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Oct 28 • General Discussion 💬
Academic Research Automation - From "Impossible" to $4,800/Month Earner
Graduate student Rachel messaged at 2:30 AM: "Need 200 citations for dissertation. Defense next week. Completely overwhelmed."
THE ACADEMIC NIGHTMARE
Manual search across 6 databases
Cross-reference duplicates by hand
Format citations in 3 different styles
Verify journal impact factors
Check for retractions
Estimated time: 45 hours
THE 6-HOUR n8n BUILD
Built her a research assistant that changed everything.
Database connector nodes (6):
PubMed API for medical/life sciences
ArXiv for preprints and physics
Semantic Scholar for computer science
Google Scholar for comprehensive coverage
CORE for open access papers
JSTOR for humanities (institutional access)
Processing pipeline:
Query translation and optimization
Parallel search execution
Result aggregation and deduplication
Impact factor lookup (Web of Science API)
Citation formatting (APA/MLA/Chicago)
PDF fetching where available
Relevance scoring and ranking
Export to Zotero/EndNote/BibTeX
THE DISSERTATION SAVE
Input: Research topics in Google Sheet
Output (12 minutes later):
847 relevant papers found
234 duplicates removed automatically
613 unique citations
All formatted in required styles
Ranked by relevance and impact factor
PDFs downloaded for 489 papers
Her reaction: "You just saved my PhD."
ACADEMIC WORD SPREADS FAST
Rachel shared in her department Slack:
8 graduate students signed up (Week 1)
3 professors requested demos (Week 2)
Department admin asked for institution license (Week 3)
Current base:
15 graduate students: $150/month each
5 professors: $300/month each
2 departments: $600/month each
Monthly total: $4,800/month
THE WORKFLOW VARIATIONS
Literature Review Generator: 45-minute systematic reviews
Citation Monitoring: Weekly alerts for new papers
Grant Research Support: Funding opportunity matching
Collaboration Finder: Co-author network analysis
MOST REQUESTED FEATURES
Automatic retraction checking
Conference paper inclusion
International database access
Full-text PDF analysis
Reference list generation
The template that saved one dissertation now powers research across 12 universities.
Academic research automation: $4,800/month from "impossible" searches that take 12 minutes instead of 45 hours.
Academic paper search templates available at pdfvector.com/integrations/n8n
What research task takes your clients forever that automation could solve in minutes?
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Academic Research Automation - From "Impossible" to $4,800/Month Earner
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