Local Deep Research
Researches a question across the web, papers and your own files and writes a cited report
by LearningCircuit
Elicit
by ElicitAppResearch something
Finds research papers, pulls out the key data and drafts a cited research report
The problem it solves
Someone asks what the research says about a question, and you have a day, a search engine and a stack of PDFs you won't finish.
For Researchers and academicsStudentsAnalysts in health and policy
- Before
- You search databases, skim abstracts, copy numbers into a spreadsheet and write the summary yourself.
- After
- You ask the question; Elicit finds papers, pulls the findings into a table and drafts a report where each claim links to its source sentence.
- Stars
- —
- License
- Closed source
- Cost
- Free
- Platforms
- Web
- Runs
- Cloud
Overview
Elicit is a web app for academic and industry research. You ask a research question; its Research Agent searches more than 138 million papers and the web, extracts findings into tables and writes a report with sentence-level citations that you can export as PDF or Word. The free Basic plan covers unlimited paper search, summaries and chat with papers. It suits students, academics and analysts in fields such as health, policy and science.
Each claim links back to the sentence in the paper it came from, so you can check the source instead of trusting a summary.
Try these first
Start with the first one: it is a small task you can check easily.
- Does [habit] improve sleep in adults? Find the main studies and show the quoted sentence behind each finding.First try · free plan
- Make a table of the studies on [topic] with the sample size, method and main result of each.
- Write a short research report on [question] that I can export to Word.limited on free plan
- Check every week for new papers on [topic] and email me what changed.Pro plan or above
Example prompts written by Agent Flows Hub.
Features
From the creator's documentation.
| Feature | What it does | Runs |
|---|---|---|
| Paper search | Searches more than 138 million papers, with summaries and chat about each paper | All plans |
| Research Agent | Finds papers, extracts data and pulls the evidence together in one session | All plans, limited on Basic |
| Research reports | A report with references to the papers used, exportable as PDF or Word | All plans |
| Systematic reviews | Screens papers against your criteria, extracts data and produces a PRISMA-style report | Pro, Scale, Enterprise |
| Routines | Re-runs a research task daily or weekly and reports what changed, with links to sources | Pro, Scale, Enterprise |
| File uploads | Upload up to 100 of your own files so the agent can read and extract from them | Your files go to Elicit |
Good to know
You need a quick, sourced overview of what studies say about a question. Elicit searches papers, extracts the findings into a table and drafts a report whose claims link to the sentences they came from.
Limits
- Elicit's help center says it can miss a paper's nuance or misread what a number refers to, and it summarises weak studies the same way as strong ones. Open the cited papers before you rely on a finding.
- It works better for empirical research, such as randomized controlled trials in social science and biomedicine, than for other fields. The Systematic Review workflow needs a Pro, Scale or Enterprise plan.
Notes by Agent Flows Hub (original project name: Elicit), written from the creator's documentation, not from running it ourselves. Elicit: which workflow should I use? · Elicit's limitations
Stuck setting it up?
Tell us what happened. We take a look first; if it needs paid work, you get an estimate before anything starts.
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