Dec '25 • Business & Strategy 🧠
How I Stay Updated on AI Research Without Spending 15 Hours Weekly 🔥
When I started building document automation workflows, I needed to stay current on research.
Academic papers on AI extraction methods. New models for document understanding. Research on accuracy improvements.
Problem: Papers publish constantly. ArXiv, Google Scholar, PubMed, Semantic Scholar. Checking manually meant 2-3 hours daily just to stay current.
I was spending 15 hours weekly on research DISCOVERY. Not reading papers. Just FINDING them.
THE SOLUTION:
Built n8n workflow that monitors academic databases automatically:
WHAT IT DOES:
Runs every morning at 8 AM. Searches ArXiv, Google Scholar, and Semantic Scholar for papers on "AI automation document processing" published in last 24 hours. Filters and validates each paper (must have abstract, PDF, author info). Limits to top 5 papers by citation count. Creates Notion database entry with full metadata. Sends Slack morning digest before I start work.
THE TECHNICAL SETUP:
Uses schedule trigger (daily). Academic search API that queries multiple databases simultaneously (PDF Vector has this built-in, but you can also use individual database APIs). Date filter code node to ensure papers are genuinely from yesterday. Validation filter to remove incomplete entries. Notion integration for knowledge base. Slack for morning notifications.
Took 45 minutes to build. Most time spent on validation logic to handle messy database responses.
THE RESULTS:
From 15 hours weekly search time to ZERO search time.
Wake up each morning, check Slack, see curated list of 5 papers. Takes 5 minutes to scan abstracts. If something's relevant, full PDF is linked in Notion.
Been running 4 months. Notion database now has 480+ papers with full searchable metadata. Found 3 papers that directly improved client workflows.
Actually reading MORE papers now because discovery friction removed.
TEMPLATES:
If you're building research monitoring workflows, PDF Vector has pre-built academic search functionality that works with n8n, Make, and Zapier.
THE LESSON:
Most people try to automate paper summarization. The real bottleneck is DISCOVERY.
If you're building AI automation businesses, staying current on research is critical. This workflow turns 15 hours weekly into 5 minutes daily.
Are you manually searching academic databases? What's your research discovery process?
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How I Stay Updated on AI Research Without Spending 15 Hours Weekly 🔥
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