How Literia uses AI
Literia uses AI to help you find, read and compare research papers. This page explains where its information comes from, what the AI features do, where they fall short, and how to check their work. It is a plain-language summary; the Terms of Service and Privacy Policy are the documents that govern your use of Literia.
Where the information comes from
- Paper details in search (titles, authors, abstracts, venues, citation counts) come from open scholarly metadata: OpenAlex and Semantic Scholar, plus arXiv identifiers where a paper has one.
- Full text comes from openly available PDFs, and from PDFs you add to your own library. Literia does not bypass paywalls.
- Concept definitions in the reader come from a curated glossary or from the matching Wikipedia article. Concepts found outside the glossary are labelled Discovered, and some of them have no definition.
Coverage is not complete. A paper can be missing from search, or have wrong metadata, because of the source it came from. See A paper I need doesn't show up in search.
What the AI does
| Feature | What it does | How you can check it |
|---|---|---|
| Search | Reads your request, gathers candidate papers (about 50 with Fast, 200 with Diligent), and judges each one against the criteria in your request. | Open a result's Criteria Verdicts and its abstract. |
| Q&A | Answers questions about a paper from passages retrieved from that paper. | Every claim carries a numbered citation that jumps to the passage it came from. |
| Summary | Writes a structured summary of a paper. | Each part points back to its evidence in the paper. |
| Concepts | Finds the scientific concepts in a paper and explains them. | Find in Paper shows where the concept is used; Ask in Paper explains it in this paper's context. |
| Collection reports | Reads every paper in a collection and writes a cited report. | Each citation opens the quoted passage and the paper it comes from. |
Limits
- AI can be wrong. Answers, summaries and reports can misread a passage, leave things out, or state something the paper does not say. Treat them as a starting point, not as the paper itself.
- Answers only know what they were given. Q&A works from the paper you are reading, and reports work from the papers in the collection. If the evidence is not there, the answer should say so; if it doesn't, check the citations.
- Not professional advice. Do not rely on Literia's output for medical, legal, financial or safety decisions.
- Coverage is incomplete, as described above.
How to check an answer
- Click a numbered citation such as [1] in the answer. The reader jumps to the passage and highlights it.
- Read the passage itself, and the text around it.
- In reports, open the citation to see which paper it comes from. A cited paper that is not in your collection is marked Not in this collection.
- If an answer looks wrong, rate it with Bad answer. That tells us what to improve.
More detail: Ask questions about a paper.
Your data and the AI
- Your questions and the passages they draw on are processed to produce the answer. Your Q&A history is saved to your account so you can reopen it.
- Your library, notes and highlights are tied to your account. We never sell or rent your data.
See the Privacy Policy and Can I delete my data?.
Questions
Something here unclear, or an answer you think is wrong? Contact us.