As a part-time Master’s student juggling work and other responsibilities, I recently purchased the lifetime deal for Paperguide, hoping it would streamline my research process and save time. After using it for a while, I’ve found a lot to like, but there are also areas where it could be improved.

The Positives:
Paperguide has several features that make it a helpful companion for research and writing:
- Ease of Use: The platform is user-friendly and relatively intuitive, even for beginners.
- PDF Chat and Summarisation: These features are fantastic. The ability to upload papers, have key sections summarised, and interact with PDFs through AI chat saves a lot of time and helps focus on critical insights.
- Centralised Reference Management: The tool allows users to gather references in one place by uploading files or importing from other reference managers, which is very convenient during the research phase.
- Time-Saving AI Tools: Paperguide’s AI tools for generating outlines, summarising papers, and organising thoughts are efficient and help cut through tedious tasks.

The Drawbacks:
Despite its strengths, there are two notable issues that impact its utility for academic purposes:
- No Bibliography Export: While you can gather references in one place within Paperguide, the inability to download or copy a properly formatted bibliography is a significant drawback. Academic writing requires a bibliography, and having to manually reformat references outside the tool adds unnecessary steps.
- Questionable Paper Credibility: The papers retrieved through Paperguide require close scrutiny. While this isn’t necessarily Paperguide’s fault, the sources it pulls from sometimes include papers that are mislabelled as academic or even use fake DOIs. Users need to verify every source to ensure its legitimacy, which can undermine the time-saving aspect of the tool.

Overall Impression:
Paperguide is a promising tool with clear potential to become an essential academic research assistant. Its current features are helpful and user-friendly, and it could tremendously support students and researchers if the development team continues to refine the platform. However, the inability to export a bibliography and the need to double-check paper authenticity are significant issues that should be addressed.

For now, I’d give Paperguide 3 tacos out of 5. It’s a good start, but there’s room for improvement before it becomes a must-have for academic users.