Top 7 AI Academic Writing Tools for Researchers

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Top 7 AI Academic Writing Tools for Researchers


The market for AI writing tools has exploded, offering solutions for emails, marketing copy, and basic grammar correction. While researchers have used these tools for academic writing, they often lack the subject-specific expertise needed for high-quality research papers. This gap is rapidly closing with the emergence of niche AI academic writing tools designed specifically for scholarly writing. These tools provide tailored language suggestions, grammar checks aligned with academic conventions, and technical corrections relevant to your field. We’ve evaluated a wide range of options and present the top 7 AI research paper writing tools that will elevate your academic writing experience.

Paperpal

Grammarly

QuillBot

Ref-N-Write

Trinka

Jenni AI

ProWritingAid

Paperpal is a comprehensive AI academic writing assistant that offers real-time, subject-specific language suggestions to help you achieve publication success faster. Paperpal’s ML models outperform other AI academic writing tools, providing 2 to 3 times more suggestions on par with corrections by professional academic editors. With over 21 years of STM expertise and robust AI trained on millions of published research manuscripts, Paperpal helps academics write 2x faster with precise language and grammar suggestions, generative AI capabilities, academic tone adherence, and more.

  1. Language Suggestions: Paperpal understands academic writing structure and conventions, offers precise language suggestions based on scientific contexts, while retaining references, equations, technical terms, and non-English words.
  2. Paperpal Research: Get science-backed answers with verified citations to your questions from over 250 million research articles as you write. The option to save relevant articles to your citation library allows you to research, write and cite with confidence.
  3. Plagiarism Checker: Paperpal checks your paper for similarity against 100 billion online webpages and provides you with a detailed report with a similarity score that lets you address actionable items, cite overlooked sources, and avoid accidental plagiarism.
  4. Contextual Synonyms: Struggling with vocabulary? Just highlight a word and Paperpal instantly dives into a vast database of high-impact research, analysing how similar words have been used in published papers. It then presents you with a list of relevant academic alternatives, ranked by their usage and context, so you’re always using the right words.
  5. Paraphrase: Improve clarity and tone with accurate Retain the context of your work and meet journal-prescribed word counts with a formal tone.
  6. Trim: Get a concise version of your writing, without losing meaning, to meet word count limits.
  7. Academic Translation: Translating academic text with DeepL and Google Translate often leads to unnecessary context-switching or introduces distractions, which can be misleading and delay the research process. With Paperpal, which covers 28 languages, you can write in your preferred language and get precise English translations in one click!
  8. Academic Consistency Checks: Paperpal’s consistency checks ensure style uniformity in the presentation of numbers, tables, figures, equation labels, word forms and spelling, and statistics. By automating these tedious manual checks and providing a simple click-and-fix solution, Paperpal saves researchers both time and effort.
  9. Paperpal Templates: Paperpal’s secure generative AI technology is tailored to academic writing conventions and based on proprietary large language models. Templates enables users to generate outlines and emails, and rewrite or trim text.
  10. Be Submission Ready: Paperpal knows that academics need to check several elements to ensure their work is submission ready. It provides 30+ language and technical compliance pre-submission checks that are designed to boost your manuscript’s chance of acceptance.

Paperpal’s Pros

  1. Tailored for Academic Writing: Trained on scholarly articles and human expertise across a wide range of subject areas, Paperpal understands academic context and offers precise suggestions and checks to enhance your essay, assignment, thesis, dissertation, or research paper. This helps improve your writing process and overall productivity over time.
  2. Accessible Where You Write: The academic writing tool is available on Web and MS Word and easy to use and navigate, ensuring you have instant corrections as and where you write.
  3. Real-time, Subject-Specific Correction: Paperpal offers real-time, in-depth checks and feedback to improve the quality of writing in minutes. Its writing tips and suggestions also help you improve your academic writing skills over time.
  4. Submission Readiness Checks: Paperpal offers a trusted plagiarism check, in partnership with Turnitin, to help you avoid accidental or self-plagiarism in your writing. It also includes a suite of 30+ critical submission readiness checks, which helps boost your chance of journal publication.
  5. All-in-One Academic Writing Tool: Paperpal is an all-in-one academic writing tool designed specifically for academic contexts, ideal for researchers, students, and publishers. It eliminates the need to use different tools for translation, writing, editing, plagiarism checks, citations, research, etc.

Paperpal’s Cons

  1. Limited Free Version: The free version gives you a taste of Paperpal features and works well for quick checks and improvements, but those requiring extensive support beyond set usage limits need to upgrade to the Paid plan.
  2. Technical Focus: Focused on technical and academic writing, Paperpal may not be as beneficial for more general or creative writing tasks, limiting its use outside academia.

Paperpal’s Pricing Plans

Paperpal’s free version offers access to the following features:

  1. 200 uses/month of Language suggestions
  2. 5 uses/day of AI features
    1. Rewrite (Paraphrase, Trim + more)
    2. Research
    3. Templates
    4. Translate
  3. Free Submission readiness summary report

You also get unlimited access to choosing your editing mode and preferred language styles and a free account on Researcher.Life – a subscription-based platform that unifies the best AI tools and services designed to speed up, simplify, and streamline every step of a researcher’s journey.

Paperpal’s Prime plan unlocks unlimited access to all the free features, plus consistency, plagiarism, and submission readiness checks at just US$19 per month or US$119 per year.

Grammarly is a comprehensive AI writing tool which offers grammar, vocabulary, proofreading, and plagiarism detection on a single platform. Grammarly is the go-to AI writing tool for bloggers, content creators, marketing, and business folks. It has recently launched an academic mode to cater to the research audience. Let’s dive into its capabilities as a research paper writing tool.

Grammarly’s Features

  1. Proofreading: Catches grammatical mistakes, spelling errors, and punctuation issues.
  2. Tone and Fluency suggestions: Provides writing feedback and tone recommendations.
  3. Rewrite and Paraphrasing: Provides suggestions to improve language clarity through generative AI paraphrasing and rewriting.
  4. Plagiarism detection: Flags specific sentences for similarity, provides information about the source, and calculates an overall originality score for your document.
  5. Generative AI Capabilities: Grammarly Go allows you to quickly compose, rewrite, ideate, and reply with basic prompts.
  6. Exclusive Features for Academic Writing:
  7. Thesis Statement Generator: Share some basic details, and Grammarly provides ideas for your thesis statement.
  8. Free Citation Generator: Add your citation information, and Grammarly formats it as per APA, MLA, and Chicago style.
  9. Free Essay Checker: Grammarly’s free version is customized to identify grammatical errors in essays.

Grammarly’s Pros

  1. Real-time language and grammar suggestions: Grammarly provides instant feedback to correct grammatical errors, improving the cleanliness of your text.
  2. Clarity and readability enhancements: Suggests simpler word choices, restructures sentences, and identifies confusing passages to boost the quality and readability of your writing.
  3. Citation and formatting tools: Offers basic help with citation styles and formatting, enhancing consistency and saving time.
  4. Generative AI capabilities: Delivers polished drafts quickly based on your prompts.

Grammarly’s Cons

  1. Aggressive reduction of passive voice: Promotes active voice usage, which, although beneficial in many contexts, may not suit scientific writing where passive voice fosters objectivity.
  2. Limited academic tone adjustments: The suggestions often lack the formal tone required for academic journal submissions and do not typically include patient-first language essential in medical fields.
  3. Inconsistent detection of stylistic elements: Catches basic language and hyphenation errors but falls short in enforcing academic style guides and spotting mistakes in tables, equations, and figures.
  4. Dependence on expert prompts for academic precision: While effective for routine tasks, creating precise academic content demands skillful prompt management and can be labor-intensive.
  5. No language translation capabilities: Lacks a translation feature, which would greatly assist ESL researchers in seamlessly writing in their native language and translating to clear, correct English.

Grammarly’s Pricing Plans 

  • Free – Access basic language and tonality checks and 100 Generative AI prompt usage at no cost.
  • Premium – At US$30.16 monthly or US$142.34 annually, Grammarly allows users access to tone adjustments, check plagiarism, build citations, and use 1,000 Generative AI prompts.

QuillBot, at its core, is an article rewriter, but its exclusive academic writing features like essay checker, citation generator, translator, and more position it as one of the sought after research paper writing tools by students and researchers. QuillBot’s NLP techniques make it a reliable academic writing tool to simplify complex sentences and improve readability.

QuillBot’s Features

  1. Paraphraser – QuillBot offers 8 pre-defined paraphrasing modes with in-built customization to change more (or less) of your writing.
  2. Grammar Checker – Instantly corrects grammar, spelling, and punctuation errors in US, UK, CA and AU English and other languages like German, French, Spanish, and Portuguese (Brazilian).
  3. Plagiarism Checker – Provides a plagiarism score and real-time analysis of improper attribution of authorship and citations for text scanned in 100+ languages.
  4. QuillBot Flow – An all-in-one word processor that helps you research, take notes, and auto-complete sentences to write research papers faster.
  5. Summarizer – Quickly extracts key points and summarizes essays, papers, and documents in bullet points and paragraphs.
  6. Citation Generator – Offers free citation generation capabilities for APA, MLA, and Chicago style as full and in-text citations.
  7. Translator – QuillBot provides real-time text translation in 40+ languages.

QuillBot’s Pros

  1. User-friendly: Minimal learning curve and easy feature navigation, with free extensions available for Chrome, Word, and MacOS without switching tabs or downloading desktop apps.
  2. QuillBot Flow: Supports paraphrasing, summarizing, researching with built-in grammar checks and citation tools.
  3. Freeze Words: Allows freezing of specific words like nouns to prevent them from being paraphrased; free version limits this to one word per day.
  4. Affordable Premium Plans: Cost-effective premium options with a 100% money-back guarantee within 72 hours.

QuillBot’s Cons

  1. Paraphrasing Limitations: Paraphrased output often lacks human-like quality, flow, and context, requiring significant manual editing.
  2. Basic Grammar Checks: Does not offer detailed insights into grammar corrections compared to some free alternatives.
  3. Restrictions in Free Version: Free version limits paraphrasing to 125 words, which is quite low compared to other academic writing tools. QuillBot offers only two writing modes: Standard and Fluency.
  4. Limited Plagiarism Checks: Plagiarism checker limited to 20 pages (about 5,000 words), with additional fees for longer texts even under premium accounts.

QuillBot’s Pricing Plans

Free Plan: 

  1. Paraphrasing tool with a 125-word limit
  2. Two writing modes
  3. Summarizer tool for up to 1,200 words
  4. Ability to process two words at once
  5. Access to Google Docs and Chrome extensions
  6. Up to three synonyms
  7. Freeze one word or phrase
  8. Citation generator tool
  9. Grammar checker
  10. Access to all extensions, including Microsoft Word

Premium Plan: 

QuillBot Premium is backed by a 3-day money-back guarantee. QuillBot Premium is priced at US$49.95 for Annual, US$39.95 for Semi-Annual, and US$9.95 for Monthly plans.

Ref-N-Write is a research assistance tool designed to assist with proper phrasing in scientific writing. It is particularly useful for researchers, students, and academics involved in writing research papers, essays, and PhD theses/dissertations.

Ref-N-Write’s Features

Below are the key functionalities and uses of this academic writing tool:

  1. Academic Phrasebank – Perfect tool for researchers struggling with academic language. Ref-N-Write’s predefined phrases make it easier for researchers to write in an academic tone and customize them according to the topic of the research. Extracted from high-quality scientific journal articles, these academic phrases can be used across research papers.
  2. Paraphrase – Type or paste a text and Ref-N-Write paraphrases text in less than a microsecond. Researchers can also fine-tune and replace selected words with a click. The research paper writing tool offers 20,000 academic sentence templates and phrases to refine language.
  3. Real-Time Cross-Referencing: Ref-N-Write allows writers to search and consolidate similar arguments and statements from reference materials in real-time. Writers can also copy and paste content from previous documents to save time
  4. Plagiarism and AI Content Detector: Ref-N-Write scans academic context against Copyleaks’ database to help researchers maintain academic integrity.

Ref-N-Write’s Pros

  1. Academic Phrase Bank: The availability of 20,000 academic writing phrases for students and researchers makes it an ideal paraphrasing and research paper writing tool.
  2. Cross-Referencing: Allows importation and cross-referencing of materials, aiding in consolidating arguments.
  3. Text-to-Speech Feature: ‘Read’ feature converts text to speech, aiding in proofreading and enhancing text flow.
  4. Affordability: Reasonably priced with a free trial option available.

Ref-N-Write’s Cons

  1. Over-Reliance: Potential for users to become overly dependent on the tool, which could impede the development of writing skills.
  2. Outdated Software Interface: Some feedback calls for a more modern update to the software interface.
  3. Content Limitations: The volume of content that can be paraphrased at once is restricted, making the process slow.
  4. Repetition in Suggestions: The tool may revert to suggesting the original sentence when asked to paraphrase the same sentence again.

Ref-N-Write’s Pricing Plans

Buy a lifetime license of Ref-N-Write for just £29.99.

Trinka AI is an online tool designed for grammar checking and language correction, especially suited for academic and technical writing. Trinka AI is trained on scholarly papers across diverse subjects, which helps in providing users with quality suggestions.

Trinka’s Features

  1. Advanced Grammar and Spelling Checking: Trinka AI addresses over 3,000 common and complex grammatical errors, going beyond typical AI academic writing tools.
  2. Plagiarism Checking: Features the top-of-the-line iThenticate algorithm for detecting text similarities.
  3. Auto-Editing Capabilities: Enhances the MS Word document editing process, making it user-friendly.
  4. Publication Readiness: Evaluates manuscripts for publication across 20 different criteria.
  5. Citation Checker: Identifies and incorporates more credible sources in research.
  6. Writing Consistency Checker: Maintains writing uniformity by addressing inconsistencies in text elements.
  7. Personal Dictionary: Enables users to add specialized or frequently used terms to ensure consistent and accurate spelling.

Trinka’s Pros

  1. Academic and Technical Writing: Specifically designed to enhance academic and technical documents.
  2. Scientific Writing Consistency Check: Features a consistency check tailored for scientific writing.
  3. Publication Readiness Check: Included in the free plan, this check significantly aids in preparing documents for publication.
  4. Flexible Pricing: Utilizes a credit-based pricing system, with free credits provided monthly.

Trinka’s Cons

  1. No Desktop or Mobile App: Lacks dedicated applications for desktop or mobile devices.
  2. Word Count Limit in Free Version: The free version restricts users to 10,000 words per month.

Trinka’s Pricing

Basic Plan:

Features: Access to basic features up to 10,000 words per month, 1 free Plagiarism Check score per month, and 2 free credits for Plagiarism Check, Auto File Edit, and journal finder, citation checker

Premium Plan

Cost: $6.67 a month per user (approximately $80 per year)

Includes: Access to all features with unlimited monthly usage, 2 free Plagiarism Check scores per month, 5 free credits for Plagiarism Check, Auto File Edit, and journal finder, citation checker. Premium users also receive 10 free credits every month.

Trinka also offers flexible credit purchasing options where users can buy additional credits as needed. These credits are used for accessing various features such as plagiarism checks, proofreading files, and publication readiness checks. Purchased credits do not expire.

Jenni.ai is an AI writing tool that helps busy students improve their academic writing tone and quality, generate ideas, and optimize for SEO. Jenni is often used by students, bloggers, content creators, and public speakers to streamline writing workflows and improve writing skills. Let’s explore how Jenni.ai performs as an academic writing tool.

Jenni.ai Features

  1. AI Autocomplete: Uses your base inputs to complete your sentences. It can suggest the next line of text and more, helping you overcome writer’s block.
  2. In-text Citations: Consults the latest research and the user’s PDF uploads to create citations for content generated in APA, MLA, IEEE, or Harvard style guides.
  3. Paraphrase: Allows users to rewrite their text by paraphrasing, expanding on, or modifying their content in their desired tone.
  4. In-built Plagiarism Check: Gives authors a chance to check if the content it helps generate is plagiarized from online sources.
  5. Outline Generator: Provides a well-structured outline, including headings and subheadings, which serves as a foundation for writing essays, theses, or academic content.
  6. Custom Styles & Tones: Allows users to choose the preferred tone to suit their writing needs, from academic to persuasive.
  7. Library: Enables users to save and manage uploaded PDFs in one place, allowing for inclusion of citations for any document.

Jenni.ai Pros

  1. ai helps initiate the writing process through prompts, line-by-line writing for initial drafts, and adherence to specific style guides.
  2. The AI academic writing tool provides paraphrasing and rewriting tools, including a built-in plagiarism checker for quick content transformation.
  3. Features a built-in research engine that automatically cites sources from an uploaded research library. ChatPDF collaboration aids in summarizing and comprehending research.
  4. The AI academic writing tool is user-friendly and requires no complex setup or installation.

Jenni.ai Cons

  1. ai offers a limited selection of content types and tone options, potentially unsuitable for students or researchers focused on academic writing.
  2. Compared to other research paper writing tools, Jenni.ai’s risk of altered meanings through paraphrasing and citation inaccuracies can lead to miscommunication in academic research.
  3. Limited translation capabilities (5 languages) may force non-native English speakers to seek alternatives for accurate academic translations.
  4. The daily limit of 200 words is inadequate when working on longer writing formats such as theses or dissertations. Advanced features are only available with Jenni.ai Unlimited paid plans.
  5. The absence of a browser extension or mobile app may restrict accessibility for some users.

Jenni.ai Pricing Plans

The Free Plan includes:

  • 200 AI words per day
  • Unlimited PDF uploads
  • AI Autocomplete
  • Support for journal and web citations
  • AI Editing commands

Priced at $20 per month, Jenni.ai’s Unlimited pack includes priority support, unlimited AI words, and access to latest features of the AI tool for research writing.

ProWritingAid is an AI-powered academic writing tool designed to help individuals in academia and other fields enhance the clarity, conciseness, and accuracy of their writing. ProWritingAid is used to refine academic and professional writing. It offers grammar checking, rephrasing, and a variety of analytical tools to ensure writing is publication ready.

ProWritingAid’s Features

  1. Rephrasing Tool: Quickly improves sentences with just a few clicks.
  2. Grammar Checker: AI-powered to identify and correct complex errors.
  3. Learning Tool for Students: Provides detailed analyses to prepare work for publishing.
  4. Analytical Language Goals: Offers suggestions for using power verbs and achieving language clarity.
  5. Reporting Functions: Includes 20 unique reporting options such as checks for overused words, sticky sentences, pronouns, and alliteration.

ProWritingAid’s Pros

  1. Comprehensive Grammar Checking: Capable of catching and correcting complex errors.
  2. Versatile Rephrasing Tool: Allows easy sentence improvements.
  3. Language Enhancement: Helps maintain clarity and conciseness with power verbs and goal-oriented feedback.
  4. Trial Offer: Includes a 14-day guaranteed refund to test the tool.

ProWritingAid’s Cons

  1. Limited Free Version: Access to full features requires a paid upgrade.
  2. Complex Reporting: The detailed reporting functions may initially overwhelm some users.
  3. Inadequate Support: Using the tool for lengthy documents or research papers can be cumbersome, as it is not optimized for organizing larger papers.

ProWritingAid’s Pricing

ProWritingAid offers several pricing plans to accommodate different user needs, including monthly, yearly, and lifetime options. Here are the details of these plans:

  • Monthly – $30 per month
  • Yearly – $120 per year
  • Lifetime – $399 for a one-time payment

ProWritingAid does not offer a free plan, but it does have a free trial available for users to test its features before committing to a subscription.

Academic writing excellence relies on clear thinking, orderly presentation, and sustained focus. To ensure an efficient and smart writing process, PhD students and researchers should prioritize areas that require their attention and outsource other basic tasks to AI academic writing tools to optimize their writing process. Research paper writing tools like Paperpal, Jenni, Grammarly and more, do help enhance the quality and efficiency of academic writing, however, it’s essential to choose the right AI academic writing tool that best fits your working style. The key is to identify your requirements, explore various options, and select the one that best fits your working style and addresses your specific needs. The right AI tool can make this journey smooth and productive.

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