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Scite

Scite is an AI research platform for finding papers, checking citation context, and getting answers grounded in scholarly literature and patents.

Scite

Scite

Scite is an AI research platform built to help researchers discover papers, evaluate evidence, and ask questions grounded in scholarly literature. Its core approach is to pair search and AI assistance with Smart Citations, so users can see whether research has been supported, contradicted, or simply mentioned in later work.

The platform combines full-text literature search, citation intelligence, and source-linked AI answers across scholarly articles, preprints, books, patents, grants, and datasets. Scite also emphasizes verification: answers link back to the specific sentence in the source paper, and the service is available through its web product, API, MCP-compatible assistants, and Zotero integration.

Core capabilities

Full-text literature search

Search across scholarly articles, preprints, books, patents, and datasets, with the ability to go beyond abstracts and into full text.

Citation context analysis

Smart Citations classify citations as supporting, contrasting, or mentioning, and show the surrounding sentence for context.

Evidence-grounded AI answers

Ask questions and receive answers grounded in cited source material, with each claim linked back to the specific paper sentence it came from.

Licensed and open coverage

Work across both open access and licensed sources, including material behind paywalls that other tools may not reach.

Research workflows

Use the platform for literature reviews, fact-checking, research discovery, staying current, and patent exploration.

Common use cases

  • Literature review support

    Use Scite to build a literature review around a topic, then inspect whether the cited evidence supports, contradicts, or only mentions key claims.

  • Grounded question answering

    Use the assistant to ask a research question and trace the answer back to specific papers and sentences instead of relying on an ungrounded summary.

  • Evidence evaluation

    Use the search and Smart Citations tools to evaluate whether a paper, author, journal, institution, or funder is associated with supporting or contrasting evidence.

  • Research tracking

    Use the platform to monitor new developments, recent papers, and related research so you can stay current in a field.

  • Patent and prior-art discovery

    Use the coverage and search capabilities to explore patents and prior art alongside scholarly literature.

Pros and Cons

Pros

  • Combines full-text search with citation context instead of relying on citation counts alone.
  • Surfaces whether a paper has been supported, contrasted, or mentioned by later research.
  • Links AI answers back to source sentences for verification.
  • Covers a wide span of scholarly content, including paywalled material, patents, preprints, grants, and datasets.
  • Offers team and enterprise plans with shared, admin-oriented features and programmatic access options.

Cons

  • Pricing and plan limits are visible, but some implementation details such as output formats and setup specifics are not fully spelled out on the source pages.
  • Integration specifics are only partially documented in the provided sources, so users with a particular workflow should confirm compatibility before adopting it.

FAQ

What is Scite used for?

Scite is an AI research platform for discovering papers, evaluating evidence, and asking questions grounded in scholarly literature. It is built around Smart Citations, which show whether later work supported, contrasted, or merely mentioned a claim.

Does Scite offer a free trial?

Scite offers a 7-day free trial on its pricing page. After the trial ends, users are automatically enrolled in the plan they selected unless they cancel before the trial ends.

Can teams use Scite together?

Yes. The pricing page lists a Team plan for small groups with centralized billing, shared collections and alerts, and user analytics and reporting. The Enterprise plan adds unlimited users, pooled usage, API access, SAML/SSO, and other organization-focused options.

What integrations does Scite support?

Scite says it can be accessed inside Claude, ChatGPT, and other MCP-compatible assistants, and that it also plugs into Zotero and provides API access for teams building their own tools.

What kind of outputs does Scite provide?

Scite’s search and assistant pages emphasize literature search, evidence evaluation, citation context, and answers linked back to source sentences in papers. The source pages do not fully describe every export or output format, so those details should be confirmed directly if they matter for your workflow.

Quick Facts

Category
AI research platform
Primary users
Researchers, students, and academic or industry teams
Core workflow
Search literature, check citation context, and ask grounded questions
Source domain
scite.ai
Access options
Web app, API, MCP-compatible assistants, Zotero
Pricing
Free trial plus paid plans; enterprise contact sales