I’ll be honest—I’ve been working with AI for a while now, but when it comes to the new tools for conducting literature reviews, I was behind the curve. I don’t even use Zotero! So when my PhD students started asking about these AI-powered search tools, I realized I needed to catch up fast if I was going to guide them properly.
So I texted my friend and colleague Jim Dunnigan at 4:30 in the morning with an idea: let’s just sit down and have a chat about this. Jim teaches in our EdD program and has been diving deep into these tools with his own students. A few hours later, here we were.
In this conversation, Jim walks me through the shift from Boolean to natural language searching, and explains why ChatGPT and Claude are not the right places to search for scholarly articles. Two big reasons: they hallucinate (trust me, they’ve given me some very flattering fake publications), and their training data isn’t up-to-date—which is a problem when you need current research. Google Scholar remains a fantastic resource, especially for recent work, and Jim recommends logging in through your university library to get full access.
From there, Jim demos four key tools: Research Rabbit, Scopus AI (through ASU Library), Litmaps, and Google NotebookLM for synthesizing your collected articles once you’ve gathered them.
The big takeaway? Build a toolkit, not a single tool dependency—and always verify what AI tells you.
The video is embedded below. But first, two songs that can help you remember the main messages from the video, created using Claude (for the lyrics) and Suno (for the music/song). The lyrics are given below the video
Down the Rabbit Hole (Version 1)
Down the Rabbit Hole (Version 1)
YouTube video of our conversation: Jim D. Schools Punya (on AI Research Tools)
Lyrics to “Down the Rabbit Hole”
[Verse 1]
Google Scholar’s still the place to start
Log in through the library, play it smart
Boolean searches get you there
But there’s new tools if you dare
[Chorus]
Follow the citations, let them lead
One connects to what you need
Watch the map as patterns show
Down the rabbit hole we go—HEY!
Down the rabbit hole
[Verse 2]
Research Rabbit, drop a seed
One good article is all you need
Watch the network start to grow
Authors, links, and who you need to know
[Chorus]
Follow the citations, let them lead
One connects to what you need
Watch the map as patterns show
Down the rabbit hole we go—HEY!
Down the rabbit hole
[Verse 3]
Scopus AI, ask it plain
Natural language, skip the boolean brain
Lit Maps shows you who cited whom
Connections light up across the room
[Chorus]
Follow the citations, let them lead
One connects to what you need
Watch the map as patterns show
Down the rabbit hole we go—HEY!
Down the rabbit hole
[Bridge]
Now you’ve got your articles stacked
Notebook LM has got your back
Search for themes across the whole
Every link back to the source you know
[Final Chorus]
Follow the citations, let them lead
One connects to what you need
Cast a wider net and watch it grow
Down the rabbit hole we go—HEY!
Down the rabbit hole—HEY!
Down the rabbit hole
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