Using Artificial Intelligence

Artificial Intelligence (AI) tools can assist with your research by summarizing vast quantities of sources, helping you brainstorm or refine your research question, outlining topics, with data analysis and more. Learn how to use AI effectively, and ethically, to boost your research productivity.

How to use AI in your research

As a Starting Point

Use generative AI tools like ChatGPT, CoPilot, Gemini, & Claude as a starting point to brainstorm or clarify your research topic. These tools can also summarize or outline topics to identify what kind of evidence exists, or find gaps in the literature.

Suggest and Develop Search Strategies

Ask the AI for keywords and synonyms to use when searching in databases, or go one step further and prompt for potential boolean search strings. You can then take these keywords and search strings and use them to effectively search databases like PubMed, CINAHL etc. to find articles that support your research.

Discover Articles

Specialized research AI tools like Consensus, Elicit, Semantic Scholar, and Research Rabbit are specifically designed to help discover articles relevant to your research. These tools differ from general AI tools in that they are limited to genuine scholarly sources and provide links to the original research papers. Be sure to evaluate articles found with AI in the same way you would any other source.

Summarize Articles or Synthesize Evidence

Use AI to increase your comprehension by summarizing articles and breaking down complex concepts. Fact-check any AI-generated claims by tracing them back to the original sources. Never directly quote AI-generated summaries – always cite the original paper.

Writing Assistance

You can use AI to help polish your writing and correct grammar, but be sure to review suggested corrections for accuracy and to retain your own voice. AI tools can automatically generate citations and format your reference list, but be sure to check them for accuracy.

Data Analysis and Visualization

AI can be extremely useful when analyzing large datasets, for coding qualitative research, and for statistical analysis. AI can generate images, charts, figures,infographics and dashboards that you can use in your work with proper attribution.

Personalized Learning Support

Use AI to create a personalized chatbot tutor, create quizzes, flashcards, translate or convert text to speach, or even video.

Ethical Use of AI

Using AI ethically means being honest about your use of it. Describe the tool’s use in a disclosure statement in your methodology or an acknowledgments section of your paper. Include the tool used, the version, as well as the prompts given. See our citation style guides for specific guidance on AI disclosure and citation.

Example:
AI Usage Disclosure: This document was created with the assistance of [AI tool and version]. The AI was used to [describe use, include a link if possible]. All AI-generated content was reviewed for accuracy and author assumes full responsibility for the final content.

Check the syllabus or confirm with your instructor that your intended use of AI is acceptable. Look to UNE’s academic integrity policy and the Guide for the Use of Artificial Intelligence (AI) in Research and the AI-U Student Guide to Artificial Intelligence.

Questions & Help

If you have questions on this, or another topic, contact a librarian for help!