool that summarises, generates content, and organises notes, enabling users to turn content into actionable, polished materials with minimal effort. Note that this tool appears to still be in a level of beta and the details below may change.
Getting Started: To get started with Cubby, sign up on their website to gain access and follow the instructions to create your first workspace and get started.
Examples of use: None currently – we would welcome examples.
Key Information:
- Cost: Users can sign up on a week’s free trial of Cubby; once this ends, billing is $16 per month as per Cubby’s pricing page
- Enterprise version available? Unclear at present as the tool is still in a level of beta.
- Privacy and IPR: Yes, Privacy Policy
- GDPR statement? Yes, Privacy Policy
- Accessibility statement or guidance: No.
- Age Restrictions: 16 years+ outside the US (Cubby Terms of Service)
- AI Team? Yes, a very good collaborative workspace tool.
(entry created 10 January 2025)
Elicit
Description: Elicit is a research tool that helps users quickly find, summarise, and compare academic papers, answer questions about studies, organise references, identify research gaps, and generate hypotheses, making it ideal for researchers and students managing complex literature.
Getting Started: Sign up on Elicit’s website to gain access to the tool. Once logged in, you can begin by typing a research question or topic into the search bar. Elicit will then fetch relevant research papers and provide summaries, key insights, and comparisons.
- Examples of use: None currently – we would welcome examples.
Key Information:
- Cost: Elicit offers a free basic version with core features, while paid subscriptions provide additional tools, with Plus membership at $10 and Pro at $42 per month. See Elicit’s Website for more info.
- Enterprise version available? Yes, contact Elicit for pricing
- Privacy and IPR statement?: Yes, Elicit’s Privacy Policy
- GDPR statement? Yes – although there is no specific statement, Elicit notes that users in the EEA have rights under applicable data protection laws.
- Accessibility statement or guidance: No
- Age Restrictions: 13+
- Tried by Jisc’s AI Team? Yes, has been tested out by the Jisc AI team.
(Entry created 11 September 2024)
Explorance MLY
Description: Explorance MLY is a platform which utilises AI for qualitative analysis using machine learning models made bespoke for analysing the student experience.
Getting Started: To get started with Explorance MLY you can reach out to them to arrange a demo via their website.
Examples of use:
- MLY Product Notes – Jisc
Key Information:
- Cost: To enquire about pricing for your institution contact Explorance.
- Privacy and IPR: Yes, refer to the terms of use link at the bottom of the MLY product page
- GDPR statement? Yes, refer to the terms of use link at the bottom of the MLY product page
- Accessibility statement or guidance: None
- Age Restrictions: None, the product is intended for staff use
- Tried by Jisc’s AI Team? Yes, Product notes are here Explorance MLY
(Entry created 28 August 2024)
OpenResearcher
Description: OpenResearcher is an AI‑assisted research prototype that answers domain questions by combining retrieval of trusted sources with large language models (RAG). It aims to provide grounded, cited answers suitable for scoping reviews and literature exploration.
Getting Started: Read the overview on the arXiv paper; hosted demos may be available via the project page or code repository.
Examples of use: None currently – we would welcome examples.
Key Information:
- Cost: Research prototype (free)
- Enterprise version available? No
- Privacy and IPR: Not specified – research prototype
- GDPR statement? Not specified
- Accessibility statement or guidance: Not specified
- Age Restrictions: 16+ (research use)
- AI Team? Yes – tested for feasibility and grounded Q&A
(Entry created 12 August 2025)
PubTator 3.0
Description: PubTator 3.0 is an AI‑powered biomedical literature platform from NCBI that performs named entity recognition and semantic annotation on PubMed articles to support concept and relation search.
Getting Started: Visit PubTator and enter terms (e.g. genes, diseases, chemicals) to explore annotated literature.
Examples of use: None currently – we would welcome examples.
Key Information:
- Cost: Free
- Enterprise version available? No
- Privacy and IPR: Yes – see NCBI Privacy
- GDPR statement? Yes – see NCBI Privacy
- Accessibility statement or guidance: U.S. federal accessibility standards apply
- Age Restrictions: 16+ (research use)
- AI Team? Yes – tested for biomedical literature queries
(Entry created 12 August 2025)
Research Rabbit
Description: Research Rabbit is a “citation‑based literature mapping tool” available online which aims to optimise a user’s time by searching for references as they plan their essay, minor project, or literature review. Users can create graphs and visualise their data and ‘interactions’.
Getting Started: Go to Research Rabbit’s website and sign up.
Examples of use: None currently – we would welcome examples.
Key Information:
- Cost: Free – see Research Rabbit’s website
- Enterprise version available? No
- Privacy and IPR: Yes, see Research Rabbit’s Privacy Policy
- GDPR statement? Yes, see Research Rabbit’s Privacy Policy
- Accessibility statement or guidance: None.
- Age Restrictions: 18+ – see Privacy Policy
- AI Team? Tested by multiple members of the team.
(Entry created 14 October 2024)
Scite
Description: Scite provides “Smart Citations” that show how a scientific article has been cited (supporting, mentioning, or contrasting), helping researchers quickly evaluate evidence and context across the literature.
Getting Started: Go to Scite, search for a paper, and review its Smart Citations; install the browser extension for in‑context insights.
Examples of use: None currently – we would welcome examples.
Key Information:
- Cost: Free tier; paid plans available – see Scite pricing
- Enterprise version available? Yes – institutional access
- Privacy and IPR: Yes – Privacy Policy
- GDPR statement? Yes – Privacy Policy
- Accessibility statement or guidance: Not specified
- Age Restrictions: 16+
- AI Team? Yes – tested for citation context and evaluation
(Entry created 12 August 2025)
Semantic Scholar
Description: Semantic Scholar is a free, AI‑powered research tool for scientific literature, developed by the Allen Institute for AI. It uses natural language processing to help users find relevant academic papers, summarise findings, and track influential citations. Its features include paper recommendations, topic‑based feeds, and AI‑powered paper summaries.
Getting Started: Visit Semantic Scholar, create a free account, and search for papers by keyword, author, or DOI. Use filters to narrow results and access AI‑generated abstracts for quicker reading.
Examples of use: Researchers and students can use Semantic Scholar to discover the most‑cited works on a topic, follow updates in their field, or quickly review papers using AI summaries.
Key Information:
- Cost: Free
- Enterprise version available? No
- Privacy and IPR: Yes – see Privacy Policy
- GDPR statement? Yes – see Privacy Policy
- Accessibility statement or guidance: Not specified
- Age Restrictions: 13+
- AI Team? Yes – tested for academic research discovery and literature review
(Entry created 12 August 2025)
Sourcely
Description: Sourcely is an AI research assistant that searches and summarises scholarly sources, helping users draft with citations and track references across projects.
Getting Started: Visit Sourcely and create an account to begin searching and saving references.
Examples of use: None currently – we would welcome examples.
Key Information:
- Cost: Freemium; paid plans available
- Enterprise version available? Contact the provider
- Privacy and IPR: Yes – see Privacy Policy
- GDPR statement? Yes – see Privacy Policy
- Accessibility statement or guidance: Not specified
- Age Restrictions: 16+
- AI Team? Yes – tested for literature search and drafting with citations
(Entry created 12 August 2025)
STORM (Stanford OVAL)
Description: STORM is a research system that programmatically plans and writes structured, cited content by orchestrating large language models with web retrieval. It’s aimed at producing transparent, auditable outputs for research assistance.
Getting Started: Visit the STORM project site for examples and resources, and see the STORM paper for methodology details.
Examples of use: None currently – we would welcome examples.
Key Information:
- Cost: Research prototype (free)
- Enterprise version available? No
- Privacy and IPR: Not specified – research prototype
- GDPR statement? Not specified
- Accessibility statement or guidance: Not specified
- Age Restrictions: 16+ (research use)
- AI Team? Yes – tested for structured, cited drafting
(Entry created 12 August 2025)
Student Voice
Description: Student Voice provides a service which uses a series of bespoke machine learning models to analyse student feedback automatically.
Getting Started: You can request a demo from Student Voice.
Examples of use:
- Student Voice pilot – Jisc
Key Information:
- Cost: Priced individually, contact Student Voice for a quote
- Privacy and IPR statement?: Contact Student Voice directly for information
- GDPR statement? Contact Student Voice directly for information
- Accessibility statement or guidance: No specific statement, contact Student Voice directly for accessibility information
- Age Restrictions: None, the product is intended for staff use
- Tried by Jisc’s AI Team? Piloted by Jisc AI Team, read the Student Voice pilot report
(Entry created 28 August 2024)
Change Log
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- Version 1.1 – Added Semantic Scholar, OpenResearcher, PubTator 3.0, Scite, Sourcely, and STORM.
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Contributors:
Tim Finch, Dan George, Helen Nicholson-Benn, Michael Webb, Tom Moule, Manya Sikombe, Sue Attewell
Find out more by visiting our Artificial Intelligence page to view publications and resources, join us for events and discover what AI has to offer through our range of interactive online demos.
For regular updates from the team sign up to our mailing list.
Get in touch with the team directly at AI@jisc.ac.uk