Researching & Writing a Literature Review NCSU Libraries

Expectations of graduate students Grad students have different backgrounds Not every grad student has done research Not everyone has experience reading the literature No problem. You are learning to ask questions Do so! No one expects you to know everything. Your job is to learn to seek out answers Knowing that information is out there can be empowering!

Talking about the literature… “What does the literature show us?” “Connect your ideas to the literature.” “Survey the literature on the topic.”

Talking about the literature… What it IS: Scholarly communication A published record of research Challenging to read and digest Indexed, searchable with research databases

X X Talking about the literature… What it IS NOT: Common knowledge i.e., handily summarized in Wikipedia Easy to find If you just Googled it, you overlooked something. Available freely online (mostly) This distinction can be transparent on campus: the “free” internet vs. library subscriptions X

Talking about the literature… Let’s focus on “What are lit reviews?” and “Why?” and the conceptual approach first… Follow-up workshops will tackle the “How?” But we’ll look at a examples as we go

What is a Literature Review? Surveys scholarly sources relevant to a particular issue, area of research, or theory Provides a description, summary, and critical evaluation of each work Offers an overview of significant literature published on a topic Gives future research context by telling the story of work done so far (adapted from http://library.ucsc.edu/ref/howto/ literaturereview.html)

Functions of Literature Reviews Establish research context Show why the question is significant Illustrate and describe previous research, including gaps and flaws Ensure that research has not been done before Hey, did you notice that the bullets here are checkboxes?

Functions of Literature Reviews Understand the structure of the problem Demonstrate your knowledge of the field Synthesize previous perspectives and develop your own perspective Point the way to future research

Review article examples: http://go.ncsu.edu/litrev1 http://go.ncsu.edu/litrev2

Digging Into the Literature = Major works B C A

Digging Into the Literature = Major works = Studies that rely on major works B C A

Digging Into the Literature = Major works = Something new! = Studies that rely on major works B C A New!

Digging Into the Literature – How? Aspect How? Major works Literature databases Colleague recommendations Cited work Related works Citation searching: Web of Science Google Scholar New information Articles alerts/RSS feeds Tables of Contents Put it all together, you have a literature review!

Overview of the Process Topic Research and Collect Information RefWorks Writing and revision Work with Articles and Brain

Overview of the Process Topic Initial topic won’t be your final topic! Choose, explore, focus Refine as you go based on: Availability of research – too much? too little? Discovering new ideas Writing progress

Overview of the Process Topic Research and Collect Information Search databases Find, evaluate, and select articles

Overview of the Process Topic Research and Collect Information Save your work in a citation mgr. Read, analyze, synthesize Develop your conceptual framework RefWorks Work with Articles and Brain

Overview of the Process Topic Research and Collect Information RefWorks Refine topic? Use your citation manager to stay organized Work with Articles and Brain

Overview of the Process Topic Research and Collect Information RefWorks Writing and revision Work with Articles and Brain

Proceeding…(use worksheet handout) Develop draft topic Discuss with advisor, colleagues Find a literature review (or book/chapter) Identify key terms and concepts Use bibliography to find sources Search the major disciplinary database Check with colleagues, a librarian Each will have different ideas of where to search! Determine scope and facets of topic Collect useful, current sources

Search other key databases (another discipline?) Proceeding… Search other key databases (another discipline?) Round out understanding of scope, facets, terms, concepts Search a Citation database Best ones: Web of Science, Google Scholar Web of Science has better tools Scholar can complete picture Identify key/seminal papers/research Identify key researchers, research centers, journals Trace citations back and forward

Questions that come up… How do I know I have the “right stuff”? How do I know when I’m done? How do know what’s important? No set answers…for each individual to decide.

Housekeeping Tips Use a citation management system Such as RefWorks, Zotero, Mendeley, etc. One word for these: invaluable. You are absolutely doing more work in NOT learning about these. Always get the complete citation information Article title, journal title, author, year/volume, pages, abstract Keep track of searches, notes, ideas, etc. (back to the worksheets) Fully citing sources = avoiding plagiarism

Read Synthetically: Pull it All Together Look at all articles to identify relationships Classify or group papers, or paper sections, by topic, method, theme Compare and contrast papers addressing similar questions Discover relationships between sources Discover critical gaps and disagreements Fit within the generated outline, or adapt outline

The Synthesis Matrix Tool to aid in writing a document showing synthesis Based on a grid Concept 1 Concept 2 Concept 3 Concept 4 James, et al. xxxxx Chung Levy xxxx

Models of Paper Structures “Stringing” Model: Organization of a Simple Summary Paper Introduction Paragraph 1: Summary or description of article 1 Paragraph 2: Summary or description of article 2 Paragraph 3: Summary or description of article 3 …and on… Summary and conclusions “Synthesis” Model: Paper showing Synthesis of Sources and Sequencing by Theme Introduction--Introduce context, topic, importance, research questions, overview Theme A: Introduce concept or theme, discuss/compare the relevant parts of papers 1, 3, and 4 Theme B: Introduce concept or theme, discuss/compare the relevant parts of papers 2,4, and 5 Theme C: Introduce concept or theme, discuss/compare the relevant parts of papers 5 and 6 Final paragraphs --Summarize and highlight conclusions, unresolved issues, identify possible next steps in research and/or practice.

Some Tips for Writing Write as you go: don’t wait until you’ve finished searching the literature Set some times to write regularly, and do it! Start with the easier sections (probably not the introduction) Jot down notes and ideas and keep them handy Get feedback, and don’t take it too personally Aim for a style that is clear, simple, and straightforward

Moving forward Other library workshops on: Doing Literature Searching How to identify good databases Maximizing your use of them Citation management How to save all of this work