The Literature Review Literature search and review from the perspective of citations

Contents Citations –Highly cited papers or authors –Impact Factors –Citation chaining –Author chaining –Chaining Google Scholar Contextualising your research within your field

Citations Paper A’s citations are the other papers that include it in their reference lists A [A] showed that… X is true [A]. Using the method of [A]… [A] hypothesised that…

Citation Theory 1: Highly cited papers Important papers tend to be highly cited (Merton, 1973) –High citation counts indicate great value to the research community? –[But there are exceptions] So… look for and give special attention to highly cited papers

Citation Theory 2: Highly cited journals Better quality journals tend to be more cited The Impact Factor (IF) reflects citations per paper Better journals tend to be indexed by the ISI (Institute for Scientific Information) and have a higher IF So… look out for the high impact journals in your field … and ask specialists if this measure is appropriate for your field.

Citation Theory 3: Citation chaining Papers tend to be cited by similar papers So… If you find a relevant paper, search for papers it references, and papers that cite it (called citation chaining) Citing papers may have refuted or improved on the research

Citation Theory 4: Author chaining Author chaining is searching for other papers by the same author … some may be on the same topic So… try author chaining.

Google Scholar Includes many digital libraries! Points to many full-text articles! Includes details on some books! Includes some reference information! Can use for author chaining and citation chaining Is free

Contextualising your research within your field The literature review should:- 1.Inform your research Topic choice (especially in established fields) Method choice (new fields/social sciences) Method details (all fields but especially sciences and old fields) Interpretation of results (all fields?) 2.Situate yourself as a competent field member –By demonstrating competence in 1 above –By giving answers to 1 above that fit a particular field

Final point Literature searching and reviewing is really, really hard (Kuhlthau, 2004) –Expect to be worried, especially at the start –Your competence and happiness should increase over time Kuhlthau, C. C. (2004). Seeking meaning: A process approach to library and information services, 2nd Ed. Wesport, CT: Libraries Unlimited.