Publishing giant Elsevier claims its new artificial intelligence tool could cut the amount of time researchers have to spend searching academic literature by as much as half.

The firm has launched ScienceDirect AI, which is designed to instantly generate summaries of content drawn from 14 million full-text articles and book chapters hosted on the ScienceDirect platform.

The tool includes a ¡°reading assistant¡±, allowing scholars to ask further questions of a content summary or a document that it references, and a ¡°compare experiments¡± feature, which creates a table breaking down each experiment detailed in a set of articles, comparing their methods and results.

More than 30,000 researchers and librarians from 70 universities and research organisations helped to test and develop the tool. ¡°Building on the feedback received, the tool can save 50 per cent of time spent on literature research,¡± Elsevier said.

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Studies have indicated that researchers spend between a quarter and a third of their time sifting through literature looking for the material that they need.

ScienceDirect AI is the latest in a series of tools designed to aid this process, but its association with the ScienceDirect database and the publishing giant?that?operates it is likely to make it a major player.

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It follows the launch of Scopus AI in January 2024, linked to the database of abstracts of the same name and designed to give fast overviews of key topics.

Elsevier said that ScienceDirect AI would provide ¡°clear links to sources of information and claims, including exact passages within research articles¡±, and was ¡°purposefully built to ensure accuracy and reduce the risk of hallucinations and biases¡±.

Judy Verses, Elsevier¡¯s president of academic and government markets, said that the new tool could be a ¡°gamechanger for researchers who are grappling with information overload¡±.

¡°ScienceDirect is the platform of choice globally for millions of researchers, so this new generative AI tool will seamlessly integrate into their current ways of working, enabling them to dedicate more time to research and achieve results,¡± she said.

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chris.havergal@timeshighereducation.com