- Enter your topic or question. Be specific. “Simulation-based education for recognising the deteriorating patient” finds far better papers than “simulation”. A research-style question works well too.
- Say what you need the references for (optional). For example, “pre-reading for a second-year tutorial” or “evidence for a curriculum proposal”. This helps the AI choose the most useful papers and shapes the “Use it for” note on each one.
- Set the filters. Choose your discipline and the level of your students, then how many references you want (5, 10, 15 or 20) and how recent they should be. Under Kinds of source, choose journal articles and reviews, reviews only (systematic, scoping and narrative), or everything, including books and chapters. Tick Only papers with free full text if your students need to read them without a library login. Then pick your referencing style.
- Find references. Choose “Find references”. The tool searches OpenAlex, Crossref and PubMed (PubMed for health topics), removes duplicates and retracted papers, and the AI reads the abstracts to pick the most relevant. It usually takes 30 to 60 seconds. You’re charged once, when the list is saved. If no suitable papers are found or something goes wrong, you aren’t charged.
- Read the list. At the top, “What these sources show” sums up the evidence, with citations that jump to each reference, and notes any gaps. Each reference shows its full citation in your chosen style, the type of study, whether it’s open access, how often it has been cited, a short summary, a “Use it for” note, and links to the DOI, PubMed and free full text. Open “Abstract” to read the original abstract. At the bottom you’ll see which databases were searched, with which terms and on what date.
- Tidy it up. Change the referencing style at any time from the Style menu, and remove any reference you don’t want. Both are free.
- Download it. Word gives you the overview and the references with their summaries. Print / PDF opens a print-ready page. Copy references copies the formatted reference list. RIS and BibTeX import straight into EndNote, Zotero, Mendeley or LaTeX. To share the list with students or colleagues, tick Anyone with the link can view under the permanent link and copy the link. They can read and download the list and its finished articles without logging in, but can’t change anything. Untick the box at any time and the link stops working.
- Write a referenced article (optional). Under the list, tick the references to write from (at least three), then choose a length from about 750 to 5,000 words, the type (literature review, background reading for students, discussion paper or evidence brief), who it’s for and any focus or angle. Choose “Write article”. It’s written section by section, and a progress line shows each section as it’s done. You’re charged once, when the whole article is saved, and the price depends on the length. If a section fails, you aren’t charged and “Continue writing” picks up where it stopped.
- Check the article. Every citation in the article points to one of your chosen papers, and its reference list is built from the database records, not by the AI. A note under each article tells you how many citations the AI tried to add that didn’t match a chosen source and were removed. Download the article as Word or PDF, or copy the text.
- Build on the list. From a finished list you can spin off up to three evidence-based case studies, a presentation on the evidence, or a hybrid AI activity where students check AI claims against these papers. Each is priced on its own button and uses the papers you found. You can also start here from a lesson plan with “Find readings for this session”. Every list is saved to “My Reference Lists” and to “Everything You’ve Generated” on your User Hub.
Every action’s credit cost is shown on its own button before you commit to it. Nothing is charged silently.