Best AI tools for Researchers to Improve PDF Reading and Writing Efficiency

Drowning in the amount of PDF documents is a typical daily life for researchers. They usually need to read through the whole paper, even multiple papers on the same topic, to retrieve the crucial information they want for the subsequent research, and write lengthy articles, which are both very time-consuming.

But the development of AI tech and the rise of AI tools since last year provide new efficient ways for researchers to read PDF documents and write papers. Today we will recommend 3 online AI tools to boost the research productivity:

• ChatDOC: chat pdf with high-precision table/formula recognition.
• ChatGPT: a general AI assistant better than search engines.
• Grammarly: online grammar checking and language enhancement tool.

ChatDOC

ChatDOC(chatdoc.com) is a GPT-based AI reading tool for knowledge professionals, especially the researchers, who are dealing with countless PDF documents every day. It allows users to chat with pdf documents directly to get AI answers and obtain summaries, analysis, abstracts and other needed information they want in seconds. You can also select texts or tables to ask specific questions, delve into a thread to ask follow up questions and upload a folder of files to query across multiple documents simultaneously.

Compared to other chatpdf tools, ChatDOC is the most outstanding AI PDF reader for researchers. Here are the excellent features you can't miss:

• Trace the answers source to the original parts with one click: when you get AI answers from ChatDOC, you can easily click the page number or the footnotes to trace back the source, enabling the answers reliability, which is highly important to researchers.

• Table and Formula recognition: not only texts, ChatDOC can even recognize tables and formulas precisely. For example, you can select the formula and ask ChatDOC: explain this formula, and just let AI make it clear.

• Chat pdfs from arxiv.org: no downloads, no uploads, just chat with the papers directly. Yes, we make it possible. When reading a paper on arxiv.org, just add "chat" before the url link and ChatDOC will be instantly summoned to chat.

• GPT-4 support: ChatDOC now supports GPT-4 answers for more accurate responses.

ChatGPT

ChatGPT(chat.openai.com), developed by OpenAI, is an advanced language model that excels in natural language understanding and generation. ChatGPT has been trained on a vast dataset from the internet, allowing it to provide information and generate text on a wide range of topics. Users can just ask ChatGPT questions to get the info, instead of searching on the chrome mannually. Researchers can leverage ChatGPT in various ways to enhance their work. They can use it to:

• Generate Text: ChatGPT can generate human-like text, which can be helpful for producing drafts of research papers, reports, or articles.

• Content Review: Researchers can utilize ChatGPT to review and refine their writing, helping to correct grammar and style issues in their documents.

• Information Retrieval: ChatGPT can provide information on a wide range of topics, making it a handy tool for gathering preliminary data and references.

• Idea Generation: Researchers can engage ChatGPT in conversations to brainstorm ideas, explore different angles, or clarify their thoughts on complex topics.

It's important to note that while ChatGPT is a valuable resource, researchers should verify information independently, as it may not always provide entirely accurate or up-to-date data. Additionally, it's crucial to be aware of potential biases in its responses and use the tool mindfully in research contexts. And it doesn't support uploading PDF documents, so it's a valuable tool for automating text-based tasks, but not a good AI PDF reader.

Grammarly

Grammarly(grammarly.com) is your personalized AI writing and proofreading tool that offers a range of features to assist writers in improving the quality of their text.

Researchers can benefit from Grammarly in several ways. First, it helps researchers enhance the clarity, correctness, and overall quality of their academic and scientific writing. This is particularly valuable when crafting research papers, articles, or thesis documents. Grammarly's real-time grammar and spelling checks, as well as suggestions for style and tone, can aid researchers in producing more polished and professional content.

But Grammarly may not always provide nuanced advice, and its suggestions should be used with caution, as it may not fully understand the context or purpose of specialized research writing. So Grammarly is not a replacement for human proofreaders or editors, and researchers should still consider professional editing for critical documents.