Inside Cicadus: AI Literature Review Tool
Everything you need to transform your research workflow
How Cicadus Works for Citation Analysis
From research question to AI-powered literature review 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 runs semantic search across relevant literature to surface the most meaningful papers and builds a citation mapping view for literature review and citation analysis.
Choose a core paper
Select a central paper to anchor your exploration. Citations are automatically analyzed and classified, revealing citation intent and 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 citation intent patterns and reasoning structure behind literature to surface insights that typically take weeks to piece together manually.
Why Cicadus for Literature Review?
Built for researchers who want insight-first AI literature review instead of manual keyword search.
Beyond Keyword Search — Semantic Literature Discovery
Stop searching by terms. Cicadus understands research intent and retrieves literature based on meaning, relevance, and contribution — not keyword overlap.
Research Literature as a Citation Network
Research literature is not a list of papers — it is a structured system of ideas. Cicadus uses citation mapping to model how studies relate, build upon, and diverge from one another.
Citation Intent Analysis, 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 for reliable citation analysis.
Research Gap Identification Through Structure
Research gaps are rarely isolated statements — they emerge from structure. Cicadus reveals missing links, weak justifications, and underexplored directions across the literature.
Built for Academic Research Workflows
Designed for researchers. Cicadus focuses on real academic workflows — literature review, systematic review, justification, synthesis, and defense — not generic AI chat.
Built for Academic Rigor and Verifiability
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
Frequently Asked Questions
Everything you need to know about Cicadus for AI-powered research and citation analysis
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 through citation mapping, showing why and how papers cite each other. It uses semantic analysis to categorize citation intent (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 as an AI literature review tool that helps you understand not just what papers say, but why they matter.
Still have questions?
Contact our support team →