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About OneSearch

Meet RA, the OneSearch AI Research Assistant!

OneSearch has an AI Research Assistant (RA) that searches in the library databases for articles on your research topic.

It then writes a brief overview of your topic, based on five of the articles that it found.

Pro tip! Don't ask RA to write a thank-you note or a grocery list--it's not that kind of AI! 

How do I prompt RA?

Research Assistant (RA) works best when you give it a prompt that sounds like a research question.

These are examples of prompts or questions that would work well in RA:

  • What are major symbols that Melville used in Moby Dick?
  • How can Ford Motor Co. expand sales in the international market?
  • Is cognitive behavioral therapy an effective treatment for anxiety?

And your question doesn't even have to sound like you're already an expert on your topic! The following types of questions work well in RA, too:

  • Is green tea good for you?
  • Who are five famous women artists?
  • How can college students avoid distractions while studying?
Pro tip: Write a clear, simple, and concise prompt. Do not copy and paste a whole long paragraph of your assignment instructions into RA, or it will return garbage results.


As mentioned above, RA will give you an overview of your research topic, based on five sources that RA finds in the library databases.

RA responses and tools

Here's what an RA response looks like: and remember, it's always an overview of your topic based on five library sources.

Please note the numbers in grey circles in the overview. Those indicate the library sources that RA used to write the overview, and which are right beneath the overview:

A screenshot of OneSearch Research Assistant (RA), showing an overview it wrote in response to the question, Is green tea good for you. In the overview, numbers are used to indicate the sources used to write the overview.

Immediately below the overview are the five sources RA used, plus a link to further sources in the library databases. Please note that RA also suggests related research questions that you can explore.

A screenshot of the 5 sources that RA used to write the overview, as well as links for further library research and suggestions for related research questions.

Pro tip: As with any AI, if you don't get good results from RA with your first prompt, try adjusting your research topic or question. 

Use RA the right way!

Research Assistant is just that, an assistant who helps you get started on your own library research.

Research Assistant can never do a whole project for you, and of course you would never just copy an RA overview and submit it as your own work!

Research Assistant helps you by finding five library articles related to your topic, then summarizing those articles into a general overview of your topic.

Your job is to take what you learned from the overview and explore your topic further:

  • Review the five articles that RA found: check how accurately RA summarized each article in the overview, and mine the articles for further ideas or facts that you can use in your project.

  • Click the View More Results link in RA to discover other articles besides the five that RA used for the overview.

  • Explore other aspects of your topic by examining RA's Related Research Questions. You don't have to change your topic! But the related questions may help you explore useful facets of your topic that you can incorporate into your project.

Acknowledgement is important! If you use RA in a classroom research assignment, you should acknowledge that you used it, as you would if you used any AI for classwork. There's really no way to officially cite RA in a paper, but when you submit your paper, you can write a note to your professor acknowledging your use of AI, something to the effect of, "I used the library's Research Assistant AI to help me find relevant articles and to help me think of alternative avenues for research."

Take an RA knowledge-check!