Search academic papers and auto-generate APA and BibTeX citations

Searches Semantic Scholar, PubMed, and ArXiv for a topic and returns ranked, properly formatted citations.

How the work actually flows

It branches. Every path runs; all paths must finish before it continues; runs once per one per paper.

Pattern: Parallel Split (2) · Synchronisation (3) · Multiple Instances with a priori Design-Time Knowledge (13)

flowchart TD trig[\"new search query row added"\]:::trigdata s0["search academic databases"]:::svc s1["rank and select top papers"]:::svc s2[["generate citations"]]:::mi s3[("update spreadsheet row")]:::store trig --> s0 s1 -->|"one per one per paper"| s2 s2 --> s3 gx{"+ which database to search"}:::gate s0 --> gx p00["search Semantic Scholar"]:::task gx -->|"Semantic Scholar"| p00 p10["search PubMed"]:::task gx -->|"PubMed"| p10 p20["search ArXiv"]:::task gx -->|"ArXiv"| p20 jn{"+ combine results"}:::gate p00 --> jn p10 --> jn p20 --> jn jn --> s1 out[/"spreadsheet filled with ranked citations"/]:::out pay{{"faster literature review process"}}:::pay s3 --> out out --> pay classDef task fill:#e7f6fe,stroke:#34b8f0,color:#2c2a29 classDef svc fill:#f6f8fa,stroke:#7c8795,color:#2c2a29 classDef mi fill:#e7f6fe,stroke:#0079a8,color:#2c2a29,stroke-width:2px classDef human fill:#fff,stroke:#0079a8,color:#0079a8 classDef store fill:#f6f8fa,stroke:#0079a8,color:#2c2a29 classDef trig fill:#00a4eb,stroke:#0079a8,color:#fff,font-weight:bold classDef trigtime fill:#00a4eb,stroke:#0079a8,color:#fff,font-weight:bold classDef trigdata fill:#8ad4f5,stroke:#0079a8,color:#06314c,font-weight:bold classDef gate fill:#fff,stroke:#e8a23d,color:#6b4708,font-weight:bold classDef out fill:#1f9d6b,stroke:#167a53,color:#fff,font-weight:bold classDef pay fill:#06314c,stroke:#021f33,color:#fff
Starts itAn outside serviceRuns once per itemA record or sheetEvery pathWaits for allResultPayoff
Build size
Standard

A mid-size build with several tools working together.

Business functions
Spreadsheet & Database OpsResearch & Market Intelligence
Connects
Google SheetsSemantic ScholarPubMedArXiv

The problem it solves

You spend hours digging through multiple research databases, then manually formatting every citation for your bibliography. It is easy to miss a more-cited paper or make a formatting mistake that costs you at review time.

Who it fits

Researchers, PhD students, and academic writers building literature reviews.

How it works

  1. A search query is added to a spreadsheet row and marked pending
  2. The system searches Semantic Scholar, PubMed, and ArXiv for matching papers
  3. Results are ranked by citation count and the top ten are kept
  4. APA and BibTeX citations are generated for each paper
  5. The spreadsheet row is updated with the papers and citations, marked complete
What you get

Citations ready to drop into your paper

It searches Semantic Scholar, PubMed, and ArXiv for your topic and returns ranked papers with formatted citations.

What you get

A spreadsheet filled with the top matching papers and ready-to-use APA and BibTeX citations.

What you need

A Google Workspace account and an API key for the paper-search service.

We can build this. But should you?

The hard question is not how to build it. It is whether this is the right thing to build first.

That is what a Fractional Chief AI Officer figures out with you, before anyone writes a line of code.

Let's Talk Strategy

Related automations

Back to the AI Playbook