CurTask vs Notion for research: a literature review tool built for papers

This page is for students and researchers who keep their literature notes, reading tables or thesis plans in Notion and wonder whether a purpose-built tool would save them time. Notion is a flexible, well-loved workspace for notes, documents and databases, with templates for almost anything and its own AI. CurTask is narrower and deeper: it is made for academic papers, from the PDF itself to a cited, written literature review.

At a glance

Your reading table fills itself, with evidence

Many researchers build a Notion database with one row per paper and columns for method, sample and findings. In CurTask that table is the literature matrix. You describe a column in plain words, see the estimated credits, and the AI reads your PDFs and fills it in. Each value carries the page number and a verbatim quote checked to exist on that page. If there is no support, the cell says "No source found".

AI values stay marked "Suggested" until you accept, edit or restore them, so your table is never quietly rewritten. A paper's analyses travel with it into every project (CurTask calls this "baggage"), and reusing an analysis you already have costs 0 credits. When you need the table elsewhere, export it to CSV.

The PDF is part of the workspace

CurTask starts with the paper itself. Drag in PDFs, Word or OpenDocument files, Markdown or plain text; details are filled in from the DOI, and the same paper is never stored twice. Scanned PDFs are read in English and Malay, and the text is captured before the file is made smaller. You read, highlight and take notes beside the page, and you can search open research catalogues and add open-access PDFs without leaving the app. A paper found without a PDF is saved with its details and marked "No PDF", so you can add the file later; the AI reads only papers that have their PDF.

Coding and synthesis for a real literature review

Beyond notes, a literature review needs analysis. In CurTask you select a passage, apply a code, and see a coloured strip beside the text; hand coding is on every plan. On paid plans, the AI can code every paper of a project at the push of a button and sort your codes into categories and themes, and you accept or dismiss each suggestion. Memos on coded passages stay private and are never sent to the AI. On the synthesis map you group codes into themes, mark which papers agree, contradict or extend each other, and send a theme to Writing with its passages. That path from passage to theme to paragraph is built in, not assembled from linked pages.

Writing with academic citations that trace back

CurTask's Writing lens is a manuscript editor for researchers. Write in sections you can reorder in binder, corkboard or outline view, and cite with @ as you type. The bibliography follows in APA, MLA, Chicago, Harvard, IEEE, Nature, AMA or ACS, and is rebuilt when you change style. Each citation keeps its page number and links back to the passage it came from: "Jump to the page" opens the PDF there with a dashed evidence line. Optional marks show the sentences that have no citation yet. Compile to Word (DOCX), PDF, Markdown or HTML when you submit.

The writing sidebar builds on the analysis you have accepted — matrix values, coded passages, themes and links — and shows what contradicts, extends or supports your paragraph, in up to three cards with contradictions first, each card with its page and a verified quote.

Private, in Malaysia, in Bahasa Melayu

Your papers, notes and writing are visible only to you and stored on servers in Malaysia, backups included. They are never used to train AI, and you can download all of it at any time as one ZIP file, with notes and manuscripts as Markdown and Word files. The interface is in English and Bahasa Melayu, and plans are priced in ringgit, starting with a free plan that needs no card.

When Notion might suit you

If you want one flexible space for everything in your life and work, such as lab meeting notes, project tasks, course pages and personal planning, and you enjoy designing your own templates, Notion does that very well.

Using both

Plenty of researchers keep Notion for planning and tasks and move the literature review into CurTask. Gather the PDFs you have attached or downloaded and drag them into CurTask; details are filled in from the DOI. Your own notes can come in as Markdown or plain-text files. From there the matrix, coding and writing work on the papers directly.

Bring in the papers for one chapter and see the matrix fill on the free plan.