Evidence ranked by strength.

Research without dread.

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Why Crytation

Research giving you the ick?

Three tools, one job: surface higher-quality evidence, faster.

Find an Article

Search millions of indexed health science articles and see them ranked by evidence strength — systematic reviews first, weaker sources last.

Evidence Brief

Ask a clinical question in plain language and get a summary of the available evidence with important caveats to look out for when interpreting the literature.

AI Search

AI-generated, conversational research, not keyword juggling.

How it works

Just put the fries in the bag

When you're under pressure — deadlines, endless patients to see, life — you shouldn't have to spend hours working out finding answers or which study to trust. Crytation does that for you, a clear and transparent evidence hierarchy based on study design. Here's exactly how it works.

1

Search

Enter a clinical question, treatment, or condition. Crytation searches millions of indexed health science articles with the option of using added AI tools.

2

See evidence levels

Each result is tagged with its study design and evidence tier. The strongest designs surface first — automatically.

3

Save & organise

Add articles to your library, annotate key findings, and group them by review topic or project. Remember to use your citation web plugin like Mendelay/ Zotero etc.

The methodology, in the open

Some studies aura farm

Crytation classifies every result by study design and ranks it on the evidence hierarchy — the same framework taught in evidence-based medicine.

Tier 1Systematic Review / Meta-AnalysisPools data from multiple studies using rigorous statistical methods — the highest form of evidence.
Tier 2Randomised Controlled TrialParticipants randomly assigned to groups — the gold standard for evaluating treatments.
Tier 3Practice GuidelineFormal recommendations from expert panels, synthesising available evidence into clinical guidance.
Tier 4Cohort / Controlled Clinical TrialObservational — follows groups over time or compares outcomes with and without an intervention.
Tier 5Case-Control StudyRetrospective — compares groups with and without an outcome to identify risk factors.
Tier 6Case SeriesDescriptive reports of individual patients — useful for hypothesis generation.
Tier 7OtherEditorials, letters, expert opinion, and articles not classified in a higher tier.
Data Sources

Europe PMC, DOAJ, and Crossref — curated open-access databases, not the open web. Results are merged and de-duplicated by DOI.

Source Filtering

Crossref is gated by an allowlist of medical ISSNs and a health-subject check. A blocklist removes irrelevant sources across all providers.

Ranking Algorithm

Sorted by evidence tier first, then recency. Stronger study designs always rank above weaker ones.

Open-access status verified via Unpaywall. Results cached for 24 h; article metadata for 30 days.

Europe PMCBackbone

Covers major journals (BMJ Open, JAMA Network Open, The Lancet, NEJM, Frontiers in Medicine, and more). Contains everything PubMed has, plus richer open-access full text and preprints — directly relevant for Crytation's OA detection.

DOAJOpen Access

Directory of Open Access Journals — over 12.7 million articles across 22,886 peer-reviewed journals, with all data openly available.

Crossref180M+ records

Nearly 180 million records across all disciplines, with all metadata publicly available.

Retraction WatchIntegrity check

Retraction data comes from the Retraction Watch Database. Opening an article's details checks its reference list (via OpenAlex) against known retractions and flags citations the authors could have known about; each article's check refreshes every 90 days. Limits: reference data is missing for many articles — no flag is not a clean bill of health; only retractions are counted, not corrections or expressions of concern; and only citations published before, or up to 12 months after, the retraction are flagged.

OpenAlexNewer, stronger evidence

When you open an article's details, Crytation looks for newer studies that cite it and sit higher on the evidence hierarchy — for example, systematic reviews that have since cited a trial — using OpenAlex citation data. A citation is not proof of inclusion or replacement: check the newer work to see how this study was used. And when no signal appears, it may simply mean the data is missing (no OpenAlex or PubMed record), not that no newer evidence exists. Checks refresh every 60 days.

A note on accuracy: Tiering is automated based on publication-type tags from each source database — mislabelled or missing tags can occasionally place a study in the wrong tier. Always confirm a study's design against its full text before clinical use.
A Note from the Developer

Join now and get pro plan for life, for free! Hurry, before price plan goes live

This project is in beta. It's imperfect. If you find a bug please report it using the contact us button. If it's helped you — thank you for being here.

Pricing

Start free. Upgrade when you need more.

Search the evidence hierarchy from your very first query — no credit card required.

Free

For occasional searchers getting started.
$0/forever
No card details required
  • 10 Ranked searches/ month
  • Full evidence-tier classification
  • Open access detection
  • AI search

Pro

For tertiary level students, researchers, clinicians and postgrads doing serious work.
$5/month
Cancel any time
  • Unlimited ranked searches
  • AI search
  • Evidence brief
  • Unlimited library folders & notes
  • Collaborative tools (with other pro account holders)
  • Citation export (RIS / BibTeX)
  • Shared folders (with other Pro account holders)
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The evidence-based medicine research platform. Find the strongest evidence, faster.

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