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10 Simple Rules for Writing a Literature Review

Ten Unproblematic Rules for Writing a Literature Review

• Marco Pautasso

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• Published: July 18, 2013
• https://doi.org/x.1371/periodical.pcbi.1003149

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

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

Published: July eighteen, 2013

Copyright: © 2013 Marco Pautasso. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons 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 Enquiry on Biodiversity (FRB) through its Centre for Synthesis and Analysis of Biodiversity data (CESAB), equally role of the NETSEED research project. The funders had no part in the grooming of the manuscript.

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

Literature reviews are in great demand in most scientific fields. Their need stems from the always-increasing output of scientific publications [1]. For example, compared to 1991, in 2008 iii, eight, and forty times more than papers were indexed in Web of Science on malaria, obesity, and biodiversity, respectively [two]. Given such mountains of papers, scientists cannot be expected to examine in item every unmarried 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 master inquiry, timely literature reviews can atomic number 82 to new synthetic insights and are often widely read [four]. For such summaries to be useful, even so, they need to be compiled in a professional person way [5].

When starting from scratch, reviewing the literature tin can require a titanic amount of piece of work. That is why researchers who accept spent their career working on a sure enquiry issue are in a perfect position to review that literature. Some graduate schools are now offer courses in reviewing the literature, given that most research students starting time their project past producing an overview of what has already been done on their research upshot [6]. However, it is likely that almost scientists have not idea in detail about how to approach and carry out a literature review.

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

Rule 1: Ascertain a Topic and Audience

How to choose which topic to review? There are and then many bug in contemporary science that yous could spend a lifetime of attention conferences and reading the literature just pondering what to review. On the one hand, if you take several years to choose, several other people may accept had the aforementioned idea in the meantime. On the other hand, only a well-considered topic is probable to pb to a bright literature review [8]. The topic must at least be:

1. interesting to yous (ideally, you should accept come beyond a serial of recent papers related to your line of work that call for a disquisitional summary),
2. an of import attribute of the field (so that many readers will be interested in the review and there will be plenty cloth to write it), and
3. a well-defined upshot (otherwise you could potentially include thousands of publications, which would make the review unhelpful).

Ideas for potential reviews may come from papers providing lists of key inquiry questions to be answered [ix], simply besides from serendipitous moments during sporadic reading and discussions. In improver to choosing your topic, you should besides select a target audience. In many cases, the topic (e.g., web services in computational biology) volition automatically define an audience (due east.m., computational biologists), only that same topic may also be of interest to neighbouring fields (e.k., computer science, 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. Five pieces of advice here:

1. keep track of the search items y'all utilize (and then that your search tin can be replicated [x]),
2. keep a list of papers whose pdfs you lot cannot access immediately (so as to call up them later with alternative strategies),
3. use a paper direction organisation (e.grand., Mendeley, Papers, Qiqqa, Sente),
4. define early in the process some criteria for exclusion of irrelevant papers (these criteria tin and 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, only also seek previous reviews.

The chances are high that someone volition already accept published a literature review (Figure 1), if not exactly on the issue you are planning to tackle, at least on a related topic. If at that place are already a few or several reviews of the literature on your upshot, my communication is not to give up, but to carry on with your own literature review,

Effigy 1. A conceptual diagram of the demand for unlike types of literature reviews depending on the amount of published research papers and literature reviews.

The lesser-right situation (many literature reviews but few research papers) is non just a theoretical state of affairs; it applies, for instance, to the study of the impacts of climate change on constitute diseases, where there appear to exist more 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 angle that has not been covered adequately 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 utilize:

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

Dominion 3: Take Notes While Reading

If you lot read the papers first, and only afterwards showtime writing the review, you will need a very good retentiveness to recollect who wrote what, and what your impressions and associations were while reading each unmarried newspaper. My communication is, while reading, to beginning writing down interesting pieces of data, insights about how to organize the review, and thoughts on what to write. This way, by the fourth dimension you have read the literature y'all selected, you will already accept 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], merely you will have avoided the danger posed by staring at a blank certificate. Be conscientious when taking notes to use quotation marks if you are provisionally copying verbatim from the literature. Information technology is advisable and so to reformulate such quotes with your own words in the terminal draft. It is important to be careful in noting the references already at this phase, then as to avoid misattributions. Using referencing software from the very beginning of your endeavour will save yous time.

Dominion four: Cull the Blazon of Review You Wish to Write

After having taken notes while reading the literature, you lot will have a rough thought of the amount of material available for the review. This is probably a good fourth dimension to decide whether to go for a mini- or a full review. Some journals are at present favouring the publication of rather brusk 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 attract more attending from decorated readers, although information technology volition inevitably simplify some issues and leave out some relevant material due to infinite limitations. A total review will have the advantage of more liberty to comprehend in particular the complexities of a particular scientific evolution, simply may then be left in the pile of the very important papers "to exist read" by readers with little 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 written report, integrative reviews effort to detect mutual ideas and concepts from the reviewed material [12]. A similar stardom exists betwixt narrative and systematic reviews: while narrative reviews are qualitative, systematic reviews try to test a hypothesis based on the published evidence, which is gathered using a predefined protocol to reduce bias [13], [14]. When systematic reviews analyse quantitative results in a quantitative fashion, they become meta-analyses. The choice between different review types will have to exist made on a case-past-case basis, depending not just on the nature of the material found and the preferences of the target journal(s), but also on the time available to write the review and the number of coauthors [15].

Dominion 5: Keep the Review Focused, but Make Information technology of Broad Interest

Whether your programme is to write a mini- or a full review, information technology is good communication to keep information technology focused 16,17. Including fabric just for the sake of information technology can easily lead to reviews that are trying to exercise too many things at in one case. The need to keep a review focused can be problematic for interdisciplinary reviews, where the aim is to bridge the gap between fields [18]. If you are writing a review on, for instance, how epidemiological approaches are used in modelling the spread of ideas, y'all may be inclined to include fabric from both parent fields, epidemiology and the study of cultural diffusion. This may be necessary to some extent, but in this example a focused review would but deal in detail with those studies at the interface between epidemiology and the spread of ideas.

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

Dominion 6: Be Disquisitional and Consistent

Reviewing the literature is not stamp collecting. A good review does not just summarize the literature, just discusses it critically, identifies methodological problems, and points out research gaps [19]. Subsequently having read a review of the literature, a reader should have a rough thought of:

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

It is challenging to achieve a successful review on all these fronts. A solution tin can be to involve a set of complementary coauthors: some people are splendid at mapping what has been accomplished, some others are very skilful at identifying nighttime clouds on the horizon, and some have instead a knack at predicting where solutions are going to come from. If your journal gild has exactly this sort of team, then you should definitely write a review of the literature! In improver to critical thinking, a literature review needs consistency, for example in the selection of passive vs. active voice and nowadays vs. past tense.

Dominion 7: Find a Logical Structure

Like a well-baked block, a good review has a number of telling features: it is worth the reader'south time, timely, systematic, well written, focused, and critical. It also needs a proficient construction. With reviews, the usual subdivision of research papers into introduction, methods, results, and word does non work or is rarely used. However, a general introduction of the context and, toward the finish, a recapitulation of the main points covered and take-habitation letters make sense also 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 can you organize the flow of the chief trunk of the review so that the reader will be fatigued into and guided through information technology? It is generally helpful to draw a conceptual scheme of the review, east.g., with mind-mapping techniques. Such diagrams tin help recognize a logical way to society 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 can be very helpful to construction the text likewise [22].

Rule 8: Make Apply of Feedback

Reviews of the literature are unremarkably peer-reviewed in the aforementioned way as enquiry papers, and rightly then [23]. Equally a rule, incorporating feedback from reviewers greatly helps ameliorate a review draft. Having read the review with a fresh heed, reviewers may spot inaccuracies, inconsistencies, and ambiguities that had not been noticed past the writers due to rereading the typescript too many times. It is however advisable to reread the draft ane more than fourth dimension before submission, as 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 form.

Feedback is vital to writing a good review, and should be sought from a variety of colleagues, so as to obtain a diversity of views on the draft. This may lead in some cases to alien views on the merits of the paper, and on how to meliorate it, but such a situation is better than the absence of feedback. A diversity of feedback perspectives on a literature review can assistance place where the consensus view stands in the landscape of the current scientific understanding of an issue [24].

Rule 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 disharmonize of interest: how can reviewers report objectively on their ain piece of work [25]? Some scientists may be overly enthusiastic about what they have published, and thus hazard giving too much importance to their own findings in the review. Yet, bias could also occur in the other management: some scientists may exist disproportionately dismissive of their ain achievements, so that they volition tend to downplay their contribution (if any) 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 cocky-deprival. 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 one's ain relevant findings. In reviews written by multiple authors, this may exist achieved by assigning the review of the results of a coauthor to unlike coauthors.

Rule ten: Exist Up-to-Date, 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 but of the overall management and achievements of a field of inquiry, but likewise of the latest studies, so as not to go out-of-engagement before they have been published. Ideally, a literature review should not identify equally a major inquiry gap an issue that has but been addressed in a serial 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 keep an eye on electronic lists of papers in press, given that information technology tin can take months earlier these appear in scientific databases. Some reviews declare that they have scanned the literature upward to a certain point in time, just given that peer review can be a rather lengthy procedure, a full search for newly appeared literature at the revision stage may be worthwhile. Assessing the contribution of papers that accept just appeared is particularly challenging, considering there is petty perspective with which to guess their significance and impact on further enquiry and order.

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

Acknowledgments

Many thank you to M. Barbosa, Thou. 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 10. 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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Source: https://journals.plos.org/ploscompbiol/article?id=10.1371%2Fjournal.pcbi.1003149

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