Elicit's Research Agent

Elicit's Research Agent is a powerful way to tackle complex research questions that go beyond what academic literature alone can answer. Unlike Elicit's Reports or Systematic Reviews — which are intentionally limited to Elicit's academic, journal, and clinical trial corpus — the Research Agent can pull from a wide range of sources (e.g. publications, public filings, press releases), produce flexible outputs, and let you iterate until you have exactly what you need. Once you have an answer, you can filter and export your sources, generate figures, and draft slides — all without leaving the conversation.

When to use the Research Agent

The Research Agent is the right choice when:

• Your question requires sources beyond academic publications — like regulatory filings, press releases, product labels, etc.
• You need a custom output format, such as a comparison table, competitive landscape, or executive summary
• You want to explore a topic iteratively, following up and refining as you go — rather than running a single structured query

For questions that are well-served by academic or journal literature and a fixed report or systematic review structure (such as PRISMA), the Research Report or Systematic Review workflows are likely a better fit.

Available agent templates

The Research Agent includes four templates:

The General template is available on all plans. Competitive, Research, and Clinical Trial templates are available on Elicit's paid plans.

• Competitive landscapes — Map out and compare products, companies, or therapeutic approaches across the sources most relevant to your analysis.
• Research landscapes — Understand the full scope of activity in a field: who's working on what, where the evidence is concentrated, and where the gaps are.
• Clinical trial landscapes — Analyze trial designs, endpoints, and outcomes across multiple studies using ClinicalTrials.gov and related sources.
• General — Investigate any research question without a predefined structure, using chat to dig deeper as you go.

How it works

1. Enter your research question
Ask your research question in plain language as if you're talking to a human. If there is additional context you want to provide to help the agent get the answer you need, feel free to include it. The more specific you are, the better the agent will be able to target the data you're looking for.

2. Answer clarifying questions
Before the agent begins, it may ask a few questions to make sure it understands your needs — which sources to prioritize, how the output should be structured, and the scope of your question. Taking a moment here leads to much better results.

3. Watch the agent work
The Research Agent breaks your prompt into a systematic plan, then executes it step by step. You can watch which sources it's consulting and how it's building toward your output in real time. You’re also free to leave the page and come back later when it's finished. Depending on the complexity of your request, it may take a little time for the agent to complete its work.

4. Review your output
All claims in the output are grounded in evidence, with citations you can trace back to the source. Unlike other AI tools, the Research Agent doesn't simply search and summarize — it builds a structured plan from your question and executes it reliably. Click on cited sources to learn more.

5. Iterate
This is where the Research Agent really shines. Once you have an initial output, you can:

• Ask follow-up questions about the results
• Request changes or additions to the existing output
• Kick off entirely new analyses based on what you've learned
• Ask the agent to generate different exportable artifacts — such as a report, tables, figures, slides, or compare/contrasts of different sources. Any artifacts generated will be available in the Artifacts dropdown menu.

A research agent session is a workspace for ongoing research, not a single query.

Working with your results

Once the Research Agent has an answer, you can turn that evidence into artifacts you can share and use — without leaving the conversation.

Filter, save, and export citations
When the Research Agent pulls papers into a table, you can act on those sources directly:

• Filter — Apply rich filters to narrow down the set of papers
• Save — Add papers directly to your Elicit Library
• Export — Download the table as .bib or .ris citations to load into your reference manager

Generate figures alongside your analysis (paid plans)
Ask the Research Agent to visualize what it found — a bar chart of sample sizes, a timeline of publications, a comparison of effect sizes across studies — and it will produce the chart as a separate artifact next to the conversation, ready to drop into your own documents.

Draft slides to PowerPoint (preview — paid plans)
When you need to share what you found, the Research Agent can create basic slides for you. Just ask the Research Agent to create a slide deck for you. Download the result as a PowerPoint file and edit from there — a grounded starting point for presenting your research.

Note: Slides is a preview feature — it's shipping early so we can learn how you actually use it. If you try it, share your feedback at help@elicit.com.

Sources the Research Agent can access

In addition to Elicit's corpus of 138M+ academic papers, the Research Agent can search:

• The broader web
• ClinicalTrials.gov and related clinical databases
• Regulatory documents (e.g., FDA and EMA filings)
• Press releases and company announcements
• Product labels
• Up to 20 files that you upload directly or select from your Elicit Library

Tips for best results

• Be specific in your prompt. The more context you give upfront — focus area, geography, timeframe, output format — the better the agent can tailor its work. Use declarative language: give the agent tasks to perform or ask research questions; don't ask the agent for opinions or advice. Note that Elicit is intended to assist with research, data extraction, and analysis only. It is not intended to assist with writing or editing your own content.
• Use the clarifying questions. Don't skip past them. These help the agent scope the task correctly before it spends time searching.
• Iterate freely. If the first output isn't quite right, just ask. The agent can refine, expand, or reframe without starting from scratch.
• Agent sessions do not count as workflows against your workflow limit.
• Agent sessions are subject to your plan's monthly usage limit.

What is the Agent NOT good for?

The Research Agent will not provide support on how to use Elicit — it is designed only for research. For help using Elicit, please contact support at help@elicit.com. The Agent is not designed to write your content for you. It's designed to assist with research.