✦ A practical guide for PhD students

The AI tools that support every stage of your PhD

Choose the right tool to explore the literature, understand papers, organise your references and prepare presentations—while keeping your critical thinking in control.

Literature search and review

Find papers, map a field and assess the strength of citations.

🔎

Perplexity

FreemiumResearch monitoring

Explore a subject and quickly trace claims back to sources that you should verify.

Best for: starting a literature review.

Open Perplexity ↗
🎯

Consensus

FreemiumEvidence

Search scientific literature through questions and compare conclusions across studies.

Best for: quickly assessing the state of evidence.

Open Consensus ↗
🕸️

ResearchRabbit

FreeMapping

Explore networks of authors and publications around a seed paper.

Best for: finding related references.

Open ResearchRabbit ↗
🌩️

STORM

Literature searchSynthesis

Explore a topic, organise collected information and prepare an initial documented synthesis.

Best for: framing a literature search.

Open STORM ↗
🌍

Mandumah

Arabic literatureArabic sources

A documentary research platform dedicated to Arabic-language academic and scientific resources.

Best for: searching Arabic scholarly literature.

Open Mandumah ↗
🔬

Scite

CitationsEvidence

See whether a paper is supported, contrasted or mentioned by the research that cites it.

Best for: checking a key source.

Open Scite ↗

Reading and note-taking

Ask questions about your papers, clarify methods and retain useful notes.

📓

NotebookLM

FreeYour sources

Ask questions of your own documents and create source-grounded summaries.

Best for: preparing a chapter or a literature review.

Open NotebookLM ↗
📄

SciSpace

FreemiumPDF

Get assistance reading complex papers, especially methods and technical concepts.

Best for: understanding a technical article.

Open SciSpace ↗

Reference management and citations

Your foundation for collecting, annotating and correctly citing sources.

📚

Zotero

FreeOpen source

Collect, organise, annotate and cite references from your browser and word processor.

Best for: most PhD students.

Open Zotero ↗
🤝

Mendeley

FreemiumCollaboration

Manage shared libraries and annotate references with your team.

Best for: collaborative projects.

Open Mendeley ↗
🗂️

EndNote

InstitutionalReferences

A reference manager widely used in university and health research environments.

Best for: institutions already using EndNote.

Open EndNote ↗

Visualise and present

Make your ideas, models and findings clearer to your audience.

🧩

Connected Papers

FreemiumNetworks

Visualise relationships between publications to identify significant papers in a field.

Best for: understanding a research landscape.

Open Connected Papers ↗
🎬

Gamma

FreemiumPresentation

Create a first presentation structure, then refine it using your verified content.

Best for: a talk or thesis defence.

Open Gamma ↗
✏️

Napkin AI

FreemiumDiagrams

Turn an explanation into a visual draft that you can review and improve.

Best for: illustrating a conceptual framework.

Open Napkin AI ↗

Need an AI workflow tailored to your research?

NBProf can help you choose tools, structure your method and use AI with academic integrity.