Once Information Is Collected What Is the First Step in Writing a Literature Review?

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X Unproblematic Rules for Writing a Literature Review

Ten Simple Rules for Writing a Literature Review

• Marco Pautasso

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• Published: July xviii, 2013
• https://doi.org/ten.1371/periodical.pcbi.1003149

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Citation: Pautasso M (2013) 10 Simple Rules for Writing a Literature Review. PLoS Comput Biol nine(7): e1003149. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pcbi.1003149

Editor: Philip E. Bourne, University of California San Diego, Usa of America

Published: July 18, 2013

Copyright: © 2013 Marco Pautasso. This is an open-access article distributed nether the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original writer and source are credited.

Funding: This work was funded past the French Foundation for Research on Biodiversity (FRB) through its Centre for Synthesis and Analysis of Biodiversity information (CESAB), as role of the NETSEED research project. The funders had no role in the preparation of the manuscript.

Competing interests: The author has declared that no competing interests exist.

Literature reviews are in great need in most scientific fields. Their need stems from the ever-increasing output of scientific publications [i]. For case, compared to 1991, in 2008 three, eight, and forty times more papers were indexed in Web of Scientific discipline on malaria, obesity, and biodiversity, respectively [ii]. Given such mountains of papers, scientists cannot be expected to examine in detail every single new paper relevant to their interests [iii]. Thus, it is both advantageous and necessary to rely on regular summaries of the contempo literature. Although recognition for scientists mainly comes from primary enquiry, timely literature reviews can pb to new synthetic insights and are oftentimes widely read [four]. For such summaries to be useful, nonetheless, they demand to be compiled in a professional way [v].

When starting from scratch, reviewing the literature can require a titanic amount 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 at present offering courses in reviewing the literature, given that nigh enquiry students start their project by producing an overview of what has already been washed on their research issue [half dozen]. Even so, it is likely that nigh scientists have non thought in detail about how to approach and conduct out a literature review.

Reviewing the literature requires the power 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 x simple rules I learned working on most 25 literature reviews as a PhD and postdoctoral student. Ideas and insights too come from discussions with coauthors and colleagues, as well equally feedback from reviewers and editors.

Rule 1: Define a Topic and Audience

How to choose which topic to review? In that location are so many problems in gimmicky science that yous could spend a lifetime of attending conferences and reading the literature merely pondering what to review. On the 1 paw, if you take several years to choose, several other people may accept had the same idea in the meantime. On the other mitt, only a well-considered topic is likely to lead to a brilliant literature review [eight]. The topic must at least exist:

1. interesting to you (ideally, yous should take come beyond a series of contempo papers related to your line of piece of work that call for a disquisitional summary),
2. an of import aspect of the field (so that many readers will be interested in the review and there will exist enough textile to write it), and
3. a well-divers issue (otherwise yous could potentially include thousands of publications, which would brand the review unhelpful).

Ideas for potential reviews may come from papers providing lists of key research questions to exist answered [nine], just also from serendipitous moments during desultory reading and discussions. In addition to choosing your topic, you should besides select a target audience. In many cases, the topic (due east.one thousand., web services in computational biological science) volition automatically ascertain an audition (eastward.one thousand., computational biologists), but that aforementioned topic may also be of interest to neighbouring fields (e.g., computer scientific discipline, biology, etc.).

Dominion 2: Search and Re-search the Literature

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

1. keep track of the search items you lot use (so that your search can be replicated [10]),
2. go along a listing of papers whose pdfs y'all cannot access immediately (so every bit to recall them later with alternative strategies),
3. use a paper direction system (east.g., Mendeley, Papers, Qiqqa, Sente),
4. define early on in the process some criteria for exclusion of irrelevant papers (these criteria tin so be described in the review to assistance ascertain its scope), and
5. do not simply look for research papers in the surface area you wish to review, but besides seek previous reviews.

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

Effigy 1. A conceptual diagram of the need for different types of literature reviews depending on the corporeality of published inquiry papers and literature reviews.

The bottom-correct situation (many literature reviews but few research papers) is non just a theoretical situation; information technology applies, for example, to the study of the impacts of climate change on found diseases, where there appear to be more than literature reviews than research studies [33].

https://doi.org/10.1371/periodical.pcbi.1003149.g001

1. discussing in your review the approaches, limitations, and conclusions of past reviews,
2. trying to find a new bending that has not been covered fairly in the previous reviews, and
3. incorporating new material that has inevitably accumulated since their appearance.

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

1. exist thorough,
2. use different keywords and database sources (e.yard., DBLP, Google Scholar, ISI Proceedings, JSTOR Search, Medline, Scopus, Web of Science), and
3. look at who has cited past relevant papers and volume capacity.

Rule three: Have Notes While Reading

If you read the papers first, and simply afterwards get-go writing the review, yous will demand a very adept retentivity to remember who wrote what, and what your impressions and associations were while reading each single paper. My communication is, while reading, to kickoff writing downwards interesting pieces of data, insights about how to organize the review, and thoughts on what to write. This way, past the fourth dimension you lot have read the literature you selected, you will already have a rough draft of the review.

Of grade, this draft will still demand much rewriting, restructuring, and rethinking to obtain a text with a coherent argument [11], simply you will have avoided the danger posed by staring at a bare document. Be conscientious when taking notes to employ quotation marks if you lot are provisionally copying verbatim from the literature. It is advisable then to reformulate such quotes with your own words in the final draft. It is important to exist careful in noting the references already at this stage, and so equally to avoid misattributions. Using referencing software from the very commencement of your endeavour volition save you fourth dimension.

Rule four: Choose the Blazon of Review You Wish to Write

Subsequently having taken notes while reading the literature, y'all will take a rough idea of the amount of fabric available for the review. This is probably a practiced time to determine whether to go for a mini- or a full review. Some journals are now favouring the publication of rather short reviews focusing on the concluding few years, with a limit on the number of words and citations. A mini-review is not necessarily a pocket-size review: it may well attract more attention from decorated readers, although it volition inevitably simplify some bug and leave out some relevant material due to space limitations. A full review will have the reward of more freedom to cover in detail the complexities of a particular scientific development, simply may then be left in the pile of the very of import papers "to be read" by readers with fiddling 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 interpretation of each reviewed study, integrative reviews attempt to find common ideas and concepts from the reviewed material [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 evidence, which is gathered using a predefined protocol to reduce bias [13], [fourteen]. When systematic reviews analyse quantitative results in a quantitative fashion, they become meta-analyses. The selection between different review types will have to be made on a case-by-case basis, depending not simply on the nature of the fabric found and the preferences of the target journal(due south), but too on the time bachelor to write the review and the number of coauthors [fifteen].

Rule five: Go on the Review Focused, but Make It of Wide Interest

Whether your programme is to write a mini- or a full review, information technology is good communication to keep it focused 16,17. Including fabric just for the sake of it can hands lead to reviews that are trying to do too many things at once. The need to keep a review focused tin can be problematic for interdisciplinary reviews, where the aim is to span the gap betwixt fields [18]. If you are writing a review on, for example, how epidemiological approaches are used in modelling the spread of ideas, you lot may exist inclined to include material from both parent fields, epidemiology and the report of cultural diffusion. This may be necessary to some extent, but in this case a focused review would only deal in item with those studies at the interface betwixt epidemiology and the spread of ideas.

While focus is an important feature of a successful review, this requirement has to be counterbalanced with the demand to make the review relevant to a broad audience. This square may exist circled by discussing the wider implications of the reviewed topic for other disciplines.

Rule half-dozen: Be Critical and Consistent

Reviewing the literature is not stamp collecting. A good review does non just summarize the literature, only discusses it critically, identifies methodological bug, and points out research gaps [19]. Later having read a review of the literature, a reader should accept a rough idea of:

1. the major achievements in the reviewed field,
2. the main areas of debate, and
3. the outstanding research questions.

It is challenging to achieve a successful review on all these fronts. A solution tin be to involve a ready of complementary coauthors: some people are first-class at mapping what has been achieved, some others are very good at identifying dark clouds on the horizon, and some accept instead a knack at predicting where solutions are going to come up from. If your journal gild has exactly this sort of squad, then you lot should definitely write a review of the literature! In addition to critical thinking, a literature review needs consistency, for example in the choice of passive vs. active vox and present vs. past tense.

Rule vii: Find a Logical Construction

Like a well-baked block, a good review has a number of telling features: it is worth the reader's time, timely, systematic, well written, focused, and critical. It also needs a good structure. With reviews, the usual subdivision of research papers into introduction, methods, results, and word does not work or is rarely used. All the same, a general introduction of the context and, toward the end, a recapitulation of the main points covered and have-domicile messages brand sense likewise in the case of reviews. For systematic reviews, there is a trend towards including data about how the literature was searched (database, keywords, time limits) [twenty].

How tin you organize the flow of the primary body of the review so that the reader will be drawn into and guided through information technology? It is mostly helpful to draw a conceptual scheme of the review, e.g., with mind-mapping techniques. Such diagrams can help recognize a logical way to lodge and link the various sections of a review [21]. This is the case not just at the writing stage, simply also for readers if the diagram is included in the review equally a figure. A careful selection of diagrams and figures relevant to the reviewed topic can exist very helpful to structure the text also [22].

Rule eight: Make Use of Feedback

Reviews of the literature are usually peer-reviewed in the aforementioned way every bit research papers, and rightly so [23]. As a rule, incorporating feedback from reviewers greatly helps better a review typhoon. 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. Information technology is however advisable to reread the draft one more fourth dimension earlier submission, equally a last-minute correction of typos, leaps, and muddled sentences may enable the reviewers to focus on providing advice on the content rather than the grade.

Feedback is vital to writing a adept review, and should be sought from a variety of colleagues, so as to obtain a diverseness of views on the draft. This may lead in some cases to conflicting views on the merits of the newspaper, and on how to amend it, just such a situation is better than the absence of feedback. A diverseness of feedback perspectives on a literature review can aid identify where the consensus view stands in the mural of the current scientific understanding of an consequence [24].

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

In many cases, reviewers of the literature will have published studies relevant to the review they are writing. This could create a conflict of interest: how can reviewers study objectively on their own piece of work [25]? Some scientists may exist overly enthusiastic about what they have published, and thus risk giving as well much importance to their own findings in the review. However, bias could likewise occur in the other direction: some scientists may exist unduly dismissive of their own achievements, then that they volition tend to downplay their contribution (if any) to a field when reviewing information technology.

In general, a review of the literature should neither be a public relations brochure nor an exercise in competitive self-deprival. If a reviewer is upward to the job of producing a well-organized and methodical review, which flows well and provides a service to the readership, so it should be possible to be objective in reviewing 1'south own relevant findings. In reviews written by multiple authors, this may be accomplished by assigning the review of the results of a coauthor to different coauthors.

Rule 10: Exist Up-to-Engagement, just Do Non Forget Older Studies

Given the progressive acceleration in the publication of scientific papers, today'due south reviews of the literature need awareness not just of the overall direction and achievements of a field of inquiry, just too of the latest studies, and so as not to become out-of-date before they have been published. Ideally, a literature review should non identify as a major research gap an issue that has just been addressed in a serial of papers in press (the aforementioned 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 can take months before these announced in scientific databases. Some reviews declare that they have scanned the literature up to a certain point in fourth dimension, 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 simply appeared is particularly challenging, considering in that location is little perspective with which to approximate their significance and impact on further enquiry and society.

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

Acknowledgments

Many thanks to Yard. Barbosa, One thousand. Dehnen-Schmutz, T. Döring, D. Fontaneto, M. Garbelotto, O. Holdenrieder, Thou. Jeger, D. Lonsdale, A. MacLeod, P. Mills, M. Moslonka-Lefebvre, G. Stancanelli, P. Weisberg, and Ten. Xu for insights and discussions, and to P. Bourne, T. Matoni, and D. Smith for helpful comments on a previous draft.

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