Your research deserves
a sharper question.
Research Compass is an AI advisor you chat with — about literature gaps, methodology choices, citation formats, and that nagging feeling your hypothesis needs work. It asks the questions your advisor would, minus the scheduling nightmare.
Start a ConversationThings you can actually ask
Type any of these into the chat — or anything related to your research.
"I'm writing my Masters thesis on microplastics in freshwater ecosystems. Can you help me identify gaps in the existing literature from the last 5 years?"
↳ Research Compass will ask about your specific focus (accumulation? toxicology? transport mechanisms?), then help map what's well-studied vs. under-explored.
"Is a mixed-methods approach overkill for my undergrad capstone? My advisor is skeptical but I think I need both survey data and interviews."
"Convert these 8 citations from APA 6th to APA 7th format and flag any that look incomplete."
"My hypothesis is 'social media use causes anxiety in teens.' I know it's too broad. Help me sharpen it into something testable."
"I have a sample size of 43. My committee wants me to justify why this is sufficient for a qualitative phenomenological study. Help?"
How a conversation with Research Compass actually goes
Three stages. One chat window. No accounts to configure, no dashboards to learn.
Tell it where you are
Describe your field, your academic level, and what stage you're at — early brainstorming, mid-literature-review, pre-defense panic. Research Compass adjusts its depth and vocabulary accordingly. A PhD candidate in computational neuroscience gets different advice than an undergrad in sociology.
Dig into specifics
This is where the real work happens. Paste your research question and get it pressure-tested. Share your lit review outline and get structural feedback. Ask whether ANOVA or regression fits your design. Debate the merits of thematic analysis vs. grounded theory. Research Compass will push back when something's vague — that's the point.
Microplastic transport in
urban watersheds. Environmental
Research Letters, 19(3), 034012.
Walk away with clarity
Copy the refined text from the chat: a tighter research question, a cleaner literature map, properly formatted citations, or a methodology justification you can hand to your committee. Research Compass is a thinking partner — the actual writing and decisions are always yours.
What Research Compass knows about
Literature Reviews
Structuring your review, identifying themes, mapping what's been studied vs. what hasn't, and spotting methodological patterns across papers.
Methodology Selection
Qualitative, quantitative, mixed methods — when each fits, how to justify your choice, and common pitfalls. From RCTs to autoethnography.
Citation Formatting
APA 7th, MLA 9th, Chicago, IEEE, Vancouver — paste citations and ask for reformatting, corrections, or from-scratch generation.
Hypothesis Refinement
Take a broad hunch and sharpen it into a specific, falsifiable hypothesis with clear variables and scope. Directional vs. non-directional, null vs. alternative.
Statistics & Analysis
When to use a t-test vs. Mann-Whitney, what your p-value actually means, sample size justification, and common statistical mistakes to avoid.
Critical Paper Analysis
Upload or describe a paper and discuss its strengths, weaknesses, generalizability, and how it fits (or doesn't) into your research narrative.
Honest note: Research Compass is an AI, not a tenured professor. It can help you think through research problems, critique your logic, and format your work — but it may occasionally get details wrong. Always verify critical claims, especially for statistical methods and recent publications. Use it as a sounding board, not your sole source of truth.
What researchers have said after chatting
I was stuck on my methodology chapter for weeks. Asked it to compare grounded theory vs. IPA for my research question — the explanation was clearer than my textbook.
Pasted in my 15 citations and asked it to switch from Chicago to APA. Got most of them right and caught two I'd been formatting wrong the whole time.
It kept asking me "what do you mean by 'impact'?" until I realized my research question was genuinely too vague. Annoying in the best way.
Frequently asked questions
Research Compass can search the web for general information, but it doesn't have direct access to academic databases like PubMed, JSTOR, or Scopus. It can help you formulate search strings, suggest keywords, and discuss papers you share with it — but for the actual database searching, you'll still use your library tools.
No, and it shouldn't. It can help you outline sections, critique your drafts, suggest phrasings, and identify logical gaps — but the writing should be yours. Most universities have clear policies about AI-generated text. Use it as an advisor, not a ghostwriter. It's at its best when you're thinking through a problem together, not outsourcing the thinking.
It has broad knowledge across STEM, social sciences, and humanities — deeper in some areas than others. It'll ask about your field upfront so it can calibrate. For highly niche subfields, it may not know the latest papers, but it can still help with general research methodology, logic, and structure. The more context you give it, the better it gets.
Yes — you can upload images and documents in the chat. Share a paper, a table of data, or a screenshot of your methodology section, and Research Compass can discuss it with you: strengths, weaknesses, whether the stats make sense, how it fits your literature review.
Research Compass is pre-configured with a specific academic research advisory persona. It already knows to ask about your field, academic level, and research stage. It defaults to rigorous academic thinking — methodology awareness, citation precision, the habit of questioning vague claims — instead of giving you generic responses. Think of it as ChatGPT that's already had the "be my research advisor" prompt baked in, with all the right defaults.
Your hypothesis won't sharpen itself.
Open a chat, describe where your research is stuck, and let's work through it together.
Ask Your First QuestionNo setup required. Just a chat window and your research questions.