Description
Documentation explaining the significance of literature review in research.
Importance of Literature Review in Research
1. Introduction
The creation of a literature review is one of the most difficult and important tasks during any research. It requires the culmination of many skills including library research, logical arrangement of information, and scientific writing. The purpose of the literature review may be manifold but usually it is the first step in the process of doing scientific research. It is surprising that most literature in science is rather useless in that it is never cited in other publications. It is estimated that only 5% of the publications in the natural sciences are useful in terms of being accurate, significant and worthy of guiding future research. Thus, the role of a good literature review is to find and present the pertinent work from the primary literature in a logical, organized manner and to bring the reader as up-to-date as possible. Primary literature is defined as peer-reviewed journals that publish the original research findings. Review articles and general science coverage articles are called secondary literature. One way of looking at this is to find the latest review article on a subject, use that information for the introduction, and then update that with the primary literature throughout the text of the review.
2.
Definition of Literature Review
It is a critical summary and an assessment of the current state of knowledge or current state of the art in a particular field. The ability to carry out a literature review is an important skill for any researcher. It is required to provide evidence that the researcher, before undertaking the research has read a certain amount of relevant literature on the topic that he/she has understood that literature, and that he/she can summarize the material read in a coherent way. Literature review is precisely that summary. Understanding the literature in any research topic will prevent the researcher from repeating previous errors, or redoing work which has already been done. It will also give him/her insights into aspects of the topic which might be worthy of exploration and future research.
3.
Purpose of a Literature Review
Research Paper Writing 2|Page
•
To provide the reader with an up to date account and discussion of the research findings in a particular topic – and also learn about the ways other people have constructed their own research projects in order to develop further understanding.
•
To be able to detect conflicting points of view expressed by different authors – These conflicting points of view might be the indicators of diverging theories within the same topic. A researcher needs to be aware of these conflicting theories as well as of the supporting arguments for him/her to assess their value and make up his/her own mind on the topic. To be able to discuss relevant research carried out in the same topic – It is important to be able to discuss relevant research because very often it is very difficult to keep abreast of everything that is published every year in a topic. The job of the writer of the literature review is to summarize and discuss the major documents published in that topic over a stated period of time. The discussion will take into account the methods and the results or findings of the most relevant research. The reviewer will assess whether the methodology is appropriate and whether the results seem valid. The reviewer therefore evaluates the quality of the research as opposed to merely listing documents. The reviewer may also discuss material published in other fields which are related to the main topic. This process is very important since very often research in the social sciences is multidisciplinary, i.e. knowledge gets generated from many disciplines and needs to be integrated. For example in order to be able to research and write a literature review on a question like ‘Why do teenagers smoke?’ The reviewer might need to read material from journals in psychology, medicine, and sociology.
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•
4.
Strategy for Literature Review
The researcher will need to develop some basic reading strategies and decide: • • Where to read from – Library, photocopies etc What to read – These may include books, journals, reports, popular media, computer-based material, internal reports, letters, conference proceedings etc or the relevance of the information available. Research Paper Writing
3|Page
•
Whom to read – The researcher should ascertain how authoritative author of the information and his/her motivation in writing. This might help the researcher to determine if the person has a biased perspective on an issue. How to find what the researcher needs to read - This is slightly more complicated than it seems because the researcher will need to develop tricks to scan a lot of documents very fast, and decide if a particular document is good enough to merit careful reading. Once the document is selected for serious reading, the researcher will need to summarize and criticize it.
•
5. Writing a Literature Review
The review will contain the following: 1. Title page - The title should be succinct and descriptive. 2. Outline - This gives the details of organization of the information covered in the review. Each item listed will correspond to a section heading within the text of the review. 3. Text - The first section of the text should be the introduction. Here the topic is defined and appropriate historical perspective of the topic should also be given. The text should end with a succinct summary or conclusion section on the most relevant findings of the review or a discussion of the future directions of research based on the logic of the information presented. 4. Literature cited - Only the citations of the articles that were referenced within the review are to be listed here. It’s advisable not to use footnotes in the text for referencing. The reader should be able to find the original source of all the information presented. It is better to over-cite than to under-cite.
Research Paper Writing 4|Page
doc_337441556.doc
Documentation explaining the significance of literature review in research.
Importance of Literature Review in Research
1. Introduction
The creation of a literature review is one of the most difficult and important tasks during any research. It requires the culmination of many skills including library research, logical arrangement of information, and scientific writing. The purpose of the literature review may be manifold but usually it is the first step in the process of doing scientific research. It is surprising that most literature in science is rather useless in that it is never cited in other publications. It is estimated that only 5% of the publications in the natural sciences are useful in terms of being accurate, significant and worthy of guiding future research. Thus, the role of a good literature review is to find and present the pertinent work from the primary literature in a logical, organized manner and to bring the reader as up-to-date as possible. Primary literature is defined as peer-reviewed journals that publish the original research findings. Review articles and general science coverage articles are called secondary literature. One way of looking at this is to find the latest review article on a subject, use that information for the introduction, and then update that with the primary literature throughout the text of the review.
2.
Definition of Literature Review
It is a critical summary and an assessment of the current state of knowledge or current state of the art in a particular field. The ability to carry out a literature review is an important skill for any researcher. It is required to provide evidence that the researcher, before undertaking the research has read a certain amount of relevant literature on the topic that he/she has understood that literature, and that he/she can summarize the material read in a coherent way. Literature review is precisely that summary. Understanding the literature in any research topic will prevent the researcher from repeating previous errors, or redoing work which has already been done. It will also give him/her insights into aspects of the topic which might be worthy of exploration and future research.
3.
Purpose of a Literature Review
Research Paper Writing 2|Page
•
To provide the reader with an up to date account and discussion of the research findings in a particular topic – and also learn about the ways other people have constructed their own research projects in order to develop further understanding.
•
To be able to detect conflicting points of view expressed by different authors – These conflicting points of view might be the indicators of diverging theories within the same topic. A researcher needs to be aware of these conflicting theories as well as of the supporting arguments for him/her to assess their value and make up his/her own mind on the topic. To be able to discuss relevant research carried out in the same topic – It is important to be able to discuss relevant research because very often it is very difficult to keep abreast of everything that is published every year in a topic. The job of the writer of the literature review is to summarize and discuss the major documents published in that topic over a stated period of time. The discussion will take into account the methods and the results or findings of the most relevant research. The reviewer will assess whether the methodology is appropriate and whether the results seem valid. The reviewer therefore evaluates the quality of the research as opposed to merely listing documents. The reviewer may also discuss material published in other fields which are related to the main topic. This process is very important since very often research in the social sciences is multidisciplinary, i.e. knowledge gets generated from many disciplines and needs to be integrated. For example in order to be able to research and write a literature review on a question like ‘Why do teenagers smoke?’ The reviewer might need to read material from journals in psychology, medicine, and sociology.
•
•
4.
Strategy for Literature Review
The researcher will need to develop some basic reading strategies and decide: • • Where to read from – Library, photocopies etc What to read – These may include books, journals, reports, popular media, computer-based material, internal reports, letters, conference proceedings etc or the relevance of the information available. Research Paper Writing
3|Page
•
Whom to read – The researcher should ascertain how authoritative author of the information and his/her motivation in writing. This might help the researcher to determine if the person has a biased perspective on an issue. How to find what the researcher needs to read - This is slightly more complicated than it seems because the researcher will need to develop tricks to scan a lot of documents very fast, and decide if a particular document is good enough to merit careful reading. Once the document is selected for serious reading, the researcher will need to summarize and criticize it.
•
5. Writing a Literature Review
The review will contain the following: 1. Title page - The title should be succinct and descriptive. 2. Outline - This gives the details of organization of the information covered in the review. Each item listed will correspond to a section heading within the text of the review. 3. Text - The first section of the text should be the introduction. Here the topic is defined and appropriate historical perspective of the topic should also be given. The text should end with a succinct summary or conclusion section on the most relevant findings of the review or a discussion of the future directions of research based on the logic of the information presented. 4. Literature cited - Only the citations of the articles that were referenced within the review are to be listed here. It’s advisable not to use footnotes in the text for referencing. The reader should be able to find the original source of all the information presented. It is better to over-cite than to under-cite.
Research Paper Writing 4|Page
doc_337441556.doc