Elicit

Editorial Review

Elicit has quickly become one of the most useful AI tools for anyone who works with academic literature. Its semantic search capability is a genuine improvement over traditional keyword-based database searches — you can describe what you're looking for in natural language and get surprisingly relevant results from its index of over 125 million papers. The automated data extraction feature lets you pull specific data points (sample sizes, methodologies, key findings) across dozens of papers simultaneously, which is transformative for systematic reviews. For business buyers in research-heavy organizations — R&D departments, consulting firms, policy institutes, and academic institutions — Elicit can meaningfully accelerate the literature review process. Tasks that previously took weeks of manual searching and reading can be compressed into hours. The structured analysis workspace makes it easy to organize findings and build evidence tables that feed directly into reports. The free tier is functional enough for occasional use, and the paid plans starting around $10/month are reasonable for regular researchers. The main limitations are that it works best with well-studied topics that have substantial academic literature, and the AI extraction can occasionally miss nuance in complex papers. It should be used to accelerate research, not replace critical reading — but for that purpose, it is among the best tools available.