Elicit is an AI-powered research assistant that helps users streamline their academic research process. It finds relevant papers, pulls out important information, and helps make sense of complex data, making it a valuable tool for researchers, students, and academics.
The platform uses smart language processing to understand research queries and acts as a capable research partner. It can search through millions of academic papers to find what you need, create summaries of key findings, and even help with systematic reviews. For organizing your work, it connects smoothly with reference management tools like Zotero.
When it comes to practical use, Elicit can tackle various research tasks. It helps users find and analyze academic papers, extract data from PDFs, and create detailed research summaries. The tool also offers team features for collaborative research projects, making it useful for both individual researchers and teams.
The service comes with several pricing options. While there's a free basic plan for casual users, paid plans start at $12 per month for independent researchers. More comprehensive plans are available for professional researchers and teams who need advanced features and collaborative tools.
Elicit has been generating mixed reactions among researchers and academics. Users love its ability to quickly summarize complex research papers and navigate through academic literature with an intuitive AI-powered interface. The tool's deep search capabilities and research matrix features have been particularly praised for saving significant time during literature reviews.
However, the platform isn't without drawbacks. Some researchers point out its limited scope, primarily focusing on academic articles, which can restrict its broader utility. There are also concerns about potential AI bias in search results and summaries. Additionally, the follow-up question feature has been flagged as needing improvement, suggesting the tool is still evolving in its functionality.
Elicit Plus offers more research power than the free Basic plan. While both give you unlimited search across 125+ million papers, the Plus plan lets you extract data from 50 PDFs monthly (versus 20 on Basic), create tables with 5 columns instead of just 2, and summarize 8 papers at once rather than 4. Plus users also get unlimited table exports to CSV/BIB/RIS formats and 1 high-accuracy column per table. The Plus plan costs $12 monthly or $120 yearly, making it ideal for independent researchers who need more robust features.
Can Elicit help with systematic reviews?Yes! Elicit Pro and Team plans include special features for systematic reviews. The guided systematic review flow helps you search, screen, extract data, and generate reports - often cutting research time by up to 80%. Elicit can automatically extract key information from papers, organize findings into customizable tables, and help you track your progress. This makes it much easier to maintain consistency and thoroughness in your review process. The Pro plan includes unlimited high-accuracy columns and data extraction from 200 PDFs monthly, which is perfect for serious systematic review work.
How accurate is Elicit's data extraction from PDFs?Elicit's data extraction is highly accurate, especially when using the high-accuracy columns feature available in Plus, Pro, and Team plans. The system can pull both quantitative and qualitative data from PDFs, including information from tables and text. All extracted data includes citations with exact quotes from the original sources, so you can verify everything. While no AI system is perfect, Elicit is designed to maintain research integrity by making the extraction process transparent and allowing you to check and edit any information it gathers.
Can I collaborate with my research team using Elicit?Collaboration features are available exclusively on the Elicit Team plan. This plan lets multiple researchers work together with collaborative live-editing and sharing of notebooks and systematic reviews. Your team can work on the same projects simultaneously, share findings, and maintain consistent research approaches. The Team plan also includes an admin panel for tracking usage across your group and managing seats. For research teams needing a unified approach to literature reviews and data extraction, this plan offers the best collaborative environment.
What happens if I need to extract data from more PDFs than my plan allows?If you reach your monthly PDF extraction limit, Elicit offers a flexible pay-as-you-go option. You can purchase additional credits as needed at the rate of $1 for 1,000 credits. This means you don't have to upgrade your entire plan just because you occasionally need to process more documents. For research projects with fluctuating needs, this flexible approach helps you manage costs while still accessing all the features you need during busy research periods.
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