Scite is an academic research tool powered by GPT-4o technology that is designed to make researching quicker and more efficient for students and educators.
I recently tried using Scite as an AI-powered research assistant for the work I do both as an educator and journalist.
Overall, I’m impressed with Scite’s ability to quickly find and summarize research papers from a diverse range of academic disciplines. It does this quicker than other AI research tools I’ve used, and has an easy-to-use interface. The only downside is that it requires a $12 per month subscription, and like all AI tools, won’t immediately find all the best sources on a given topic.
Therefore, whether you’re a student or academic using this, you’ll likely still have to do additional digging and searching for sources the old-fashioned way. This isn’t always a bad thing. In fact, one of the things I love about Scite is it encourages you through the research process by eliminating some of the barriers or difficulties around getting started. In other words, it is the type of AI tool that me and many other educators are always talking about wanting: one that facilitates rather than replaces thinking.
Here’s a closer look at everything Scite does well and where there is room for improvement.
What Is Scite and How Does It Work?
Scite works like a beefed-up AI-powered academic search engine.
I asked it “Can you summarize research on the use of AI chatbots as tutors in education?” With a minute or two, it provided an accurate overview of the current research into this topic with citations linking to the latest studies.
The summary noted that “AI chatbots are increasingly recognized for their ability to engage students in a personalized manner,” and shared the researchers making this claim and their evidence for it. Then it summarized some of the concerns researchers have.
Scite noted that “Despite the promising advantages, there is also critical discourse surrounding the implementation of AI chatbots in education," and that some researchers "caution about the hype surrounding AI chatbots, suggesting that while they exhibit considerable potential, their actual effectiveness in replacing traditional pedagogical methods requires comprehensive evaluation.”
Scite also shows you how often a paper has been cited, and lets you quickly view this citation, so you can tell if it was cited in a positive or negative way.
What Does Scite Do Well?
The Scite features described in the previous section are a really welcome resource for someone conducting a deep dive into any academic topic. This quick snapshot of the overall consensus around a topic is a wonderful place to start research. I would definitely recommend it for this purpose to students and fellow instructors.
The ability to quickly assess how often the paper has been cited, and in what context, gives you an almost instant sense of how the paper is viewed by other experts in the same field, which is so important given how one paper can sometimes find results that are seemingly amazing but can be so out of whack with other findings on the topic that it strains credibility.
Of course, there are some caveats. Scite does not have access to every academic paper, so students, in particular, need to be reminded not to begin and end their research with Scite.
Scite is not the only helpful AI research tool available, but it provides a quicker and more concise overview of research than others I’ve used, including STORM and OpenAI’s deep research tools. Both STORM and OpenAI’s research tend to provide longer and more in-depth overviews about any topic and write something based upon that topic for you. This might be preferable in some settings, but for me, the shorter overviews Scite provides are more useful and do what I want: help me find relevant research while leaving the actual writing to me or my students.
What Are Scite’s Limitations
Scite is a great tool, but it should not be your only research tool.
On some topics I investigated, I found several important studies that Scite missed or deemphasized. The tool also has a tendency to move toward centrist views on every issue. This is probably for the best overall, but doing that potentially risks overlooking some important minority viewpoints. And all summaries, even human-written ones, by their nature can gloss over nuance, particularly in discussions of complex topics, which most academic inquiries tend to examine.
So if I were to get approval from my university’s security and IT team to recommend this tool, I’d definitely remind students of these concerns. I'd also stress that while Scite can be helpful to use, it doesn’t replace conducting additional research on their own.
How Much Does Scite Cost?
Scite costs $12 per month for individual users. Additionally, it offers institutional subscriptions for companies and universities, but those are custom and based upon the number of licenses needed and other factors.
Bottom Line: Is Scite a Good Tool For Teaching?
Overall, Scite is a helpful and engaging research tool that can likely benefit educators, academics, and students. It requires a monthly submission but seems worth it to those who regularly conduct research.
Ultimately, I found Scite to be one of the best AI research assistant tools around.
