AI Tools
This table provides a list of AI tools which may be useful for your studies and which have a free version available. Coventry University Group can only guarantee that your data will be protected if you use Copilot, as we pay for an Enterprise Licence. For all other tools, you should check their privacy policies.
This list contains stand-alone tools. Increasingly, you may also find that AI functionality is embedded within the platforms you use, such as Google or journal databases. AI is often used to do things like generate a summary of the information you have searched for. These platforms should tell you that AI has been used, and will often use a star symbol to indicate this. It is important that you pay close attention to where information you are using has come from, so that you can ensure you are meeting the requirements in your assignment brief.
The table was last updated on 17th June 2025. For more detailed information which may be updated more regularly, see the ITHAKA or JISC guides to AI tools.
| Tool | Source of Data | What it Does | Access | Notes |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Copilot, from Microsoft | Unclear | Generative AI chatbot | Coventry University Licence | Coventry University has an Enterprise licence for Copilot, which keeps your data protected. Check for a green padlock symbol to make sure you are using this. |
| ChatGPT, from OpenAI | Information publicly available on the internet, information from third parties, user content (OpenAI, 2024) | Generative AI chatbot | Some free features, others require a subscription | OpenAI use your data to train ChatGPT. This means you should not upload personal data or your assignments to ChatGPT. |
| Grammarly | OpenAI and users' content | Writing assistant | Some free features, others require a subscription | Grammarly provides information about privacy and responsible use of AI. They say that users can choose whether their data is used to train their AI models. However, their Terms of Service state that they can use your content to develop new technologies. |
| Elicit | Semantic Scholar | Semantic literature search tool (analyses the content of abstracts to help you find relevant papers, helps to extract data, etc.) | Some free features, others require a subscription | Semantic Scholar is a database of only open access articles, so Elicit will miss lots of content we subscribe to which is behind paywalls. |
| Research Rabbit | Semantic Scholar and PubMed | Citation-based literature mapping tool (analyses citations between papers, shared authors, etc. to help you find relevant papers) | Free | Because some of its data comes from PubMed, it is an excellent choice for research in Health. For other subject areas, be aware that Semantic Scholar, its other source of data, only covers open access papers. This means it will miss lots of content we subscribe to which is behind paywalls. |
| Keenious | OpenAlex | Semantic literature search tool (analyses your writing or another paper to help you find relevant articles) | Some free features, others require a subscription | OpenAlex claims to have the second largest coverage of academic works, with only Google Scholar having more. This makes it one of the more comprehensive sources of data. |
| Perplexity | Information publicly available on the internet | Generative AI chatbot, with a focus on searching for information | Some free features, others require a subscription | Although it says it has a 'research' mode, if you want it to search for academic information, you have to specify this. Even then, it can still only find information publicly available on the internet. |
| Goblin | OpenAI | A collection of tools designed to help neurodivergent people with tasks they may find overwhelming | Free | You can ask Goblin to help you do things like create a to-do list, break down a bigger task into smaller parts, or estimate how long something will take. |
| Rayyan | Unclear | Systematic review tool | Some free features, others require a subscription | Rayyan is a user-friendly way of organising your papers in a systematic review through the deduplication and screening processes. Some of its features use AI to enhance their functionality. |
| Inciteful | OpenAlex, Semantic Scholar, Crossref, Open Citations | Citation-based literature mapping tool (analyses citations between papers, shared authors, etc. to help you find relevant papers) | Free | Inciteful is developed and run by a single person, and is a less well known tool. However, it has a very wide range of data sources. |
| Litmaps | OpenAlex, Semantic Scholar, Crossref | Citation-based literature mapping tool (analyses citations between papers, shared authors, etc. to help you find relevant papers) | Some free features, others require a subscription | Litmaps allows you to choose which algorithms it uses to search, making it more transparent what the AI is doing. |
| Consensus | OpenAI/Chat GPT, Semantic Scholar | Semantic literature search tool (analyses your question to help you find and summarise relevant articles) | Some free features, others require a subscription | The Consensus Meter feature aims to analyse papers to give a clear overview of what the literature says about a yes/no/possibly question. However, small tweaks to the prompt (e.g. from 'decrease incidents' to 'reduce rates') gave different answers when we tested it. |
Lanchester Library
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Telephone:+44 (0) 24 7765 7575
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Coventry University
Frederick Lanchester Building
Gosford Street
Coventry, United Kingdom
CV1 5DD
Telephone:+44 (0) 24 7765 7575
Email: ask-a-librarian.lib@coventry.ac.uk
