The AI workspace for your research papers

A working researcher's paper library is enormous and almost entirely unsearchable. Hundreds of PDFs in a reference manager, a downloads folder, and half a dozen email threads from collaborators. You've read most of them, highlighted some of them, and can find almost none of them by what they actually say. Your reference manager handles citations. It doesn't handle retrieval. When you need "the paper that challenged the standard model of memory consolidation" or "the study with the longitudinal cohort from the 2019 dataset," you're searching by author name and hoping you remember it, or scrolling through a list of titles that all look similar. The papers hold the knowledge. The system for getting that knowledge back, especially across many papers at once, barely exists.

Fabric reads every research paper in your library, understands the content, and makes it searchable by meaning. Annotate as you read and the annotations are findable forever. Ask the AI to synthesise across dozens or hundreds of papers. The knowledge in your reading becomes as accessible as the knowledge in your own notes.

Search across your entire paper library by meaning

Reference managers search by author, title, year, and keyword tags you remembered to add. Fabric's AI search reads the full text of every paper and searches by meaning. Ask "studies showing a negative correlation between social media use and adolescent wellbeing" or "critiques of transformer architectures for time-series forecasting" and find the relevant papers across your entire library, regardless of how they were titled or who wrote them.

The search reads inside the paper: the abstract, the methods, the results, the discussion, the footnotes. A finding buried in the discussion section of a paper you read two years ago is as findable as a title you remember.

The AI assistant synthesises across papers. Ask it to summarise what your sources collectively say about a topic, identify where papers disagree, compare methodologies across studies, or find gaps in the literature. It draws on the full text of every paper in your library and cites the sources. For running a literature review, this is the difference between manual synthesis and AI-assisted synthesis grounded in your actual reading.

Annotations that survive and stay searchable

The most valuable thinking in academic work happens in the margins. You highlight a key finding, note a methodological concern, mark a passage to cite, write "contradicts Smith 2021" next to an argument. In most PDF viewers, these annotations are locked inside the file. Finding them later means opening the paper and scrolling to the right page.

Fabric's annotations let you highlight and comment directly on any paper. The annotations are searchable across your entire library. A marginal note you wrote six months ago is findable by searching what you wrote, not by remembering which paper it was on. When you're writing and need "the paper where I noted a problem with the control group," search for it and find both the paper and your annotation.

Read papers in the reader for a clean, focused experience. Your annotations and highlights stay attached to the paper and join your searchable library.

If your existing highlights live in other tools, Fabric's Readwise integration brings them in. Past reading becomes part of the same searchable library as new papers.

Write alongside what you're reading

Research writing draws constantly from the papers you've read. The insight on page seven of one paper supports the argument on page three of your draft. In most workflows, the papers are in one tool and the writing is in another, so every reference check means switching context.

In Fabric, your papers and your writing live in the same workspace. Draft in notes and docs with your paper library searchable alongside. When you need to verify a claim, find a citation, or check what a paper said about a specific point, search without leaving the draft. The AI assistant can pull relevant passages from your papers into your working context as you write.

Use templates for structured academic work: literature review, research paper summary, and dissertation chapter planner from the template marketplace.

Connections between papers you wouldn't find manually

The most valuable insight in a paper library often lives between papers: two studies from different subfields that reach the same conclusion, an argument that evolved across a decade of publications, a methodology from one domain that could apply to another. These connections are invisible when you read papers sequentially.

The explorer and similar search surface relationships across your library. When you save a new paper, Fabric shows what else in your collection relates to it, including papers saved months or years earlier. The connections form by content, not by you manually linking references.

For spatial thinking about a research landscape, the canvas lets you arrange papers, notes, and ideas visually. Map the state of a field. Cluster papers by methodology or finding. Plan the structure of a review.

Capture papers from any source

Research papers arrive from journal databases, preprint servers, institutional repositories, email forwards from collaborators, and conference proceedings. Save papers from the web with the web clipper. Forward a paper from email to email-to-note. Pull in existing libraries from Google Drive or Dropbox. Upload PDFs directly. However the paper reaches you, it ends up in the same searchable library.

Smart organization automatically tags papers by content, subject area, and type. Your library organises itself as it grows.

Complements your reference manager

Fabric isn't a citation-formatting tool. It complements Zotero, Mendeley, or whatever you use for bibliographies. Your reference manager handles citation generation and bibliographic metadata. Fabric is where you actually read, annotate, search, and synthesise across your papers. The two work in parallel: the reference manager for the bibliography, Fabric for the knowledge.

Who uses Fabric for research papers

Research papers are central to academic and scientific work. Researchers and research teams manage paper libraries across projects and years. Students collect papers for studying, dissertations, and literature reviews. Educators curate reading lists and annotate papers for teaching. Writers collect papers as research material. User researchers read academic literature alongside their qualitative data.

For structured approaches, see the guides to literature reviews, research workflow, dissertation workflow, and evergreen notes.

Get started

Make every paper in your library searchable by what it says, and stop losing the knowledge you've read. Try Fabric free.

Browse research templates for structured academic work. Comparing tools? See why researchers choose Fabric as the best app for PhD students and the best way to organise research.

FAQs

Can Fabric search inside research papers by meaning?

Yes. AI search reads the full text of every paper, including abstracts, methods, results, and discussions, and searches by meaning. Describe the finding or topic and find the relevant papers.

Can the AI synthesise across multiple papers?

Yes. The AI assistant can summarise what your sources say about a topic, identify disagreements, compare methodologies, and find gaps. It cites the source papers.

Can I annotate papers and have the annotations be searchable?

Yes. Annotations let you highlight and comment directly on any paper. Your annotations are searchable by what they say, across your entire library.

Does it replace Zotero or Mendeley?

No. Fabric complements your reference manager. Zotero or Mendeley handles citation formatting and bibliographic metadata. Fabric is where you read, annotate, search, and synthesise across your papers. They work in parallel.

Can the AI help with a literature review?

Yes. Ask the assistant to synthesise findings across papers, identify themes, compare perspectives, or find what no paper in your collection addresses. See the literature review use case for the full workflow.

Can I find a paper when I've forgotten the author and title?

Yes. Search by what the paper was about in plain language. Fabric finds it by content, not by bibliographic metadata.

Can I read papers in Fabric?

Yes. The reader provides a clean reading experience. Your annotations and highlights stay attached to the paper and are searchable in your library.

Can I find connections between papers from different subfields?

Yes. The explorer and similar search surface relationships between papers by content. Two papers from different disciplines that address the same concept are connected automatically.

Can I import papers from Google Scholar or PubMed?

Yes. Save papers from the web with the web clipper. Forward papers from email to email-to-note. Upload downloaded PDFs directly.

Can I import my existing highlights from Kindle or Readwise?

Yes. Fabric's Readwise integration brings in highlights from Kindle and other reading tools. Past annotations join the same searchable library as new papers.

Are there templates for academic work?

Yes. The template marketplace includes templates for literature reviews, research paper summaries, and dissertation chapter planning.

Can I write my paper alongside my reading in Fabric?

Yes. Draft in notes and docs with your paper library searchable alongside. The AI can pull relevant passages into your working context as you write.

How many papers can Fabric handle?

There's no practical limit. Whether you have fifty papers or five hundred, every one is searchable by meaning.

Are my papers private?

Yes. Your content is encrypted and only visible to you unless you choose to share it. Fabric uses AES-256 encryption and is CASA Tier 2 compliant.