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...
11 days 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...
18 days ago • 1 min read
Digital Note Taking Obsidian 1.9 released with a magnificent new feature: Bases Dear Scholar, Obsidian is my software of choice when it comes to organising academic information. I have used this tool for many years and accumulated hundreds of thousands of words in notes. This week, the team behind Obsidian released a new version, 1.9, that features a very long-awaited update called Bases. I spent many hours experimenting with it and discovering new ways to organise my information and navigate...
25 days ago • 1 min read
ChatGPT-5 Update for Academics Dear Scholar, The big topic in AI news this week has been the release of ChatGPT-5 just a few days ago. I spent my weekend testing out different scenarios and writing an in-depth review of what has changed and how that influences your academic career. For those who have purchased my Effortless AI course, I have also recorded two new videos about the details and implications of this major release. Subjectively speaking, GPT-5 is just a better, more intuitive...
about 1 month ago • 1 min read
Agentic AI finds new research ideas Dear Scholar, A new type of AI has been released this week: AI Agents. Instead of answering a query in one step, like a generative AI, an agent has a goal, and it will plan, search, and review results to achieve it (see diagram below). This involves many iterations and can easily take 15 minutes. The SciSpace AI agent does this for academics and searches academic papers, rather than the internet, as the ChatGPT agent does. You can imagine that this opens...
about 2 months ago • 1 min read
AI Atomic Sentences For Academic Writing Dear Scholar, My core approach to research involves breaking complex ideas down into atomic statements (or notes) and then creatively finding new connections to form new ideas. This method also works for academic writing, and it helped me to write my last paper in record time! In today's brief tutorial, I will share with you an AI assistant (prompt and link included) that breaks down complex papers into concise, simple sentences. These atomic sentences...
2 months ago • 2 min read
Sponsor: Anara Anara uses AI to help researchers quickly understand dense materials, whether academic papers, books, or lecture recordings, while keeping everything organized and traceable. Learn more about Anara.com Get 20% off: ILYA20 Writing Your Discussion With ChatGPT Deep Research Dear Scholar, I am just finishing the final edits for a paper we are about to submit. I took the opportunity to experiment with writing as much of it as possible using AI and my notes. Surprisingly, the...
2 months ago • 1 min read
Top 20 Resources for Effortless Academics Dear Scholar, Over the past few years, I have published numerous articles on various tools, techniques, and innovative applications of AI in academia. This week I am sending you the 17 most popular and essential tutorials: Digital Note-Taking: Foundations of my digital note-taking system Adding AI to your digital note collection in Obsidian The best way to read and annotate PDFs in Obsidian Making "Colorful" Links for more structure in Obsidian →...
3 months ago • 1 min read
Tool Review: Yomu.ai for Academic Writing Dear Scholar, I am currently refining my latest paper and experimenting with various tools to enhance my academic writing. Today, I want to present a deep dive into Yomu.ai, which might be the most collaborative academic writing tool. In my opinion, Yomu is more targeted at younger career researchers or academics who are pivoting to a new domain or doing cross-disciplinary research. A recent Nature study I was reading proposes that there is a "pivot...
4 months ago • 1 min read