"Scite Review 2026: Citations With Context, Not Just Counts"
Scite flips the citation metric on its head. Instead of a raw citation count, it classifies each citing paper as ‘supporting’, ‘mentioning’ or ‘contradicting’ — so you can see whether a study has held up or been rebutted.
How it works#
Search a paper or claim; Scite returns a breakdown of how later work treats it, with snippets of the citing context. The Assistant answers questions over theIndexed literature with citations, and ‘Smart Citations’ embed the supporting/contradicting split into reference managers.
Strengths#
- Distinguishes support from contradiction
- Surfaces retracted or debunked work fast
- Assistant cites real papers
- Integrates with Zotero and reference managers
- Strong for fact-checking
Weaknesses#
- Classification is automated and occasionally off
- Corpus strong in STEM, patchy elsewhere
- Deep features behind subscription
- Not a full literature-review tool alone
Pricing#
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Free — $0: Basic lookup
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Premium — $9-12/mo: Assistant, alerts, export
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Teams — custom: Shared, admin
Verdict#
Scite is essential when a claim’s credibility matters — due diligence, medicine, policy. Combine with Elicit and Consensus for a full research stack.
FAQ#
Q: What is a Smart Citation?
A citation tagged as supporting, mentioning or contradicting the original claim, with context.
Q: Can it find retracted papers?
It surfaces contradicting and later work, including corrections and retractions.
Q: Does it replace reading papers?
No; use it to prioritise what to read and what to distrust.