Simplifying the research journey

Head of Product Platforms, Academic

Tanya Laplante

“Our tools have different focuses, but together they demonstrate our commitment to improving research outcomes and upholding our mission: to make high-quality research and educational content as widely available as possible.”

Did you know that 402.7 million terabytes of data are generated each day? As powerful new AI tools promise to scour the web for the exact information users are looking for with only a click, tap, or prompt, the possibilities for the research journey are endless. However, peer-reviewed insights are not always returned by AI chatbots. 

At OUP, we’re committed to helping researchers harness the power of AI to more easily discover and engage with OUP’s trusted and vetted content. Our roadmap to develop native AI capabilities is guided by the desire to solve known user problems, such as helping researchers find reliable information at speed. 

So far in 2025, we have developed and rolled out three AI assistants. While each is designed to meet the unique needs of users, they were all built to maximize discoverability of and engagement with OUP’s trusted content.

The Oxford Academic AI Discovery Assistant offers an enhanced search experience, supporting the research journey across our 500+ journals and 50,000+ books. Unlike traditional search—which is based on keyword hits in the text—the Discovery Assistant understands the context of user queries and filters to the most relevant results based on parameters (dates, format, topic) included in the user’s input/query. Each result is accompanied by an availability icon and a short AI-generated summary, so a user has the information they need before clicking on a result.

The AI Search Assistant on OED.com—the online home of the Oxford English Dictionary (OED)—enables researchers to dive into the dictionary’s content quickly and more easily, by asking advanced search questions in natural language and bypassing the different tabs, filters, and taxonomies offered on the traditional search page. The tool cannot hallucinate as it is trained on URLs within the site rather than OED content, meaning its responses will direct you to the most relevant OED results to help you continue your research journey.

Finally, the Oxford Law Pro AI Research Assistant launched just this week as an integral part of Oxford Law Pro, a new innovative product for legal researchers and professionals that combines quality-assured legal research and expert opinion with a conversational AI research assistant. The AI tool can be used to generate analysis, precise summaries of content, and trusted sources for further reading based on our world-leading portfolio of legal content.

Our tools have different focuses, but together they demonstrate our commitment to improving research outcomes and upholding our mission: to make high-quality research and educational content as widely available as possible.  

In addition to our rollout of our native AI features, we are publishing cutting-edge research on AI: the recent launch of Oxford Intersections included the publication of a new collection, AI in Society. 

In both our approach to integrating AI tools across our products and through our publishing, we’re putting researchers’ needs at the heart of our work by helping them harness the power of this evolving technology in a secure and reliable way.