ScholarLens – AI Reader for Research Papers (Vi/En)

Highlight text in a research paper for an instant AI explanation in Vietnamese with English terms. Reads formulas and charts too.

Understand English research papers without leaving the page. Highlight any paragraph, formula or chart in an academic article and ScholarLens explains it right there, in clear Vietnamese with the original English technical terms kept in parentheses, or in plain English if you prefer. Built for graduate students, PhD candidates and researchers who read scientific papers every day for a thesis, a literature review or their own research, and are tired of copy-pasting paragraphs into a chatbot or a translator. ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ WHAT YOU CAN DO ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ • Explain a paragraph: highlight text and press Alt+Shift+E, click the "✦ Giải thích" button that appears, click the toolbar icon, or right-click → "Giải thích bằng AI". • Explain formulas, equations, tables and charts: press Alt+Shift+S and drag over the region. The AI reads it straight from the image, so it works even when the content can't be copied as text. • Ask follow-up questions in one click: Simpler, Example, More detail, Literal translation. Or type your own question. • Page context: the paper title, journal and surrounding paragraph are sent along, so the explanation fits the article instead of being generic. • Learn the vocabulary as you read: every key term keeps its English original, e.g. "hồi quy logistic (logistic regression)". • Personalised to you: set your field of study and level (undergraduate, master's/PhD, lecturer/researcher) so examples and wording match. • Answers stream into a draggable panel on the page you are reading. Works on most pages where you can select text: publisher and journal websites, open-access articles, preprints in HTML, PubMed Central, Wikipedia, blogs and documentation. ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ GET STARTED IN 2 MINUTES ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ 1. Install ScholarLens. The Settings page opens automatically. 2. Choose an AI provider and paste your API key: • Google Gemini: has a free tier. Get a key at aistudio.google.com/apikey • OpenAI or any OpenAI-compatible service (OpenRouter, Groq, LM Studio…) • Anthropic Claude 3. Click "Kiểm tra kết nối" (Test connection). Done. 4. Open a paper, highlight a paragraph and press Alt+Shift+E. Tip: pin ScholarLens to your toolbar (puzzle icon → pin). You can change the shortcuts at chrome://extensions/shortcuts ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ PRIVACY ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ • No account, no sign-up, no developer server. Nothing is sent to us. • Runs only on the tab where you activate it. It does not read your other tabs or browsing history. • What you select goes directly from your browser to the AI provider you chose, using your own API key. • Your API key and settings are stored only on your device. ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ GOOD TO KNOW ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ • You need your own API key. The extension itself is free; usage is billed (or limited by the free tier) by your AI provider. A monthly request limit in Settings helps you control usage. • PDF files opened in the browser's built-in PDF viewer are not supported, because browsers don't allow extensions there. Open the HTML version of the article; most journals offer one. • The interface is currently in Vietnamese; explanations can be in Vietnamese or English. • Don't use it on confidential or unpublished documents: your selection is sent to the AI provider. • AI can make mistakes. Check important points against the original paper before you cite them. ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ TROUBLESHOOTING ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ • Nothing happens: the extension can't run on chrome:// pages, the Chrome Web Store or the built-in PDF viewer. Try a normal web page. • "HTTP 400/401/403": the API key is wrong, or the API is not enabled for your project. Create a new key and test again. • "HTTP 402 … prepayment credits are depleted" (Gemini): your Google Cloud project uses prepaid billing with no credit left. Create a key in a project without billing to use the free tier, or add credit. • "HTTP 429" or "503": the AI server is busy or you reached the free-tier limit. ScholarLens retries automatically; you can also set a fallback model in Settings. • Formula capture gives poor results: choose a model that supports images (vision).