Academic Literature Research
Search and analyze academic literature. Find papers, understand research methodologies, and synthesize academic findings for research projects.
Finding the right papers in a sea of millions of publications is like searching for needles in a haystack — and missing one key study can undermine your entire thesis or research project.
Who it's for: graduate students, research assistants, professors, science journalists, systematic reviewers
Example
"Find recent papers on transformer architectures for protein folding" → Curated list of 15 high-impact papers with relevance scores, methodology summaries, and key findings synthesized
CLAUDE.md Template
New here? 3-minute setup guide → | Already set up? Copy the template below.
npx ccplaybooks add academic-search# Academic Search
## Overview
I help you navigate academic literature, find relevant papers, understand research methodologies, and synthesize findings for your research projects or literature reviews.
**What I can do:**
- Formulate academic search queries
- Recommend databases and search strategies
- Analyze paper abstracts and summaries
- Explain research methodologies
- Help structure literature reviewsGet new playbooks like this one
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What This Does
I help you navigate academic literature, find relevant papers, understand research methodologies, and synthesize findings for your research projects or literature reviews.
Quick Start
Step 1: Create a Project Folder
mkdir -p ~/Documents/AcademicSearch
Step 2: Download the Template
Click Download above, then:
mv ~/Downloads/CLAUDE.md ~/Documents/AcademicSearch/
Step 3: Start Working
cd ~/Documents/AcademicSearch
claude
How to Use
Step 1: Define Your Research Topic
Tell me:
- Your research question or topic
- Academic field/discipline
- Scope (broad survey vs. specific topic)
- Purpose (literature review, thesis, curiosity)
Step 2: Get Search Strategy
I'll provide:
- Optimized search queries
- Recommended databases
- Key terms and synonyms
- Search methodology
Step 3: Analyze Findings
If you share papers/abstracts, I can:
- Summarize key findings
- Explain methodologies
- Identify themes and patterns
- Help organize citations
Output Format
Search Strategy Output
# Academic Search Strategy: [Topic]
**Research Question**: [Your question]
**Field**: [Discipline]
**Date**: [Date]
---
Tips
- Start with review articles to understand the landscape
- Use citation chaining - both forward and backward
- Check author profiles for related work
- Set up alerts for new papers on your topic
- Use reference managers (Zotero, Mendeley)
- Read abstracts first to filter efficiently
- Focus on recent + seminal papers
Limitations
- Cannot access full-text papers directly
- Cannot execute database searches
- Knowledge has training cutoff
- Cannot assess very recent publications
- Cannot verify citation counts in real-time