Consensus: AI-powered academic search engine trial now available

Until the end of 2026, the USI community has trial access to Consensus, an AI-powered academic search engine designed to facilitate the retrieval, analysis, and synthesis of peer-reviewed scientific literature. The trial is managed by the Lugano University Library.

Consensus searches over 200 million scientific publications, drawing from sources such as Semantic Scholar, OpenAlex, and a vast collection of content from the academic web. For each query, the platform identifies the most relevant articles and, using artificial intelligence, synthesises the main findings, always providing the corresponding bibliographic citations to ensure source traceability.

In addition to traditional searching, Consensus offers advanced deep-search features. These allow users to explore specific topics in more detail, analyse the full text of articles, generate graphical visualisations of results, and export bibliographic citations. Exclusive access for the USI community allows up to 50 advanced searches per month. Furthermore, users can save their searches and organise documents of interest through their personal profiles.

The platform is primarily aimed at students, researchers, and anyone seeking to quickly find scientific evidence to support their studies and research.

To access Consensus, USI members must create an account using their institutional email address.

It is important to remember that Consensus uses generative artificial intelligence models to process responses. Like any tool of this nature, results can be incomplete, inaccurate, or contain errors, and should always be critically verified. For the responsible use of generative artificial intelligence, please refer to the recommendations published by USI.