Research tools
Research Synthesis guides.research-synthesis.hero.title_accent
The literature-review table you'd build by hand — author, year, method, findings, argument — assembled across all your sources at once, and ready to export.
When to reach for it
When you've read a stack of sources and now need them side by side, in a form you can sort and scan — for a literature review, a grant appendix, a catalogue bibliography, or just to see at a glance which arguments cluster and which stand alone. It's the moment reading becomes a comparison.
Select the sources to synthesise
Pick at least two materials — synthesis is inherently comparative, so a single source has nothing to sit beside. Choose the sources you want in the same table: a set of essays on one artist, the catalogues from a lineage of shows, the papers behind a claim you're testing.
Selecting multiple materials for synthesis
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Get a structured matrix
Each source becomes a row; the columns are the things you'd extract by hand — title, author, year, methodology, findings, and central argument. Instead of holding six papers in your head, you're reading one table. The gaps in the grid are as informative as the entries: a blank methodology column tells you something too.
The synthesis matrix
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Sort, scan, and read across
Sort by year to see how a debate moved; sort by argument to see who agrees with whom. Reading down a single column — every source's findings, in order — is a different kind of attention than reading each source whole, and it surfaces patterns the sequential read hides.
Sorting the matrix by a column
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Read one column top to bottom before you read any row across. The column view is where the through-line hides.
Export it
Take the matrix out as CSV or JSON — into a spreadsheet, a reference manager, a grant document, or your own notes. The synthesis isn't trapped in the app; it's a working artefact you can hand to a collaborator or drop into a submission.
Exporting to CSV or JSON
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What it will — and won’t — do
It does the extraction and the tabulating — the mechanical, hours-long part of a literature review. It doesn't write the review's argument. The synthesis in the deeper sense — what this body of work adds up to, and where your reading departs from it — is still yours to make. The table just clears the desk so you can make it.
Synthesising a set of sources costs roughly 4,000 tokens — a few cents, against an afternoon of manual tabulation.
What comes next
From the matrix onward
Connection Mapping
5 minDiscover relationships between your materials with interactive graph visualization
Essay Coaching
7 minSocratic questions and structured feedback that deepen your thinking — never a ghostwritten draft
Comparative Analysis
5 minSide-by-side source comparison with contradiction scoring and common ground detection
Turn a stack of sources
into one table.
Upload your sources and synthesise them in seconds. Curatorial is free to start.
Try it free