Consensus vs Lit Mind Maps

Consensus is an AI workspace and academic search engine for scientific research, available on web, Android, iOS, and as an extension. It searches more than 220 million peer-reviewed papers, with the database updated weekly, and offers filters for publication date, access, citations, journal rank, study design, population, sample size, and other paper details. Its Research Agent plans multi-step searches, uses tools such as citation crawling and DOI lookup, and returns citation-backed answers. Consensus says citations in its AI summaries correspond to exact paper quotes, with the relevant section identified and PDF text highlighted when available. Medical Mode searches a selected collection of about 8 million papers and 50,000 clinical guidelines from the top 1,000 medical journals. Users can import Zotero libraries and export CSV or RIS files for reference managers. Consensus also works in ChatGPT, Claude, and Microsoft 365 Copilot; API and MCP calls share a monthly allowance. The Free Tier costs nothing. Pro is $20 a month, or $144/year billed annually; Deep is $65 a month, or $540/year billed annually.

Lit Mind Maps is a web tool for Masters and PhD students conducting literature searches and evidence mapping. Users enter a research question in plain language or provide a paper title or DOI. The service returns cited answers based on retrieved academic papers, then places those papers in a three-branch literature mind map and idea timeline. Branch sets can be changed before another search. A citation map displays a seed paper, its references and citing papers as bubbles arranged by year and citation count. Five optional answer sets address definition, mechanism, evidence, effects and comparison, with three branches each. After signing in and searching, users can download a Word starting draft for a literature review or proposal. Records come from Semantic Scholar. Searches use titles, abstracts and metadata rather than every paper’s full text. The service describes results as a starting aid and advises checking papers.