Documentation

📘 Overview

What is ResearchLab?

ResearchLab is a complete academic research platform. It brings your research-project management, a set of specialised artificial-intelligence tools, plagiarism checking, peer manuscript review, collaborative writing and journal-submission tracking together in one place. The platform works in English and French.

Principles

• Faithful to your sources. The tools work from the documents you provide and never invent references.
• You remain the author. Every output is a working draft that you review, correct and approve.
• Confidential. Your manuscripts are never published or shared with other users.

🚀 Getting started

Create an account

Register with your email address and phone number. Creating an account and projects is free; a monthly subscription is required for the Squirrel tools. You receive a welcome SMS with your login details and an email explaining how everything works.

Credits

Credits are the platform currency. Each Squirrel action consumes an amount proportional to the length of the text processed. The estimated cost appears before every generation and the exact cost after. Top up by bank transfer from the Pricing page: send your receipt and your credits are activated after verification.

📂 Research projects

A project is one study: a dissertation, a thesis or an article. It keeps all your work in one place and guides you through six stages, from idea to publication: Conception, Literature, Methods and data, Writing, Integrity, then Journal and submission. Each stage offers the right tools at the right moment.

Add your materials (papers, data, drafts) once: they stay stored in the project and can be used with every tool. Every output produced from the project is archived there and version-numbered.

🧰 Squirrel tools

The platform includes 26 specialised tools, grouped by research stage. Open a tool, provide your text or upload a document, then run the generation.

📚 Literature

• 📚 Literature review — Critical synthesis of the documents you upload.
• 🔍 Research gap finder — What the literature has not yet answered.
• 🗂️ Annotated bibliography — A structured entry for every paper you provide.
• 📑 Paper summarizer — A long article condensed into a clear one-pager.
• ⚖️ Compare studies — Side-by-side table: sample, method, findings…

🧭 Design the study

• ❓ Research questions & hypotheses — Questions, objectives and hypotheses from your topic.
• 🧭 Research model — Conceptual framework, variables and hypotheses.
• 🔬 Methodology — Your study's methodology section.
• 📋 Research proposal — Full proposal: objectives, significance, timeline, budget.
• 🗳️ Survey builder — A questionnaire aligned with your research objectives.

📊 Data & analysis

• 📊 Data analysis — Interpret your data (CSV/tables) and get results.
• 🧮 Run statistical tests — T-tests, ANOVA, correlation, regression… actually computed on your data.
• 🧪 Statistical test advisor — The right test (t-test, ANOVA, chi-square, regression…) for your case.
• 🖨️ Explain statistical output — SPSS, R, Stata, Jamovi → interpretation + APA write-up.
• 📈 Results writer — Turn your tables/statistics into a Results section.
• 🧠 Thematic analysis (qualitative) — Interview transcripts → codes, themes, quotations.

📝 Writing

• 📝 Abstract generator — A structured academic abstract from your paper.
• 💬 Discussion writer — Your findings set against the literature you provide.
• 💡 Conclusion & recommendations — Conclusion, implications, limitations and future work.
• ✨ Improve academic writing — Correct and elevate academic language (FR/EN).
• 🛡️ Plagiarism fix (rewrite) — Rewrite flagged passages with proper citation.
• 🌍 Translate FR ⇄ EN — Academic translation between French and English.

🎓 Publish & defend

• 🔗 Reference formatter — APA 7, MLA, Chicago, IEEE, Harvard, Vancouver.
• 📑 Turabian bibliography (from notes) — Extracts footnotes/endnotes and builds the Turabian bibliography.
• 🩹 Revise per reviewer comments — Applies reviewer comments to your manuscript.
• 🔄 Convert citation style — Converts the whole document between APA, MLA, Turabian, Chicago…
• 🏛️ Journal finder (DOAJ) — Real peer-reviewed journals matched to your paper.
• 📬 Reviewer response assistant — Professional responses to reviewer comments.
• 📄 PRISMA assistant — Systematic reviews: criteria, screening flow, extraction.
• 🎤 Viva / defense preparation — Likely examiner questions + model answers.

📊 Real statistics

The "Run statistical tests" tool does more than advise: it actually runs the analysis in Python (pandas, scipy, statsmodels) on your data. Upload a CSV, an Excel file or an SPSS file (.sav) — the variables, labels and data are converted automatically. You get exact statistics, assumption checks, the appropriate tests (t-test, ANOVA, correlation, regression) and an APA write-up.

🛡️ Plagiarism & integrity

From a project, at the Integrity stage, check the similarity of your text or manuscript. The scan produces a score and a report where passages too close to existing sources are highlighted, with the list of matched sources. The cycle is simple: check → fix the flagged passages with Squirrel → re-check, until you are under the threshold your institution requires. Use it to know your score and fix it before your school's official check.

🔍 Peer review

Have your paper read before you submit it. Two levels work together:

• Squirrel assessment to SSCI standard. The manuscript is evaluated criterion by criterion (originality, theoretical framing, methodological rigour, analysis, discussion, writing, references) against the standards of top indexed journals, with numbered suggestions and a prioritised checklist of what to strengthen.
• Human review. Choose a fellow platform researcher matched by research interests. You discuss, accept corrections, then generate the corrected version and download it.

Every submitted manuscript receives a permanent certified identifier and a timestamped SHA-256 fingerprint of the full text: proof of priority that protects your work.

🖋️ Collaborative manuscripts

Write a paper with several authors in a word-processor-style rich editor (headings, bold, lists, tables, colours). The lead author invites co-authors into the project; they propose changes, either by writing directly or by submitting a file. The lead author reviews each contribution with a side-by-side comparison of the differences, discusses it through comments, requests adjustments, then accepts it into the manuscript. Every version is timestamped and visible to all participants.

🎓 Journal & submission

The "Journal finder" tool queries the DOAJ (Directory of Open Access Journals) live and suggests real journals matched to your abstract, with their publication fees and licence. Save the target journal in your project and track your submission status: Preparing, Submitted, Revisions, Accepted, Published. The "Reviewer response" tool helps you answer reviewer comments point by point.

📎 Supported formats

You can upload: PDF, Word (.docx), Excel (.xlsx), PowerPoint (.pptx), OpenOffice (.odt/.ods), RTF, images (PNG, JPG — for example a screenshot of SPSS output), SPSS (.sav read natively, .sps), TXT, CSV, Markdown, HTML, BibTeX and RIS. Maximum size: 20 MB. A scanned-image PDF (no text layer) cannot be read: export it to Word or to a text PDF.

💳 Credits & billing

Buy credits by package from the Pricing page. Payment is by bank transfer: make the transfer to the account shown, upload your receipt, and your credits are activated after verification (usually quick). Credits do not expire. If you have a referral code, enter it at checkout to get a discount.

🔒 Privacy

Your documents and manuscripts are never published, shared with other users, or used to train models. Files sent to the tools are deleted after processing; project materials stay in your private space until you delete them. Manuscripts submitted for peer review are visible only to you and the reviewer you choose.

💬 Support