Introducing Elicit Reports

Today we're excited to introduce Elicit Reports: fully-automated research overviews for actual researchers, inspired by systematic reviews.

Elicit Reports rigorously summarize research by building on the systematic review process, the gold standard for synthesizing scientific literature. They conduct a fully-automated rapid review (search, screening, data extraction) using the same engine that powers our Systematic Review workflow. You can understand and edit every intermediate step to get a report you trust.

Other Deep Research tools target broad and informal use cases (shopping, travel, finance). Elicit Reports support researchers who want to understand and control how the AI system works, researchers who work in high-stakes contexts where accuracy and trust are paramount.

Try it now, for free. Or check out an example report: What are the effects of microplastic exposure during pregnancy?

How Elicit Reports work

Start with your research question. Elicit will suggest ways to clarify the question or explore additional angles.

Elicit will then conduct a rapid review (search, screening, and data extraction) to write the Report.

Unlike other AI tools, you can understand and edit every step used to produce the Report — which papers were included, what information was summarized, etc.:

Elicit cites every claim with exact quotes from the original source. Other tools may link sources, but they don’t tell you word for word where to check the information (and sometimes misquote sources).

You can also extend a report by chatting with it. Ask questions about specific claims and papers, or have it summarize certain report sections.

You can even ask it about the underlying information, even if it wasn't covered directly in the report.

How well do Elicit Reports work?

We asked a team of 17 PhD-level researchers to generate research reports on 29 questions in their fields using Elicit and other tools. They evaluated questions like:

• Was it accurate? 
• Were its claims supported by the literature? 
• Was it useful?

We found Elicit Reports are significantly better than OpenAI’s, Perplexity’s, and Gemini’s Deep Research.

We also found that Elicit saves more time than other tools.

We plan to share the full methodology and more details shortly.

Conclusion

With Elicit Reports, we aim to bridge the gap between powerful AI capabilities and trusted science methodology. We prioritize good process and transparency because that's necessary for trusting AI in high-stakes contexts.

Elicit Reports are available to all users.