Paywall Research Tool

A deep research tool that allows users to enter their paywall credentials to access full-text academic articles, enabling AI to search and analyze content behind authentication walls.

Key Points:

• Problem:

  • Academic research is locked behind paywalls (journals like Elsevier)
  • Current AI research tools can only search abstracts or open web content
  • Researchers can't fully leverage AI with their paid credentials

• Solution:

  • Create a version of deep research that accepts user credentials
  • Allow AI to log in to paywalled sites and access full-text articles
  • Index the complete text of journals using the user's authentication

• Technical Components:

  • Storage of credentials (described as "a little bit more tricky")
  • Similar to existing tools like Deep Research or GenSpark, but with credential access
  • Would need to integrate with various academic publishers' authentication systems

• Existing Competitors:

  • Elicit and Syspace allow searching abstracts and uploading individual PDFs
  • Nothing currently indexes full text of journals with user credentials

• Personal Motivation:

  • Siqi Chen needs this for researching treatments for his daughter's rare brain tumor
  • Highlights the gap between standard medical care and frontier research
  • Would help find repurposed drugs for rare conditions where commercial research is limited

• Market Opportunity:

  • Academic publishing is a high-margin industry ($30,000/year paywalls mentioned)
  • Researchers are frustrated by limited access despite paying for credentials
  • Could be developed as a vertical-specific tool (like "SciencePal" for researchers)