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The best paraphrasing tools for researchers include Paperpal, QuillBot, Grammarly, Scribbr, Jenni AI, and Ref-n-Write. In this article, we explore the features and advantages of each, to help you choose the right tool for your research manuscript.
Why do researchers need to paraphrase?
Challenges of paraphrasing scientific content
Why do researchers need AI academic paraphrasing tools?
Best paraphrasing tools for researchers
Why do researchers need to paraphrase?
In academia, copying another text word-for-word is considered plagiarism and is a serious breach of ethics. Plagiarism can lead to failed grades, failed courses, suspension, expulsion, being fired, and effectively tank your research career. That’s why researchers always need to write in their own words and add a relevant citation for any ideas or data from another source.
Challenges of paraphrasing scientific content
Paraphrasing scientific content is challenging because
- Scientific terminology is very specific: a change in term can change meaning. For example, a “correlation” is NOT the same as an “association” in research.
- Academic writing does not give scope for much variation in tone and style. Researchers are expected to always write professionally and impersonally.
- There is little or no scope for personal anecdotes or comments. If you’re writing a magazine article or a personal blogpost, you can talk about your own experiences and feelings fairly easily. These don’t belong in a research paper. Even opinion pieces like commentaries usually require citations to support the arguments.
Why do researchers need AI academic paraphrasing tools?
Because paraphrasing academic material is much more difficult than nontechnical content, researchers often use AI for help. But general large language models (LLMs) may not be accurate when they paraphrase highly technical scientific content. That’s why we have listed the best academic paraphrasing tools for researchers.
Best paraphrasing tools for researchers
Paperpal
Paperpal is a powerful academic writing assistant that has been trained on millions of research papers. This means that the tool is fully capable of preserving and following academic writing conventions, without losing meaning. The tool offers you the option to not just paraphrase but also improve fluency, simplify, and “make academic”. That way, researchers can play around with the wording to make sure they’re not copying the original text but still preserving its meaning.
- Recommended for: Researchers working on journal articles, especially literature reviews and narrative reviews, across fields
- Price: 5 uses free daily (limit of 1200 words per use, which is more than enough for most researchers)
QuillBot
QuillBot, a suite of AI tools for researchers, offers free paraphrasing. It offers “standard” paraphrasing as well as AI humanizing. While running the tool, you can choose the number of synonyms you want it to use, basically trading off between similarity and accuracy. The tool also highlights which words have been replaced, and you can click on any of the highlights to see a suggested list of synonyms for further paraphrasing.
- Recommended for: Researchers particular about preserving terminology while paraphrasing
- Price: Free for Standard mode. The Formal, Simple, Academic, and Creative modes are available only under the Premium version, for $8.33 per month onwards.
Grammarly
Grammarly’s paraphrasing tool is free for basic paraphrasing, with no sign up required. You’ll need to sign up, however, if you want to set your paraphrasing style to academic, streamlined, professional, humanize, simple, or creative. The tool also lets you define your target audience, and estimates how well your message is tailored for them. The downside of Grammarly’s paraphraser, however, is that it’s essentially multipurpose: meant for letters, applications, etc. You’ll have to do a bit of fine tuning to get the right tone and style for academic writing. Also, summarizing has to be done separately from paraphrasing.
- Recommended for: Students who have to write a variety of documents, like essays, applications, personal statements, etc.
- Price: Free for basic paraphrasing without any choice of style. Grammarly Pro available from $12-30 per month.
Scribbr
Scribbr’s AI paraphrasing tool has a useful Chrome extension but just two modes: Standard and Fluency. It’s free for up to 125 words per use. Clicking on the Advanced Paraphrase button takes you to QuillBot’s page back again, so I wouldn’t necessarily recommend going the Scribbr route if you have complex technical content.
- Recommended for: Busy researchers and students who just need quick rewrites of max 1-2 sentences
- Price: Free up to 125 words. For unlimited paraphrasing, you’ll need the premium plan at $4.17 onwards per month.
Jenni AI
Jenni AI’s paraphrasing tool requires you to create a free account. Once logged in, I had significant difficulty even LOCATING the paraphrasing tool, unlike all the other options above, which are very user friendly. The tool does allow you to change the sentiment of the text (boldly, casually, persuasively, etc.), and it allows you to export text in LaTex or HTML, as well as Word.
- Recommended for: Physical sciences researchers without time constraints (as figuring your way around Jenni’s interface takes a lot more time)
- Price: 200 words and 10 chats free. Unlimited paraphrasing available at $12-20 per month.
Ref-n-Write
Ref-n-Write’s AI paraphrasing tool allows you to check small amounts of text online for free but requires you to install a Word plug-in for longer texts. It gives you the choice of 3 options for you to choose the best paraphrased sentence. The tool also checks and detects grammatical errors simultaneously (note that Paperpal and Grammarly also have free grammar checkers included in their tools).
- Recommended for: Students not familiar with English grammar
- Price: 15 day free trial, then $35-45 per year
