Inside Cicadus
Everything you need to transform your research workflow
How Cicadus Works
From research question to comprehensive insights in four simple steps
Ask a research question
Upload a research paper PDF or enter a focused research question. Cicadus understands your research intent and initiates a structured analysis based on your objective.
Cicadus Maps the research landscape
Cicadus scans relevant literature to surface the most meaningful papers and constructs a semantic view of the research landscape, highlighting how work in the field is organized and connected.
Choose a core paper
Select a central paper to anchor your exploration. Citations are automatically analyzed and classified, revealing why papers reference one another , whether for background, methodology, critique, or application.
Understand citation logic
Explore how ideas evolve through citation relationships using interactive visualizations and annotated documents. Uncover the reasoning behindffected structure behind the literature and surface insights that typically take weeks to piece together manually.
Why Cicadus?
Built specifically for researchers who want to focus on insights, not search.
Beyond Keyword Search
Stop searching by terms. Cicadus understands research intent and retrieves literature based on meaning, relevance, and contribution — not keyword overlap.
Literature as a System
Research literature is not a list of papers — it is a structured system of ideas. Cicadus models how studies relate, build upon, and diverge from one another.
Citation Logic, Made Explicit
Every citation is traceable to real paper content. See exactly why a paper is cited — whether for background, method, validation, or critique — with transparent source grounding.
Gaps are Structural
Research gaps are rarely isolated statements — they emerge from structure. Cicadus reveals missing links, weak justifications, and underexplored directions across the literature.
Built for Researchers
Designed for researchers. Cicadus focuses on real academic workflows — literature review, justification, synthesis, and defense — not generic AI chat.
Built for Rigor
Your research environment improves as you add papers. Build a grounded, verifiable knowledge base that respects academic standards and methodological rigor.
Join thousands of researchers who've transformed their workflow
Who Cicadus is Built For?
Curious who Cicadus is built for? You might see yourself here.
Graduate Students
Accelerate thesis and coursework research by mapping citations, understanding paper relationships, and grounding claims in primary literature.
Researchers & PhD Scholars
Identify research gaps, trace intellectual lineages, and understand why papers cite each other. Build defensible, structured literature reviews.
Academics & Research Leads
Streamline literature synthesis, evaluate research positioning, and strengthen methodological decisions with transparent citation reasoning.
Frequently Asked Questions
Everything you need to know about Cicadus
Cicadus is an AI-powered research tool that helps you understand research papers faster. Upload a paper or ask a research question, and our AI analyzes it to provide literature reviews, visual reasoning maps, annotated PDFs, and personalized knowledge bases from your saved papers.
Our AI insights are highly accurate, backed by direct quotes and references from original papers. We use advanced language models trained on millions of research papers, ensuring reliable and trustworthy analysis. Every insight includes source citations for verification.
Yes! Cicadus works across all research domains - from computer science and medicine to social sciences and humanities. Our AI understands diverse academic fields and adapts to the specific terminology and structure of your research area.
Currently, Cicadus supports PDF uploads for research papers. Our system can process academic papers, preprints, journal articles, and conference proceedings. We're working on adding support for additional formats in future updates.
The reasoning map visualizes citation relationships between papers, showing why and how papers cite each other. It uses semantic analysis to categorize connections (e.g., 'supports', 'extends', 'critiques'), helping you understand the foundational structure of research topics at a glance.
Absolutely. We take data security seriously. Your uploaded papers and research data are encrypted and stored securely. We never share your data with third parties, and you have full control to delete your content at any time.
Team collaboration features are coming soon! You'll be able to share reasoning maps, annotated PDFs, and knowledge bases with your research team. Join our waitlist to get early access when collaboration features launch.
Cicadus combines multiple research workflows into one platform - literature reviews, citation analysis, PDF annotations, and personalized knowledge bases. Our unique reasoning map visualization and semantic relationship analysis set us apart, helping you understand not just what papers say, but why they matter.
Still have questions?
Contact our support team →