Research Assistant: Frequently Asked Questions
The Research Assistant is designed to help teams navigate complex and evolving research areas more efficiently. Created to streamline discovery, it enables users to ask natural language questions, search across multiple sources including personal libraries and Dimensions, and receive summarized, cited insights with direct links to the research source. The goal is to provide a more fluid, contextual research experience that helps you find the most relevant information fast to accelerate decision-making and support better collaboration.
The Research Assistant functionality expands well beyond our current AI features, offering several major upgrades:
- Discover New Research: Instead of relying only on content you already have in your library, or knowing exactly what to search a research database for, the Research Assistant can now search both your library and external sources to find the most relevant content for your question. You no longer need to know which papers to query-the AI does the discovery for you.
- Analyze a Broader Set of Papers: The previous AI chat was limited to analyzing up to 20 selected papers from your library. This new tool can handle much larger and more flexible sets of references, chosen dynamically based on your question.
- Have True Conversation: This update introduces a more natural, back-and-forth chat experience. You can ask follow-up questions, refine your queries, and explore complex topics more fluidly.
- Access Chat History: Your AI conversations are now saved in your browser, allowing you to revisit and continue past threads. (Note: chat history is local to your browser, switching devices or clearing your cache will remove it.)
The Research Assistant searches across multiple trusted sources-including your ReadCube library, scientific databases, and patent repositories-to generate a response. All sources used are cited so you can easily verify the information and explore it further.
The Research Assistant searches across content from a broad range of sources, including journal articles, preprints, patents, books, and book chapters indexed as part of the Dimensions database and which include data from PubMed, PubMed Central, arXiv, Crossref, and direct feeds from over 160 publishers.
Yes. The Research Assistant searches patent data via the Dimension database, enabling access to a wide range of intellectual property information alongside traditional scientific literature. This ensures a more comprehensive view of the research landscape.
Yes. You can direct the Research Assistant to look at a specific library or list.
No. The Research Assistant will analyze full-text content when available, but it can also generate responses based on titles and abstracts alone. You don't need to have the PDF saved for the AI to consider an article in its analysis-it will use whatever metadata is accessible to provide the most relevant insights.
Yes. Depending on the prompt, it will decide which searches are best to employ. They can be activated simultaneously.
Yes. The Research Assistant lists sources at the end of its response and often embeds them within the answer text. If you would like to dive deeper into cited articles, you can click the source link to open the PDF and use our Chat with a PDF functionality to interrogate the article directly.
Yes. You can easily add any sources cited by the Research Assistant to your ReadCube library-just click on the reference and use the standard "Add to Library" option, just as you would with any other content.
The Research Assistant offers the opportunity to find the most relevant articles via its integrated ability to search across the Dimensions database and a direct route to download, where available, or purchase articles of interest from the publisher themselves or via ReadCube Document Delivery.
Yes. With this new functionality you will see a running list of your 'chats' in the left hand menu. Clicking on a previous chat will reopen it and you can revisit the conversation and pick up where you left off. Note: Chat history is preserved in the browser, so if you change devices or browsers you will no longer be able to see the history.
When you get a response to your prompt, there is a thumbs up and thumbs down icon in the bottom right corner of the screen. Click on either option based on the quality of the response. This will bring up a popup where you can add additional feedback. We review all feedback provided, so please be generous with your thoughts!
Yes. Below are some sample prompts to help you get started or spark ideas for your own questions. Feel free to use them as inspiration-these examples are just a starting point, not a limit to what you can explore with the Research Assistant.
- Summarize the findings on CRISPR-Cas9 off-target effects from my saved articles.
- Find all articles in my library about CRISPR gene editing in cancer therapy.
- Compare dosing regimens for GLP-1 agonists from recent clinical studies.
- List recent patents for nanoparticle-based drug delivery systems for anticancer drugs.
- What are the current WHO guidelines for malaria treatment?
- Summarize key findings from recent research on gut-brain axis signaling.
- Are there any papers exploring how microbiota affects vaccine efficacy?