From Oct. 1 – Dec. 31, 2026, the Wood Library will be hosting a trial for several artificial intelligence research support tools (AIRSTs) to explore which option(s) would be most beneficial to researchers at WCM. WCM faculty, staff, and students interested in joining the trial can now access the paid versions of these tools for free until the end of the year, and are invited to provide feedback on the AI applications to help Library staff make a final determination about licensing.
What are AIRSTs?
AIRSTs provide a way to search the scientific, clinical, and academic literature using the natural language query functionality of large language models (LLMs), as well as offer connections to general purpose LLMs using Model Context Protocol plugins. OpenEvidence is an example of an AIRST that can be used for evidence-based practice.
The AIRSTs selected for this trial are Consensus, Scite, and Undermind.
How to join the trial
Should you join the trial, you will be given WCM users will have access to the paid version of these tools at no cost from Oct. 1 – Dec. 31, 2026. Just visit each site listed below and click for “Log in” or “Sign in,” then use your WCM email address to log in. Note you may be prompted to confirm your institution as Cornell University.
Further updates on the trial will be posted at med.cornell.libguides.com/ai, including the link to a survey to provide feedback on the tools. We have created a brief survey for you to share your feedback about each tool. If you have questions about the trial, email library-ai-trial@med.cornell.edu.
Additionally, trial participants are invited to join a sub-group that will conduct more in-depth evaluations of these tools, examining factors like accuracy and completeness of outputs from each tool. To join the sub-group, please contact Andy Hicker at alh4014@med.cornell.edu for details.
More about the AI tools in this trial
These AIRSTs have been selected from a broader list based on pricing, functionality, and focus on academic and scientific literature:
- Consensus is an AI search engine for scientific and academic research. It searches metadata and abstracts for over 200 million scientific documents by aggregating data from Semantic Scholar, OpenAlex, and its own crawl of the scholarly web. Learn more about how Consensus works.
- Scite is an AI-powered platform that helps researchers discover and evaluate scientific literature through Smart Citations, showing whether studies support or contradict a claim. Scite uses its own index of over 1.6 billion citations, full text articles with access negotiated through agreements with several major scholarly publishers, and open access sources such as preprint servers. Learn more about Scite:
- Undermind is an AI-powered search tool that asks follow-up questions to refine a researcher's prompt based on iterative literature searches, generating detailed reports and extensive reference lists, and helping researchers further develop their research questions. For sample use cases, check out this case study involving Undermind customer GSK.