The Promise of Artificial Intelligence to Aid in Systematic Reviews: An Examination of Scopus AI

Systematic reviews are a critical tool in oncology practice to facilitate informed clinical decision-making, synthesize current research, and guide practice policy. To facilitate early exploration of a literature query or topic, Scopus Artificial Intelligence (AI), which was introduced in 2024 and is subscription-based, provides a new tool for researchers and providers to access current data or begin a systematic review topic exploration. The following article is intended to familiarize advanced practice providers (APPs) with both the recently released AI tool of Scopus AI and associated AI interface capabilities with literature search methodologies. Scopus AI is embedded within the extensive resources of Scopus, an established search engine database. Scopus AI simplifies a topic search by allowing a user to enter the question or phrase in natural language, or ordinary spoken or written language. It then translates the query into a vector and/or keyword search. Scopus AI summarizes the output results to include bullet points, numbered highlights, and conclusions. Associated citations, with internal URL links to articles embedded within the Scopus database, allow for confidence in the output summary. Pivotal or landmark study foundational document citations are also listed. The utilization of AI tools can aid APP researchers and clinicians to expedite steps in the systematic review process. Multiple tools are available to assist the researcher; Scopus AI is one of the tools that can be used to assist in streamlining specific aspects such as the initial tasks and literature search steps of the systematic review development process.