Elicit AI: The Specialized Research Assistant
An **AI research tool** designed to automate evidence synthesis, literature reviews, and systematic review workflows by searching and extracting data from **138M+ academic papers**.
Elicit’s Core Features: Rigor and Automation
Elicit is not a general-purpose chatbot. It is a highly specialized tool whose features are built around the methodology of systematic reviews, emphasizing transparent data extraction and synthesis.
Sentence-Level Citations
Every AI-generated claim is backed by an **exact quote** and a link to the original source paper. This is critical for academic trust and verifies the information immediately.
Automated Data Extraction
Upload a set of papers or search for a topic. Elicit extracts key information (e.g., population, intervention, outcomes, sample size) into a **customizable, interactive table**, accelerating meta-analysis preparation.
Systematic Review Workflows
Provides a guided, step-by-step process for search, screening, and data extraction, partially automating the most time-consuming steps of a full systematic review.
Key Research Workflows Automated by Elicit
Elicit shines by transforming complex, multi-step research tasks into simple, time-saving workflows, drastically improving efficiency for scholars and research labs.
Rapid Research Reports
Generate high-quality, fully-automated research overviews (reports) based on your question, following a structure inspired by systematic reviews. The report is fully editable and citable.
Natural Language Search
Ask a full research question (e.g., “What are the effects of mindfulness on executive function?”) and Elicit will use semantic search to return the most relevant papers, even without perfect keyword matching.
BYOData & PDF Chat
Upload your own PDFs (research articles, company reports, or documents) and use Elicit to summarize them, ask specific questions, and extract data from the full text, not just the abstract.
Trade-offs: Advantages and Drawbacks
Key Strengths (Why Researchers Use It)
- **Verifiable Outputs:** Sentence-level citations are the gold standard for trust and accuracy in academic AI tools.
- **Structured Data:** Outputs are clean, comparative tables ideal for immediate analysis or for import into statistical software.
- **Systematic Review Focus:** Workflows are tailored for rigorous evidence synthesis, not just casual searching.
- **High Accuracy:** Validated in studies to have very high accuracy in extracting specific data points from papers.
Practical Limitations (Areas for Caution)
- **Search Completeness:** Elicit’s search is a **starting point**. Comprehensive systematic reviews still require traditional database searches (e.g., PubMed/Embase).
- **Extraction Limits:** Free and entry-level paid plans have a **limit on the number of papers** you can extract data from per month/year.
- **Not for General Knowledge:** It is strictly a research tool. Do not use it for broad, non-academic questions.
- **Report Quality:** AI-generated reports are excellent **drafts**, but still require expert human editing for publication.
Elicit AI Pricing and Subscription Tiers
Elicit offers a generous free tier for casual exploration, with paid tiers scaling up the capacity for data extraction and systematic review features.
Basic
Free
- Unlimited search (138M+ papers)
- Unlimited paper summaries (4 at once)
- Research Reports (Generate & Chat)
- **Extract data from 20 papers/month**
Plus (Best for Individuals)
$10/user/month
Billed annually ($12/month monthly)
- Everything in Basic, plus…
- Unlimited summaries (8 at once)
- **Extract data from 600 papers/year**
- Unlimited table exports (CSV, BIB, RIS)
The **Pro** plan ($42/user/month annually) increases data extraction to 2,400 papers/year and includes the full guided systematic review workflow and personalized research alerts. **Team/Enterprise** plans are available for larger groups and institutions.
🔥 Final Assessment: The Academic Powerhouse
Elicit AI is arguably the most valuable AI tool currently available for empirical researchers, students, and evidence-based consultants. It excels where general AI assistants fail: **structured data extraction, cross-paper synthesis, and citation integrity.** Its ability to automate the bulk of a literature review while still providing the necessary rigor (sentence-level citations) makes it an **essential, time-saving platform** for anyone in academia, pharmaceuticals, policy, or medical research.
