Research Writing & AI Tools

How I Write My Thesis and Research Papers Using Digital and AI Tools

✍️ Ikramul Hossain Mondal — PhD Research Scholar·Published: August 10, 2026·~12 min read

I am a PhD research scholar. In the past, I have written many reports, theses, and research papers for my academic curriculum during my M.Tech and PhD. During this journey, I learned about many tools that improve the research writing process. Most of these tools I learned from YouTube, the Internet, and by myself after trying different things.

I am sharing this because, there is plenty of tools and many youtubers and bloggers suggests many tools, but knowing which to use where is confusing. Also most students don’t learn about these tools from their teachers, because most of the teachers are from past generations where they didn’t use them, or even if they know them, they aren’t that interested in telling their students.

So, the list of the tools and how I used them for writing and publishing research papers are given bellow. This is the workflow I currently use. It may not be the best method for everyone, but I hope it helps other research scholars.

1Title

For choosing a topic, first we need to find a problem. It may be something we already know, or we can search Google or ask ChatGPT about current problems related to our domain/speciality (Education branch). You may note down multiple possible problems.
Once the problems are found, do some literature review (non-formal one). Search on Google Scholar or directly on Google, and see what type of work has been done in that field. You can read the Abstract and Conclusion parts of the papers. Also, you can use NotebookLM to summarise those research papers to understand them. (About NotebookLM, I will discuss it in detail in a later section.)
All these small findings can be noted in your physical notebook, or you can use a digital notebook in table style in Notion. I will share my Notion table link for reference.
In this literature review, also decide whether the equipment required for your selected topic is available in your university or a nearby university. It will help you later when finding testing equipment.
Once the topic is selected after the literature review, finalise your title. You can take help from ChatGPT for preparing your title. For example: “Suggest me some titles for a research paper on this ‘……..’.”

2Outline

Once the title is fixed, ask ChatGPT to prepare an outline for that title. Then ask Claude, Gemini, and DeepSeek to generate an outline for the same title.

Go through all the outlines generated by the different LLMs, then make one by yourself by combining, deleting, and adding things from all these outlines.

This is the outline for starting to write the paper. The outline may change as we write our paper. You will know when to change which part of the outline automatically.

So, the draft outline is done.

3Methodology

After the outline, you can write the Methodology. Because it’s the easiest part of the paper.

You can read the methodology of some papers to see how they did it, and then you have to decide how you will do it.

Once it’s done, you already know your method, so write it by following your already prepared outline. If needed, you may change the outline bit by bit.

4Literature Review

I normally write the literature review part before the Introduction.

For the literature review, download all relevant papers. For downloading, managing, renaming, and citing research papers, I use Zotero. You should use it too.

Install the Zotero add-on in your browser (Chrome/Edge), download the Zotero desktop app, and link it to Word. You can watch a proper YouTube tutorial for it.
Then search your title/proper terms for your research in Google Scholar. Open the paper’s page and click on the Zotero add-on icon. It will automatically download and rename the papers.
After downloading 100 to 150 papers, upload these PDFs to Google NotebookLM.
Then, in NotebookLM settings, set the role of the LLM model as an expert research paper writer who writes papers in an academic and succinct tone.
Then ask NotebookLM to write a specific portion of your research paper outline. Never ask it to write a whole outline section or the whole paper. Always ask it to write a portion. For example: “Write the outline 2. Literature Review, 2.1. Background for the title ‘Corrosion kinetics of Al-alloy in HCl and NaOH media’.”
Then NotebookLM will write and cite the review portion for you. Copy and paste the text from NotebookLM to Word. Now point your mouse to each reference number (citation) in NotebookLM. It will show the paper authors’ names and title. This is the reason we used Zotero to rename the papers initially, to find those papers easily.
Now, in Word, insert those references in the same position as they are in NotebookLM, using the Zotero insert citation tool for Word.
After completing all the outlined sections, go through all the sections thoroughly and correct any mistakes if needed. You may remove or add new lines/sections.
If, after properly reading, you find that new dedicated sections are needed, which AI may not have suggested, add them.
In this way, you didn’t write this section just by AI/LLM; you used your own brain to write it.

Important: AI can make mistakes, misunderstand papers, or sometimes give incorrect information. I always read the generated section myself and check the original paper before using it. Never use an AI-generated citation without checking the actual paper.

5Introduction

The Introduction can be written as I already mentioned in the Literature Review. Use the same digital tools and a similar way to write the Introduction.

First, write a little background of the research.
What is the problem we currently face?
What solutions have already been found by different researchers? (Short, most important, and directly linked literature reviews if you are writing a thesis and have a dedicated Literature Review section. But if you are writing a research paper, then this section is the literature review, and no dedicated literature section is needed.)
What solution do you want to offer, and why have you chosen it?
Objective of your study.

6Conclusion

Always write the conclusions in key bullet points.

You can make a PDF file of your already written draft paper, upload it to ChatGPT, and ask it to write the conclusion in bullet points. Then do the necessary modifications to the conclusion points.

Also, write the bullet points step by step, according to your findings.

7Abstract

In the same way, upload the draft paper PDF and ask ChatGPT to write the abstract of the paper in 200–250 words in an academic tone.

8References

Since we use Zotero as a citation tool, just go to this section, click Insert Bibliography, and select your style (IEEE, APA, etc.), then click OK.

All references will be inserted automatically in order.

In Summary: Tools We Used to Write the Thesis/Paper

NotebookLM, Zotero, ChatGPT, Gemini, Claude, DeepSeek, and Notion.

About the Author

Written by Ikramul Hossain Mondal — PhD Research Scholar, M.Tech (ASTU), Holder of 5 Design Patents & 1 Utility Patent.

Read full bio →

Writing Your Own Report or Thesis?

Format your project reports automatically with standard Indian university formatting (Times New Roman 12pt, 1.5 line spacing, Cover Page, TOC & PDF Export).

Open Free Report Writer Tool →