Why Notion Isn't Enough for Research (And What to Use Instead)

We love Notion. Seriously. It's beautiful, flexible, and great for a lot of things. But after watching hundreds of researchers struggle with it, we realized something: Notion wasn't built for research.

Here's the problem: your notes live in Notion, but your papers live somewhere else. Your citations are in Zotero. Your questions are in ChatGPT. Your search is in Google Scholar. Nothing is connected.

You take notes about a paper, but those notes aren't linked to the actual PDF. You can't click from your note to the specific section it references. You can't search your notes and papers together. You can't ask questions about your papers from within Notion.

Research isn't just note-taking. It's a workflow: find papers, read them, ask questions, take notes, organize insights, build connections, cite sources. Notion handles one part of that workflow well, but it leaves the rest disconnected.

What researchers actually need is a workspace where:

• Papers and notes are linked, not separate

• You can ask questions about your actual PDFs

• Search works across papers and notes together

• Citations are automatically generated and linked

• Everything updates in real-time as you work

Notion is great for many things. But for research, you need something built specifically for how researchers actually work. That's the difference between a general tool and a purpose-built platform.

We're not saying don't use Notion. We're saying: use the right tool for the job. And for research, that's a research platform.