Responsible Literature Searching Guide

Limitations & Questions

• Be careful about uploaded full-text articles into an AI tool. You may violate copyright or license agreements. Also, be careful about uploading your original research data/manuscript. Unless it is an closed model or there is an enterprise agreement, there is always the possibility the company can retain your data and use it to train their tool.
• Some AI tools have been known to engage in plagiarism ("AIgiarism"), copying word-for-word from a source.
• The guidelines for using and reporting the use of AI in research and manuscript development can vary by publisher. Always check out their website for more information. You risk undermining the credibility of your research and violating academic and publication ethics and standards.
• There are a lot of ethical concerns that arise when utilizing AI to write your manuscripts or engage in the peer review process.
• Do not become overdependent on AI. Apply your creativity and critical thinking. AI outputs can be generic or flat, failing to understand and provide nuanced arguments and oversimplify your findings.

Why These, Not Those?

• Most chatbots be can be utilized for this research task, but we recommended Copilot due to UTSW work data protection and integration with other Microsoft 365 applications. Likewise, Turnitin and Proofig have already went through the institutional approval process.
• You can receive more support for the use of these tools through consultation with a librarian or vendor support lines.

Note: All AI can hallucinate, provide poor quality outputs, or oversimplify complex topics. Apply critical analysis to any output.

Use the ROBOT test to evaluate AI tools.

You can ask the AI to do the following:

• Rewrite your text based on a specific audience or desired tone, proofread, or restructure your paper. Never upload your entire manuscript unless you are certain the model does not retain your data. Please note that AI-generated writing can be stilted and should always be edited.
• Assist with translating your text into another language.
• Assist with the generation of images and other media. Most AI chatbots have an image (and often video) generator integrated directly into the tool.
• Create draft proposals or letters of interest to a journal editor.

Check out other chatbots for these processes.

EndNote 2025 is now available for download on Windows AND Mac devices.

Note: The download link requires that you are either on campus (i.e., using the UTSW wireless network from your laptop) or using VPN remotely. This software is not to be installed on CMC or PHHS devices.

• PaperPal Preflight Checker - An AI pre-submission tool to check for manuscript compliance with journal submission requirements available in EndNote's Cite While You Write in Word. The error report is free, but you have to pay for the edited manuscript.

Manuscript Matching Tools

Use these tools to upload your title and abstract and receive journal recommendations, often for a select publisher or collection.