Be honest with yourself as a researcher, scholar, or whatnot; you’ve probably experienced the same dread when beginning a new literature review. You open your web browser, navigate around multiple academic databases, perform multiple keyword searches; then you end up with an overwhelming number of irrelevant articles or an insufficient number of articles—most of which are outdated. This method for locating articles can also be tedious, time-consuming, and frankly antiquated. In 2016 alone, we’ve created smart devices to help us with our scheduling, streaming services (like Netflix) that use machine learning algorithms to help us find what we want to watch next, etc. So why do we continue to sort through academic article databases using traditional methods? That is where papersearch comes in; it’s not only a “nice’ tool to have, but a necessary tool. Consider if you had a research assistant who would never tire or sleep; one who understood context, could find patterns you might otherwise overlook, and find just the right resources without requiring an endless amount of time spent looking for them. This is what smart-paper-search technology is trying to accomplish by changing the way knowledge gets created and shared.

The amount of research published daily is mind-boggling. There are thousands of papers being added every day in virtually all areas, and no person can ever keep track of all of it. Keyword-based searching is often used, so if your search term does not hit the exact keyword, it may miss ground-breaking research or have it published in a low-visibility journal. A smart paper search will look at the meaning of your search request by using advanced algorithms, natural language processing, and sometimes analytical intelligence to determine what the intent of your search request is; therefore, figuring out how many citations there are for that paper to give context for the paper to add to the relevance of related papers in other fields. For example, let’s say that you are researching how climate change is affecting farming. When you use a traditional search method, you probably will find a list of papers related directly to climate change and agriculture. In contrast, if you use a smart paper search method, you may find papers on how climate change is affecting farming from an ecology perspective, economics perspective, or even social science perspective with papers that discuss adaptive farming. These are all examples of research on farming that will not typically show up on a search for climate and agriculture. The point is, this is not only for convenience; it is for completeness. When you miss a crucial paper in academic research, you are often beginning the process of developing an argument from scratch or, worse, based on partial data. A good way to approach a literature review is to use an approach that incorporates a number of different strategies in order to get the best possible and most comprehensive literature review.

For scholars, time may be the only resource that you can never recoup; and the majority of the time used to find a paper is often wasted. You may spend hours, days, even longer looking for references, verifying sources, or going down rabbit holes only to realize they lead nowhere. Using a good paper search solution can simplify a lot of this time-consuming activity. Paper search solutions help to streamline these processes by incorporating functions such as citation tracking, recommendation engines, and customizable alerts based on your area of interest or research. A good paper search solution will turn weeks of work into just a few work-focused sessions. For example, if you are searching for papers about neural networks as they apply to healthcare, rather than spending the time manually reviewing new publications, you would be able to get notified immediately when a relevant paper is published. Additionally, if you found that a particular paper was pivotal to your research, a good paper search solution will be able to show you immediately who has cited that paper and what newer papers have used the cited paper as inspiration. This collaborative view of scholarly work allows you to work faster and be a cutting-edge contributor to your research area. Additionally, many of these tools connect to various online reference managers, allowing you to store, organize, and reference papers from a single interface instead of switching among multiple tabs. The time saved is not only major time savings, but also gives you the ability to use that time for genuine thought, writing, and experimentation, resulting in improved productivity.

In addition to navigating the world of applicable and helpful academic papers, one major hurdle researchers face is unearthing relevant studies. How many times have you read an abstract that seems to match your own research, only to find after reading the entire paper that it does not meet your needs? Advanced papersearch tools are now employed to help streamline this process. For instance, some now include features for providing summaries, making it much easier to quickly assess if the paper is relevant to your work. Some of these tools also provide a frame for data in a research landscape, showing how research is grouped by topic, as well as providing insight to the seminal papers in a research area. This additional information is extremely valuable for improving the efficiency of your research process by enabling you to better recognize patterns, determine gaps in the research literature, and identify potential collaborators. Using a papersearch platform, for example, could highlight two independent research trends occurring in the area of renewable energy that may actually be coming together, thus suggesting an alternative research thesis for you to investigate. As well, you may find a laboratory that conducts research consistently related to your interests, and thus identify a future networking opportunity. These tools do more than retrieve documents — they also help you to synthesize information, which allows for greater insight and creativity. For those with the goal of producing original scholarly documents, this type of context has tremendous value.

Let’s discuss serendipity—that great little twist of fate in the realm of research when you just happen to run across some information that changes your entire frame of reference. Traditional searches can seem so rigid; however, with a properly built and functioning papersearch engine, serendipity can be implemented through well-thought-out mechanisms of recommendation. By making use of your previous searches, your saved papers and even drafts of papers you’ve written, the engine can provide you recommendations that you would never have considered looking for. It may be a study out of another discipline that you could adopt some of their research methods, or an older study that has recently become relevant again. This is how innovative ideas are created through the sharing of ideas across disciplines. Additionally, as open access continues to expand, papersearch tools will help to democratize access to research by enabling users to discover high levels of quality with research that is freely available, rather than solely in high-priced restricted publications and journal articles. The tool will allow for the same level of papersearch capabilities and opportunities for graduate students in lesser-known universities as they have for Professors in Ivy League universities; thus, providing more egalitarianism in academia. Papersearch becomes essentially a partner in your exploration of the world, providing gentle nudges toward connections between your curiosity and creative or rigorous endeavors.

Of course, there are a variety of concerns when implementing a new tool. Is it trustworthy? Does it favour particular publishers? How does it ensure data privacy? The best paper search tools attack these points by being transparent about their algorithms, sourcing from many different databases, and allowing users to control the way their data are used. They are merely a tool to assist you in the process of critically evaluating resources, reading deeply, and building your argument; you can do it more effectively now with a better weapon. As academia continues to speed up and the trend toward interdisciplinary collaborations takes hold, continuing to use manual searches is analogous to using a typewriter in an age of typewriters. It’s not only ineffective; it’s giving you an edge. Utilizing a smart papersearch tool promotes working efficiently, remaining up-to-date, and providing a broader, more updated academic background for your research. You should begin to search for one if you haven’t already. Your futur self – buried in a project and surrounded by the stress of upcoming deadlines – will appreciate your decision!