Elicit
Status:
watch-list| Maturity:production-ready| Last reviewed: 2025-06-01
What it does
Elicit is an AI research assistant that automates parts of the literature review process. It searches academic papers, extracts key findings, and allows researchers to build structured evidence tables across large numbers of papers without reading each one in full.
Key capabilities
- Natural language search across 125m+ academic papers (Semantic Scholar corpus)
- Automated extraction of structured data from papers (populations, methods, results)
- Evidence table generation suitable for systematic review workflows
- Paper summarisation with direct citation to source text
- Export to CSV for further analysis
Fit for Sheffield researchers
Strong fit for STEM and health sciences researchers conducting systematic or scoping reviews. Less suited to arts and humanities researchers due to corpus bias toward English-language STEM literature. Potentially high value for researchers under time pressure to survey large bodies of evidence quickly.
Licensing and access
Free tier available with usage limits. Paid plans for higher usage. No confirmed institutional or Jisc pricing at time of review — recommend direct enquiry with Ought before procurement. Data residency is US-based which requires consideration under GDPR for sensitive research data.
Trust and governance notes
Ought states that user data is not used for model training. However, GDPR compliance has not been independently verified and data residency is US-based. SSO not supported at time of review. Not recommended for use with sensitive personal data until GDPR status is confirmed.
Observed limitations
- Corpus limited to Semantic Scholar — incomplete coverage of humanities, grey literature, and non-English sources
- Extraction quality varies by paper format and discipline
- Not a replacement for full systematic review methodology — positions itself as an acceleration tool
- GDPR status unconfirmed
Related tools
scite · research-rabbit · covidence
Sources and evidence
- Elicit product page: https://elicit.com (accessed 2025-06-01)
- Ought data policy: https://elicit.com/privacy (accessed 2025-06-01)
- Semantic Scholar corpus information: https://www.semanticscholar.org/about (accessed 2025-06-01)