Elicit

What It Is

Elicit is an AI-powered research assistant designed to streamline the process of reviewing, summarizing, and synthesizing academic literature. Created by Ought, Elicit helps researchers automate repetitive parts of evidence synthesis — such as finding relevant papers, summarizing results, extracting data, and organizing insights. Unlike standard search engines, Elicit structures information from research papers into easy-to-analyze formats.

Key Features

• Automated Literature Review: Searches for papers relevant to your research question and highlights key findings without manual screening.
• Research Question Builder: Guides users to refine queries into effective research questions suited for academic discovery.
• Paper Summaries: Generates structured summaries and highlights of papers, including methods, participants, and outcomes.
• Data Extraction: Automatically extracts quantitative and qualitative results from PDFs or research abstracts.
• Structured Tables: Organizes extracted data into visual tables for easier comparison across studies.
• Custom Workflow Design: Users can create custom workflows for tasks like summarizing abstracts, comparing study designs, or aggregating results.
• Citation Tracking: Links results to source material for transparent verifiability.

Use Cases

• Systematic Literature Review: Rapidly gather and summarize peer-reviewed studies for academic or policy research.
• Research Paper Summarization: Digest lengthy academic papers into key insights with method and conclusion summaries.
• Evidence Synthesis: Collect structured findings across multiple sources to identify consensus, gaps, and trends.
• Policy and Decision Support: Provide evidence-based insights for organizations or government research tasks.
• Academic Writing: Extract and organize references or supportive material for a new paper or review.

Pricing

• Free Plan: Basic paper search and summary capabilities.
• Pro Plan: Advanced extraction, workflow customization, and export features (pricing varies, typically from \$10–\$25/month).
• Team / Institutional Plans: Handles bulk research workflows and integrations for university or enterprise environments.

Expert Notes

Elicit distinguishes itself from tools like Perplexity by focusing exclusively on academic research synthesis rather than general knowledge retrieval. Its biggest advantage is the ability to structure unstructured research data, making literature reviews dramatically faster and more systematic.
For academics, policy analysts, and research writers, Elicit serves as a “co-pilot” for evidence gathering — automating the tedious parts of research while preserving human interpretation where it matters most.

Direct Link: https://elicit.org