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The future of quantum computing research in India.opportunities and challenges (85)

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A.J. Institute of Medical Sciences · Posted
Urban Planning

My Setup

I run a machine learning lab with 8 PhD students. Over the past 18 months, I have noticed a significant shift in how my students (and I) work, largely driven by large language models.

Things that have genuinely improved:

  • Literature search: I use LLMs to get a quick conceptual map before diving into papers
  • Code debugging: GitHub Copilot has reduced boilerplate time by ~30%
  • Writing: Grammar and clarity checks are now instant

Things I am cautious about:

  • Students are sometimes getting confidently wrong answers about recent results
  • Risk of AI-generated text without proper attribution
  • I worry that relying on AI for literature summarization may weaken reading comprehension skills

The question: How are others balancing the productivity benefits against these risks? And what explicit policies has your department adopted for AI use in research?

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17 Replies

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Shiva Prasad Active 480 pts · Accepted answer

Seconding the recommendation for Zotero. Game changer for managing references across multiple projects.

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Hema Suresh Starting 20 pts · Accepted answer

Respectfully, I think this framing misses the systemic dimension. Individual researchers cannot solve a collective action problem. If you submit to open-access journals and your colleague submits to Nature, your colleague gets the promotion. Until evaluation criteria change at the institutional level.which requires policy intervention.individual choices have minimal impact.

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Replying to Hema Suresh
Manish Tiwari Starting 10 pts · Accepted answer

I found that writing a paper abstract first (before the paper) and then reverse-engineering the paper from the abstract helped with clarity enormously.

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Ravi Patel Starting 25 pts · Accepted answer

For Zotero vs BibTeX management, I moved to Zotero + Better BibTeX 3 years ago and have not looked back.

My workflow:

  1. Zotero browser connector captures papers instantly from ArXiv, Google Scholar, ACM DL, IEEE Xplore
  2. Better BibTeX generates a clean .bib file that auto-updates whenever I add a paper
  3. Overleaf directly pulls from the .bib file via Dropbox sync

One tip: create a Zotero collection per paper/project. When you export the .bib, export only that collection to keep it clean.

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Replying to Ravi Patel
Disha Malhotra Starting 8 pts · Accepted answer

Seconding the recommendation for Zotero. Game changer for managing references across multiple projects.

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Replying to Ravi Patel
Suresh Iyer · Accepted answer

I am in a very similar situation. Would you be willing to share the outline of your PMRF proposal? Not the content.just the section headings and approximate word allocation.

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Replying to Ravi Patel
Quamar Ahmed Growing 65 pts · Accepted answer

Highly recommend checking out the PMRF portal for the actual numbers.they update the stipend structure annually.

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Vikram Bhatia Active 420 pts · Accepted answer

I found that writing a paper abstract first (before the paper) and then reverse-engineering the paper from the abstract helped with clarity enormously.

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Replying to Vikram Bhatia
Xena D'Souza Starting 25 pts · Accepted answer

Seconding the recommendation for Zotero. Game changer for managing references across multiple projects.

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Replying to Vikram Bhatia
Tara Singh Starting 5 pts · Accepted answer

+1 to everything said above. My experience was identical.

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Gopal Naidu · Accepted answer

I found that writing a paper abstract first (before the paper) and then reverse-engineering the paper from the abstract helped with clarity enormously.

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Replying to Gopal Naidu
Suresh Iyer · Accepted answer

Really appreciate you taking the time to write this out in detail. This is going straight into my research notes.

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Replying to Gopal Naidu
Wajid Khan Growing 110 pts · Accepted answer

Much appreciated. I will restructure my proposal along these lines. The point about societal impact being substantive is something I would have gotten wrong.

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Replying to Gopal Naidu
Suresh Iyer · Accepted answer

This is exactly what I needed. Thank you so much.I have been going back and forth on this for weeks and this clears it up completely.

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Hema Suresh Starting 20 pts · Accepted answer

Open access is the right direction but the APCs are prohibitively expensive for many Indian researchers without institutional funding.

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Bhavana Reddy Starting 30 pts · Accepted answer

I think you are conflating two separate problems here. The publish-or-perish culture creates pressure, yes.but the solution is not to criticize researchers who are navigating an unfair system. The real problem is with evaluation committees who treat publication count as a proxy for research quality. Fix the evaluation, and the incentives change.

Also worth noting: open review has been implemented in some fields and has its own problems. It can disadvantage early-career researchers who fear retaliation from senior colleagues they have reviewed critically.

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Shiva Prasad Active 480 pts · Accepted answer

Open access is the right direction but the APCs are prohibitively expensive for many Indian researchers without institutional funding.