Papers is a reference management application that pairs citation and PDF library tools with an AI assistant for querying academic papers. The product traces back to 2007, when it was created by postdoctoral researchers at the Netherlands Cancer Institute under the company Mekentosj; ReadCube acquired it from Springer Nature in 2016, and it now operates under Digital Science.
Beyond standard reference-manager functions like citation formatting and PDF annotation, the AI assistant lets researchers ask questions across multiple articles at once instead of reading each one individually, surfacing relevant passages and generating summaries tied back to the source text. The tool integrates with major academic databases and citation styles used across scientific publishing.
Papers suits academic researchers, graduate students, and lab groups who need both a citation manager and an AI reading assistant in one subscription. Pricing starts at the Essentials tier for $65 per user per year, with a Pro tier at $130 per year (or $11 per month) unlocking multi-article queries, and academics get a 40 percent discount; a 30-day free trial is available but there is no permanent free tier.
