An AI research assistant is useful when its output helps you do a defined research task and you can check the work. A fluent paragraph, a long reference list or a working DOI is not enough to establish that a conclusion is supported.

For a researcher preparing a manuscript background or literature review, the practical question is what to delegate, what evidence to retain and what still needs judgment. Capabilities vary by product and workflow; the tasks below are things to evaluate, not promises that every assistant performs them accurately.

Match the assistant to a specific task

Exploring vocabulary: ask for candidate terms and inspect whether they represent your population, setting and concepts. A suggested search is a starting point to test.
Reading a paper: ask for a particular detail with its passage or table location. Check whether the tool had the full text, only an abstract or an incomplete document.
Organizing notes: compare study characteristics while keeping source identifiers and qualifications attached.
Drafting: use a proposed outline or paragraph as material to revise. Check the interpretation against the evidence before accepting it.

Separate these tasks from final study-selection decisions, statistical analysis or certainty judgments. A tool that summarizes a PDF has not thereby demonstrated the ability to perform those other tasks.

A real reference can still support the wrong sentence

Source checking involves different questions. Keeping them separate makes it easier to see what remains unresolved:

Identity: does the title, author, year and identifier match the original publication?
Access: what material was actually available—abstract, full text, supplement or only a citation record?
Passage: can you locate the relevant result or explanation, with enough surrounding context?
Support: does that material justify the sentence, including its population, setting, time point and uncertainty?

A citation link addresses only part of this check. If an assistant supplies a quotation, compare it with the original wording. Keep a paraphrase distinct from a quotation, and label your interpretation as an interpretation. The citation verification guide includes linked research and a more detailed checklist.

Try a bounded evaluation before relying on the output

Choose permitted papers you know well and a task with an answer you can inspect. For example, ask the tool to locate the study setting, the measured outcome and the authors' stated limitation. Include a field that is not reported and check whether it leaves that gap visible.

Compare the output with the papers, record errors and correction effort, and test whether the source context survives copying or export. This is a practical evaluation suggestion, not a validated benchmark. Success on a few familiar papers does not establish an accuracy rate, exhaustive coverage or a benefit for every topic.

For a formal systematic review, follow the planned review methods. Cochrane's data-collection guidance emphasizes piloting forms and checking extraction. The fact that an AI value looks plausible does not settle a discrepancy.

What INRA supports—and what remains yours to check

INRA provides narrative-review drafting with source records and citations to inspect. Default NLR retrieval uses Semantic Scholar, PubMed Central and arXiv; supported PDFs and Zotero sources can add material. Coverage and full-text access vary. These implementation descriptions are not a measured guarantee of accuracy or completeness.

NLR quality improvements are in progress. Researchers still need to review the scope, source selection, references and interpretation. We do not promise a fixed number of verified sources, a zero-error report or a particular time saving.

The separate SLR Copilot supports reviewer-led systematic-review tasks. Do not assume its screening or assessment controls are part of NLR generation. Check the current plans before starting; the current public offer requires a paid plan for generation.

Describe assistance honestly

ICMJE's AI guidance keeps responsibility for submitted work with human authors and calls for disclosure of AI assistance. Check your institution's and target journal's requirements. Say what the tool did and what you checked, without turning a planned check into a completed one.

Editorial update: October 19, 2026. Unsupported speed, coverage and error-free citation promises have been removed. This guide is not a product benchmark or qualified methods approval.