New features, improvements, and fixes to Polyref, the AI research assistant for STEM. Polyref answers from a citation index of 270M+ scholarly works, including 150M+ paper abstracts, covering peer-reviewed journal articles, conference papers, preprints, and more.
Showing all 23 updates
New
A good literature search starts with a clear question, and that is as true for an AI research agent as it is for a human researcher. Polyref can now ask clarifying questions to resolve any ambiguities before it starts. You can answer them or choose to skip them. In our own research, we’ve found that a few seconds spent clarifying the question leads to noticeably more relevant results.
Improved
Less than a week after its release, OpenAI’s GPT-6.1 Sol is now writing Polyref Pro’s research answers.
Improved
Polyref now reads further into an uploaded paper when a question calls for it, giving fuller answers that draw on more of the text. As before, every claim it makes about your papers comes with direct supporting quotes, so you can verify it at a glance.
Improved
When you ask about a paper or an earlier answer, Polyref makes better use of what is already in the conversation and runs fewer unnecessary new searches.
New
Switch between a light and a dark theme from the toggle in the header. Light mode suits reading in bright surroundings, while dark mode is easier on the eyes during long research sessions.
Improved
Polyref’s citation index includes conference papers alongside journal articles and preprints. Literature searches now handle conference papers and conference abstracts better, so they surface more reliably in answers.
New
Research answers now display formatted mathematical equations, which you can copy as LaTeX.
Fixed
Fixed an issue that could cause Polyref to leave out papers it had found during a literature search.
Fixed
Fixed cases where a citation link in an answer did not open its supporting evidence.
New
A new plan for researchers whose work outgrows Pro, such as those iterating on literature reviews or regularly analysing a large library of papers. Pro Plus includes everything in Pro, with higher research agent usage limits and more PDF uploads, so you can run more in-depth searches and work across more of your own papers without hitting a cap. See the plans page for current limits.
New
If your connection drops while Polyref is writing an answer, it reconnects and restores the text written so far.
New
Citation cards and the Research Library now show SCImago journal quartiles (Q1–Q4) where available. Quartiles rank journals within their subject field by citation impact, so they give a quick read on source quality: Q1 journals are the top 25% in their field and include many of its most established, widely cited publications, and Q2 journals are also well regarded.
New
Refer to “paper [3]” or “those studies” in a follow-up question. Polyref goes back to the papers behind earlier citations to explain or compare them in more detail.
New
Ask Polyref to restructure what it has already found in a conversation. For example, summarise the mechanisms from a previous answer in a table, group the cited researchers by research focus, or list the cited papers by year of publication.
Improved
Papers you attach remain available for later questions in the same conversation, so you don’t need to attach them again with each message.
New
Pro users can copy a research answer together with its reference list, and can make this the default in settings.
New
Polyref’s research agent can now open the specific sections of an uploaded paper it needs, such as the methods or results, and quotes the relevant passages directly whenever it cites that paper, so you can check each claim against the source text.
New
Add a paper cited in an answer to your Research Library straight from its citation card, with no PDF needed. Papers now move both ways: bring library papers into a chat, and keep the papers you find in chat for later.
Improved
Upload PDFs, search your papers by title or author, star useful sources, add notes, and read abstracts where available. Select one or more papers and add them to a chat, or manage a chat’s attached papers from the library without leaving the conversation.
Improved
Polyref recognises a PDF that is already in your library and reuses it, so it does not count against your upload allowance again.
New
Attach papers to a conversation and ask Polyref about them. It reads and cites them alongside the papers it finds in its literature search.
New
Paid accounts can use the Privacy Mode setting to control whether their anonymised data is used for training and service improvement.
New
Polyref can now widen a literature search by following the references cited by the papers it finds. It uses a weighted citation network to identify the key papers to include in the context for your query, surfacing relevant studies that the first search might have missed.
