Dear Reader, Last week, I made a post on using AI for academic writing, which enraged the community like nothing I have ever written. 4 Million views & about 400 hate comments. A dozen people even took the time to reach out to the dean of my university & my supervisors (yet none to me personally). I don't think even 1% read past the hook ("I wrote 4000 words for my thesis with AI") and ignored that the basis for the entire process were my own papers, the workflow included deep-reading &...
7 days ago • 1 min read
Obsidian Bases for Idea Generation Dear Reader, Generating new ideas is the currency in academia: The more impactful your ideas, the more impactful your research, and the better your chances of success. But what are ideas? Ideas are connections between two related concepts. For instance, if someone finds a link between a vegetarian diet and hip fracture rates, that's novel and vital research that could improve people's lives. But these two concepts are not necessarily related. Nutritionists...
28 days ago • 1 min read
Sourcely.net (Sponsor) Your AI-powered academic search assistant, offering access to over 200 million papers. Sourcely finds papers matching an entire manuscript rather than a short query, providing scientific evidence for every sentence and enabling the so-called "reverse literature review": Write first, cite later. Discount Codes:Effortless40 (40% off annual)or Effortless20 (20% off monthly) Which Reference Manager To Choose For AI Dear Scholar, Reference Managers are the workhorses of...
about 1 month ago • 1 min read
Reverse Literature Review with Sourcely Dear Scholar, A literature review usually starts with finding relevant papers and reading them to write your manuscript. However, sometimes the reverse can be more powerful: Write up ideas first before searching for relevant literature. This week's newsletter shows you how to do this with sourcely and its freshly released deep search capabilities. But why, you might ask? In my own research, I have come up with a few examples when this workflow is handy:...
about 2 months ago • 2 min read
Google's AI tool for Academics and Students Dear Scholar, NotebookLM is a tool developed by Google and released about a year ago. It can process up to 300 PDFs and create mind maps, records, flashcards, quizzes, and even videos of your content. Ever since it was released in 2024, it has become one of my favourite tools for a literature review. In recent months, I have implemented major updates that I would like to dedicate this week's newsletter to. As a reader of this newsletter, you may...
3 months ago • 1 min read
In-Depth Review of Liner: AI Agents for Every Part of the Academic Workflow Dear Scholar, AI agents are quickly evolving to become the next frontier in AI, as they can solve far more complex use cases than a simple large language model alone, even when supplemented with an academic database. (Check out the infographic below). This week, I am testing Liner, a tool that has been around for many years but just recently switched its focus to academic AI. Currently, Liner offers five AI agents for...
3 months ago • 1 min read
AI Literature Review Workflow in 2025 Dear Scholar, When I published my literature review workflow diagram, it garnered positive and negative reactions. Surprisingly, a lot of academics reject the idea that AI should be used in literature reviews because we as scientists will not be able to maintain our creativity or learn much. Here are some reactions: All of these criticisms come from senior academics with years of experience. For instance, the professor on the top left rejects AI-written...
3 months ago • 3 min read
Academic Writing Apps Comparison Dear Scholar, In this week’s article, I want to compare three tools for academic writing: PaperPal, which is made for academics, ChatGPT, a general-purpose tool and Grammarly, which is optimised for grammar. It turns out there is no best tool out there. The question is, rather, when should you use which tool? This article suggests using ChatGPT in the brainstorming and ideation phase of your writing due to its general purpose and customizability. Then move on...
3 months ago • 1 min read
The AI-readiness checklist Dear Scholar, Everybody has heard about AI, but very few have mastered the art of using it effectively. I decided to design a small test that will help you determine how good you are at using AI as an academic. Answer these 10 yes/no questions to find out your AI readiness score. The article also features in-depth explanations and links in case you couldn't answer something and would like to know more about the topic. Read this week's blogpost & take the test Free...
3 months ago • 1 min read