As part of my current research project at the University of Southern Denmark, I have been reading about how Hans Christian Andersen’s stories were received in India during the nineteenth century.

If you don’t know about Andersen, he is a famous Danish writer. His stories like “The Ugly Duckling,“ “The Little Mermaid,“ and “The Emperor’s Clothes“ are considered our collective literary heritage.

I am reading articles and books about Andersen and I am also experimenting with a bunch of AI-powered apps that can help me with literature review.

Consensus

Consensus looks like most search engines but what sets it apart is that if you ask it a Yes/No question, it gives you the consensus of the academic community about the question. I wrote about Consensus a few weeks ago.

For example, I ask Consensus the following question: “Does immigration improve economy?“

Consensus tells me that 67% of available scholarships agrees that immigration does improve economy. But Consensus doesn’t stop there. It also gives me a list of the papers that it used to arrive at the consensus. Scholars in social and natural sciences would find this feature particularly helpful.

A new feature:

A couple days ago, Consensus added a new feature. Now if you ask it a question, Consensus not only gives you the consensus but also a summary of the top articles it analyzed. This is an extremely useful feature that scholars can use during their literature review.

Consensus, however, is not without its limitations. It only caters to six topics, which are supplements, economics, sleep, social policy, medicine, and mental health.

Good news is that folks at Consensus are seeking feedback on how to improve their product so that it becomes an efficient tool to as many scholars as possible. If you have any comments about it, please feel free to reach out to them via the chat box on their website.

Once you have collected a bunch of papers for your literature review, the next important step is to take notes.

During my PhD, I took notes by hand. But for my current project, I am using Zotero to take notes. I bought 6 GBs of Zotero storage and I think it would be sufficient for my current project. If you use Zotero, I’d highly recommend paying for extra storage. It’s totally worth it.

Zotero is a useful tool but when it comes to taking notes, it doesn’t help you with making connections. Interesting scholarship makes new connections between things and that is not possible in Zotero.

Lateral

To see how I can connect different arguments of various scholars, I tried Lateral, an AI-powered app. Lateral helps you see how a particular concept connects different papers and arguments.

Create a account on Lateral and upload the papers that you want to see the connections between. Once you have uploaded the paper, you can create “Concepts.“

Click on the “Concepts“ button and create a concept that you think could be a potential connection between different papers.

Once you have created a “Concept,“ click in the box in front of any paper, and Lateral will give you all the snippets from the paper that are relevant to that concept.

In the screenshot below, you can see Lateral has helped me figure out how the concept of “Circulation“ connects various papers. Figuring out these connections would have taken me at least a couple weeks.

Editing You Draft

Once you have written a draft of your journal article or a dissertation chapter, the next step is to edit it. Editing scholarly prose is a laborious and time-consuming job. Until recently, I used to work as an editor at the Journal of Postcolonial Writing and there editing a journal article take would take months.

During my PhD, I spent a lot of time looking a professional editing service that could help me polish my dissertation before submission. I found a lot of editing services for fiction writers but very few for academic writers. And the ones that I found were either unaffordable or unprofessional.

Recently, I came across Editage, a editing service for academics that I found to be both affordable and professional. I found their rates almost too good to be true and couldn’t believe it initially. So, I asked them if they could send me an editing sample and they responded promptly.

Below is an editing sample they sent me, which looks quite impressive. They have done line editing to polish the manuscript’s prose and they have also given comments to sharpen the argumentation.

Plus, they are quite efficient. They can edit a whole manuscript within a few days. Personally, I found their Premium plan to be most useful for the kind of work I do.

I emailed folks over at Editage that I would like to write about their services in my newsletter. They said they would be happy to offer a discount to me and to anyone who subscribes to my newsletter. You can use “WELCOME10“ to get a 10% discount.

My Upcoming Webinar — Become an Efficient Academic Writer with AI apps

Last month, I did two webinars on how to become an efficient academic writer with AI apps. Both of them were sold out.

Recently, I have received quite a few emails from people asking me to another one. Since there is considerable interest, I am doing another webinar on 8 April, 5pm GMT.

Registration

You can register for the webinar by clicking here.

The registration fee is $108.54 only, and you can use the code “Efficient30“ for a 30% discount.

Registration fee includes FREE access to my tutorial containing 170+ slides (worth $49.99).

If you can’t make it for the webinar, I will record it for you so you can watch it whenever it’s convenient for you.

Those who attended my last webinar have this to say:

And that’s it for this week.

I’ll see you next week with more tips on how to supercharge your academic writing with AI-powered apps.

Until then, keep writing.