This table consolidates information about various AI tools and projects relevant to academic research and scientific discovery, categorized for clarity.
These are open-source projects or repositories focusing on automating or assisting the core research workflow.
| Project | Description | Focus Area |
|---|---|---|
| HKUDS/AI-Researcher | An AI system for autonomous scientific discovery and paper generation, automating everything from literature review and algorithm design to manuscript drafting. It transforms user ideas or reference papers into publishable research manuscripts. | Research workflow automation, AI agent orchestration |
| SakanaAI/AI-Scientist | One of the first comprehensive tools for fully automated open-ended scientific exploration, capable of reviewing and evaluating papers with LLMs. It includes modules to simulate peer review for conferences like ICLR. | Scientific discovery, peer review automation |
| dair-ai/ML-Papers-of-the-Week | A curated and continuously updated repository listing the most important ML papers each week, ideal for staying current and identifying publication trends. | Paper discovery and research synthesis |
| ashishpatel26/500-AI-Agents-Projects | A large, categorized collection of AI agent use cases across domains, helping researchers explore applied AI and benchmark methodologies. | AI agent design, applied research |
| GitHub 40M Repositories Dataset | A meta-dataset of 40 million GitHub repositories (2015–2025) with rich metadata — ideal for empirical software engineering or data-driven AI research. | ML-on-code, data mining, analytics |
These are dedicated platforms and applications designed to enhance specific steps in the research process, particularly literature review and synthesis.
| Tool | Distinct Feature | Ideal Use Case | Pricing |
|---|---|---|---|
| Paperguide | Semantic AI search across 200M+ papers, extract tables/data, generate structured literature summaries, and write research text. | Full-cycle academic research — search, review, and writing. | Free tier; paid plans start around $20/month |
| Elicit (by Ought) | Evidence-based synthesis of literature through Semantic Scholar corpus. | Rapid review of studies and evidence extraction. | Free |
| Iris.AI | Systematic review and cross-language research mapping. | Comprehensive reviews and meta-analysis. | Free basic, enterprise pricing available |
| SciSpace | Deep PDF understanding, Q&A with papers, and collaborative annotations. | Reading and team-based literature review. | Free + $12–$20/month for advanced plans |
| Connected Papers | Visual graph linking related papers by citation similarity. | Exploring relationships between studies and identifying influential works. | Free + $9.99/month Pro |
| Research Rabbit | “Spotify for research papers” with author networks and personalized recommendations. | Curating and discovering papers through visual or author-based search. | Free |
| Semantic Scholar | Massive corpus (200M+ papers) and AI impact metrics. | General-purpose academic search with citation-based relevance. | Free |
| Consensus.app | Retrieves papers and summarizes scientific consensus for questions. | Finding what studies agree on within a topic. | Free |