Working the Literature With AI

Find, read, connect and check your sources.

Course abstract · by Sergueï Spetschinsky, PhD

Course content. Which sources does my chapter still need? What has been published since I wrote it? Who would disagree with me, and have I read them? Does this paper really say what I cite it for?

In this course, you learn to answer these questions with AI, starting from your own texts and your own literature library. You leave with a first draft of the state of the art of your question, a literature knowledge base of your own, and a text of yours whose references have all been checked.

Goals. You learn to:

• map what exists on a question and who answers whom in its debates, from a search across databases and the citation trails of its key papers (the papers they cite and the papers that cite them);
• find the sources your text needs, claim by claim, and the literature it does not yet cite: the counter-positions, the debates it leaves aside, the work published since you wrote it;
• read many papers at speed, through structured summaries (question, method, findings, limits) and comparison tables, including work in languages you do not read;
• read one paper in depth by questioning it with the AI: what it assumes, where it is weak, what its critics would say;
• link each section of your text to the sources it rests on and to those it contests, and see where your argument goes beyond them;
• keep what you read in a literature knowledge base of your own (a folder of linked notes, one per paper, tied to your own ideas), fed every week by a search on your question;
• draft a state of the art of your question, and have it read by an AI set up as a reviewer, for what it misses;
• check every reference in your text (does it exist, has it been retracted, does it say what you cite it for), and keep your bibliography in order between your text and your reference manager (Zotero);
• judge when an AI search or summary is enough, and when you must search by hand or go back to the paper itself.

Format. Every course can take different shapes: in person, online or both, as one intensive block or spread over several weeks, shorter or longer. Length, format and all practical details are open: we agree them together, and I adapt the course to what your institution needs.

Interested for your programme? Write to me →