Chemistry

Before you Use AI Tools - Pause and consider -  Is it is the best tool for what you are hoping to find?

If you are looking for information, research or data in the field of Chemistry - there may be discipline specific tools that will be of more use.

*Reminder: Check your syllabus or ask your professor before using generative AI tools for an assignment.*

AI Tools Can be Helpful With:		Be More Cautious with AI Tools if You:
Writing Models		Need very recent information
Suggesting Synonyms		Do not have previous knowledge of a topic
Copy Editing		Are doing a substantive literature review or need articles on a narrow topic
Brainstorming		Need to perform complex mathematics
Summarizing*		Are unsure if you're permitted to use AI tools in your research or writing
Translation		Are concerned about the energy or water resources used in running these tools
Formatting Information		Are concerned about potential plagiarism or copyright violations

*Be aware of the copyright restrictions of any content you use in a prompt or upload to an AI tool.  Some tools allow you to state that you do not want it to keep the information you use in prompts or uploads.   Make sure that is the case if you are using copyrighted or proprietary information that is not meant to be shared.

• This includes your own research and data - If you don't want it to be out there for other users to find 
• This includes your professor's or research group's Research work or data 
• This includes your professor's teaching materials - if they have shared documents, syllabi, activities, study notes etc. with the class - that does not equal giving you permission to put it online or into an AI tool's training base.

For more information on using generative AI resources in your research, visit our Research Guide.

AI Tools do not work well for Literature searching of any kind, and especially not for systematic literature Reviews. 

This is for 2 reasons:  

1. Knowledge Base

• AI Tools have a limited Knowledge Base - Each AI tool has a knowledge base that it has been trained on and that it uses to answer your questions.  T
  • AI tools do not have access to all the scholarly literature in any field.
  • Many AI tools cannot even search the live public internet. 
• Scholarly Databases have extensive Knowledge bases - Each scholarly database has created its universe of the scholarly literature and tells you what is included. 
  • Scholarly Databases in specific fields often include a significant percentage of the literature in a field. 
  • They do not search the public internet - they have intentionally created a knowledge base over time that includes more than what is on the public internet  
  •  

2. Value Added Subject Indexing -

• AI Tools do not add subject indexing to the citations that they have access to. They can recombine things to generate new text, but for searching, they can only use what is in their knowledge base or on the live web in some cases. 
• Scholarly Databases do add subject indexing to their citations -they add discipline specific subject headings and tags for things like Document types, Substances used or Population Groups. 
  • This provides many more access points for any given article - so it is more likely to come up in your search.
  •   Example - Search for articles Robotics Chemical Engineering - to find items on using Robitics in Chemcial Engineering processes. 
    • A search in SciFinder gives you an article called "Engineering Chemistry Innovation"   -which is on exactly that topic.   It comes up because it has had a subject heading for Robotics added
    • A search in an AI tool or Google for those same terms would not pull up that article, even if it was in its Knowledge Base, because it doesn't use the word Robotics anywhere in the citation. 

Use SciFinder for Chemistry research anytime you need:

• All the articles on a topic 
• The best articles on a topic 
• Narrowly focused articles
• The latest articles on a topic 
• Specific types of articles - Review articles, Synthesis articles, Patents, Clinical trials... All the
• All the articles out of a specific Research Group

Note: SciFinder requires that users have an individual, free account on the site.  See the Articles & Databases page in this guide to find out how to register.