CMU-Qatar Library: GenAI Guide

How do we actually use generative AI effectively for Research?

The best way is to think of AI as a research assistant rather than a replacement for your expertise. Here's how:

Get Your Research Questions Right

Think of AI as a brainstorming buddy. It's great at helping you explore ideas you might not have considered and can spot gaps in existing research that could be worth pursuing. When you're drowning in literature reviews, AI can help you navigate through sources and explore data from different angles. But here's the key: you still need to use your judgment to decide which AI suggestions are actually worth following up on.

Make Your Research Process Smoother

This is where AI really shines. Need to understand different research methods quickly? AI can summarize them and even help you figure out which approaches might work best for your project. It's also incredibly useful for analyzing large amounts of text—something that would take you weeks can be done in hours. Plus, it can help turn your findings into clear reports and visualizations.

Double-Check Your Work

AI can actually help you validate your research by suggesting different frameworks to test your findings and flagging potential problems in your data or methods. It can even give you feedback on your writing, though you'll want to take that with a grain of salt.

Keenious

Keenious is a resource recommender tool designed to aid in the identification and discovery of scholarly research. It analyzes writing from text documents and PDFs to recommend the most relevant articles and topics to explore using AI combined with conventional search algorithms. It seamlessly integrates with library resources to minimize paywalls, and is freely available to all Carnegie Mellon affiliates.

Scite

Scite is an AI-powered research platform that enhances the evaluation of scholarly articles by analyzing citation context. Its key feature, Smart Citations, categorizes citations as supporting, mentioning, or contrasting the cited work, allowing researchers to understand how a paper has been referenced. The Scite Assistant enables users to ask research questions in plain language and receive answers directly from over 32 million research articles.

ScopusAI

Scopus has introduced a new AI feature, Scopus AI, designed to enhance the research experience by allowing users to search using natural language queries. This innovative tool provides concise summaries, expanded insights, and concept maps based on the extensive Scopus database, which includes over 27,000 academic journals and 1.8 billion citations. Scopus AI highlights foundational papers and experts in specific fields and suggests follow-up questions for deeper exploration. The feature is currently in a trial phase, available to all users, including those using the free version of Scopus.

Notice: You can access these databases through CMU Libraries Databases A-Z. Make sure you use your Andrew ID and password to create your account.

Created using Claude Sonnet 3.5 | Updated Aug. 2025

Notice: Some of these tools have faced criticism for their use of copyrighted content without prominent attribution and have limitations in fully grasping context compared to human experts. The generated AI summaries can sometimes lack full contextual accuracy compared to human interpretation. Therefore, you are required to approach the use of these AI tools with a critical mindset, ensuring that you verify the information presented and cross-reference it with original sources. It is essential to maintain a rigorous standard of academic integrity by properly attributing any content derived from these tools and acknowledging the limitations inherent in AI-generated outputs.