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A Software Ecosystem for Research, Zettelkasten Note-Taking, and Writing [UNDER DEVELOPMENT]

AI Summarizer Tools: Uses and Tips

This box provides information about using AI Summarize Tools. The points apply to the research ecosystem described in this guide but range beyond it to use of summarizations tools in general.

If you are a student, when using AI tools observe the student code of conduct; see the "Acceptable Use of AI Tools" page of the following guide:

Some examples of summarization tools are below. Some of them supply literature citations in addition to summarizing text. 

At present they may or may not be not useful for your purposes in implementing the note-taking practices mentioned in this guide, but progress in this space is probably inevitable.

Ideally, AI summarizer tools can play a role in a note-taking system to:

  • assess the relevance of publications to your work, as a supplement to whatever abstracts or summaries the publication itself contains;
  • create provisional notes about the content of publications (in Zettelkasten language, "literature notes".) "Provisional" in the sense that you will then want to edit the notes as you read the publications. Ideally you will write your own summaries, but such tools may be helpful if you do not have time;
  • summarize a section of an article (if the tool allows it); ideally this will enable the ability to summarize details of an article in a more granular way than a higher level view of an entire article, e.g. as provided in an abstract.

Tips:

  • Do an Internet search on AI summarizer tools to identify and compare them.
  • Try out a summarizer tool on papers whose content you know to assess if it produces accurate and useful summaries. You may have to edit the results to correct for whatever errors or imprecisions such tools generate.
  • If you do not find such tools useful, check in again at some later time to assess improvement as AI technology evolves.
  • If you use them, observe emerging citation practices for use of AI tools. 

 Some free summarizer tools, though check if there is a maximum number of free uses:

These tools include the ability to summarize and also provide citations.