As we navigate the landscape of AI innovations, one jumps out as an invaluable tool for researchers. ResearchRabbit, which bills itself as the "Spotify of Papers" allows users to conduct thorough literature reviews with engaging visualizations to understand the network of research related to a topic.
The concept is simple: you start by using one or more papers (called seed papers), and ResearchRabbit will find more papers relevant to the topic of interest (which is dictated by the seed papers you previously selected). The tool is designed to support your research without you switching between searching tabs and databases which can be time consuming, leads to further citation mining, and can be hard to keep organized; a truly unpleasant rabbit hole...
ResearchRabbit is a free tool that anyone can use regardless of academic affiliation and is not classified as a "library resource". It is very similar to how we support another popular free research tool, Zotero, in that we endorse the service and are happy to help our community navigate it. This post will provide a brief overview of the app and answer some common FAQ that we've addressed in our time exploring it.
Here's what ResearchRabbit has to say for their service:
Q: Does ResearchRabbit integrate with Zotero?
A: Yes! When you sign up for an account, you will see a prompt to connect your Zotero account and import all your existing references into a ResearchRabbit "collection". As you explore each paper's network, you can easily add new articles to those collections which will sync back with your Zotero account. Learn more here: https://www.researchrabbit.ai/tipsandtricks.
Q: How do I access articles that I find on ResearchRabbit?
A: If you click on the title in a ResearchRabbit result, you will be linked directly to the article page on it's host site, which may or may not provide immediate access to the full text. We recommend copying and pasting the title into our catalog search to see whether or not Fairfield has access to the article. If not, no worries! Simply request it using our fantastic Interlibrary Loan service.
Q: I'm collaborating in a group research project, can we share a ResearchRabbit collection?
A: Yes! Each collection allows you to add collaborators.
Pro-tip: if you're conducting a group literature review, we recommend storing everything in a shared ResearchRabbit collection first, then exporting to Zotero once you're done to continue working there. ResearchRabbit does not integrate "group libraries" from Zotero so it's a little clunky but still easy to work around.
Have questions or want to explore how ResearchRabbit can support your work? Get in touch with one of our research librarians: https://www.fairfield.edu/library/askalibrarian/index.html.