Don’t just read papers.
Learn to think about them.
Research Brainie is a reading tutor for academic papers. Upload a paper and Brainie takes you through it with questions, so you learn to understand it, question it and judge it yourself, instead of being handed a summary.
PDF upload · about 20 minutes · no card required
Research Brainie
Every paper becomes a structured knowledge record you own and edit. The system remembers your prior thinking and points out contradictions in your own reasoning over time.
Why Most Published Research Findings Are False
Postgraduate study runs on reading papers. Almost nobody is taught how.
You are expected to read dozens of papers, judge them, and build an argument from them. The skill is assumed rather than taught, and the shortcuts make it worse.
- 01
You read it, and a week later it's gone
Hours highlighting a paper, and you still can't say what the author argued or why it mattered.
- 02
Summaries feel like progress
A summary tells you what a paper says. It doesn't teach you whether to believe it, and that judgement is what your work is marked on.
- 03
Your literature review describes instead of evaluates
“Too descriptive, not critical enough” is the feedback so many postgraduates get, because nobody showed them how to critique a paper.
- 04
You have to defend judgements you never practised
Supervisors and examiners ask what you think of the evidence, not what the paper said. That takes practice most people never get.
Brainie asks the same five questions every careful reader eventually learns to ask, and waits for your own answer before it gives its own, so the judgement stays yours, and gets better with practice.
What it deliberately refuses to do
- Write your literature review or your argument
- Show you the answer before you have attempted it
- Invent quotes, page numbers or citations
- Write assignments for students
- Replace reading with a one-click summary
- Treat every absence as a research gap
Two papers free, with no card. After that $15 for 20 papers. Credits never expire, and nothing renews by itself.
You answer first
At every pass, Brainie asks its question and waits. The analysis stays hidden until you have written your own answer. There is no button that skips this, because skipping it removes the only thing the product is for.
Social media and political communication.
What is the author claiming about this topic?
Type what you think the main argument is.
Brainie responds after you have attempted it, never before.
The five-pass academic reading system
Each pass asks you to think first, then responds to what you wrote. The order matters: a paper you have not understood cannot be evaluated, and a paper you have not evaluated cannot be used.
- 01Pass
What is this?
Identify the topic, research question, and key concepts. Then explain it in your own words.
- 02Pass
What is the argument?
Distinguish topic from argument. What is the author actually claiming?
- 03Pass
How do they know?
Examine the research design, methodology, and evidence. Was the method appropriate?
- 04Pass
What is wrong or missing?
Structured critical evaluation. Argument, theory, evidence, methods, limitations.
- 05Pass
What does this mean for me?
Connect the paper to your own research. Relevance, gaps, future directions.
What this looks like in your field
The questions are the same. What counts as an answer is not.
See the tableHide the table
What this looks like in your field
The questions are the same. What counts as an answer is not.
| Field | Pass 3 asks | Pass 4 asks |
|---|---|---|
| Experimental science | The design, the sample, the controls and measures, and whether the analysis matches the design that was run. | Whether the study could detect what it claims, what else could explain the result, and whether the effect claimed is the effect measured. |
| Health sciences and clinical research | The patient group or population studied, the diagnostic criteria that defined them, the outcome actually measured (a clinical endpoint or a surrogate standing in for one) and who was excluded before the result was ever counted. | Whether the population studied is who the finding then gets applied to, whether harms and adverse events were tracked as carefully as the benefit, and who funded the work. |
| Qualitative research | Sampling logic, how the data were generated, the researcher's own position, and how themes were arrived at rather than asserted. | Whether the interpretation is warranted by the material shown, and whose account is missing from it. |
| Education | The setting and age group, the intervention or programme being evaluated, how learning was actually measured, and what the comparison or baseline was. | Whether the outcome measure captures learning or only performance on something aligned to the intervention, and whether the result would survive a different teacher, school or cohort. |
| Performance and practice-based research | The production or practice examined, how the author reconstructs it (their own performance, recordings, reviews, interviews with those involved) and what stands in for the live event itself. | Whether one production or one practitioner's account is treated as if it speaks for the form, and whose experience of the work (performer's, audience's, author's) the analysis is actually built from. |
| Humanities and theory | Which sources are read, the tradition being argued within, and the concepts doing the actual work. | Whether the reading is supported by the text itself, and what a rival reading would say about the same passage. |
| Law and policy | The authorities relied on, the jurisdiction, and how the doctrine or the policy problem is constructed. | Whether the authorities bear the weight placed on them, and what has been distinguished away rather than answered. |
| Systematic and literature reviews | The search strategy, the inclusion criteria, how quality was appraised, and how the findings were synthesised. | What that search would have missed, and whether the conclusion follows from what was actually included. |
One pass of five on an open-access paper, including an answer that gets it wrong.
Read two papers before you decide
One credit analyses one paper, all five passes. Everything else, the coach, the flashcards, search and exports, costs nothing. Prices are in US dollars and exclude local tax, which is added at checkout if your country charges it.
Free
Read two papers properly and see whether this is for you.
- 2 papers, analysed in full
- The complete 5-pass reading system
- 10 Research Coach messages
- Flashcards and quiz mode
Student
Most chosenA term's reading, with deeper AI analysis.
- 20 papers
- Deeper AI analysis
- Unlimited Research Coach
- Reading log, BibTeX and RIS export
- Supervisor share link
- Credits never expire
Researcher
A full literature review, at a better rate per paper.
- 60 papers
- Deeper AI analysis
- Everything in Student
- Priority support
- Credits never expire
Credits never expire. If an analysis fails, the credit goes back automatically, without asking.
Payments are processed by Lemon Squeezy, the merchant of record for every order, under Lemon Squeezy’s buyer terms. Your receipt will carry their name.
Turn papers into research knowledge.
Upload a paper you actually need to read and work through all five passes in about twenty minutes. The first two papers are free, and we do not ask for a card to start.