Nerdi: Research Papers

Read real research papers from across science — a fresh handful every day, with original abstracts and PDFs. Papers come from OpenAlex, an open catalog of scholarly research. Each entry has the paper's actual title, authors and original abstract, plus a link to the source — usually a PDF, sometimes a publisher's page.

The catalog is a curated, growing selection of recent papers across 20 fields — a few hundred new ones arrive each week — rather than the whole of OpenAlex. It is meant to let you read carefully, not to be a search engine.

Many papers also have a short summary in plain words, clearly labeled "AI summary" and shown above the paper's original abstract, which stays unmodified. It is generated from the paper's title and abstract only, and its numbers are checked against the abstract. Short summaries are free for everyone and available in all six of the app's languages (English, Turkish, German, French, Spanish and Portuguese), and a switch in Settings hides them.

Once a week, Nerdi also picks one paper for you, free, and can send it as a notification if you allow it.

You do not need an account. Open the app and the day's picks are there. Save a paper, keep your place in it, and hide ones you are not interested in — all of that works entirely on your device if you never sign in.

Signing in with Apple is optional. With Nerdi Plus, your saved papers, your reading position in each, your notes and collections, your hidden list and your interests follow you between devices. Apple's private relay address works fine if you would rather not share your real one.

Nerdi Plus is an optional auto-renewing subscription, weekly, monthly or annual. It gives you an unlimited library (free readers can save 5 papers), notes and collections for your papers, offline PDFs, BibTeX and RIS export of your library, adding any paper by pasting a DOI, arXiv, PubMed or OpenAlex link, and sync across your devices. Reading, the daily picks, search and filters stay free, and nothing you saved is removed if Plus ends. Payment is charged to your Apple ID. The subscription renews automatically unless cancelled at least 24 hours before the end of the current period; manage or cancel it in your App Store account settings.

Terms of Use: https://www.apple.com/legal/internet-services/itunes/dev/stdeula/

Worth knowing before you start: PDF links come from publishers, and like any link on the open web some will be slow, paywalled or broken. An "open access" label reflects the source's claim, not a guarantee. There is no highlighting inside PDFs, and the weekly paper notification is optional: Nerdi asks first, and a switch in Settings turns it off.

No ads and no cross-app tracking. Nothing is sold and nothing goes to data brokers. Nerdi Plus is an optional auto-renewing subscription; everything else is free. Usage sharing is on by default with a switch in Settings; it records a handful of interaction events — opening a paper, a PDF loading or failing, saving something, tapping a daily pick — and never what you searched for or the contents of what you read.

Requires iOS 17 or later. iPhone only.