Elicit has gotten exciting coverage on Twitter the last few days, leading to an influx of new users [1, 2, 3]. Welcome! We’re so excited to have you and grateful for your interest. 

Alongside the overwhelmingly positive response, some people wisely pointed out the need for more information about Elicit. We quickly wrote up some notes describing information about:

1. The team building Elicit
2. How Elicit works
3. Elicit's limitations today
4. Suggestions for how to relate to Elicit given those limitations

The most important takeaways: 

1. Elicit helps with, but does not automate, literature reviews. Elicit is an early product using early technology, attempting to help with complex topics. You are the researcher and the expert, not Elicit. Elicit results should be taken as a starting point for your further review and evaluation. 
2. Elicit is only as good as the research it uses. While we think researchers are a very careful and rigorous group on average, there is research with questionable methodology and even fraud. Elicit does not yet know how to evaluate whether one paper is more trustworthy than another, except by giving you some imperfect heuristics like citation count, journal, critiques from other researchers who cited the paper, and certain methodological details (sample size, study type, etc.). We’re actively researching how best to help with quality evaluation but, today, Elicit summarizes the findings of a bad study just like it summarizes the findings of a good study.
3. Double check Elicit’s work. Confirm that Elicit’s summaries and extracted information are correct by clicking each row and reviewing the abstract or full text of the paper. Search for both sides of your question to minimize confirmation bias.