Reading a research paper feels more like a test of patience than learning. You are open to a particular page and hope it will give you the correct information. Sadly, you get bombarded with jargon, and have been there already? We have a solution for you.
Research papers are hard to read, whether you are a student working on a dissertation, a researcher trying to curate the best literature review, or a company founder going through a detailed legal contract. Enter AI PDF summarizer tools.
Dump all those lengthy PDFs in these tools and let them summarize. You no longer need to review abstracts, gather citations, or get drowned in footnotes. These tools summarize but also identify the critical areas, simplify confusing terms, and let you converse with the text in a PDF.
However, you need the right AI PDF summarizer tools to complete your job in seconds. So, we have curated a list of 12 top research paper and PDF AI summariser tools. But before we get into this list, let’s find out how AI summarizes these PDFs.
How do AI summarizers work?
Generally, these AI summarizers rely on the mechanisms of NLP or Natural Language Processing and machine learning models. Combining both allows these tools to scan, interpret, and simplify complicated documents to produce easily digestible text. The core functioning of AI summarizers is based on these two methods:
- Extractive summarization: Since this acts like a digital highlighter, AI scans the entire text and extracts the most essential portions from the PDF document.
- Abstractive summarization: This is a more innovative approach. Instead of extracting lines straightaway from the document, AI reads the text, understands its context, and rewrites it like an original text.
These days, AI summarizers mostly rely on transformer-based NLP models. The primary USP of these models is their capacity to deal with vast volumes of text. This means these tools understand the flow of language and the perfect structure of a summary. An even better aspect of these AI summarizers is the chat interface. Now, you can talk with your PDF documents. Ask necessary questions and get relevant answers in seconds.
Why is summarizing a research paper hard?
Summarizing a blog post on “Top 10 home gardening rules” is a cakewalk. But what about summarizing a 110-page academic thesis on the neurochemical pathway? That’s too tiring. Here’s the truth:
Research papers aren’t written for entertainment purposes. They are technical, dense and complex. Even the academic learned people must re-read these research papers multiple times to catch subtle mistakes. This is what makes summarizing research papers so painful:
- Dense jargon: The way most of the research papers are written assumes that you have a doctoral degree. Naturally, they are stuffed with complex words and phrases that require you to be fluent in the research dialect.
- Long and rigid structure: While you sit with a research thesis, you can’t jump to the last page in a day. These research papers are packed with a strict format beyond a layman's understanding.
- Too much context: Every sentence contains enriching information in extensive research papers. You miss one, and the whole perspective of the paper changes. Again, it’s humanly impossible to understand every point clarified in a research paper.
- Manual workload: If you have to summarize a PDF, it’s nothing less than an academic cardio. First, you read the whole research, make notes, write a rough draft and then rephrase it. Don’t forget the citations and the referencing styles. Yes, it’s way too much work.
Glance table: List of the best 12 research paper and PDF summarizer tools
Top 12 AI tools to summarise research papers and PDFs
You’re done battling with the academic turmoil. Now, you need a tool that takes this heavy task off you. Good news: You have these brilliant AI tools to summarize PDFs and research papers. Below is a list of 12 AI summarizing tools with amazing features. Let’s dig in.
1. Copilot.live
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Copilot.live can be your new research buddy, making your dense academic papers like a casual chat if you are tired of wrestling with research PDFs. All you need to do is upload the PDF or research paper, let the tool analyse it, and ask relevant questions. Gone are the days of skimming lengthy documents for hours. Now, Copilot.live can skim through the papers, validate sources and learning quickly to meet deadlines.
Key features:
- You can upload PDFs in various languages from around the world to get answers in a language you prefer.
- This tool scans documents to provide key details and summaries to find potential insights in the research papers.
- The tool has a dashboard that gives a side-by-side view where the PDF appears on the left while the AI chatbot appears on the right.
Suitable for: Students, higher-level academicians, lawyers, doctors, accountants, financial analysts, business executives, and writers.
2. SciSummary
With SciSummary, you can read a research paper or a lengthy PDF in just 2 minutes. After the tool reads and analyses your research paper, it summarizes it in brief pointers. After you get a summary of a PDF or a research paper, you can ask relevant questions related to the different aspects of the PDF. And, a brownie point: It’s completely free!
Key features:
- The tool offers different summarizing styles to tailor to your needs. This ranges from a quick bullet-point overview to providing a detailed breakdown.
- The multi-doc summarization feature of the tool synthesizes information across multiple documents to save time and effort.
- To keep track of your reading, SciSummary has a system of organizing articles where you can create folders, add personalized tags and color-code portions of the papers.
Suitable for: Students and PHD scholars.
3. Scholarcy
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Another significant AI-powered research paper and PDF summarizer tool is Scholarcy. The primary purpose of Scholarcy is to consider any lengthy and dense research paper and transform it into a digestible and readable form. The best part of this tool is how it highlights essential sections of a PDF and helps you focus on absorbing insights.
Key features:
- Scholarcy has a research quality indicator that analyzes the quality of work and segregates it into weak, fair, and excellent.
- The research comparison feature of the tool helps you compare multiple PDF files and pick the best.
- The tool has a dig deeper feature where you write a question or a short prompt to learn more about a research paper.
Suitable for: Students, researchers, and international students.
4. Explainpaper
Often, reading dense research papers feels like decoding an ancient manuscript. However, Explainpaper solves this problem. You only need to upload a document and click on the confusing paragraph. Soon, Explainpaper will come up with a simplified explanation. In short, Explainpaper ensures that you get what you’re reading.
Key features:
- The simple interface of the tool gets things done in just a single click, devoid of any ads or popups.
- The dashboard gives you a clear side-by-side view where you can see the PDF document on the left and the AI highlighted text on the right.
- The tool gives three options for each PDF document or research paper: Paper, Explain and Chat. You can either get the source of the paper, get a detailed explanation, or chat with the tool.
Suitable for: Students, professionals, educators, self-learners.
5. ChatPDF
With ChatPDF, you can give your research papers a personality. Upload a 100-page dense PDF file and just ask questions. You don’t need to look for citations from page to page. ChatPDF is a total game-changer with zero fluff and only accurate facts. The best part of this tool is that it’s completely free. The tool is fast, fun and extremely useful.
Key features:
- The tool gives you cites resources at once. So, you don’t have to go from one page to another searching for citations.
- The multi-file chat feature of ChatPDF helps you create folders to organise PDF files and chat with multiple PDFs in a single conversation.
- The side-by-side view in the dashboard allows you to keep the PDF document and the chat together.
Suitable for: Students, teachers, researchers, and journalists.
6. Glasp
If you love highlighting and adding sticky notes to create a summary for your PDF document, Glasp can be your go-to tool. It’s nothing less than an academic scrapbook. You can add bit-sized annotations and share insights with your community while working with multiple PDFs.
Key features:
- Glasp lets you highlight sections and organize them with tags and authors. This makes it easy for you to look for them later.
- The AI clone of the tool shares insights and recommendations regarding the PDF via a question-and-answer pattern.
- Glasp allows you to share your reading interests and insightful connections in the home feed to connect more with like-minded people.
Suitable for: Students, researchers, visual learners and content curators.
7. SciSpace
Another significant research paper and PDF summarizer tool is SciSpace, which functions like a research guide. Not only does the tool summarize PDF documents, but it also decodes them. The kind of contextual breakdown this tool provides will relieve you from your struggle. Built by keeping researchers in mind, SciSpace has no hidden or subscription charges.
Key features:
- Once you upload a PDF file and ask questions, you get answers backed by citations from various specific sections.
- The highlighted text explanations help you understand complex texts and transform them into simplified explanations.
- To cater to people worldwide, SciSpace supports 75+ languages to make it more accessible.
Suitable for: Academic researchers, learners and students.
8. PDF.ai
PDF.ai can talk back to your PDF documents and get information through a conversational chat. With this tool, you can change static documents into responsive sidekicks that save time. Whether it is a thesis or a business report, PDF.ai deals with the PDFs in a more innovative and fun way.
Key features:
- Conduct interactive conversations with PDFs and texts in seconds and learn in-depth about the PDF.
- The side-by-side view of the dashboard helps you keep the PDF and the AI chat on the same page.
- The tool mentions the page numbers and citations from where it has extracted information.
Suitable for: Lawyers, financial experts, real estate agents, healthcare specialists, educators, and researchers.
9. QuillBot Summarizer
If you struggle with summarizing long essays, articles or theses, QuillBot Summarizer can be your saviour. Significantly known for its rewriting feature, QuillBot Summarizer can tackle dense PDFs and research articles like a pro. Whether you want to know what a PDF deals with in seconds or a shorter paragraph of any section, QuillBot Summarizer is at your service.
Key features:
- The tool has a summary length feature to condense articles and documents to the key points.
- The most critical information in a PDF is presented as bullet points in listicles to make it easily digestible.
- You can use custom instructions to create unique summaries with endless possibilities.
Suitable for: Professionals, educators, researchers, and students.
10. Wordtune Read
Let’s be honest. Nobody has the time to read a 50-60 page whitepaper. This is where Wordtune Read swoops in to boost your productivity. The tool scans academic papers, business reports, and legal contracts and turns them into bite-sized sections. Not only does it give you instant answers, but it also customizes the texts to suit your needs.
Key features:
- The tool helps you expand on specific parts of the summary to zoom in on the parts that matter most to you.
- You get a library in the tool to store all the summaries and documents in one place.
- The tool has a note section where you can jot down points and your thoughts while going through the summaries of the documents.
Suitable for: Students, corporate people, researchers and writers.
11. Blainy Document Chat
If you’re drowning in a heap of PDFs and don’t have the time to go through them individually, yet must submit a research report, Blainy Document Chat is here to help you. It’s a powerful AI tool created for people who barely have the time to conduct in-depth research. The tool lets you cut the noise and bring out the good stuff.
Key features:
- The tool pushes your document into AI autocomplete mode, predicting and completing texts.
- After you get the highlights, this tool properly credits sources. So, you don’t need to hunt for them.
- To simplify research processes, you can conduct conversational behavior with the PDFs via AI.
Suitable for: Researchers, analysts, and people who struggle with productivity.
12. Smodin AI Summarizer
With Smodin AI Summarizer, you get a clever and organized AI tool that cites resources irrespective of the complications of a PDF file. Besides summarizing text, Smodin AI rewrites, translates and develops plagiarism-free text. An even better side of Smodin AI is the academic tone it captures and portrays throughout.
Key features:
- The tool helps you with citation-ready text. This means you don’t have to hunt for them.
- The tool supports a multilingual feature through which it can summarize lengthy documents of multiple languages.
- Smodin rewrites content in a new structure to keep it original and plagiarism-free.
Suitable for: Students, researchers, journalists and copywriters.
How do you choose the right AI summarizer for your needs?
We get it that you don’t have time to try each one of them and see which tool suits you. Whether you are a researcher or a student, here’s how you can pick the best AI summarizer tool:
- If you’re a researcher: Choose a tool that explains a PDF in simple and plain English. The tool you choose should be able to translate and simplify complex academic terms.
- If you need academic breakdowns: Pick AI summarizing tools specifically designed for dealing with academic papers. Generally, these tools break down the entire paper into fragments and highlight the important portions.
- If you want to ask questions: Look for AI PDF summarizers with an AI chat interface. With this feature, you can communicate with the PDF document and chat with it directly. You upload the PDF, let the tool analyze it and start asking questions.
- If you’ve a tight budget: Many free tools do their job almost as well as a paid one. So, if your budget is a constraint, pick the ones that do not need subscriptions or sign-ups. These are most suitable for professionals early in their careers and students.
Conclusion
So, no more spending day and night to reach and interpret research papers and PDFs. With AI PDF summarizer tools, you can manage multiple PDFs simultaneously. Not only do these tools summarize documents, but also explain complicated terms, highlight important sections and explain them in details. Amongst all the 12 AI PDF summarizer tools share here, Copilot.live is the best. Therefore, stop reading and start using smart AI PDF summarizing tools now.
