There is a huge gap between the knowledge that science produces and the knowledge that marketing teams actually use to make decisions. Not because research doesn't exist, but because accessing it efficiently has always been difficult.
Searching academic databases, filtering relevant papers, reading abstracts, and synthesizing what the body of evidence says is a process that can take days when the team needs an answer in hours.
Consensus exists to close that gap. It is an academic search engine powered by artificial intelligence that allows you to ask questions directly to scientific literature and obtain answers based on real papers, with verifiable citations, in minutes.
Consensus is an AI-powered academic search platform developed to find, synthesize and present scientific evidence in an accessible way.
Its database includes more than 200 million peer-reviewed papers from virtually every scientific discipline, from medicine and psychology to behavioral economics and communication sciences.
Unlike Google Scholar, which returns a list of papers that the user has to read and evaluate on their own, Consensus does the work of synthesis.
When you ask a question, the system identifies the most relevant papers, extracts the main findings from each one, and generates a summary that reflects what the available evidence says about that topic, including the points of agreement and disagreement between studies.
What sets Consensus apart from other similar tools like Elicit is its focus on the binary question.
It is specially designed to answer yes or no questions: does X have an effect on Y? Does this intervention work? Is there scientific consensus on this issue? For these types of queries, Consensus has a feature called Consensus Meter that visually shows how much agreement there is among researchers on a specific statement, based on the analysis of the papers found.
The platform uses GPT-4 and advanced language models for analysis and synthesis, but it doesn't generate made-up answers. Everything it produces is anchored in real papers that the user can review directly.
Using Consensus is significantly simpler than using traditional academic databases. The flow begins with a question formulated in natural language, without the need for Boolean operators or special syntax.
The system processes the question, searches its database using a semantic search, that is, understanding the intention behind the query and not just the exact words, and returns a selection of papers ordered by relevance.
For each paper, show the title, year, authors, number of citations, and a specific summary aimed at answering your question.
Above the results, the Consensus Meter indicates the level of scientific agreement: if most of the studies found support the statement, contradict it, or if the results are mixed. This allows us to quickly gauge the strength of the evidence without having to read each paper.
From the results, you can access two additional high-value features.
Search filters are one of Consensus's strengths. You can filter by year of publication, type of study, sample size, disciplinary domain, and level of evidence.
For marketing teams that work in categories such as health, nutrition, or consumer behavior, these filters make it possible to find exactly the type of evidence they need.
The platform also integrates with ChatGPT through ConsensusGPT, a plugin available in the GPT Store that allows you to use Consensus's search capabilities directly from a ChatGPT conversation. It is one of the most used integrations in the ecosystem of specialized GPTs.
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Content marketing is full of statistics and statements that circulate from blog to blog without anyone having verified their origin. “Consumers make purchasing decisions in less than seven seconds”, “80% of buying decisions are emotional”, “social proof increases conversions by 34%”.
Some have real backing. Others are data of dubious origin that have been repeated so much that they seem true.
Consensus allows you to quickly verify if a statement has scientific evidence behind it before including it in an article, a presentation for a client, or a campaign. This protects the credibility of the team and improves the quality of the content produced.
Consumer psychology is one of the areas with the most accumulated academic research.
The effect of prices ending in nine, the impact of color on brand perception, how perceived scarcity affects the purchase decision, what factors influence brand loyalty, how the order of presentation of options affects choice. All of that has decades of research available.
Consensus allows efficient access to this literature. A team that is designing a product page, a pricing strategy, or a retention campaign can consult what the scientific evidence says about the psychological mechanisms relevant to their problem, instead of relying only on intuition or what competitors do.
For teams working in health, supplements, financial services, or education, making claims without scientific support has regulatory as well as reputational consequences.
Consensus makes it possible to find the evidence that supports product or communication claims, and also to identify the limits of that evidence so as not to exceed what the research actually supports.
In health or wellness campaigns especially, the difference between saying “studies suggest that X can contribute to Y” and saying “X causes Y” is significant from a regulatory point of view. Consensus helps calibrate those statements precisely.
B2B marketing teams that produce content for technical or highly informed audiences, medical directors, engineers, researchers, and health professionals, have to substantiate their arguments more rigorously than average.
A whitepaper or article that cites real academic research has more credibility and more utility for those audiences than one that cites only industry blogs or agency reports.
Consensus accelerates that research process. Instead of spending hours searching for relevant papers in PubMed or Google Scholar, the team can find the evidence they need in minutes and spend the time building the editorial argument.
Many consumer trends are rooted in academic research before reaching the mainstream.
The growing interest in mental well-being, the effects of remote work on productivity, patterns of generational change in purchasing preferences, all of these phenomena are documented in scientific literature before appearing in trend reports from consulting firms.
Using Consensus to explore an emerging topic allows the team to arrive at that knowledge faster and in greater depth than reading only news coverage or industry reports.
Like Elicit, Consensus doesn't crawl the web in real time. Its database is updated monthly, which means that the most recent papers may not be immediately available. For very fast moving themes, it is necessary to supplement with other sources.
The coverage isn't perfect either. Comparative studies published in 2025 document that Consensus can miss between 15% and 20% of relevant papers in exhaustive systematic reviews.
For marketing use, that's generally not a critical issue. For research work where completeness is mandatory, it is.
Access to the full text of the papers depends on whether they are in open access or on whether the user has institutional access. Consensus shows summaries and excerpts, but to read the full paper it may be necessary to search for it by other means.
Consensus has an accessible freemium model. The free plan includes unlimited search, 10 Pro Analyses per month with GPT-4, and 10 monthly Study Snapshots. It is enough to test the tool and for occasional use.
The Premium plan costs $8.99 a month or $108 a year and includes unlimited Pro Analyses and Study Snapshots.
It's the plan that makes the most sense for teams that are going to use the tool on a regular basis. The Teams plan at $9.99 per user per month adds collaboration and account management features for organizations. There are discounts for students with verified academic email.
Both tools search academic literature and produce evidence-based syntheses, but they have different strengths.
Consensus is optimized to answer direct questions about the state of evidence on a topic, especially binary questions where the Consensus Meter adds immediate value.
It's faster to use and more accessible to users with no academic research experience.
Elicit is more oriented to systematic review workflows, with more advanced functionalities for structured data extraction from multiple papers and for projects where it is necessary to analyze a body of literature in an exhaustive way.
For most marketing use cases, the two are complementary. Consensus for quick inquiries about the state of evidence on a topic.
Elicit for deeper research projects where it is necessary to extract and compare data from many studies in a systematic way.
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