What Needs to Be Included in a Scientific Review Paper

• Journal List
• PLoS Comput Biol
• v.9(seven); 2013 Jul
• PMC3715443

PLoS Comput Biol. 2013 Jul; 9(seven): e1003149.

Ten Elementary Rules for Writing a Literature Review

Marco Pautasso

^aneCentre for Functional and Evolutionary Ecology (CEFE), CNRS, Montpellier, France

²Middle for Biodiversity Synthesis and Analysis (CESAB), FRB, Aix-en-Provence, French republic

Philip E. Bourne, Editor

Literature reviews are in great demand in about scientific fields. Their need stems from the ever-increasing output of scientific publications [1]. For instance, compared to 1991, in 2008 iii, viii, and xl times more papers were indexed in Web of Science on malaria, obesity, and biodiversity, respectively [two]. Given such mountains of papers, scientists cannot exist expected to examine in detail every single new paper relevant to their interests [3]. Thus, information technology is both advantageous and necessary to rely on regular summaries of the contempo literature. Although recognition for scientists mainly comes from primary research, timely literature reviews can lead to new synthetic insights and are often widely read [4]. For such summaries to be useful, however, they need to be compiled in a professional way [v].

When starting from scratch, reviewing the literature can crave a titanic corporeality of work. That is why researchers who have spent their career working on a certain research issue are in a perfect position to review that literature. Some graduate schools are now offering courses in reviewing the literature, given that most research students offset their project by producing an overview of what has already been done on their research issue [6]. However, it is likely that almost scientists have not thought in detail about how to arroyo and bear out a literature review.

Reviewing the literature requires the ability to juggle multiple tasks, from finding and evaluating relevant material to synthesising data from diverse sources, from critical thinking to paraphrasing, evaluating, and commendation skills [7]. In this contribution, I share ten simple rules I learned working on about 25 literature reviews every bit a PhD and postdoctoral student. Ideas and insights besides come from discussions with coauthors and colleagues, likewise equally feedback from reviewers and editors.

Rule 1: Define a Topic and Audience

How to choose which topic to review? There are so many bug in contemporary scientific discipline that you could spend a lifetime of attending conferences and reading the literature just pondering what to review. On the one hand, if you lot have several years to choose, several other people may have had the same thought in the meantime. On the other paw, but a well-considered topic is likely to lead to a brilliant literature review [8]. The topic must at to the lowest degree be:

1. interesting to yous (ideally, you should have come beyond a serial of recent papers related to your line of work that call for a critical summary),

2. an important aspect of the field (and so that many readers will be interested in the review and there will exist enough textile to write it), and

3. a well-defined issue (otherwise you lot could potentially include thousands of publications, which would make the review unhelpful).

Ideas for potential reviews may come from papers providing lists of key research questions to be answered [9], merely as well from serendipitous moments during desultory reading and discussions. In addition to choosing your topic, you should likewise select a target audience. In many cases, the topic (eastward.m., web services in computational biology) volition automatically define an audience (due east.one thousand., computational biologists), only that same topic may likewise be of interest to neighbouring fields (e.g., computer scientific discipline, biological science, etc.).

Rule 2: Search and Re-search the Literature

After having called your topic and audition, start by checking the literature and downloading relevant papers. 5 pieces of advice hither:

1. keep rails of the search items you use (and so that your search can exist replicated [ten]),

2. keep a list of papers whose pdfs you cannot access immediately (and so as to retrieve them later with culling strategies),

3. employ a newspaper management system (eastward.m., Mendeley, Papers, Qiqqa, Sente),

4. define early in the process some criteria for exclusion of irrelevant papers (these criteria tin can then be described in the review to help define its scope), and

5. do not just expect for research papers in the area you lot wish to review, but likewise seek previous reviews.

The chances are high that someone will already have published a literature review (Figure 1), if not exactly on the issue you lot are planning to tackle, at least on a related topic. If there are already a few or several reviews of the literature on your consequence, my advice is non to surrender, simply to acquit on with your own literature review,

A conceptual diagram of the demand for different types of literature reviews depending on the amount of published enquiry papers and literature reviews.

The lesser-right situation (many literature reviews but few research papers) is not simply a theoretical situation; it applies, for example, to the study of the impacts of climatic change on establish diseases, where there appear to exist more literature reviews than research studies [33].

1. discussing in your review the approaches, limitations, and conclusions of by reviews,

2. trying to find a new angle that has not been covered fairly in the previous reviews, and

3. incorporating new fabric that has inevitably accumulated since their appearance.

When searching the literature for pertinent papers and reviews, the usual rules apply:

1. be thorough,

2. use unlike keywords and database sources (e.g., DBLP, Google Scholar, ISI Proceedings, JSTOR Search, Medline, Scopus, Spider web of Scientific discipline), and

3. look at who has cited past relevant papers and book chapters.

Rule 3: Take Notes While Reading

If you read the papers first, and but afterwards start writing the review, you lot volition need a very good memory to call up who wrote what, and what your impressions and associations were while reading each single paper. My advice is, while reading, to first writing downward interesting pieces of information, insights nearly how to organize the review, and thoughts on what to write. This way, by the fourth dimension y'all have read the literature you lot selected, you will already take a rough draft of the review.

Of form, this draft volition all the same need much rewriting, restructuring, and rethinking to obtain a text with a coherent argument [11], but you will take avoided the danger posed by staring at a blank certificate. Exist careful when taking notes to use quotation marks if you are provisionally copying verbatim from the literature. It is advisable then to reformulate such quotes with your ain words in the concluding draft. It is of import to exist careful in noting the references already at this stage, so as to avoid misattributions. Using referencing software from the very starting time of your endeavour will salvage you time.

Dominion 4: Choose the Type of Review You Wish to Write

After having taken notes while reading the literature, yous will accept a rough idea of the amount of material available for the review. This is probably a expert fourth dimension to decide whether to become for a mini- or a full review. Some journals are now favouring the publication of rather short reviews focusing on the last few years, with a limit on the number of words and citations. A mini-review is not necessarily a modest review: information technology may well attract more attention from busy readers, although it will inevitably simplify some problems and leave out some relevant material due to infinite limitations. A full review will have the advantage of more than freedom to cover in item the complexities of a detail scientific development, but may and so be left in the pile of the very of import papers "to be read" past readers with little fourth dimension to spare for major monographs.

There is probably a continuum between mini- and full reviews. The aforementioned point applies to the dichotomy of descriptive vs. integrative reviews. While descriptive reviews focus on the methodology, findings, and estimation of each reviewed written report, integrative reviews effort to detect common ideas and concepts from the reviewed fabric [12]. A similar distinction exists between narrative and systematic reviews: while narrative reviews are qualitative, systematic reviews attempt to test a hypothesis based on the published prove, which is gathered using a predefined protocol to reduce bias [xiii], [14]. When systematic reviews analyse quantitative results in a quantitative way, they become meta-analyses. The selection between different review types volition take to be fabricated on a case-by-case basis, depending not but on the nature of the fabric establish and the preferences of the target journal(southward), merely also on the time bachelor to write the review and the number of coauthors [15].

Rule 5: Keep the Review Focused, simply Make It of Broad Interest

Whether your program is to write a mini- or a full review, information technology is good advice to proceed it focused 16,17. Including material merely for the sake of information technology tin easily lead to reviews that are trying to practice also many things at once. The demand to go on a review focused can be problematic for interdisciplinary reviews, where the aim is to bridge the gap between fields [eighteen]. If you are writing a review on, for instance, how epidemiological approaches are used in modelling the spread of ideas, you may be inclined to include textile from both parent fields, epidemiology and the written report of cultural diffusion. This may be necessary to some extent, just in this case a focused review would only deal in detail with those studies at the interface betwixt epidemiology and the spread of ideas.

While focus is an important characteristic of a successful review, this requirement has to be balanced with the need to make the review relevant to a broad audience. This square may be circled past discussing the wider implications of the reviewed topic for other disciplines.

Dominion half-dozen: Exist Critical and Consistent

Reviewing the literature is non stamp collecting. A expert review does not only summarize the literature, simply discusses it critically, identifies methodological problems, and points out research gaps [19]. After having read a review of the literature, a reader should have a rough idea of:

1. the major achievements in the reviewed field,

2. the main areas of contend, and

3. the outstanding research questions.

Information technology is challenging to accomplish a successful review on all these fronts. A solution can be to involve a set of complementary coauthors: some people are splendid at mapping what has been achieved, some others are very good at identifying dark clouds on the horizon, and some have instead a knack at predicting where solutions are going to come up from. If your journal club has exactly this sort of team, then you should definitely write a review of the literature! In addition to critical thinking, a literature review needs consistency, for case in the selection of passive vs. agile vocalisation and present vs. past tense.

Rule 7: Find a Logical Construction

Like a crisp cake, a good review has a number of telling features: it is worth the reader'due south time, timely, systematic, well written, focused, and disquisitional. It also needs a good structure. With reviews, the usual subdivision of enquiry papers into introduction, methods, results, and word does not work or is rarely used. Still, a general introduction of the context and, toward the end, a recapitulation of the principal points covered and have-home letters make sense also in the case of reviews. For systematic reviews, there is a trend towards including information about how the literature was searched (database, keywords, time limits) [twenty].

How can you organize the period of the primary body of the review so that the reader volition be fatigued into and guided through information technology? It is generally helpful to draw a conceptual scheme of the review, e.1000., with mind-mapping techniques. Such diagrams can help recognize a logical way to order and link the various sections of a review [21]. This is the example not just at the writing stage, but also for readers if the diagram is included in the review equally a figure. A careful pick of diagrams and figures relevant to the reviewed topic can be very helpful to construction the text too [22].

Rule viii: Make Use of Feedback

Reviews of the literature are normally peer-reviewed in the same way every bit research papers, and rightly then [23]. As a rule, incorporating feedback from reviewers greatly helps meliorate a review draft. Having read the review with a fresh mind, reviewers may spot inaccuracies, inconsistencies, and ambiguities that had not been noticed by the writers due to rereading the typescript too many times. It is yet appropriate to reread the draft one more fourth dimension before submission, as a final-minute correction of typos, leaps, and muddled sentences may enable the reviewers to focus on providing advice on the content rather than the form.

Feedback is vital to writing a good review, and should be sought from a diverseness of colleagues, and then as to obtain a diversity of views on the draft. This may pb in some cases to alien views on the claim of the paper, and on how to improve it, but such a state of affairs is better than the absence of feedback. A diversity of feedback perspectives on a literature review can assist place where the consensus view stands in the landscape of the current scientific understanding of an issue [24].

Dominion 9: Include Your Own Relevant Research, but Be Objective

In many cases, reviewers of the literature will accept published studies relevant to the review they are writing. This could create a conflict of interest: how can reviewers report objectively on their own work [25]? Some scientists may be overly enthusiastic about what they have published, and thus take a chance giving too much importance to their own findings in the review. Still, bias could also occur in the other management: some scientists may be unduly dismissive of their own achievements, so that they volition tend to downplay their contribution (if whatever) to a field when reviewing it.

In general, a review of the literature should neither be a public relations brochure nor an exercise in competitive self-denial. If a reviewer is up to the chore of producing a well-organized and methodical review, which flows well and provides a service to the readership, then it should be possible to exist objective in reviewing one's ain relevant findings. In reviews written past multiple authors, this may be achieved by assigning the review of the results of a coauthor to different coauthors.

Dominion 10: Be Up-to-Appointment, but Exercise Not Forget Older Studies

Given the progressive acceleration in the publication of scientific papers, today's reviews of the literature need awareness not only of the overall direction and achievements of a field of research, simply also of the latest studies, and so every bit non to become out-of-appointment before they have been published. Ideally, a literature review should non identify as a major research gap an consequence that has just been addressed in a serial of papers in press (the same applies, of course, to older, disregarded studies ("sleeping beauties" [26])). This implies that literature reviewers would do well to keep an eye on electronic lists of papers in press, given that it tin can have months before these announced in scientific databases. Some reviews declare that they have scanned the literature upwards to a certain point in time, but given that peer review tin be a rather lengthy process, a full search for newly appeared literature at the revision stage may be worthwhile. Assessing the contribution of papers that have just appeared is particularly challenging, because there is little perspective with which to gauge their significance and touch on on farther research and society.

Inevitably, new papers on the reviewed topic (including independently written literature reviews) will appear from all quarters after the review has been published, so that in that location may soon be the need for an updated review. But this is the nature of science [27]–[32]. I wish everybody good luck with writing a review of the literature.

Acknowledgments

Many cheers to M. Barbosa, K. Dehnen-Schmutz, T. Döring, D. Fontaneto, Yard. Garbelotto, O. Holdenrieder, M. Jeger, D. Lonsdale, A. MacLeod, P. Mills, M. Moslonka-Lefebvre, M. Stancanelli, P. Weisberg, and X. Xu for insights and discussions, and to P. Bourne, T. Matoni, and D. Smith for helpful comments on a previous typhoon.

Funding Argument

This work was funded by the French Foundation for Research on Biodiversity (FRB) through its Centre for Synthesis and Analysis of Biodiversity data (CESAB), as part of the NETSEED enquiry project. The funders had no role in the preparation of the manuscript.

References

2. Pautasso M (2010) Worsening file-drawer trouble in the abstracts of natural, medical and social science databases. Scientometrics 85: 193–202 doi:10.1007/s11192-010-0233-5 [Google Scholar]

iii. Erren TC, Cullen P, Erren M (2009) How to surf today'southward information tsunami: on the arts and crafts of effective reading. Med Hypotheses 73: 278–279 doi:x.1016/j.mehy.2009.05.002 [PubMed] [Google Scholar]

iv. Hampton SE, Parker JN (2011) Collaboration and productivity in scientific synthesis. Bioscience 61: 900–910 doi:ten.1525/bio.2011.61.xi.9 [Google Scholar]

6. Boote DN, Beile P (2005) Scholars earlier researchers: on the axis of the dissertation literature review in inquiry preparation. Educ Res 34: iii–xv doi:ten.3102/0013189X034006003 [Google Scholar]

7. Budgen D, Brereton P (2006) Performing systematic literature reviews in software applied science. Proc 28th Int Conf Software Engineering, ACM New York, NY, USA, pp. 1051–1052. doi:ten.1145/1134285.1134500.

ix. Sutherland WJ, Fleishman E, Mascia MB, Pretty J, Rudd MA (2011) Methods for collaboratively identifying research priorities and emerging bug in science and policy. Methods Ecol Evol 2: 238–247 doi:10.1111/j.2041-210X.2010.00083.ten [Google Scholar]

10. Maggio LA, Tannery NH, Kanter SL (2011) Reproducibility of literature search reporting in medical education reviews. Acad Med 86: 1049–1054 doi:10.1097/ACM.0b013e31822221e7 [PubMed] [Google Scholar]

11. Torraco RJ (2005) Writing integrative literature reviews: guidelines and examples. Human being Res Develop Rev 4: 356–367 doi:10.1177/1534484305278283 [Google Scholar]

12. Khoo CSG, Na JC, Jaidka K (2011) Analysis of the macro-level soapbox structure of literature reviews. Online Info Rev 35: 255–271 doi:10.1108/14684521111128032 [Google Scholar]

15. Dijkers G (2009) The Chore Force on Systematic Reviews and Guidelines (2009) The value of "traditional" reviews in the era of systematic reviewing. Am J Phys Med Rehabil 88: 423–430 doi:10.1097/PHM.0b013e31819c59c6 [PubMed] [Google Scholar]

16. Eco U (1977) Come si fa una tesi di laurea. Milan: Bompiani.

17. Hart C (1998) Doing a literature review: releasing the social science research imagination. London: SAGE.

eighteen. Wagner CS, Roessner JD, Bobb G, Klein JT, Boyack KW, et al. (2011) Approaches to understanding and measuring interdisciplinary scientific enquiry (IDR): a review of the literature. J Informetr v: 14–26 doi:10.1016/j.joi.2010.06.004 [Google Scholar]

nineteen. Carnwell R, Daly W (2001) Strategies for the construction of a critical review of the literature. Nurse Educ Pract i: 57–63 doi:10.1054/nepr.2001.0008 [PubMed] [Google Scholar]

20. Roberts PD, Stewart GB, Pullin AS (2006) Are review articles a reliable source of bear witness to support conservation and environmental management? A comparison with medicine. Biol Conserv 132: 409–423 doi:10.1016/j.biocon.2006.04.034 [Google Scholar]

21. Ridley D (2008) The literature review: a footstep-by-step guide for students. London: SAGE.

22. Kelleher C, Wagener T (2011) Ten guidelines for constructive data visualization in scientific publications. Environ Model Softw 26: 822–827 doi:10.1016/j.envsoft.2010.12.006 [Google Scholar]

xxx. Pautasso M (2012) Publication growth in biological sub-fields: patterns, predictability and sustainability. Sustainability iv: 3234–3247 doi:10.3390/su4123234 [Google Scholar]

31. Michels C, Schmoch U (2013) Impact of bibliometric studies on the publication behaviour of authors. Scientometrics doi:ten.1007/s11192-013-1015-7. In press. [Google Scholar]

32. Tsafnat G, Dunn A, Glasziou P, Coiera E (2013) The automation of systematic reviews. BMJ 346: f139 doi:10.1136/bmj.f139 [PubMed] [Google Scholar]

33. Pautasso M, Döring TF, Garbelotto Chiliad, Pellis 50, Jeger MJ (2012) Impacts of climate alter on plant diseases - opinions and trends. Eur J Plant Pathol 133: 295–313 doi:10.1007/s10658-012-9936-1 [Google Scholar]

---

Articles from PLoS Computational Biology are provided hither courtesy of Public Library of Science

---

buffingtonacessays.blogspot.com

Source: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3715443/

Share this post