For universities
Litrevu for universities. Cited drafts from the sources your students chose.
Litrevu helps postgraduate students work through the papers they have already gathered: ask what the literature says, see the passage behind every citation, and draft a literature review they then check, revise and own.
What it does for postgraduate students
From the PDFs a student has already collected to a cited literature-review draft they edit.
- Step 1
They build a library of their own sources
Students upload the PDFs they have gathered, or add a paper by its URL, DOI or arXiv link, by pasting its text, or by picking open-access papers found on their topic. Litrevu cites from that library and nothing else.
- Step 2
They ask what the literature says
Answers cite the passage each claim came from. Opening a citation shows an excerpt of that passage word for word, with the paper's title, authors and year. When the library does not cover a question, Litrevu says so, and anything it adds from general knowledge is marked as such and carries no citation.
- Step 3
They draft a literature review they then revise
Students agree a brief and an outline in chapters and sections, then draft cited sections into a document they edit. Citations switch between APA, MLA, Chicago, Harvard, Vancouver and IEEE, and the document exports to Word or PDF, with the references to BibTeX or RIS.
Our academic-integrity stance
Litrevu is built so the student’s reading stays visible in the draft, not hidden behind it.
Only the sources the student added
Litrevu cites only papers in the student's own library. It does not search the web for citations, and it does not pull in papers the student did not choose.
Every citation traces to a passage
Before a student sees an answer or a section, each citation is checked against a passage Litrevu read in one of their papers. The reference list is built from the same library.
No invented references
A citation to a paper Litrevu did not read in the library is removed before the student sees it, so a reference cannot point to a paper that is not in the student's library.
A draft the student owns
The output is a first draft. The student reads the cited passages, revises the text in their own words, and remains responsible for the submission and for following your policy on AI-assisted work.
Uploaded papers are not used to train AI models
The text of a student’s papers is processed by our AI providers (currently OpenAI and Google) under API terms that prohibit using it to train their models. The PDF files themselves stay on our own infrastructure. The details are in our privacy policy.
What Litrevu does not do
- It does not integrate with your learning management system.
- It has no supervisor or staff dashboard. Each account belongs to one person.
- It does not detect AI-written text, and we make no claim about how AI detectors treat its drafts.
- It does not check that a passage fully supports a sentence. It checks that the citation points to a passage in the student's papers; the student still reads it and decides.
Free tools you can list today
Two tools a library guide or writing centre can link to now, with no pilot and no integrity worry: they check and plan a student’s own work and write nothing for them. Both are free and need no account, and a pasted reference list is looked up and returned, not saved.
Reference Checker
A student pastes a reference list. Each reference is looked up in Crossref, OpenAlex and doi.org, and the checker says whether a published record matches, names any detail that differs (year, first author, volume, pages, DOI), flags a DOI that belongs to a different paper, and shows retractions from the Retraction Watch database that Crossref carries.
Limits: It cannot find records those indexes do not hold, which includes many books, theses and reports, and it does not judge whether a source supports the sentence it is cited for. When it cannot find a reference it says so, and never calls it fake. Up to 30 references per check.
Open the reference checkerDissertation Word Count Calculator
A student enters a word limit and level and sees how long the literature review and each chapter should be, and roughly how many sources to cite, based on published university guidance.
Limits: It gives typical proportions, not a rule. A department's own handbook always wins.
Open the dissertation word count calculatorWhat we offer institutions
Start small. See it on your own papers first, then decide whether it belongs in front of students.
Free staff accounts to evaluate it
Supervisors, librarians and writing-centre staff can try Litrevu on papers of their own before recommending anything to students. We set the account up; there is nothing to pay.
A cohort pilot
Run Litrevu with one postgraduate cohort or research group for a set period. We agree the group, the length and what you want to learn from it with you, and review it together at the end.
A workshop for postgraduates
A session on working from sources with AI: building a reading library, checking a citation against the passage it came from, and where AI-assisted drafting sits within your institution's rules.
Request staff access
Email Sam de Bruyn, Litrevu’s founder, with your name, role and institution, and whether a staff account, a pilot or a workshop is what you have in mind.
Request staff accessOr write to [email protected].