Tool Review: Consensus 2026 for Lit Reviews & Writing Phase Dear Reader, I am wrapping up writing my PhD thesis and am currently 3 months ahead of schedule, with two papers accepted and two more in review. This feels good, especially as I will be able to dedicate much more time to the EffortlessAcademic. I think most students could do this if they master what almost nobody does: The combination of digital notes + AI. Here is why: A digital note-taking system, helps learning and remembering...
7 days ago • 2 min read
New Effortless Writing with AI WebinarApril 11, 2026 (+ Recording) Dear Reader, It seems easy to "write with AI", but fairly quickly, you realise 99% of AI-written text doesn't actually meet academic standards. Typically, the text is vague, overly verbose, or just plain wrong. Maybe you've been there? I've had this experience as well, which prompted me to push AI to its limits, to build a system that is ethical, personal, fact-checked, and produces writing tailored to academic needs. My main...
13 days ago • 2 min read
Notion vs Obsidian for Academics Dear Reader, Notion and Obsidian are two very popular note-taking tools used by thousands of researchers, students, and academics worldwide. If you are a long-time reader of the EffortlessAcademic, you probably know my preference for Obsidian, but this has practical reasons. Notion has a few strengths that Obsidian can't match, and for your use case, it might even be better suited. Sharing notes, for example, or AI and calendar integration are superb in...
21 days ago • 1 min read
Jenni.ai (Sponsor) Jenni is a writing workspace that allows researchers to write, cite, and edit with ease. Built to be a co-pilot that keeps you in control while letting you reap the benefits of efficient AI use in research. Discount Codes:EA20 (20% off) Organising Meetings & Attendees In Obsidian Dear Scholar, The Note-Taking Mastermind just finished (what a ride!), and one topic most participants were interested in was organising meetings in Obsidian. In this week's article, I want to give...
28 days ago • 1 min read
Manage Research Projects using Liner Scholar Dear Reader, If you're like me, you juggle a lot of research tools. Even with great integrations and streamlined workflows, it can still feel tedious to jump between apps to find papers, keep track of work, and build out each part of a new research project. Why do we bother? Because using specialised tools often gets the best results. However, there's a new option now: we can build out a research project and accomplish several steps from one place:...
about 1 month ago • 2 min read
Paperpal.com (Sponsor) Your AI-powered academic writing assistant from first idea to final draft. Use it to write, cite, take notes, and chat across multiple PDFs. Finished writing? Use Paperpal's AI language and plagiarism detection. Everything an academic needs, all in one place. Discount Codes:ILYA30 (30% off Paperpal Prime) Connecting Zotero and Obsidian Dear Scholar, I am currently in the middle of the Note-Taking Mastermind where 20 academics like you are learning everything I know...
about 1 month ago • 1 min read
Jenni.AI for academic writing Dear Scholar, There are several tools available to support academic writing. This week, we tested Jenni.AI. Jenni is a unique tool because it combines multiple aspects from other tools: MS Word for writing, Zotero for references and ChatGPT for AI assistance. Moreover, Jenni can find references as you write and do some sanity checks on your writing. This article examines three use cases. (1) Writing the outline with Jenni.AI and the various ways how AI is...
about 2 months ago • 1 min read
Obsidian gets an AI agent Dear Scholar, While I absolutely love AI, I always found that the AI agents underwhelming. They were slow and made many mistakes. However, this week I was diving deep into the Google's Scribe plugin which enables the use of an AI agent within Obsidian. For the first time, I feel that the AI agent was truly useful because it either did something that I wouldn't be capable of or would be too lazy to do. Going forward, I think Gemini Scribe is a must-use plugin for...
about 2 months ago • 1 min read
Academic Writing with AI Dear Scholar, No topic is as hotly debated as whether and to what extent AI should be permitted in academic writing. Plagiarism is a significant issue, but so is the increasing number of papers being produced (and the implicit assumption that using AI produces papers faster and thus lowers their quality), which is overwhelming the peer-review system. And lastly, a more subtle notion of not fully understanding the science when outsourcing some of the writing, which is...
2 months ago • 2 min read