What Were the Challenges and Surprises in Writing a Partial Literature Review

4 ways to better exploit digital era capabilities

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An elaborate literature review is an important stage in the development of almost all PhDs, and it is also a normal commencement step also in launching any new inquiry project. In that location are two main versions.

Narrative reviews aim to requite a 'genetic' account of the origins and development of understanding for a defined topic. They ordinarily follow a basically chronological sequence — perhaps cleaved up into periods treated more than as coherent wholes ('periodization'); or perchance analytically fragmented into component parts or sub-topics. The humanities and most of the social sciences are dominated by narrative reviews. Their proponents claim that they focus on 'meanings' and hence are especially appropriate for these human-focused and interpretative disciplines. Critics argue that narrative reviews are often partial, making no effort to be comprehensive. They are written upward in ways that are qualitative or subjective; analysts rarely brand explicit their criteria for assessment; and these evaluative criteria are non applied systematically. For some observers the limitations of narrative reviews are exposed by the wide gulf between the meager citations levels of the humanities and soft social sciences, compared with the far more than extensive referencing included in Stalk scientific discipline papers.

Systematic reviews focus instead on results and try to find consensus (or at to the lowest degree an agreed motion-picture show) about effect sizes underlying apparently divergent or disparate findings. The analyst kickoff explicitly defines a set of quality criteria to be used in comprehensively sifting through a big volume of literature. The criteria are used to progressively filter down the field of relevant work, and so as to focus progressively on just the all-time-conducted studies. The analyst so seeks to condense out precise upshot estimates of how a given cause or type of intervention A affects phenomenon X at the focus of analysis. Systematic reviews are highly developed in medicine, and they have spread into social sciences recently via the wellness sciences.

Critics fence that systematic reviews are near advisable in fields where quantitative research predominates, where there is high consensus on problem definition, and where methods across studies are broadly comparable (rather than being contested). To be properly conducted systematic reviews also need to exist comprehensive, which requires extensive searching in multiple databases. Systematic reviews are also tricky to practise when a researcher'south understanding of problems and connections is not well adult. They need a thorough agreement of how problems fields relate to each other, which is inherently very hard to acquire at the start of projects. Finally critics contend that a neat many 'impaired' systematic reviews are now being churned out, using full text searches for precise give-and-take combinations in commodity or book titles. These may capture but a proportion of relevant literature, chiefly because academic researchers are endlessly skillful at mis-describing their research in titles and in abstracts.

One of the greatest problems of large-scale and formalized literature reviews (both narrative and systematic) is that they take a long time to do. Hence researchers tend to be highly averse to repeating or renewing them — indeed with some systematic reviews the blueprint may mean that 'topping up' at a afterwards stage is not viable. Nonetheless over the course of a inquiry project (and mayhap particularly in a PhD project), the annotator's understanding typically expands hugely. Anyone is far better informed on the realities of researching a given topic ii or three years into it than 1 could hope to exist at the start.

Formal literature reviews may besides become considerably over-extended past modern university practices. In the Britain and Europe more 'professionalized' PhD preparation at present ofttimes requires that doctoral students spend their start nine months (finer a whole bookish twelvemonth) scoping their topic and conducting a literature review. There are precautionary institutional reasons why such a long menses of navel-gazing and insubstantial, 'throat-clearing' or preliminary work are then commonly enforced. But this enforced childhood can have adverse effects on the developments of PhD students' research. Information technology tends to feed the illusion that problems' solutions are to be institute by an extended literature hunt, rather than by getting stuck into seriously trying to solve them for yourself. (As Schopenhauer famously said: 'Practise non read — think!')

In research projects main investigators are more experienced and tend to exist quicker off the mark. But here too literature reviews often expand equally a style of bringing new research staff up to speed. They also help construct an inspect trail to convince grant-funders that no 'duplicative' work has been undertaken. Finally, of class, once the design of an experiment is fixed, and its equipment and protocols have been defined in a detail manner, information technology is always tricky and may well and so be impossible to conform them or to do things differently. This strengthens the rationale for an exhaustive initial literature search to surface all options and help choose the best-adapted procedures. Yet in Stalk sciences being the first to achieve and publish a given experimental effect or quantum is of critical importance. So a huge ongoing amount of researchers' time still after has to be dedicated to monitoring and keeping up with current literature.

In the social sciences and humanities, past contrast, an initial literature review may well not be refreshed at afterward stages of long projects. Information technology is quite common to run into researchers looking surprised or even severely affronted when questioners at seminars or conferences, or fifty-fifty periodical reviewers, ask that other literature or perspectives are taken into business relationship. Such brush-off responses can suggest an entrenched unwillingness by investigators to consider literature not covered in their initial (often partial) review.

Digital literature reviews can be faster

We live now in a digital era, in which the idea of a giant initial literature review is of fading relevance, except for properly conducted systematic reviews. Instead of freezing our understanding of a field at one time, frequently indeed a fourth dimension when we least understand the field, we should meet the literature review as a repeated component of whatever ongoing inquiry. We need more agile ways to surface other relevant enquiry at every phase of our thinking and 'writing up', non just at the outset. We also demand to consider how researchers actually work now, which is not very well presented by virtually institutional advice webpages or courses, generally produced by librarians I recollect, rather than by creative researchers themselves. So, in hopes that it will trigger some pushback comments and reactions, I set out here a outset (deliberately controversial) attempt to outline strategies that contrast with the rather orthodox (and perfectionist) advice that seems to exist out in that location at nowadays.

1. Utilise Google search tools first and foremost. This may seem controversial to virtually librarians, who want researchers to use the proprietary bibliometic databases that they have expensively acquired, and sometimes researched almost. Only Google tools are clearly the best available in many dimensions and nigh disciplines, and they are piece of cake to use in common ways, universally available on whatever net PC or tablet, and gratuitous.

• Google Scholar is by far and away the best (most inclusive) of the globe's bibliometric systems now, chiefly because it covers not just journal articles, but also citations of books and the many 'grey literature' reports originating from academic sources. Y'all can search datewise in GS and it is usually fair enough to date restrict enquiry searches to the last v or vi years. GS likewise responds well to Boolean algebra search terms, putting linked terms in "double quotes", and using operators such equally AND, OR and Not. You demand to effort a broad range of permutations of possible search terms, and to refine the combinations looked for in line with what the GS results are throwing up. One time you lot accept well-divers search combinations, a realistic goal then is to brand sure that you skim though the first 200 or 300 results. (If you gear up upward your page to evidence 10 search results in snippet manner at a time then this is only xx keystrokes). Typically there are likely to be three levels of results. (i) 'Remote possible' papers where you can just paste the GS 'snippet view' details into your 'Materials' file or archive, in case they might later bear witness interesting; (ii) Partly relevant papers, where you might copy across the commodity championship and abstract merely; and (iii) Conspicuously relevant papers, where you download the full text to your PDF library.
• Google Books is an essential additional tool in the humanities and social science. Even in Stalk disciplines it can be a useful add together-on resource when seeking textbooks (best for explaining new materials), or the occasional 'summation', call up piece or research commentary books from senior scientists. Substantially Google has now run around 10 million books through optical graphic symbol readers so as to create online images of each page. For books that are out of copyright, Google makes available the total text for reading online, but the material cannot be downloaded in the free use version of the program. The text of nearly out of copyright books is also fully searchable, so y'all can easily find specific sentences, quotations, or words of interest anywhere in the book. For books notwithstanding in copyright how much data is viewable on Google Books depends on what understanding the book's publisher has reached with them. (i) The near restrictive 'no preview' option only replicates the publishers' book blurb and perhaps gives the contents pages. (two) The 'snippet view' offers only a few short glimpses of the book'south content. Just this still allows readers to word search the total text for terms or phrases, so assess how much coverage in that location is of relevant material. (3) The most expansive Google Books preview shows many full pages of the text, simply leaves out some key capacity or sections. However, y'all can withal employ the word search across these omitted sections, and get a snippet idea of what's covered outside the total text pages. In either the snippet view or full text preview you tin can't re-create any text from Google Books. But in Windows, press Control+Impress Screen to capture your screen view and then copy that image into a Give-and-take archive file. If a book covers what you are interested in only briefly, it's piece of cake to copy across these few pages of relevant text as a succession of images, obviating the demand to consult the text itself. The text-finding software in Google Books is and so powerful that many scholars at present use it every bit an online alphabetize to observe cloth within books already on their shelves, but which have either no index or the normally very inadequate academic book alphabetize system.
• The main Google (Spider web) database has some specific search advantages compared to Scholar and Books, notably in being much more up to date, and in covering news media, blogposts, and the extensive 'greyness literature' from corporate and professional bodies (likewise as bookish reports and working papers covered with a lag in GS). Because of its enormous size, however, main Google is all-time searched with relatively extensive and if possible distinctive phrases. For instance, searching for the writer- and concept-distinctive jargon term 'deliverology' would be feasible, where the simpler and more ordinary linguistic communication term 'commitment' would generate far besides many entries to be useful. If your search initially throws up thousands of items, add together boosted content-distinctive words (again using Boolean operators) to become the numbers down to a viable size. Similarly if you cannot find a quoted author or source, only you do have a quotation of at to the lowest degree five or vi words, search for them inside "double quotes" and you'll be surprised how quickly this thins down the lists of Google's possibles.
• Google Scholar Citations is a very helpful search extender. It's a database of authors that most leading researchers now have an entry on, and which Google auto-updates so that it is always current. (If you're a PhDer or researcher who's non still joined GSC, are y'all perhaps an academic hermit? Don't be). One time you've got a list of 'core' articles or books directly relevant to your research from the sources discussed in a higher place, look up all the fundamental authors on GS Citations to see if they take other publications on the same theme. GSC as well shows you lot how many citations a given source has, and so you can see roughly how important information technology may be. Sources that are heavily cited (given their historic period) more often than not deserve more care and attention. Oftentimes a major author may also accept several versions of their argument, where generally the older one is more cited (considering recent work takes quite a fourth dimension to learn citations). Outside STEM subjects key authors may well have both a book and article versions of the same piece of work. Of form, different bailiwick groups as well take varying citation rates, that you lot need to control for. Yet used intelligently citations levels help y'all cut through the problem of distinguishing remotely what is or is non likely to be of import. GSC also lists all the other works in Google Scholar that take cited X'due south key work (click on the cites number to see a listing of these). For piece of work direct related to your inquiry, these listings have a loftier probability of including other relevant stuff, so it pays to search them fully and thoroughly. GSC also lists co-authors — so if y'all detect that X has written well on your topic with Y, look up Y's publications as well on GSC. For journal manufactures GSC has a powerful Google Scholar Metrics tool. Just enter the name of a journal you are unfamiliar with, and GSC will show you excellent indicators of its importance in its dwelling house field. Finally, the GS Alerts service provides excellent personalized updates to researchers in line with their publications, and with the kinds of authors they are post-obit. Especially if yous have published a lot (and then that GS has a lot of information about your research interests to proceed) these Alerts are phenomenally authentic and time-saving. They may not be and so constructive for new researchers though. Taken together, these tools help you lot practice a digital equivalent of 'searching along the shelf' in the library, but in a much faster mode and with far more useful contextual information.

2. Learning to utilize proprietary databases , such as the cantankerous-disciplinary Globe of Science and Scopus, and more single-discipline or topic-focused resource , such equally PubMed, can take time. These expensive and charged for databases are all human-compiled and then require that your university library has a subscription for y'all to gain access. They more often than not focus on manufactures in academic journals judged 'reputable' on conservative criteria. It can be time-saving and helpful to know that what elite Western academics might judge as 'marginal' work has mostly been excluded, only these databases nevertheless include a range of materials sufficiently wide to go far vital that yous guess directly the quality of what you lot find. The biggest advantage of the proprietary databases is including new literature from core journals quickly, an especially important feature in STEM disciplines. Notwithstanding their 'legacy' designs often predated the modern digital era, making them 'clunky', quite difficult to utilise, and unlike from ane to some other. Considering they are hard get familiar with initially, and re-familiarize with after a break, yous commonly accept to exist trained in the Library about how to use them creatively. And so these systems tend to reinforce the idea of a literature review as a discrete phase of inquiry.

Exterior Stalk sciences, the coverage of many edited databases like these is quite poor, with low 'internal inclusion' levels (an alphabetize showing how many references from articles included the database are also sources establish within it). Non roofing books and chapters in books is a big problem in most social sciences and all humanities disciplines. A literature review compiled on this ground might be worse than useless, because it is actively misleading. Scopus has included some books for some time, and Web of Science has been trying to reverse this blank spot recently. But neither comes close to the comprehensive coverage in Google products.

Similarly, if your research focuses on regions exterior Europe, due north America or Australasia, it is important to recognize that despite their size, the main proprietary databases cover only a modest proportion of published work about these areas — perhaps as little equally three per cent of all journal manufactures worldwide. They are likewise English-biased sources, which may matter a lot if a lot of inquiry in your topic area is published in other languages.

3. Open access sources matter increasingly, chiefly because they give you quick access to full texts. They range now from 'born open access' journals (like plusone, now the biggest journal in the life sciences surface area); through web-based alerting and word paper serial (like Arxiv in physics and neighbouring areas); over to leading blogs (such as EUROPP, a leading European web log curated past LSE). Archive sites that shop full text versions of manufactures, chapters and papers are likewise very important, with ResearchGate running an especially expert service that alerts you lot when some other researcher you are following deposits any new materials. Twitter and Facebook streams linked to blogs, or based around other open access databases, also now serve as very important means of academic communication in the social sciences and humanities. Many older researchers accept bewailed the increasing volume of academic piece of work and their disability to continue pace with it. Just the full range of search extension services should really mean that you tin can keep upwardly to engagement more easily beyond a far wider range of materials than in the past.

4. Shop total texts digitally (and don't make conventional notes for call up reasons). At research level, details and precision matter — for instance, how you design an experimental protocol; how strong different observed effects are; or how to detect and interpret circuitous multi-causation patterns. Information technology'south no good making conventional notes virtually such things. If a source is straight relevant for your research, yous need to store it deeply on your ain Cloud space or hard disc drive; you lot need to encounter exactly what the original writer(s) said; you should annotate directly on it and then every bit not lose your reactions and questions; and you need to accept both text and comments constantly available to you lot, to consult whenever y'all are citing or covering that source.

Modernistic bibliographic management tools too arrive beyond the one-time confines of reference-but systems like EndNote and RefWorks. The package Zotero helps you prune, comment and shop all forms of fabric that you read digitally, annotate information technology and then manage your accumulating collection. Not everyone gets on with information technology though. Mendeley lets you store PDFs and other documents in along with details that are gear up-formatted for re-expressing in bibliographies of different formats. You tin also of course store all your ain publications with them, and create groups that have collective resources. Each of these packages takes time and often grooming to empathize, just for well organized people they should repay early on learning and input costs with improved later on access to sources.

For the social sciences and nearby humanities subjects, some related information for the social sciences can be found in : Simon Bastow, Patrick Dunleavy and Jane Tinkler, 'T he Affect of the Social Sciences ' (Sage, 2014) or the Kindle edition . You tin can also read the get-go chapter for costless and other free materials are here .

To follow up relevant new materials run across also my stream on Twitter@Write4Researchand the LSE Impact blog

vickerspoorely.blogspot.com

Source: https://blogs.lse.ac.uk/writingforresearch/2014/12/08/doing-a-quick-literature-review/

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