For the activities below, it is recommended to use your own research questions.
Otherwise, feel free to use one of the sample research questions below.
Sample research questions:
The Impact of Remote Learning on Student Performance During the Pandemic
Social Media’s Influence on Climate Change Awareness
The Ethics of AI in Academic Research
The Effect of Urban Green Spaces on Community Well-being
What is Undermind?
An AI research assistant tool that finds and synthesizes relevant literature
Has a GenAI chatbot to narrow down research questions and specifically explain what you're looking for
Creates GenAI summaries and relevance analyses for all sources
Price: Free (limited searches per month)
Paper sources: Semantic Scholar
Instructions:
Go to undermind.ai - it requires you to make an account using your UVic email
Input your research topic into the search bar, and talk with the chatbot to refine your topic
Once the search process is completed (approximately 5 minutes), note the output:
A GenAI summary of top literature
A list of relevant papers
A GenAI chatbot box
Activity Questions:
Try asking a question to the chatbot about the papers! How would you rate the output quality?
What is the '% converged' statistic in the left corner? How much do you trust it?
How can you sort or filter the papers? What type of filters are available? How helpful is this for you?
Looking at the papers, how high quality and relevant do they seem? Try comparing the results to a UVic library search or Google Scholar search... is anything missing?
What is Research Rabbit?
A tool that helps navigate and discover relevant literature
Visually maps out connections between research papers, to help users find related work, identify trends, and explore new research areas
Allows you to save and organize papers however you'd like
Price: Completely free! (paid version just has more filters)
Paper sources: Semantic Scholar, Open Alex
Instructions:
Go to researchrabbit.ai - it requires you to make an account
Search your topic in the search bar. Then, choose an option below to create a visual graph and explore:
To explore a single paper, click on a paper you find interesting, and then pick either 'similar', 'refs', or 'cited by' (see image below)
To explore suggestions and relationships between multiple papers, select them using the circles on the right, and then click 'search' in the bottom right corner
Activity Questions:
What does it mean when a dot has many connected lines, vs few?
Pick a single article. Can you find the oldest reference it has? Can you save it to a collection?
How can you alter the X and Y axis on the graph? Is this helpful?
Looking at the articles Research Rabbit found, do they seem high quality?
How helpful do you think this tool would be for your research?
What is Elicit?
A research assistant tool that helps extract insights from academic papers and data (both from the web and ones you upload)
Automatically makes GenAI summaries and creates editable tables to compare information across sources
Allows you save papers, as well as 'chat' with chosen papers to compare and summarize findings
Price: Free (limited columns and summaries)
Paper sources: Semantic Scholar & you (upload)
Instructions:
Go to elicit.com - it requires you to make an account
Press 'Find papers', and search for your topic in the search bar (see image below)
Note the output:
GenAI summary of the 'top' sources (in its opinion)
A comparison table of the sources it found
Activity Questions:
How do you add more columns to the comparison table? Are there certain column types more helpful than others?
Can you find all papers on your topic, written between 1990 and 2010?
How trustworthy do the GenAI summaries seem? How would you double check their accuracy?
How good do you think the 'chat with papers' ability is?
What is Consensus?
An AI-powered search engine that sources peer-reviewed studies, and creates GenAI summaries with citations
Has a 'consensus meter' for yes/no questions, that shows you where evidence leans
Allows you save papers, as well as 'chat' with chosen papers to compare and summarize findings
Price: Free (limited pro/deep searches per month)
Paper sources: Semantic Scholar, Open Alex, web crawling
Instructions:
Go to consensus.app - it requires you to make an account
For this workshop, click the drop-down menu and pick the 'quick' option (see image below)
Search for your topic in the search bar, and note the output:
A GenAI summary of top literature
Suggested follow-up research questions
A list of relevant papers
Activity Questions:
How can you save a paper to your collection?
Start a 'new thread'. What happens when you ask consensus a 'yes or no' research question? How much do you trust this?
What filters are available, and how helpful are they? Can you find literature from only Canada?
Looking at the articles, do they seem high quality and/or relevant?
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