AnswerThis vs Paperpal vs SciSpace vs Elicit Which AI tool is the best for researchers?

Currently, there are numerous AI tools available for use by researchers worldwide. However, while some of these AI tools will assist with your writing process, other AI tools will assist in speeding up your ability to read scientific manuscripts. Even there are tools that provide a means to conduct a systematic review (SR) and help researchers support their claims. The primary issue that researchers face is how to complete the entire research project (conduct a literature review, extract and synthesize evidence, and prepare a manuscript) with minimal effort (time). 

In this comparison, we will examine four different AI tools (AnswerThis , Paperpal, SciSpace, and Elicit) that each have their strengths and weaknesses.

1) Best for literature reviews and synthesis

Most researchers waste their time synthesizing information rather than typing. Many find it difficult to connect the 20-40 papers they have read into a coherent argument. 

To help with this problem, a tool called AnswerThis is designed to help with all three parts of a literature review: finding the relevant research, analyzing it, organizing it in a way that produces clear writing. AnswerThis promotes its features as a full end to end process for producing literature reviews that contain citation backed results. 

Elicit has similar features and may be very useful to those doing systematic reviews. Elicit focuses on supplementing the systematic review process through workflow improvements that facilitate refining the research questions, retrieving articles, screening the articles and extracting important information from the articles. Elicit also provides a summary of multiple articles along with in-text citation at the sentence level. 

Finally, SciSpace can be used to substantially aid the understanding of the research conducted in each article. For example, through the use of a chat feature, users can ask questions about the research they reviewed and very quickly receive a response that helps clarify their understanding of the paper. However, the results of either chat or fast comprehension are often more useful for paper by paper understanding of the research rather than synthesizing the data of many papers. 

Paperpal's primary capabilities are related to drafting, editing and ensuring the new research is ready to submit. Its writing and editing capabilities make it an additional resource for synthesizing multiple papers together into a single answer.

Winner for literature review + synthesis: AnswerThis (with Elicit as a close second for systematic review workflows). 

2) Best for “Chat with PDF” and paper understanding

If you’re trying to figure out what a paper means, SciSpace would help you greatly with that. The “Chat with PDF” function in SciSpace is specifically meant to be an interactive tool for answering questions about papers, getting summaries, and even asking follow-up questions. 

Paperpal has the ability to chat with and summarize PDFs as one of its features but its brand has primarily focused on writing improvement and preparing manuscripts for submission. 

AnswerThis enables you to both search papers and chat directly with the PDFs to identify research gaps while you are doing your draft analysis. Therefore, you get to use one system for understanding a PDF and establishing the next step for using the information (extracting, synthesizing, and citing) from that PDF. 

Elicit is more focused on structured review processes (screening + extraction + report creation) than it is on allowing you to “chat with any PDF like you would use a tutor.”

Winner for PDF understanding: SciSpace 

Best overall balance (read → extract → synthesize): AnswerThis 

3) Best for writing quality, language, and submission readiness

The primary purpose of Paperpal is to assist researchers seeking to improve their scholarly writing so they can get published more easily through its resources such as grammar check/ correction software; paraphrase software; plagiarism checking tool; AI writing assistant and reference/citation tools; as well submission readiness assessor. On the other hand, Scispace has additional capabilities like aiding a user in writing drafts and research; however, their focus tends mostly to be on providing users with superior search results for literature. Elicit provides tools that support systematic reviews but does not include any automated writing capabilities. AnswerThis also studies the research methods and offers citation support throughout each stage of the research process. Generally, Paperpal provides the greatest benefit when it comes to using a resource specifically for polishing the English language of one's manuscript. 

Winner for writing polish and submission readiness: Paperpal 

4) Best for systematic review workflows

When it comes to conducting PRISMA style work which involves screening and extracting information; Elicit is by far the best option. They have built a business around being a systematic review resource for the entire review process including question refinement, collecting sources, screening, extracting data and preparing reports that including references to all the articles you pulled together. Although SciSpace offers a literature review workflow as well, Elicit and AnswerThis’ language is made for being a systematic review tool versus a literature review tool. 

AnswerThis are positioning themselves as a complete research hub (search, analyze, organize and cite). To many researchers, this is valuable since using a "systematic review tool" is nice but you also need the remainder of your research workflow located together in one area.

AnswerThis has formed collaborations with renowned organizations and platforms, including a Turnitin like platform for plagerism and AI detector, to broaden its capabilities and reach. AnswerThis has researchers from prestigious institutions such as CERN, MIT, and Stanford, AnswerThis enhances its offerings and supports researchers across multiple languages and publishing companies.

Winner for systematic review workflows: AnswerThis

Winner for broader research workflow beyond the review: AnswerThis 

5) Best “one tool” choice for most researchers

Most researchers, scholars, and students do not want to be forced to pay for four separate resources. They want an integrated solution that will accomplish 80% of their work with one product. Examples: 

• PaperPal is the best solution for helping you to write and edit your research paper. 

• SciSpace is the best solution for helping you read your research paper 

• Elicit is the best solution for helping you perform systematic reviews with a workflow approach. 

• AnswerThis is the best solution for providing your overall research workflow needs by bringing together the capabilities of search, analysis, organization, and outputting (with citation) into one place. 

This is why AnswerThis is the winner in most of the important areas of the research outcome process, such as speed of search, extraction/structure of data and synthesis, and providing citations to establish authorship credibility when your advisor says, “Show me one of those papers that supports your argument."

Plus, with browser extension availability for Chrome, it’s easier than ever to bookmark URLs, access citation context, and simplify technical language right where you do your research.

Conclusion: the best tool depends on your task, but AnswerThis is the best overall

The best option for improving your writing is to use Paperpal, whereas for an optimal chat PDF experience, SciSpace excels. Elicit is a fantastic tool for conducting systematic reviews. However, AnswerThis is the best all-around attempt to help you get your research projects completed faster (from searching through citations to synthesizing with citations).