Workflow: Building a Citation Draft with AI Agents

The “Blank Page Syndrome” in academic writing is often caused by the daunting task of gathering citations. AI Research Agents have changed this game, moving from simple text generation to “Deep Research” with verifiable sources.

Step 1: The Discovery Agent (Elicit)

Start with Elicit or SciSpace. Instead of keywords, ask research questions:

“What are the primary effects of Blue Light on Circadian Rhythms in teenagers?”

The agent scans millions of PDFs and creates a table of top papers, summarizing their methodologies and findings side-by-side.

Step 2: The Synthesis Agent (Perplexity)

Take your top 5 papers and feed them into Perplexity (or ChatGPT with browsing). Ask it to draft a “Literature Review” section.

• It synthesizes the arguments.
• It tracks who said what.
• It maintains the context of the debate.

Step 3: The Citation Manager (Zotero + AI)

Finally, use an AI wrapper for Zotero (or tools like Jenni.ai) to format your inline citations automatically. This ensures you never have a “dangling reference” that doesn’t match your bibliography.

Try Elicit Research