If you need to process research papers to get a quick understanding of what's going on and what's most important, Elicit can be useful. This AI research assistant can find, summarize and extract data from more than 125 million research papers, which can be useful for things like speeding up literature reviews and automating systematic reviews. Elicit also offers a free Basic version with limited credits and features, a subscription-based Plus version, and an Enterprise/Institutions version geared for groups and institutions.
Another good option is Semantic Scholar. This free AI-powered research service indexes more than 219 million papers across all scientific subjects. It's got powerful filters for searching, brief summaries (TLDRs), tools to cite papers, organize papers into folders and share research feeds. You can also get paper recommendations based on your interests and set up automated email alerts for new citations.
For explanations of complex topics, Explainpaper is a good option. This AI-powered system lets you upload papers, flag sections you'd like explained, and get detailed explanations. It also can summarize papers and analyze multiple papers at once, so it's a good tool to get a better grasp of research papers quickly.
Last, Scholarcy offers a specialized AI-powered summarization tool for academic papers. It converts dense documents into interactive summary flashcards and can handle lots of file formats. With features like custom summaries, note-taking and literature matrices, Scholarcy is designed to help students and researchers better understand complex information.