Hello and thank you for visiting BiblioPraxis! I'm the developer behind this tool.
I'm a scientist by day, so I know firsthand how tedious sifting through dozens of papers can be when you're deep in a literature review. That's why I created BiblioPraxis. It started as a personal tool I built while preparing a talk. I needed to find the right background papers, and I needed to do it fast.
When I used that early version, I was struck by how well it found genuinely relevant papers and the quality of the initial review it produced. I asked a few friends and family members in academia to test it. We all tried it with our respective fields of expertise. I searched for the specific topics I worked on during my PhD and Master's and was excited to see it pull up the exact papers I expected.
My friends and family reported the same thing. That's when I realized this tool had the potential to help many more people overcome the same issues I've been having.
"But Can't You Just Use ChatGPT?"
That's a fair question. While large language models are powerful, I found it tricky to get them to focus specifically on scientific papers. More importantly, if you don't craft your prompts perfectly, they can "hallucinate" and cite papers that don't exist! This was a deal-breaker for me.
I designed BiblioPraxis to avoid this. It only displays papers that are first found on Google Scholar, ensuring that the sources are real. I can't say it will never return an irrelevant paper, but after dozens of my own tests and over a hundred more from friends and family, not a single person has reported a fake paper.
"There Are So Many Other Tools. What Makes BiblioPraxis Different?"
That's true, it's a growing field! While I haven't tried every tool out there, I noticed many are either overly complex or simply not very effective. I believe most of us just want a tool where you can input your topic and get a list of relevant, existing journal articles. The short synthesis report it generates is a bonus, helping you decide which of the shortlisted papers to dive into first.
Another major issue I found with other services was the cost. Many require expensive, (sometimes year-long) subscriptions. As a former graduate student, I know that kind of purchase isn't always feasible, especially when you're not sure how useful the tool will be long-term. Research workloads often come in seasons, so a forced annual subscription felt wrong.
This is why BiblioPraxis uses a credit-based system. We do have subscriptions for those who would benefit from them (and the credits are cheaper that way), but you can also just top up your credits when you need them.
Help Me Build the Future of BiblioPraxis
If you're reading this, you're here in the early days. BiblioPraxis is still young, and I am incredibly open to any suggestions you might have. Please, help me shape this website into something that is genuinely useful for you.
Thank you for being a part of the journey.