Research technology is a new type of AI-driven tool that is the present and future of scientific practice. The tools in this domain read thousands of scholarly articles in minutes, catch fraud in research submissions, and pair studies with the right peer reviewers. Millions of researchers rely on these tools and almost no one outside academia has heard of them. That gap costs the companies behind these tools in the form of lower valuations, buyers and investors never reached, and a higher cost for customer acquisition.
We can call this field research technology, or ResTech, and none of its problems come from a lack of substance. Some of these tools, such as statistical analysis and citation management, are too niche and narrow to interest the general public, but many extend much further. Policymakers and governments are especially interested in dynamic economies like those in ASEAN.
These tools nevertheless pull in serious investment when they’re onto something novel, and solve problems that slowed research for decades. Like it or not, they’re the present and future of science. Yet nearly all of that value stays inside academic and trade circles and their self-serving media silo.
Their marketing speaks almost only to people who already know them.
- Why do ResTech’s communications largely stay inside the academic world?
- What are they leaving on the table?
- What can the sector do differently?
Unlike a routine software update, these tools have a real story for a mainstream reader.
Mainstream PR firms overlook these companies, and the companies return the favor: most don’t grasp how PR works for tech, or that it applies to them at all. That’s why MacroLingo created a service for this specific need and partners with a rapidly growing, future-now PR firm called Ellerton & Co. We bring together writing and research knowhow with veteran media relations and promotional skills. Service details are here.
Journalists already cover AI’s effect on education, so that tool is reaching mainstream outlets quickly, and the coverage is put in front of readers no trade outlet reaches. Many ResTech companies have a compelling story that will play in the mainstream media.
Contents
What research technology (ResTech) is, and why AI has changed its scale
ResTech comprises the software and platforms built specifically to support the research lifecycle: finding and synthesizing literature, managing and sorting submissions, detecting image manipulation, matching manuscripts with reviewers, tracking citations, and increasingly, using AI to do all of those things faster and more reliably than previously possible.
- Main examples in ResTech include:
- Literature search and synthesis (Elicit, Consensus)
- Citation analysis and research intelligence (Scite, Connected Papers)
- Manuscript integrity and fraud detection (Proofig AI, Imagetwin AI)
- Peer reviewer matching (Prophy, ReviewerOne, Thesify)
- Academic writing and drafting assistants (Jenni AI, Paperpal)
- Reference management (Zotero, Mendeley, EndNote)
- Editorial and submission management systems (ScholarOne, Editorial Manager)
- Plagiarism and originality checking (Turnitin, iThenticate)
Until recently, most ResTech companies served relatively contained niches within scholarly publishing, selling either to publishers or directly to researchers. That changed when large language models (LLMs, like ChatGPT et al.) made it possible to process and synthesize scientific literature at a superhuman scale.
Tools like Elicit, Consensus, SciSpace, Jenni AI, and Scite can extract findings from thousands of papers, assess methodological quality, surface contradictions across the literature in minutes, help draft manuscripts, and suggest new research directions. Manuscript integrity platforms can screen tens of thousands of submissions for image duplication, statistical anomalies, and AI-generated text. Peer review matching tools can identify qualified reviewers across millions of published authors.
The AI boom didn’t create ResTech, but it compressed what would have been a decade of incremental development into a few years, and the user numbers reflect it: Connected Papers has more than 2 million, Jenni has as many as 8 million. Consensus has more than 10 million.
These are no longer niche tools serving a narrow specialist audience. They’re now infrastructure for how research and science get done.
Research tech’s tools with big reach, little noise
Those user numbers don’t show up in how the sector talks about itself.
ResTech companies are covered almost exclusively in fora like Research Information, STM Publishing News, and the programs of SSP and ALPSP. Walk those conference programs and you’ll find webinar series, community surveys, integration announcements, and partnership expansions that communicate effectively to people already inside scholarly publishing. These channels are inward looking and build the trust relationships that drive adoption within the sector.
These channels were built for publishers, scientists, and all adjacent parties – in a big and self-serving (and vitally so) scholarly silo.
What this silo doesn’t do is reach the journalists, funding bodies, university executives, and policymakers whose understanding of research infrastructure is shaped by what the mainstream press has written. These are audiences ResTech now has both the scale and the story to engage and attract.
Under-investment in communications is part of the picture. For instance, top-quartile B2B SaaS companies publish 10 or more press releases per year.
Most AI-native research tools? Zero to two. And those that do publish focus almost entirely on integration and partnership announcements, as well as within-sector expansions, rather than the broader questions their tools are helping to answer.
For many, communications budgets are a fraction of what comparable software companies spend. The founding culture treats PR as optional, not part of how a company earns public standing.
Why the scholarly silo formed, and why publishers don’t face the same PR problem
The communications culture ResTech operates in reflects the culture it grew from.
Academic environments reward peer-reviewed publication over public communication. The Ingelfinger Rule, originally designed to protect journal exclusivity, produced a broader instinct that communicating research-adjacent work to lay audiences signals a lack of rigor. Founders who came through academic careers absorbed those norms, and the result is a sector that has built sophisticated tools and then described them almost entirely in the language and channels of the world that produced them.
Publishers have operated in the same channels/silo for decades and, for them, this makes sense. Their primary audience – researchers, librarians, and institutions – is the scholarly publishing world, and that world’s channels are precisely where their decisions get made. A publisher’s PR circle closing back on itself is not a failure; it’s appropriate targeting.
ResTech, however, is in a fundamentally different position. Its tools now serve tens of millions of researchers, process billions of documents, and address questions – about the integrity of the scientific record, the role of AI in knowledge production, the reliability of published research – that mainstream journalists and their readers actively care about. The same communications approach that fits a publisher does not fit a company whose potential audience is anyone who depends on science being trustworthy.
What happens when other scientific companies pursue mainstream coverage
The B2B companies that have built durable mainstream editorial visibility have done so by giving journalists something verifiable to write about, connected to topics those outlets were already covering.
MagicSchool AI built coverage in NPR, The Washington Post, and EdWeek not by pitching its product features but by framing its story around teacher burnout and classroom time – questions those outlets were already asking. Named expert quotes appear more frequently in AI-generated outputs than unattributed claims, and MagicSchool built a bench of named educators who spoke to those outlets on the record. The coverage opened district-level procurement conversations it would not otherwise have reached, and built a public profile that shaped how administrators, parents, and policymakers understood what the tool was.
Pangram placed in The Atlantic, the Wall Street Journal, and Slate by co-authoring a peer-reviewed study with researchers at Microsoft and the University of Maryland on AI detection in newspapers, then turning the findings into a news story. Coverage followed because the company gave journalists verifiable evidence connected to a question those outlets were already covering: what AI-generated text means for institutions that depend on written work. The coverage reached university administrators and policymakers who would never have encountered the tool through trade communications alone.
Both companies had the underlying evidence before a journalist wrote about them. What generated coverage was connecting that evidence to angles in outlets whose audiences extend well beyond the category’s existing user base.
ResTech companies produce that kind of evidence routinely – accuracy benchmarks, institutional adoption figures, integrity research, validation studies. The mainstream press connection is the step most of them haven’t taken.
The mainstream audience that’s already waiting for research AI PR
Analysis of more than one million links cited by ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini, and Perplexity found that 82% of AI citations came from earned media in independent outlets – one measure of what mainstream coverage produces, though not the primary one.
The more immediate return is access to conversations about funding, policy, institutional procurement, and public trust in science that trade press doesn’t reach.
ResTech companies address questions that matter to anyone who cares about the integrity of knowledge: whether published science can be trusted, whether AI is changing who gets to contribute to it, whether the infrastructure supporting research is keeping pace with the scale of the problems it’s meant to help solve. Those are mainstream stories that connect to audiences far beyond scholarly publishing. The sector has spent years building the tools that could carry them.
A three-step path from trade coverage to mainstream outlets
The move from trade mentions to mainstream coverage follows three steps, each built on evidence a ResTech company already holds.
First, match your evidence to a question the mainstream press already asks. Take a queue from adjacent industries. MagicSchool (education tech) tied its story to teacher burnout; Pangram (AI detection) tied its detection data to the reliability of written work. Take the accuracy benchmarks, adoption figures, and integrity findings you already hold, and match each to a debate that business editors, funders, and university leaders follow.
Second, turn that evidence into something a reporter can check and quote. Put named experts on the record, publish the study or dataset behind the claim, and write the finding as a news story rather than a product update. Coverage in NPR, The Atlantic, and the Wall Street Journal followed that method.
Third, place the story where your buyers and funders read, then reuse it. A single earned feature reaches procurement committees and grant panels that trade press never touches, and it feeds AI search, where 82% of citations trace back to earned media in independent outlets. Add each placement to your sales, investor, and grant materials, so one piece of coverage supports every conversation with a buyer or funder.
What should PR-curious ResTech do?
For starters: Act like a B2B company and take a step outside the scholarly silo.
Yours tools are already built, your evidence already exists, and the questions your work answers are already in the mainstream press. The decision to answer them in public is what’s missing. The companies that move now will shape how journalists, funders, and buyers understand this entire category, and the ones that stay quiet will keep watching that story get told without them.
Generate buzz, customers, and funding for your research tech
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