Built Academic Research Automation, Professor Thinks I'm Magic
Professor emails at 2 AM: "Need 200 citations for grant proposal. Due Thursday. Help?" This is Dr. Sarah Chen, molecular biology, Harvard. Her grant applications get $2M+ funding. No pressure. HER MANUAL NIGHTMARE - Search 6 different academic databases - Cross-reference citations - Format in 3 different styles (APA, MLA, Chicago) - Remove duplicates manually - Verify impact factors - Total time estimate: 40 hours MY n8n SOLUTION (Built in 6 hours) The Workflow Architecture (12 nodes): 1. Google Sheets trigger → research topics input 2. Multi-database search node (parallel): PubMed API; ArXiv search; Semantic Scholar; Google Scholar; ERIC database. 3. Results aggregation and deduplication 4. Citation impact factor lookup 5. Automatic citation formatting (3 styles) 6. Relevance scoring based on keywords 7. Output to structured database THE MAGIC MOMENT Demo call Tuesday morning:"Input your 12 research topics here..."types topics in Google Sheet 3 minutes later: - 847 relevant papers found - Duplicates removed (312 eliminated) - 535 unique citations - All formatted in required styles - Ranked by relevance and impact factor Her reaction: "This is impossible. You built a research assistant." WEDNESDAY DELIVERY Final results: - 200 top-ranked citations - 3 formatting styles - Impact factor analysis - Relevance scores - Export formats: BibTeX, EndNote, Zotero Processing time: 8 minutes Manual equivalent: 40 hours Time saved: 39 hours 52 minutes THE FOLLOW-UP PROJECT "Can this monitor for new papers weekly?" Added scheduled triggers: - Monday search for new publications - Automatic relevance filtering - Weekly digest with top 10 papers - Direct integration with her reference manager SCALING THE MAGIC Current setup serves: - 8 professors across 4 universities - 15,000+ papers processed monthly - Average search time: 4.3 minutes - Manual equivalent time saved: 320 hours/month REVENUE BREAKDOWN - Professor subscriptions: $600/month each - Enterprise university licenses: $2,400/month - Custom research workflows: $1,800 one-time - Total monthly: $4,800