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Scite

Scite is a research tool that shows how articles cite a paper and why, using Smart Citations to help researchers and students evaluate scientific literature.

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ai-research-toolai-paperseducationresearchsmart-citations
Last Updated Oct 20, 2026

About

Scite is a citation analysis platform built for people who read and evaluate scientific literature. Traditional citation counts tell a researcher only that a paper has been referenced; they do not indicate whether the citing article supported, contrasted, or merely mentioned the findings. Scite addresses this gap with Smart Citations, which pair each citation with context from the citing article and a classification of how the citation was used.

At a high level, Scite analyzes millions of full-text articles and extracts the passage surrounding each citation, then labels it as supporting, contrasting, or mentioning the cited work. Researchers can look up a paper and quickly see how the broader literature has received it, read the exact citation contexts, and compare results across alternative papers on the same question. Scite is widely used alongside databases such as PubMed and Google Scholar and offers a browser extension for viewing Smart Citations while browsing publisher sites.

Key Features

Smart Citations: Each citation is displayed with the sentence context from the citing article and a classification showing whether it supports, contrasts with, or simply mentions the cited work.
Citation contexts: Users can read how other researchers interpreted and discussed a paper without needing to open each citing article individually.
Reference checks: Authors and reviewers can evaluate the references in a manuscript to see whether key citations have been contrasted by later work.
Search and discovery: Scite's search interface lets users find articles and see their supporting and contrasting citation profiles alongside traditional metrics.
Browser extension: A companion extension surfaces Smart Citations on sites such as PubMed, Google Scholar, and publisher pages.
Notifications: Researchers can follow papers of interest and receive updates when new citations appear.

Pricing & Fees

  • Pricing: Not publicly listed on the pages we reviewed; check the official site for current plans.
  • Access options: In addition to individual accounts, Scite is commonly licensed for institutions such as universities and libraries; institutional availability depends on the organization.
  • Coverage: Smart Citations are drawn from a large corpus of full-text articles across scientific disciplines, though coverage varies by field and publisher.

Who It's For

Scite is designed for academic researchers, graduate students, and clinicians who need to assess the credibility of the papers they read and cite. It is also useful for peer reviewers and editors checking whether a manuscript's references have been disputed by later studies, for librarians and institutions supporting evidence evaluation, and for science writers who need to characterize how the literature has responded to a particular finding.

FAQ

What is Scite?Scite is a research platform that classifies citations as supporting, contrasting, or mentioning, and shows the surrounding context so researchers can see how a paper has been received by the literature.

Is Scite free to use?Scite offers limited free functionality for looking up articles, but full access to its features requires a paid plan or an institutional subscription; current pricing is not publicly listed on the pages we reviewed.

Does Scite work with PubMed and Google Scholar?Yes, Scite provides a browser extension that displays Smart Citations while browsing PubMed, Google Scholar, and many publisher websites.

How is Scite different from Google Scholar?Google Scholar reports where a paper has been cited, while Scite additionally classifies each citation and shows the sentence in which it appears, indicating whether the citation supports or contradicts the original work.

What data does Scite use?Scite analyzes full-text articles to extract citation contexts, and the specific corpus coverage varies by discipline and publisher agreements.