5 ways to save time working with a lot of sources—including an AI-driven Summarization Generator

If you want to be promoted to a senior teaching position within a university, one of the requirements to cross rank is to have your research published. But have you ever considered using an AI-driven summarization generator to help you achieve that?

The process of getting published, or even writing a postgraduate or doctoral thesis, can be a long and arduous one. When working with a large number of scholarly sources, conducting research can take months – sometimes even years – and summarization generators are time-saving tools that help academics and students work smarter, not harder.

Why Summarization Generators are a Great Time Saver for Academics

The traditional method of academic writing goes like this:

1. Choose a director or determine the topic of your paper.
2. Decide on a hypothesis as the general aim of your research.
3. Make an outline of the main points you want to talk about, typically in IMRAD format.
4. Look for scholarly sources that support or contradict your position and provide more information on your topic.
5. Skim read through each piece of source material to decide whether or not it’s actually relevant to your paper.
6. Select the references which are and read them thoroughly, pulling out data and quotes which you want to directly cite in your research.
7. Write your paper, pulling all of this information together from the various places you have access to it to craft a cohesive argument.
8. Write your review of related literature (RRL), summarising the most important works cited in your essay.
9. Create a bibliography and cross-reference all foot and endnotes.

With this method, you could go to the library, use the OPAC (online public access catalogue) to find books relating to your research interests, and read through those books.

Alternatively, you could search for keywords related to your study online, using tools like Google Scholar or JSTOR. This has become one of the most preferred research methods for students and academics worldwide, and it’s faster and easier than going through books at the library. But the catch here is that you still have to read through each scholarly source you find, or rely on a vague abstract to tell you whether or not the source is relevant to your study.

Suppose you want to work smarter, not harder. In that case, you could delegate your RRL writing and organization to a research assistant, although not all academics (and certainly not most students) have the luxury of doing this.

Your other option is to use a reference management tool that comes with an AI-driven summarization generator.

How a Summarization Generator Works

An AI-driven summarization generator manages references by giving you at-a-glance information from countless sources in just a few seconds.

Let’s take a look at how Flowcite’s summarization generator tool works, to give you an idea of just how much time researchers can save with technology like this.

Using the summarizer add-on is straightforward. You can search for relevant scholarly sources in the Flowcite Knowledge Library and use filters to narrow down your search. Once you’ve found some titles which look interesting, you simply generate a summary of each article in less than 30 seconds.

Now, instead of having to read through each scholarly source to determine its relevance to your research, you can save hours of time by reading only the AI-generated article summary. The summary includes key points and arguments from the paper, so if you see that it’s not dealing with subject matter specifically related to your topic, you can discard it.

If an article summary does look promising, you can add the source to your Project Library, where it can be sorted, cited, and inserted into your writing with the click of a button.

How to Find the Best Summarization Generator Tool

Before deciding which summarization generator to use, here are some things to consider in evaluating a reference management tool (RMT):

• Does it allow you to import scholarly sources from multiple research databases?
• Can it sort references according to topic, theme, chronology, or in alphabetical order?
• Can it synchronize your data across shared documents or folders?
• Does it have an automatic citation feature?
• Does it have a summarization generator?

Understanding the features of a reference management tool will help you decide whether or not it fulfills all of your research needs. Flowcite is the only RMT which provides all of the above features in a single platform, including a summarization generator which scholars say is one of the biggest time-savers they’ve encountered in a research tool.

Let’s go over some more tips that can help you save time when working on research with a large number of sources, as well as how to maximise the benefits of a summarization generator.

5 ways to save time when working with a lot of scholarly sources

1.    Sort your sources by topic

This is something you or your research assistant can do. Create a spreadsheet with the title of each source, the author’s name, and a summary of what it’s about, then upload it to cloud storage (e.g., Google Drive, iCloud, OneDrive) for easy access.

This can be tedious and time-consuming, but you will avoid having to comb through tons of scholarly sources on multiple browser tabs later on if done right. Instead, all your sources will be in one document that you can pull up at any time and from anywhere.

Good reference management tools, like Flowcite, will allow you to do this automatically.

2.    Divide your research into sections and add to your document as you go

Think of this as a fleshed-out outline—a time saver for academic writing. Read through your references and write new insights in the corresponding section in your document.

By sectioning your research and inserting the relevant references accordingly, you save time by limiting yourself to writing only what’s necessary for that section. It also helps you keep your citations and arguments organised throughout the research process, so they’re ready for composition when you get to the writing stage.

3. Use an online citation generator to create citations

Citation generators help you save time when making reference lists and citations. There are tons of free citation generators online, and some text editors even have these built in.

The nice thing about citation generators is that they free up your time by letting you copy-paste references and in-text citations directly into your document. This reduces the anxiety induced by accidental or unintentional intellectual property theft (e.g., plagiarism) and lets you focus on writing your paper, rather than nitpicking over citation formats.

4. Take advantage of Google Scholar

Google Scholar has become one of the primary go-to’s for finding and reviewing scholarly sources online.

Google Scholar displays related literature with their respective citations when you search for relevant keywords on the platform. Much like the previous tip, Google automatically cites each related search result for you.

It’s like a digitised online library, except you don’t have to leaf through a ton of books before finding what you need. You can even view snippets from each scholarly source containing information that’s specifically relevant to your topic, because Google highlights the keywords you’ve searched where they appear within the text.

However, you won’t be able to read entire texts in this database without paying to access each one.

5. Use Flowcite

Have you ever found yourself wondering whether there’s a platform that incorporates all aspects of academic writing in one place?

Flowcite offers just that.

Flowcite’s unique, purpose-built platform integrates various research and academic writing tools to streamline your workflow without having to open multiple programs simultaneously. Everything you need to craft an excellent, well-researched academic paper is in Flowcite.

Some of our core features include:

• A built-in LaTeX text editor for writing your paper and all the formulae it might require.
• A Similarity and uniqueness checker, because no one wants to be accused of plagiarism.
• Proofreading, editing and peer-review services to ensure you get a second set of eyes on your paper.
• Access to millions of academic sources in the Flowcite Knowledge Library reduces trips to the library and repetitive online searches.
• Using our add-on summarization generator tool saves researchers hours spent reading and analysing sources

Plus, with our integrated reference management tools, using Flowcite can significantly reduce the amount of time it takes for you to read through a large number of scholarly sources.

Final Thoughts

With powerful, time-saving academic writing and reference management tools like these, crafting a well-researched paper has never been so simple or efficient.

Especially when you’re working with a large number of scholarly sources, the traditional pen and paper method of research can consume a huge amount of time. But you’ll work smarter, not harder, if you take advantage of new technology that’s designed specifically for research writing.

Flowcite Research Management 3.0 provides you with a complete suite of research, writing, editing, and publishing tools. Sign up to start writing smarter today.