What Scholar AI is
Scholar AI is a question-answering tool that searches your own source library, not the open web. Ask it a question and it finds the relevant sources, synthesizes an answer, and cites everything so you can verify. It knows what you've read, not what the internet says.
How to use it
- Open Scholar in the editor's side bar, or the Scholar AI panel on the Sources page.
- Ask any question about your sources.
- Scholar AI searches your library, finds the relevant sources, and synthesizes an answer.
- Citations are included in every response: click a numbered citation to jump to that source.
Scholar AI answers your questions; it doesn't write into your document.
Scholar AI in the collaborator chat
Scholar AI also shows up in a second place: the chat on a shared document (Chair plan). There it acts as an advisor on the shared draft: it reviews your writing and sources and tells you what's strong, weak, or missing, but it never writes the paper for you. That's different from the panel here, which answers your private questions about your library. Same assistant, two jobs. See Sharing and collaborating.
Good questions to ask
Scholar AI works best with specific, source-grounded questions. Some examples:
- "What do my sources say about the relationship between sleep deprivation and academic performance?"
- "Is there a tension between [Source A] and [Source B] on the role of social media in political engagement?"
- "Find evidence for the claim that active recall improves long-term retention"
- "Summarize the methodology used in [paper title]"
- "Which of my sources discuss sample size limitations?"
Limitations
- Scholar AI only searches sources in your library. If the answer isn't in your sources, it won't be in the response. Add more sources for better coverage.
- It works best with text-based PDFs and well-structured articles. Scanned PDFs with no selectable text may not be searchable.
- Scholar AI is a research assistant, not a replacement for reading. It can point you to the right source, but you should verify important claims yourself before citing them.
Plan limits
Scholar AI is available on every plan, with different limits. The free Scholar plan includes a monthly taste: 10 questions a month. Fellow raises that to 20 questions an hour, and Chair to 60 an hour. See Plans and billing for the full picture.