What it does

Scite answers research questions using a database the site puts at more than 300 million papers, books, preprints, patents and datasets. It says it has agreements with 44+ publishers and also covers the open access literature, and that its search reads full text rather than only abstracts. Smart Citations classify how later studies treat a finding: supporting it, challenging it, or simply discussing it. The site says this applies to claims, methods, journals, authors, institutions and funders as well as papers. The AI Assistant uses the same evidence signals to ground its answers, and each claim is said to link to the exact sentence it came from. Scite can be used within Claude, ChatGPT and other MCP-compatible assistants, has a Zotero integration and offers an API. The site says it is used by over 2 million researchers, students and industry experts.

Capabilities

A database of over 300 million scholarly items, including papers, books, patents and datasets
Search that reads full text rather than only abstracts
Smart Citations showing whether later work supported or challenged a finding
AI Assistant whose claims link back to source sentences
Works inside Claude, ChatGPT and MCP-compatible assistants, and with Zotero
API access for developers who want to build their own tooling

When to use it

You need to check whether a paper's findings have held up in later research
You are doing a literature review and want answers tied to specific passages
You want paper search available inside Claude, ChatGPT or Zotero
You are building a tool that needs citation context through an API