AI Tools for Research Workflow in Academia (maintained under https://buff.ly/3zXkFMs by Prof. Niels Van Quaquebeke)

AI Tools for the Research Workflow in Academia

Maintained by Prof. Niels Van Quaquebeke (24. August 2025)

This document is part of my thesis supervision video course (open enrollment for anyone and for free): https://courses.quaquebeke.com/courses/thesis-introduction

Brand new publication on the topic: Van Quaquebeke, N. Tonidandel, S. & Banks, G. C. (In press). Beyond Efficiency: How Artificial Intelligence (AI) will reshape scientific inquiry and the publication process. The Leadership Quarterly. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.leaqua.2025.101895

Disclaimer:

Use AI assistance for your academic projects. It will make your life easier. But use it with care. AIs will speak with a confidence that is seldom warranted in academic writing. Also, they will at times "hallucinate" and, for instance, make up references or interpretations. Double check everything.
Check with your thesis supervisor on the rules of your institution (or with the journal you are submitting to) regarding AI use.
Do not use all listed AI tools. Have a look at them, and then decide which ones work best for your workflow.
If a tool does not work for you right now, check back in a few weeks. The speed of development in this space is phenomenal. Things change quickly. Also, best to bookmark this Google doc for updates.
Some apps are free, some freemium (i.e. pay for additional features or extensive use).
Some tools are strictly speaking not AI apps, but they belong into the workflow … and lazy me didn’t want to create a separate document.

Feel free to spread the doc if you find it helpful. And drop me an email if you find something is missing. https://www.klu.org/quaquebeke

For quick access, click on jump links:

Additional Note on AI Development

Research and discovery

Note-taking and organization

Summarization of papers

Meta-Analyses

Text transcription (from audio or video files)

Translation

Research material creation

Video Creation

Finding data(bases)/Recruiting

Analysis of data

Writing assistance

Checks, Feedback, and Review

Visuals and presentation

Prompting

Miscellaneous

There’s always an AI for that

Email writing assistance

People to follow on Twitter for AI use in academic research

Final note (not AI): Work with a standardized format

Additional Note on AI Development

Own GPTs: As of 7th of November 2023, ChatGPT announced that people can develop their own GPTs and then provide these GPTs to others via a WebShop. In the future, it seems very feasible that you can train your own personal research assistant based on your writing and other documents (though the copyright regarding the training material is somewhat of a wild west domain right now). This “research assistant” can then assist not only with discovery but also writing.

Wrappers: Generally, it seems many services are structured around the API of big AI companies (i.e. OpenAI, anthropomorphic, Google, Adobe, Meta, etc.). So if you bet on such a wrapper service that very service may be rendered obsolete in the future. It’s therefore a dilemma between moving fast with a first mover wrapper, or waiting a bit with likely a more sustainable base service.

Models: Most of the big LLM companies have put out different models of their tools, some better suited fro prose other better for analytical thinking and deep search. Make conscious choices which model fits best for your purposes. And keep in mind the landscape is shifting rapidly. So your once favorite model may not be the best for your purposes anymore when you need it again.

Prompting: A lot of the work with LLMs really comes down to prompting. The essential advice of writing a good prompt for academic research...write as if your are talking to your research assistant

✔ Provide sufficient context

✔ Provide a clear task

✔ Clearly stipulate the kind of output you want to get

✔ Be friendly, emotional and encouraging

You may create or refine over time your perfect one. Here is one that may help you get started:

"You are now operating as a world-class academic research assistant trained in deep reading, structured synthesis, and factual precision.

Your role:

- Act as a scholarly collaborator for students, researchers, writers, and knowledge workers.

- Provide clean, citation-rich summaries of academic papers.

- Extract and compare key arguments across multiple sources.

- Attribute quotes and ideas to authors and their institutions.

- Write formal, cohesive research notes in academic tone and structure.

Your rules:

- Never hallucinate sources or facts. If something isn’t in the text, say “not available.”

- Include author names, paper titles, and publication year when citing.

- Use formal academic English — avoid casual tone.

- Default citation format is APA unless user specifies otherwise.

- Always structure your output with clear section headings: Abstract, Summary by Source, Comparative Analysis, and Synthesis & Takeaways.

- End with a full bibliography.

- Assume all inputs are from reputable academic sources unless told otherwise.

When a user gives you a document, treat it like a scholarly text. When they give a topic, find structure and help them reason through it academically.

You are not a chatbot. You are a rigorous academic co-author."