University Libraries adds powerful AI search engine for academic research

The OHIO community now has premium-level access to , an AI tool designed for researchers, via the University Libraries. Consensus searches over 200 million academic papers鈥攃onsisting of nearly all the highest-impact journals and the entirety of PubMed鈥攁nd then uses language models to help find, understand, and synthesize peer-reviewed literature. Consensus only uses AI after it searches the scholarly literature. This ensures that every response is grounded in real, citable research, not speculative content generated by a model.

鈥淯nlike general-purpose chatbots that were trained indiscriminately on content from the Web, Consensus was trained only on high-quality research papers,鈥� said Rob Ross, Dean of Libraries.  鈥淭his means that, when you ask this AI tool a question, you can be confident that the answer won鈥檛 be misguided by intellectual detritus.鈥�

Consensus is a search engine designed specifically for academic research.  It excels at retrieving and summarizing peer-reviewed literature, making it ideal for exploring research questions, not general knowledge like trivia or definitions. Consensus employs the following safeguards to reduce the risk of AI misuse:

• Search before synthesis: Every response starts with a literature search.  This ensures that all citations are real papers, never hallucinated or invented sources.
• Summarization, not speculation: Consensus AI tools are strictly limited to summarizing content from the papers retrieved.  They don鈥檛 鈥渇ill in the blanks鈥� with outside knowledge.
• Transparent sourcing and attribution: Every claim is cited, and every citation is clickable.  Consensus makes it easy to inspect, verify, and reference the original source content with one click.  Note: If 花季传媒 Libraries has licensed the journal article in question, you will see a direct OHIO link to access the full text.
• AI 鈥渃heckers鈥� for relevance: Before summarizing, Consensus uses separate models to verify that the source contains information relevant to the query.  If a paper doesn鈥檛 meet their threshold for relevance, it won鈥檛 be used in the response.

鈥淭he AI landscape is filled with hyperbolic prognostications,鈥� Ross said. 鈥淐onsensus represents a counter example in its specialized utility: enabling researchers to engage with the scholarly record faster and deeper.鈥�

Using Consensus will be familiar to anyone who has used other commercial AI tools.  OHIO-affiliated users have access to premium-level accounts, which include unlimited Quick and Pro searches, and 50 鈥淒eep鈥� literature review searches.

Visit the to learn more about Consensus and how to create an account.