Running a literature review
Sharly’s multi-document analysis makes literature reviews faster and more thorough. Here’s a typical workflow:1. Upload your papers
Drag and drop PDFs, Word documents, or scanned papers into your workspace. Sharly supports 50+ file formats and uses OCR for scanned or older documents.2. Summarize
Sharly generates a concise summary for each document, including bullet points and suggested follow-up questions (“icebreakers”) to guide your reading.3. Extract key findings
Use extraction to pull out methodologies, hypotheses, results, tables, and statistics from each paper. Sharly identifies key topics and entities automatically.4. Compare across sources
With multiple documents loaded, ask Sharly to find overlaps, contradictions, and research gaps. Cross-document comparison surfaces connections you might miss reading papers individually.5. Cite and export
Every insight links back to the original source text. Switch citation formats to match your needs before exporting.Citations and academic integrity
Sharly links every generated insight to the exact passage in the original document. This source-verification approach supports academic integrity by letting you:- Verify claims — click any insight to see the source text in context
- Switch citation formats — toggle between APA, MLA, Chicago, IEEE, and other styles (Pro and above)
- Avoid misattribution — Sharly never fabricates references; every citation points to uploaded content
Working with scanned PDFs
Older journal articles and archival documents often exist only as scanned PDFs. Sharly’s OCR engine processes these automatically, converting scanned text into searchable, summarizable content. For best results:- Use high-resolution scans (300 DPI or above)
- Ensure pages are not heavily skewed or cropped
- Multi-column layouts are supported
Tips for extracting research data
Use specific prompts to get structured results:- “Extract the methodology section from each paper” — pulls research design details across documents
- “List all statistical findings with p-values” — surfaces quantitative results for comparison
- “Compare the hypotheses across these papers” — identifies alignment or divergence in research questions
- “Summarize in 5 bullets” — quick overview when you need to triage a large reading list