AI Paper Search

AI Paper Search finds published research for a topic you describe in your own words. Citavi sends your description to a search service, where an AI turns it into a set of keyword queries and runs them against OpenAlex, a free index of scholarly works. The AI then ranks the works it finds by relevance to your topic and explains in one sentence why each was suggested. You review the suggestions and add the ones you want to your project.

AI Paper Search requires an internet connection and either a Citavi account you are signed in to or a valid Campus or Server license.

  1. Open your Citavi project and click AI Paper Search.
    If the AI terms of use dialog is displayed, follow the steps below:
    1. Click the AI Terms of Use link in the dialog. The Lumivero Artificial Intelligence Terms of Use page is displayed for you to read.
    2. Return to Citavi and select the confirmation check box.
    3. Click OK.
  2. Under What are you researching?, describe your topic in full sentences rather than as a list of keywords. The more context you give, the better the results are ranked.
  3. Click Search. Citavi shows its progress while it works. To stop the search, click Cancel.
  4. Review the results. Each one shows the title, the authors and year, a relevance percentage, and a sentence explaining why it was suggested. A paperclip marks a result with a freely available PDF. The lower-confidence label marks a result the AI judged to be a weaker match in substance, even though other signals ranked it highly.
  5. Click a result to look at it more closely. The right pane shows the abstract. If a PDF is available, you can switch the preview to the attachment.
  6. Select the check boxes of the references you want to keep and click Add to Project.
  7. If any of your selected results has a PDF, Citavi asks whether you want to save a copy of the file locally. Click Yes to download the full texts into your project.
  8. Click OK to confirm the message. The new references are shown in the References view as your most recent import.

Please note:

The relevance percentage is calculated within a single search and cannot be compared between searches. Always read it together with the explanation, never on its own.

Hint

Citavi saves the AI's explanation in each imported reference's Notes field and enters OpenAlex as the Source of bibliographic information, so you can see later why a reference was suggested.

Please note:

Results that are already in your project are not shown. The status bar at the bottom of the window lists the queries the AI generated from your description and how many results were left out because you already have them, for example: Searched using: "…", "…". 24 results · 3 already in your references.

See also: