academic-research

name	academic-research
description	Use this skill when the user asks to find academic papers, do a literature review, search scholarly sources, write a research paper, find scientific references, or cite academic work. Covers the full workflow: searching multiple academic databases, ranking and deduplicating results, formatting citations, and synthesizing findings into structured documents.

Academic Research Guide

Overview

This skill turns zWork into a capable research assistant. It covers:

1. Searching academic databases for papers
2. Presenting results clearly to the user
3. Formatting citations in APA/MLA/Chicago
4. Synthesizing findings into structured literature reviews

When to use this skill

Load this skill whenever the user mentions:

• "find papers on...", "search the literature...", "what does the research say..."
• "literature review", "academic sources", "scholarly articles"
• "cite this", "format this as a citation", "references"
• "write a research paper", "summarize the research on..."
• Any request that involves scientific, medical, or academic knowledge beyond general web search

Core workflow

Step 1: Understand the research question

Before searching, clarify with the user (only if truly ambiguous):

• Any time period constraints? (e.g. "last 5 years")
• Any field/domain preference? (e.g. "computer science only")
• How many papers do they need?

Do NOT ask these unless the user's request is genuinely ambiguous. Default to recent papers (last 5 years) unless the user says otherwise.

Step 2: Search

Call search_papers with the user's query. Use year_min to filter for recency.

search_papers(query="transformer attention mechanisms", max_results=10, year_min=2020)

The tool searches OpenAlex, arXiv, Crossref, and Semantic Scholar in parallel and returns ranked, deduplicated results.

Step 3: Present results

Present papers as a numbered list with key information. For each paper include:

• Title (bold)
• Authors
• Year
• Citation count (if available)
• DOI link (if available)
• Brief abstract snippet (1-2 lines)
• PDF availability note

Format example:

Here are the top papers on transformer attention mechanisms:

1. **Attention Is All You Need**
   Vaswani et al. (2017) — 95,000+ citations
   https://doi.org/10.48550/arXiv.1706.03762
   *The dominant sequence transduction models are based on complex recurrent or
   convolutional neural networks...*
   📄 PDF available

2. ...

Step 4: Let the user choose next steps

After presenting results, ask what they want to do:

• "Would you like me to dive deeper into any of these?"
• "Should I format citations for specific papers?"
• "Want me to write a structured literature review from these?"

Step 5a: Format citations

When the user asks for citations, call format_citation for each paper:

format_citation(paper={...}, style="apa")

You can format multiple papers at once by calling the tool multiple times. Present all formatted citations together.

Step 5b: Write a literature review

When the user asks for a literature review:

1. Call search_papers with a focused query and higher max_results (20-30)
2. Read through the abstracts and organize papers by theme
3. Write a structured review document using the sidebar artifact block:
   • Introduction: scope and research question
   • Key Themes: 2-4 thematic sections with paper summaries
   • Gaps & Future Work: what's missing
   • References: full APA-formatted citation list

Use the sidebar artifact for the review document:

[[ARTIFACT kind=doc title="Literature Review: ..."]]
# Literature Review: [Topic]

## Introduction
...

## Key Themes
### Theme 1: ...
- Paper A (Author, Year): summary...
- Paper B (Author, Year): summary...

## References
1. Formatted citation...
2. Formatted citation...
[[/ARTIFACT]]

Step 5c: Save for later

If the user wants to keep the search results, save them to a markdown file in the workspace outputs directory. Use write_file to create a well-formatted reference document.

Citation formatting rules

• Use APA 7th edition by default unless the user specifies MLA or Chicago
• Always include DOI links as clickable URLs
• For papers with no DOI, use the source URL instead
• For arXiv papers, include the arXiv ID: arXiv:1706.03762
• When authors are missing, use "Anonymous" for APA or omit for MLA

Important constraints

• NEVER fabricate papers, authors, DOIs, or citation counts. Only report what the APIs return.
• NEVER claim a paper says something unless the abstract confirms it.
• If search returns poor results, try rephrasing the query rather than making up results.
• Semantic Scholar may be unavailable (rate limited). That's fine — OpenAlex, arXiv, and Crossref provide excellent coverage.
• Always note which source each paper came from when there are conflicts or the user asks.

Multi-source coverage

The search_papers tool queries four sources in parallel. Understanding their strengths helps you interpret results:

Source	Strength	Weakness
OpenAlex	Medicine, public health, sociology, economics	Smaller CS/engineering coverage
arXiv	Physics, math, CS preprints	Preprints only, not peer-reviewed
Crossref	Broadest coverage, best journal metadata	Slower, less structured abstracts
Semantic Scholar	CS, ML, biomed	May be rate-limited

If results seem thin, suggest the user narrow or broaden their query rather than concluding there's no research on the topic.