Scite
Smart Citations: see whether papers support, contrast, or merely mention a claim.
Acquired — still operating
acquired by Research Solutions 2023
About
Scite builds a 'smart citation index' — over 1 billion citation statements (provider-claimed) classified by deep-learning models as supporting, contrasting, or mentioning the cited work. Its distinctive tools: Reference Check (upload a manuscript, find retracted or contradicted references) and citation-statement search.
No permanent free tier — 7-day trial, then Basic ~$20/mo ($12/mo annual) or Pro ~$50/mo with API access. Institutional licenses are common at universities. Acquired by Research Solutions in 2023.
What it can do
- Smart Citations: support/contrast/mention classification
- 1B+ citation statements indexed (provider-claimed)
- Reference Check for manuscripts
- Citation dashboards, alerts, browser extension
- API access (Pro tier)
Setup
- Start the 7-day trial at scite.ai (or use institutional access).
- Search a paper, DOI, or topic to see its Smart Citation report.
- Filter citing papers by supporting / contrasting / mentioning.
- Run Reference Check on a manuscript before submission.
Prerequisites
A web browser; trial or paid subscription (check institutional access first).
Use cases
Works with
Trust score — 6/10
Scored 6/10 (metrics tier). Unique capability (citation-intent classification) with publisher partnerships and real institutional adoption, but closed SaaS with no permanent free tier and the headline corpus numbers are provider-claimed. Smaller adoption footprint than the general research assistants. Metrics-tier is the honest placement.
How the trust score is built
Full methodology →- Adoption · stars/downloads, log-scaled vs peers
- 7.0/10
- Maintenance · recency, releases, issue load
- 5.0/10
- Openness · license + docs
- 4.5/10
- Manual review · sanity read + red-flag check
- 8.0/10
- · provider-tier estimate — thinner evidence (no public adoption metric)
- · established niche; acquired by Research Solutions 2023 — provider-tier estimate
- · no release date — neutral maintenance score
- · manual review: Smart Citations (support/contrast/mention) verified across sources; 1B+ citation statements provider-claimed; no permanent free tier; license: closed SaaS
Sources
Every fact above was checked against these sources. Where a claim comes from the provider and couldn't be independently verified, the text says so.