Elicit

What is Elicit?

Elicit is a really handy tool for researchers, especially when you need to speed up your literature reviews. It’s great for finding papers that might be a bit tricky to track down otherwise. Plus, it can automate parts of systematic reviews and meta-analyses, and it’s a fantastic way to start exploring entirely new research areas. It really shines in empirical research fields, the kind that deal with experiments and measurable results – think biomedicine or machine learning. However, it’s important to know that Elicit isn’t designed to answer questions or provide information that isn’t already documented in academic papers. So, if you’re looking for specific facts, like statistics or numbers, or if you’re working in theoretical or non-empirical areas, it might not be the best fit. Elicit searches through a massive collection of about 125 million academic papers from the Semantic Scholar corpus, covering a really broad spectrum of academic disciplines.

Who created Elicit?

Elicit was actually started by its founder, Allen Ross. His company is all about extracting, organizing, and then synthesizing data specifically for research purposes.

Who is Elicit for?

• Researchers
• Scientists
• Data Analysts
• Biomedical researchers
• Machine learning engineers
• Academic librarians
• Systematic reviewers
• Meta-analysts
• Graduate students
• Policy Analysts

How to use Elicit?

To really get the most out of Elicit, here’s a simple breakdown of how to use it:

1. Know its purpose: Elicit is a big help for researchers looking to speed up their literature reviews. It’s also great for finding those hard-to-get papers, automating systematic reviews and meta-analyses, and generally exploring new research topics. It’s particularly useful in empirical fields like biomedicine and machine learning where experiments and tangible results are key.
2. Understand its limits: Keep in mind that Elicit isn’t built to answer questions or provide information that isn’t found within academic papers. It might not be the best tool for digging up specific facts, like statistics or exact numbers, and it’s less effective for theoretical or non-empirical subjects.
3. How to search: Researchers can use Elicit by simply typing in their research questions or the topics they’re interested in. This helps them discover relevant academic papers much more efficiently.
4. What you get: Elicit will present you with a carefully selected list of papers that match what you searched for. This means you can quickly access valuable information for your research projects.
5. Making it better: To get even better search results, you can use more specific keywords, phrases, or filters. This helps you narrow down your search and find the papers that are most relevant to what you’re researching.

By following these steps, researchers can really make Elicit work for them, streamlining their literature review process, finding those elusive papers, and gaining valuable insights across many empirical domains.