Citing Sharly - Sharly Documentation | AI Research Assistant Guides & FAQs

Sharly is a research instrument, not a source. Cite it when it did work you report in your methods — screening literature, extracting data, content analysis in a review. Cite the documents you read, not Sharly, for the findings themselves.

Cite Sharly

APA (7th ed.)

Macario, S. (2026). Sharly AI: an AI research assistant for source-grounded document analysis (Technical note, software version 2026.09). VOX AI Inc. https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.22803980

BibTeX

@techreport{macario_2026_sharly,
  author      = {Macario, Simone},
  title       = {Sharly AI: an AI research assistant for source-grounded document analysis},
  institution = {VOX AI Inc.},
  year        = {2026},
  type        = {Technical note},
  note        = {Software version 2026.09},
  doi         = {10.5281/zenodo.22803980},
  url         = {https://sharly.ai}
}

In text: (Macario, 2026) · Sharly AI (Macario, 2026)
The DOI above always resolves to the latest version of the note. To cite the exact version you used: https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.22803981 (version 2026.09).
The citation file for Zotero, Mendeley and EndNote is on the citation page.

Disclose your use of Sharly

Most journals and universities require authors to declare any use of AI tools. Adapt one of these two sentences; record the software version shown in the app.

Methods section

Documents were analysed with Sharly AI (VOX AI Inc., version 2026.09; Macario, 2026), which answers from passages retrieved from the uploaded documents and shows the source excerpt and page. All extracted statements were verified against the original sources.

AI-use statement

Sharly AI (VOX AI Inc.; Macario, 2026) was used to [summarise and cross-check sources] during this work. All citations were verified, and the author(s) take full responsibility for the content.

Verify before you publish

Open the cited excerpt and read the surrounding passage in the original document.

Confirm that the passage supports the statement as you have worded it.

Cite the original document, not Sharly, for the finding.

Record the software version and the date you used.

Disclose the use of the tool with one of the sentences above.

A statement with no citation in Sharly is unsupported until you have located it in the source.

Frequently asked

Can I cite an AI tool?

Yes, as an instrument, the way you cite VOSviewer, NVivo or SPSS. Not as an author, and not as a source of facts.

Do journals allow this?

Most now require it. COPE and ICMJE state that AI tools cannot be listed as authors and that their use must be disclosed. The sentences above are written for that.

Which version should I cite?

The DOI above resolves to the latest version of the note. If your work depends on the exact behaviour you used, cite that version’s DOI from the Zenodo record.

Is Sharly a source?

No. Sharly finds and extracts what your documents say. You verify the passage and cite the document.

The technical note

The technical note describes Sharly as a research instrument: what it accepts, how documents are processed, how answers and citations are produced, the research workflows it supports, and its limitations. Reviewers and librarians can check it.

Technical note on Zenodo

Macario, S. (2026). Technical note, software version 2026.09. CC BY 4.0.

Eighteen published works from 2024 to 2026 refer to Sharly; the list is on the citation page.

​Cite Sharly

​Disclose your use of Sharly

​Verify before you publish

​Frequently asked

​The technical note