What Are the Basic Guidleines for a Literature Review

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10 Simple Rules for Writing a Literature Review

Ten Simple Rules for Writing a Literature Review

• Marco Pautasso

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• Published: July 18, 2013
• https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pcbi.1003149

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Citation: Pautasso Thousand (2013) Ten Unproblematic Rules for Writing a Literature Review. PLoS Comput Biol nine(seven): e1003149. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pcbi.1003149

Editor: Philip Eastward. Bourne, University of California San Diego, U.s. of America

Published: July xviii, 2013

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

Funding: This piece of 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 research projection. The funders had no role in the preparation of the manuscript.

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

Literature reviews are in great need in most scientific fields. Their demand stems from the ever-increasing output of scientific publications [ane]. For example, compared to 1991, in 2008 three, eight, and forty times more papers were indexed in Spider web of Science on malaria, obesity, and biodiversity, respectively [ii]. Given such mountains of papers, scientists cannot be expected to examine in item every single new paper relevant to their interests [3]. Thus, it is both advantageous and necessary to rely on regular summaries of the recent literature. Although recognition for scientists mainly comes from chief inquiry, timely literature reviews tin lead to new synthetic insights and are oftentimes widely read [four]. For such summaries to exist useful, notwithstanding, they demand to be compiled in a professional person manner [5].

When starting from scratch, reviewing the literature tin can require a titanic corporeality of work. That is why researchers who accept 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 start their projection past producing an overview of what has already been done on their research issue [half dozen]. Still, it is likely that most scientists accept not thought in detail well-nigh how to arroyo and carry out a literature review.

Reviewing the literature requires the ability to juggle multiple tasks, from finding and evaluating relevant material to synthesising information from various sources, from critical thinking to paraphrasing, evaluating, and citation skills [7]. In this contribution, I share 10 elementary rules I learned working on about 25 literature reviews as a PhD and postdoctoral student. Ideas and insights also come up from discussions with coauthors and colleagues, as well as feedback from reviewers and editors.

Rule 1: Ascertain a Topic and Audition

How to choose which topic to review? There are and so many issues in contemporary science that you could spend a lifetime of attending conferences and reading the literature just pondering what to review. On the ane hand, if you take several years to choose, several other people may have had the same idea in the concurrently. On the other manus, but a well-considered topic is likely to lead to a brilliant literature review [8]. The topic must at least exist:

1. interesting to you (ideally, you should accept come across a series of recent papers related to your line of work that call for a disquisitional summary),
2. an of import aspect of the field (so that many readers will exist interested in the review and at that place will be plenty material to write it), and
3. a well-defined issue (otherwise you could potentially include thousands of publications, which would brand the review unhelpful).

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

Rule 2: Search and Re-search the Literature

After having chosen your topic and audition, starting time by checking the literature and downloading relevant papers. Five pieces of advice here:

1. keep track of the search items you use (and then that your search can be replicated [10]),
2. go along a listing of papers whose pdfs you cannot access immediately (so as to remember them later with alternative strategies),
3. use a newspaper management system (e.g., Mendeley, Papers, Qiqqa, Sente),
4. define early in the procedure some criteria for exclusion of irrelevant papers (these criteria tin and so be described in the review to help define its scope), and
5. do not just look for research papers in the expanse yous wish to review, but also 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 are planning to tackle, at least on a related topic. If there are already a few or several reviews of the literature on your issue, my advice is non to give up, only to carry on with your ain literature review,

Figure one. A conceptual diagram of the need for different types of literature reviews depending on the corporeality of published enquiry papers and literature reviews.

The bottom-correct state of affairs (many literature reviews simply few research papers) is non but a theoretical situation; information technology applies, for example, to the study of the impacts of climatic change on plant diseases, where in that location announced to be more literature reviews than enquiry studies [33].

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

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

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

1. be thorough,
2. employ different keywords and database sources (e.chiliad., DBLP, Google Scholar, ISI Proceedings, JSTOR Search, Medline, Scopus, Web of Science), and
3. look at who has cited by relevant papers and book chapters.

Dominion three: Accept Notes While Reading

If y'all read the papers beginning, and only afterward first writing the review, you will need a very good memory to remember who wrote what, and what your impressions and associations were while reading each unmarried paper. My communication is, while reading, to start writing down interesting pieces of information, insights most how to organize the review, and thoughts on what to write. This way, past the time you take read the literature you selected, you lot will already have a rough typhoon of the review.

Of form, this draft will still need much rewriting, restructuring, and rethinking to obtain a text with a coherent argument [xi], but you will have avoided the danger posed by staring at a blank certificate. Be conscientious when taking notes to employ quotation marks if you are provisionally copying verbatim from the literature. Information technology is appropriate then to reformulate such quotes with your own words in the final draft. It is important to be careful in noting the references already at this stage, then as to avoid misattributions. Using referencing software from the very first of your endeavour will save you time.

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

After having taken notes while reading the literature, you will have a rough idea of the amount of material bachelor for the review. This is probably a good time to decide whether to go for a mini- or a full review. Some journals are at present 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 minor review: it may well concenter more attention from busy readers, although it volition inevitably simplify some issues and leave out some relevant textile due to space limitations. A total review will have the advantage of more freedom to cover in particular the complexities of a item scientific evolution, but may then be left in the pile of the very important papers "to exist read" by readers with piffling time to spare for major monographs.

There is probably a continuum between mini- and full reviews. The same 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 stardom exists between narrative and systematic reviews: while narrative reviews are qualitative, systematic reviews attempt to test a hypothesis based on the published testify, which is gathered using a predefined protocol to reduce bias [xiii], [xiv]. When systematic reviews analyse quantitative results in a quantitative way, they become meta-analyses. The selection between unlike review types will have to be made on a case-by-instance basis, depending non only on the nature of the cloth found and the preferences of the target journal(due south), but also on the time available to write the review and the number of coauthors [15].

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

Whether your plan is to write a mini- or a total review, it is skilful advice to go on it focused 16,17. Including material just for the sake of information technology tin easily lead to reviews that are trying to do besides many things at once. The need to keep a review focused can be problematic for interdisciplinary reviews, where the aim is to span the gap between fields [18]. If you are writing a review on, for example, how epidemiological approaches are used in modelling the spread of ideas, you may be inclined to include cloth 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 merely deal in item with those studies at the interface between epidemiology and the spread of ideas.

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

Rule 6: Be Critical and Consistent

Reviewing the literature is not stamp collecting. A skilful review does not simply summarize the literature, but discusses it critically, identifies methodological problems, and points out inquiry gaps [19]. Later on 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 master areas of debate, and
3. the outstanding research questions.

It is challenging to achieve a successful review on all these fronts. A solution tin can exist to involve a set of complementary coauthors: some people are excellent at mapping what has been accomplished, some others are very adept at identifying dark clouds on the horizon, and some have instead a knack at predicting where solutions are going to come from. If your journal club has exactly this sort of team, then you should definitely write a review of the literature! In addition to disquisitional thinking, a literature review needs consistency, for example in the choice of passive vs. agile voice and present vs. past tense.

Dominion 7: Find a Logical Structure

Like a well-baked cake, a good review has a number of telling features: it is worth the reader'south time, timely, systematic, well written, focused, and critical. Information technology also needs a good structure. With reviews, the usual subdivision of research papers into introduction, methods, results, and word does non piece of work or is rarely used. However, a full general introduction of the context and, toward the end, a recapitulation of the main points covered and take-domicile 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) [xx].

How tin you lot organize the flow of the main body of the review then that the reader will be drawn into and guided through it? 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 order and link the various sections of a review [21]. This is the case not but at the writing stage, merely also for readers if the diagram is included in the review as a figure. A careful selection of diagrams and figures relevant to the reviewed topic tin can exist very helpful to structure the text too [22].

Rule viii: Make Use of Feedback

Reviews of the literature are usually peer-reviewed in the same way every bit research papers, and rightly and then [23]. Every bit a rule, incorporating feedback from reviewers profoundly helps improve 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. Information technology is even so advisable to reread the draft i more than time before submission, as a concluding-minute correction of typos, leaps, and muddled sentences may enable the reviewers to focus on providing advice on the content rather than the class.

Feedback is vital to writing a good review, and should be sought from a variety of colleagues, and so every bit to obtain a diversity of views on the draft. This may lead in some cases to conflicting views on the claim of the paper, and on how to ameliorate it, only such a state of affairs is meliorate than the absence of feedback. A diversity of feedback perspectives on a literature review can help identify where the consensus view stands in the landscape of the current scientific understanding of an effect [24].

Dominion ix: Include Your Ain Relevant Research, but Be Objective

In many cases, reviewers of the literature volition have published studies relevant to the review they are writing. This could create a conflict of interest: how tin reviewers study objectively on their ain piece of work [25]? Some scientists may be overly enthusiastic most what they have published, and thus adventure giving as well much importance to their ain findings in the review. Notwithstanding, bias could too occur in the other management: some scientists may be disproportionately dismissive of their own achievements, so that they will 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-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 be objective in reviewing 1's own relevant findings. In reviews written by multiple authors, this may exist achieved past assigning the review of the results of a coauthor to different coauthors.

Rule ten: Be Up-to-Date, but Do Not 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 management and achievements of a field of research, but likewise of the latest studies, and so as not to become out-of-date before they have been published. Ideally, a literature review should not identify as a major research gap an issue that has just been addressed in a series of papers in printing (the same applies, of course, to older, overlooked studies ("sleeping beauties" [26])). This implies that literature reviewers would do well to proceed an center 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, merely given that peer review can exist a rather lengthy process, a total search for newly appeared literature at the revision phase may exist worthwhile. Assessing the contribution of papers that have just appeared is particularly challenging, because there is little perspective with which to guess their significance and affect on further research and social club.

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

Acknowledgments

Many cheers to M. Barbosa, K. Dehnen-Schmutz, T. Döring, D. Fontaneto, G. Garbelotto, O. Holdenrieder, G. Jeger, D. Lonsdale, A. MacLeod, P. Mills, G. 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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