Research Solutions (Scite) · Citation Intelligence for Scientific Research — Supporting vs Contrasting Evidence
Scite shows how scientific papers have been cited — classifying each citation as supporting, contrasting, or mentioning the original findings. It is built for researchers who need to evaluate the evidentiary weight behind a specific claim, not just find papers that reference it. Scite is part of Research Solutions.
Best for
Researchers, scientists, and systematic reviewers who need to evaluate the evidentiary weight and replication status of specific claims in the scientific literature — not general topic discovery
Not ideal for
Broad research overviews, non-academic or current-events topics, anyone who needs full paper text, or users whose primary need is discovering new fields rather than evaluating existing claims
Who it's for
Scientists, academic researchers, and systematic reviewers who need to understand how the scientific community has responded to specific findings over time
Scite solves a specific problem that Consensus, Elicit, and Perplexity do not touch: not 'what papers exist on this topic' but 'how has the scientific community specifically responded to this finding over time.' The supporting/contrasting classification is genuinely useful for anyone doing systematic work — it lets you filter a massive citation list to find the contradictions without reading every paper. The limitation is that this depth is narrow: Scite is not a general research assistant and will not help you understand a new field or find interdisciplinary connections the way Perplexity or NotebookLM can. It is a precision tool for people who already know what claim they are evaluating.
Who should use it
Researchers doing literature reviews or systematic reviews who need to validate specific claims before citing them; scientists checking whether key findings in their field have been challenged since publication; anyone writing a paper or grant who needs to understand the current consensus or controversy around a specific hypothesis.
Who should skip it
Anyone looking for a general research assistant for broad topic overviews, students exploring a new field for the first time, or researchers whose primary sources are outside peer-reviewed scientific literature. Perplexity or Consensus are better starting points for discovery; NotebookLM is better for synthesising your own document collection.
Connect
Free
Basic
$20/month
Billed annual
Pro
$50/month
Billed annual
Free tier limits: Connect plan: 25 MCP credits/month for use inside other AI tools; no Search or Assistant access.
Note: Basic and Pro prices shown are billed yearly, and both include a 7-day free trial. Institutional plans are available.
Pre-submission literature check for a research paper
Before submitting a paper, a researcher uses Scite to check whether the key papers they are citing have been substantially challenged since publication. A paper cited as foundational evidence that has since been contradicted by multiple subsequent studies is a risk to the manuscript's argument — Scite surfaces this in a way that a standard citation count search does not.
Systematic review prioritisation
A systematic reviewer is working through 400 papers and needs to prioritise which ones to read carefully. Using Scite's citation type filters, they filter for papers that have received contrasting citations — identifying the contested findings first and spending reading time where the evidence is most in dispute.
Grant proposal evidence validation
A researcher building a grant proposal needs to show that a specific mechanistic claim is well-supported in the literature. Scite's Assistant surfaces the papers supporting and challenging the claim, with citation context, allowing the researcher to write a more defensible argument and anticipate reviewer objections.
Scite vs. Consensus
Consensus is designed for discovery — find papers, get AI-generated summaries of their conclusions, and see whether there is a consensus across them. Scite is designed for depth on a specific claim — how has this particular finding been responded to? Consensus is better for entering a new topic; Scite is better for evaluating a specific piece of evidence you already have. Many researchers use both at different stages of a project.
Scite vs. Elicit
Elicit extracts structured data from papers — methodology, sample size, outcome measures — making it useful for systematic review data extraction and comparing study designs. Scite focuses on citation classification — how subsequent papers have responded to a finding. Elicit is stronger for structured evidence synthesis; Scite is stronger for understanding citation context and claim validity. They address different steps of the same research workflow.
Scite vs. Perplexity
Perplexity searches the live web and synthesises answers from a wide range of sources — fast and broad, not academically rigorous. Scite is narrow and deep — academic literature only, with structured citation context. Use Perplexity for broad topic orientation or current events; use Scite when you need to know specifically whether a scientific claim has held up or been challenged in the peer-reviewed literature.
Is Scite free?
Scite's free Connect plan gives 25 MCP credits/month to query Scite from ChatGPT, Claude, and other AI tools, but no Search or Assistant access. Basic ($20/month billed yearly) unlocks Assistant and Search; Pro ($50/month billed yearly) adds API access and larger collections. Both have a 7-day free trial. The browser extension is free, and institutional plans are available.
What is a 'Smart Citation' in Scite?
A Smart Citation is Scite's classification of how a paper is cited by another paper. Rather than just recording that Paper B cited Paper A, Scite reads the context and classifies it: did Paper B cite Paper A as supporting evidence, as contradictory evidence, or simply mention it in passing? This distinction turns raw citation counts into evidence quality signals.
Scite vs Consensus: which should I use?
Use Consensus when you are exploring a topic and want AI-generated summaries of research conclusions across multiple papers — it is better for discovery and overview. Use Scite when you have a specific claim or paper and want to know how the scientific community has responded to it since publication — it is better for evaluation and validation. Many researchers use Consensus to find relevant work and Scite to evaluate how well it holds up.
Is Scite useful for fields outside biomedicine?
Scite reports 1.6B+ citations across 317M+ full-text articles, but coverage varies by discipline and publisher. Before subscribing, check scite.ai for coverage of the specific journals in your field.
Does Scite provide full text of papers?
Not directly. Scite provides citation context — the sentence from the citing paper — and links to the original paper on the publisher's site. Institutions can enable Scite Holdings to open full text through their library subscriptions; otherwise access depends on open-access availability.
Consensus
Non-experts and analysts who want clear, source-backed answers from the scientific literature
FreemiumElicit
Researchers, students, and R&D teams who need to process large volumes of scientific literature efficiently
FreemiumPerplexity AI
Fact-checking, current events research, and cited answers
FreemiumThe key distinction Scite makes is one that citation counts and standard search cannot: a paper cited 500 times may have been reproduced 400 times and challenged 100 times, or cited in passing 500 times without ever being replicated. Scite's Smart Citations classify each citing reference as supporting, contrasting, or mentioning — surfacing that distinction at a glance in search results and within paper text. Scite's Assistant lets you ask questions and receive answers synthesised from citation context, with each claim linked to the papers that support or challenge it. This is meaningfully different from tools like Perplexity or Consensus: Perplexity searches the live web broadly; Consensus finds papers and summarises conclusions; Scite tells you how the scientific community has specifically responded to a claim over time. That depth is Scite's strength and also its limitation: it is not useful for non-academic topics, current events, or broad discovery of a new field. It is most valuable when you already have a specific claim, paper, or hypothesis and need to understand how well it holds up in the literature. Scite reports 1.6B+ citations across 317M+ full-text articles from 44+ publisher partners; coverage varies by discipline and publisher. Scite is part of Research Solutions, which acquired it in 2023, and it can also be used inside ChatGPT, Claude, and other AI tools through its MCP server.
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