Industry Research Vs Academic Research, What's the Difference?

Do not index

When you're tasked with writing a paper or article, there's often a lot of pressure to perform well. You may feel lost when understanding the differences between industry and academic research and how they relate to your assignment.

Research skills must be recognized in this process. This guide will explore the differences between academic and industry research to help you enhance your writing and write efficient papers, summaries, and articles with AI.

Unriddle’s AI research assistant can help you achieve these objectives by improving your research skills, thus making writing more accessible.

What is Industry Research?

Industry research is a systematic approach to gathering information about factors influencing a particular industry. Often referred to as industry analysis, this research focuses on economic, market, political, and financial factors that affect an industry. Industry research is a tool for companies to determine their position within their current industry or niche of competitors.

This process provides insights into supply and demand, competition, and future threats or opportunities. Companies understand the internal and external factors influencing their industry through industry research. This, in turn, presents an overview of how the industry operates now and how it will operate in the future.

AI for Academic Research

Collaborative Research

Academic Research

Research Team

Research Process

Industry Research

Research Skills

Research Collaboration

What is Academic Research?

Academic research refers to investigating what is known about a given subject. In most cases, you must examine and analyze scholarly sources when completing your assignments (unless your instructor indicates otherwise).

Scholarly Sources Help

Add depth to your understanding. Strengthen your argument. Reduce bias and misconceptions. Research assignments help you think like a researcher and learn good research skills, such as selecting appropriate topics, identifying keywords, searching for information efficiently, and evaluating your sources.

Industry Research Vs Academic Research, What's the Difference?

1. Scope and Impact: What’s The Difference?

Academic research often focuses on abstract concepts, while industry research prioritizes real-world problems. For example, an academic might study the impact of “coercion” on decision-making in a laboratory setting. In contrast, a researcher in the industry might look closer at how to improve user experience for a product with “force” features that users find off-putting. Industry research also tends to have more immediate impacts on people’s lives.

2. Goals: What Are You Working Toward?

Academia is discovery-focused; researchers often follow their interests wherever they lead, and there’s little emphasis on real-world applications. The primary goal of industry research is to understand or solve a specific problem. In the case of UX research, we’re looking to elevate the voice of the customer and synthesize findings into actionable insights to improve a product’s user experience. Ultimately, better user experience leads to increased profits, which is the goal of industry research.

3. Timelines: How Long Do Projects Last?

Timelines for industry and academic research projects differ significantly. Educational research can span several years, while industry research is often completed in weeks or months. As a result, the scope and quality of industry research aren’t necessarily better than academic research; the projects are designed to meet different needs.

4. Deliverables: What Happens at the End?

Industry and academic researchers produce reports communicating their findings at the end of a research project. However, the reports look very different. For academics, the ultimate goal is to publish their work in a peer-reviewed journal. In industry, the primary objective is to communicate actionable insights to stakeholders so they can make informed decisions. While industry researchers may produce a report, it will likely only be a few pages long and include an overview of methods and key findings in plain language.

5. Outcome Measurement: What Do You Look For?

In industry research, stakeholders are less concerned with statistical significance and more interested in actionable insights. Sure, some folks on the team may understand the nuances of p-values and significance testing, but the numbers that matter are the ones that track user behavior. Are the numbers going up or down? What is contributing to that change? How can we communicate these findings to align with business goals?

How To Conduct Industry Research

1. Get To Know Your Industry and Competitors

Begin by gaining a solid understanding of your industry and its competitive landscape. Start with background research, reading articles, and examining reports to help you learn the ins and outs of your industry. You can analyze the entire industry or focus on a specific niche. Next, determine what you want your analysis to accomplish. For example, you might want to learn more about competitors’ behaviors, industry standards, or market growth. Compile a list of direct competitors and look for research about them to help you answer your questions.

2. Gather Relevant Data

Next, collect data to help answer your industry analysis questions. Start by looking for the most recent industry research reports from your company or third-party organizations to get an overview of current trends. Then, investigate competitors’ marketing materials, product placement, public financial records, and other data to learn more about their target markets and profitability. You can also use secondary sources like government data, journal articles, and marketing reports to collect additional information about your industry or any other topics that require further research.

3. Analyze Your Findings

Once you’ve gathered enough data, pick an industry analysis model to help you organize your findings. In this step, you can compare your products or marketing strategies and those of competitors. You can also evaluate your strengths against those of other companies to see how you measure up. As you analyze your findings, consider external factors that could influence the numbers, such as:

Globalization

Technology

Market growth

Consumer preferences

Regulatory conditions

4. Document Your Research

Present your analysis in a written report to make your findings easy to read and share with others. Consider using a template to help you structure your report, including:

Introduction

Start with an overview of your industry, competitors, and historical trends you compiled during your research.

Aim

State the purpose of your analysis and include necessary questions or context for clarity.

Data

Showcase the data you collected in words, charts, and graphs to give context and reference points for your analysis.

Analysis

Report your findings and answer questions posed in the aim section.

Future

List the company's long- and short-term impacts based on your analysis and address any potential future challenges arising from the findings.

Summary

Include a three- or four-line summary of the entire report.

Edit

Reread and edit your report before publication and distribution.

5. Use Your Research to Make Business Decisions

Finally, use your report, specifically the analysis section, to help make informed business decisions regarding your focus area. For example, if you conducted an industry analysis to find out how fast a competitor is growing their business and find they are growing at a rate of 12% per year, you may look for ways to exceed that growth in your company. If you find after completing your analysis that you still have questions, you may run a second analysis that focuses on another industry factor.

How To Conduct Academic Research

1. Find Your Niche: Identify and Develop Your Topic

Choosing a research topic can be one of the most challenging parts of writing a paper. Since this is the first step in conducting academic research, it’s essential to get it right. Here are some tips for selecting a research topic:

Follow the Guidelines

First, make sure you understand the parameters set by the assignment. Your instructor often gives clear guidelines on what you can and cannot write about. Please work within these guidelines to ensure your instructor considers your proposed paper acceptable.

Pick Something Interesting

Next, select a topic of interest and learn more about it. Researching and writing a paper will be more enjoyable if you write about something interesting.

Consider the Available Information

Conduct a preliminary search of information sources to determine whether existing sources meet your needs. If you find too much information, you may need to narrow your topic; if you see too little, you may need to broaden your topic.

Be Original

Your instructor reads hundreds of research papers yearly, many on the same topics (topics in the news at the time, controversial issues, subjects for which there is ample and easily accessed information). Stand out from your classmates by selecting an interesting and off-the-beaten-path topic.

Ask for Help if You Need It

Still can’t come up with a topic to write about? See your instructor for advice. Once you have identified your topic, it may help to state it as a question. For example, suppose you are interested in finding out about the epidemic of obesity in the American population. In that case, you might ask, “What are the causes of obesity in America?” By posing your subject as a question, you can more easily identify your research's main concepts or keywords.

2. Do a Preliminary Search for Information

Before beginning your research in earnest, do a preliminary search to determine whether enough information is available to meet your needs and set your research's context. Look up your keywords in the appropriate titles in the library’s reference collection (such as encyclopedias and dictionaries) and other sources, such as our catalog of books, periodical databases, and Internet search engines.

Additional background information may be in your lecture notes, textbooks, and reserve readings. You may need to adjust the focus of your topic in light of the resources available to you.

3. Locate Materials

With the direction of your research now clear to you, you can begin locating material on your topic.

4. Evaluate Your Sources

See the CARS Checklist for Information Quality for tips on evaluating the authority and quality of the information you have located. Your instructor expects you to provide credible, truthful, and reliable information, and you have every right to expect your sources to be the same. This step is crucial when using Internet resources, many of which are regarded as unreliable.

5. Make Notes

Consult the resources you have chosen and note the information that will be useful in your paper. Be sure to document all the sources you consult, even if you may not use that particular source. The author, title, publisher, URL, and other information will be needed later when creating a bibliography.

6. Write Your Paper

Begin by organizing the information you have collected. The next step is the rough draft, wherein you get your ideas on paper in an unfinished fashion. This step will help you organize your ideas and determine your final paper's form. After this, you will revise the draft as often as necessary to create a final product to turn in to your instructor.

7. Cite Your Sources Properly

Give credit where credit is due; cite your sources. Citing or documenting the sources used in your research serves two purposes: it gives proper credit to the authors of the materials used. It allows those reading your work to duplicate your research and locate the sources you have listed as references. The MLA and the APA Styles are two popular citation formats. Failure to cite your sources properly is plagiarism. Plagiarism is avoidable!

8. Proofread

The final step is to proofread the paper you have created. Read the text and check for spelling, grammar, and punctuation errors. Make sure the sources you used are correctly cited. Ensure the message you want to convey to the reader has been thoroughly stated. You can use Unriddle AI for proofreading.

Read Faster & Write Better With Unriddle

Unriddle AI allows you to read faster and write better. Quickly find info in documents, simplify complex topics, take notes, and write with the power of AI. Unriddle is trusted by thousands of researchers and students, from the classroom to the boardroom. Unriddle generates an AI assistant on top of any document so you can quickly find, summarize, and understand info.

Unriddle understands the meaning behind your writing and automatically links you to relevant things you’ve read and written about. Highlight text, and Unriddle AI will show you the most appropriate sources from your library using AI. Never lose a citation again. Generate text with AI autocomplete to improve and expand your writing, with suggestions based on the context of your work. Step into a collaborative workspace where everyone can contribute and chat with the same documents in real time and much more!

Read faster & write better — try Unriddle for free today.

14 Best Tools for Industry Research and Academic Research

1. Unriddle AI: Research Tool 101

Unriddle AI is an intuitive research tool that generates an AI assistant on top of any document to help you read faster and write better. You can quickly find information in documents, simplify complex topics, take notes, and write with the power of AI. Thousands of researchers and students trust Unriddle to improve research productivity. Unriddle helps you to get past endless skimming. The tool understands the meaning behind your writing and automatically links you to relevant things you’ve read and written about. Highlight text and Unriddle will show you the most appropriate sources from your library using AI.

Never lose a citation again. Generate text with AI autocomplete to improve and expand your writing, with suggestions based on the context of your work. Step into a collaborative workspace where everyone can contribute and chat with the same documents in real time and much more!

2. Bit AI: The Team Player

Bit AI is an AI program designed to help teams collaborate on documents, wikis, and knowledge bases. It goes beyond just text and images, allowing users to create interactive documents containing videos, cloud files, and audio. It works much like Google Drive, allowing for real-time collaboration on documents. Multiple people can work on documents simultaneously and chat with one another within the interface.

Pros

Built-In AI Writing Assistant

AI Genius is the perfect tool for generating documents, wikis, and other information based on a text prompt.

Multiple Use Cases

Due to its document development features, Bit AI is great for researchers, marketers, product managers, startups, and Human Resources.

Collaboration Tools

Bit.ai allows multiple users to collaborate on documents, notes, wikis, and other content in real-time.

Wide Range of Integrations

Bit AI integrates with many third-party tools, including YouTube, Google Sheets, Figma, and GitHub.

Cons

Limited Customizations

Bit AI would be better if it had text formatting or options to customize the appearance of documents, such as matching company branding.

3. Semantic Scholar: The Literature Finder

Semantic Scholar is one of the top AI tools for research, widely used by students pursuing computer science, biomedical science, and neuroscience. It uses natural language processing to analyze academic papers and find relevant literature. Besides, Semantic Scholar offers detailed overviews of research topics and can identify the most critical parts of a paper, making it a valuable AI tool for research.

Pros

Refine search results for greater efficiency and relevance.

Continuously improves the tool based on user feedback and provides a personalized user experience.

Cons

The summary has accuracy issues and AI-generated citations.

It only gives you access to the full text of some papers.

4. Scite: The Citation Assistant

Scite is one of the most popular AI-powered academic research tools that improve academic research in one go. Its own natural language processing and machine learning help users do better research on scholarly articles and analyze citations. Moreover, Scite allows researchers like you to assess the dependability of references in any particular context. It helps in evaluating the quality and impact of the research. It also provides better visualizations and metrics to understand the citation landscape of a specific paper or topic. If you have missed out on using this tool, try it today.

Pros

Innovative Citations

Scite analyzes how an article is referenced in other research. It can tell if the citing article supports, contradicts, or mentions the original article.

Citation Context

Scite shows you how different sections of an article are cited in other research, helping you understand how the original research is being used and interpreted by other researchers.

Citation Reports

This tool generates reports that show citation patterns and trends, helping users identify articles and authors in a related field.

Large Dataset

Scite was training on more than 187 million articles, books, preprints, and other datasets, making it a solid choice for researchers.

Cons

Not All Articles Cited Are Accessible: Although Scite offers full-text access for most articles cited, some publishers have not.

5. Google Scholar: The Academic Search Engine

Google Scholar is a beacon for academic research, offering a straightforward platform akin to its browser counterpart. It’s a treasure trove of recent articles, research papers, and scholarly literature, simplifying the quest for up-to-date information with easy-to-identify tags for quick access.

Pros

Use natural language searching to find academic and literature topics.

Allow your search for gray literature for systematic reviews.

Cons

The content you find will not be reviewed thoroughly, and there are concerns about source credibility.

You should have shown significant literature topics.

6. PDFGear Copilot: Your PDF Assistant

PDFgear Copilot is an AI-powered assistant that extracts and summarizes information in PDF documents. It utilizes OpenAI’s ChatGPT language model to help users locate important information in documents while conducting research. It lets you chat with a document, ask questions about its contents, and quickly summarize entire PDFs.

Pros

Interact With PDFs

Summarize, analyze, and interact with PDF content through natural language processing.

ChatGPT Integration

Find critical information and get answers by using built-in ChatGPT functionality.

Streamline PDF Workflows

Complete tasks such as converting, printing, and saving PDFs with natural language processing.

Support for Multiple Languages

PDFgear Copilot supports over 100 languages, making it accessible to many users.

Cons

No Dark Mode

PDFgear doesn’t have an option to switch to dark mode, potentially alienating those who prefer it.

7. Consensus: The Research Summarizer

Consensus is a research tool that gathers information from published material and peer-reviewed articles. It is helpful for those who want to understand scientific subjects thoroughly by scanning for trustworthy and accurate research articles. This tool is handy for students and researchers in STEM and business fields.

Pros

Natural language processing is used to analyze data and verify the source.

Generate a summary of research queries and help get information for the early research stage.

Cons

It is favored only for STEM and business, not the humanities and fine arts.

Not suitable for rigorous and reproducible research works.

8. Trinka: The Academic Writing Assistant

It is one of the most commonly used AI tools for scholars and students. It helps with grammar and language correction for academic and technical writing. It has 3000+ grammar checks and tone and style enhancements, which allow scholars to write better theses and projects without errors.

Trinka enables you to document scientific findings and allows you to have a more technical tone and style without any difficulty. Therefore, Trinka is the most promising tool for academic research purposes, as it helps better document research papers and white papers.

Pros

Save time in checking grammar while doing academic writing.

Let you check grammar and correct spelling, and offer context suggestions based on your writing style.

Cons

The response time of the tool could be faster, which would cause a hindrance to quick feedback needs.

It may be challenging to understand the technical jargon.

9. Connected Papers: The Visual Research Mapper

Connected Papers is an innovative research tool that helps scientists and scholars efficiently explore relevant literature by providing a visual, similarity-based mapping of related academic papers. It uses circles to represent different papers.

The size of the circle corresponds to the frequency of citations by other researchers. Papers that closely resemble the original paper you provided are positioned closer together and connected by lines. The thickness of the line indicates the strength of the relationship between the documents. By following the connections between papers, you can use Connected Papers to explore new research areas within your field.

Pros

Similarity Graphs

Connected Papers produces a visual graph displaying related papers. However, unlike a traditional citation tree, it emphasizes semantic similarity, meaning papers with shared citations and references are more connected.

Prior and Derivative Works

Connected Papers identifies influential prior works that have shaped the current research landscape. Additionally, it can reveal derivative works that build upon the original paper’s ideas.

Multi-Origin Graphs

You can enter multiple papers as a starting point so that CP can create a combined graph highlighting their relationships.

Save Papers and Graphs

Save papers and graphs to revisit and explore topics further.

Cons

Limited Citation View

Unlike citation trees, Connected Papers doesn’t directly show how papers cite each other.

10. Mendeley: The Reference Manager

Mendeley is a user-friendly AI tool for organizing, sharing, and citing research papers properly in one place. It helps you quickly organize your PDFs, create better bibliographies, and annotate documents. Moreover, this tool enables researchers to collaborate on projects and discover relevant articles based on their interests. Mendeley’s powerful features and integration into academic workflows make it a practical tool. It helps streamline your management and enhance collaboration within the scholarly community.

Pros

Offer citation styles for journals and boost citation efficiency.

Organize and share references for collaborative research.

Cons

Do not make PDF annotations as expected.

Users commonly face server downtime and syncing errors.

11. Litmaps: The Literature Mapping Tool

Litmaps is a literature mapping tool that helps researchers discover new and relevant research papers, visualize the relationships between papers, and share their research. It works by using connectedness theory, which allows researchers to quickly scan Litmap’s network of academic papers around the documents they know, discovering vital related papers they may not know about. Litmaps can also generate reading lists and notify users when relevant new papers are published, making it easier to stay up-to-date on the latest research.

Pros

Search Academic Papers

Litmaps allows you to search a vast database of over 260 million academic papers to find relevant articles.

Mind Mapping

Litmaps lets you visualize your research by creating a map of interconnected articles and annotating them for better understanding.

Explore Research From Various Angles

Dynamic Exploration allows users to explore research from different angles by rearranging how papers are positioned on the map.

Collaboration Features

The platform allows you to share your research maps with colleagues, students, or advisors to facilitate collaboration.

Cons

Limited Free Plan

Some features, like unlimited searches, are only available on paid plans.

12. Scholarcy: The Research Paper Reader

Scholarly is an AI tool that improves academic research by automating the process of reading, summarizing, and extracting information. It can help you recognize figures, tables, and references from articles and grasp the main concepts. Additionally, this tool has citation extraction features that allow users to organize and cite the sources used in the research. It also provides the literature review process, which enables you to save valuable time and effort.

Pros

Summarize the topics of research papers to save time and effort.

Offer links to the cited resources to access the research material.

Cons

The essay summary may need to be more precise, which may result in plagiarism.

The AI-generated summary will only cover some of the critical points of the research paper.

13. Jenni: The AI Writing Assistant

The next AI tool for research on our list is Jenni. It’s an AI-powered writing assistant designed to help students and researchers with academic writing tasks. It uses machine learning and natural language processing (NLP) to provide content suggestions, writing feedback, and research assistance. It’s beneficial for writing essays, research papers, literature reviews, and more. Jenni can also help with citations and references and check for plagiarism.

Pros

AskJenni

Use an AI research assistant who can help answer research questions and provide document-related clarifications.

Citation and Reference Assistance

Jenni can properly format citations and references in styles like APA, MLA, and Chicago.

AI Commands

Jenni can perform tasks like paraphrasing, rewriting, and simplifying existing text.

AI Autocompletion: Jenni can suggest and complete sentences to help you write faster.

Cons

Limited Content Types

Compared to other AI writing tools like Copy.ai and Jasper, Jenni.ai offers limited content types, such as blogs, essays, emails, and free-flow writing.

14. Knewton: The Personalized Learning Tool

Using artificial intelligence and machine learning algorithms, Knewton allows users to deliver personalized educational content. You can tailor the tool for the academic content according to individual needs and learning styles.

This is a one-stop and easy-to-use tool for academic learning. Knewton also allows users to analyze student performance data, strengths, weaknesses, and progress. By leveraging AI's benefits, Knewton seeks to improve engagement, making it one of the best online learning platforms.

Pros

Provide you with a personalized learning experience with the help of adaptive learning.

Offer student interaction to keep cheating at bay by offering different questions to each student.

Cons

The problems in the tool are generic and need to align with the curriculum.

Offer feedback and flexible assessment options that impact students’ learning.

How to Organize Research Papers

How to Read Academic Papers

AI Tools for Academic Research

Research Tips

Research Collaboration Software

Academic Collaboration

Traditional Research

Research Collaborations

Research Lab Management

Best Apps for Grad Students

Complete Step-by-Step Guide On How To Use Unriddle's AI Research Tool

Here is a step-by-step guide on how to use Unriddle. I’ve also copied it below :)

From here, it's pretty simple.

Unriddle helps you read, write and learn faster.

Interact with documents via AI so you can quickly find and understand info.

Then start writing in a new Note and Unriddle will show you relevant content from your library as you type.

Get started by uploading a document.

Or read on for the full rundown.

Interact with documents

When you upload a document, Unriddle generates an AI assistant on top of this data.

Click 'New' in the right sidebar and then select 'Upload' to get started.

Use this assistant to answer specific questions about the text, summarize content and simplify jargon.

The trick is to be super clear about what you want.

If you're summarizing a research paper, for example, instead of saying “Summarize” or “Summarize this research paper”, say something like “Explain this research paper to me in simple terms. What method did the researchers use? What did they find? Why does it matter?”.

The second prompt will produce a much better overview of the paper because we're giving the AI more hints about what we want.

Automatic relations

Unriddle grasps the context behind each Note and Document in your library and automatically links them based on meaning.

Let's say you have a collection of nuclear physics papers in your library.

When you start writing a note about The Manhattan Project, simply mentioning "The Manhattan Project" will prompt Unriddle to find the connection between this note and the nuclear physics papers.

Even if you didn't explicitly mention the research papers, Unriddle's knowledge of Oppenheimer, his work, and the significant relevance of these papers means it understands the connection and automatically links them together.

In short, Unriddle shows you relevant content from your library at the exact moment you need it, even if you haven't explicitly mentioned it.

Citing your sources

Writing is hard when you have a ton of sources to track.

So we made it easy.

Highlight some text, click ‘Cite’ and you’ll see items from your library that contain information related to the selection of text you just highlighted as determined by our AI.

When you select an item Unriddle inserts a link into highlighted text that, when clicked, takes you to the referenced item.

Writing with AI

Click ‘New’ in the sidebar and hit ‘Note’ to open up a new note.

Here you’ll find all the text formatting options you’re used to and more.

Type ‘++’ to generate text based on the context of what’s already written.

Highlight text and click ‘Ask AI’ to open up the AI menu where you’ll find options to improve, expand, summarize and explain.

You can type custom prompts too!

Finally, you can open any note in a pane on the right side of the screen while interacting with documents. Just click the orange pencil icon at the top of the chat window.

Adjust the model, temperature and response length in the Setting sidebar.

Click the cog icon in the top right corner of the screen and look for "Chat Settings".

These apply across all documents but you can easily flip between them regardless of settings at the time of upload.

Model: the machine learning model used to generate responses.

Temperature: the amount of creative license you give to the AI.

Max length: the maximum number of words generated in a response.

Got feedback or questions? Send us an email and we'll get back to you within a day.

— Naveed

Read Faster & Write Better With Unriddle for Free Today

Unriddl AI allows you to read faster and write better. Quickly find info in documents, simplify complex topics, take notes, and write with the power of AI. Unriddle is trusted by thousands of researchers and students, from the classroom to the boardroom. Unriddle generates an AI assistant on top of any document so you can quickly find, summarize, and understand info.

Read faster & write better — try Unriddle for free today.