The literature review primer 2014

The Literature

Review Primer

CONTENTS

What is a literature review? Definitions.

Link to online film of how to write a lit-

review (with quick notes by Alex.)

Alex’s Guide: Finding material for your

literature review

1) Choosing your topic 2) Collecting the most relevant (and

usually “peer reviewed”) articles and books

3) Using the tools (with worked examples):

(a) Subject Reference Books, (b) The Library, National and

International Book Catalogues.

(c) Databases of Electronic Journal Articles

(d) Thesis databases (e) Citation databases (f) Boolean Searching (g) Finding a specific Electronic

Journal (h) Setting up alerts (i) Using a Citation Database (j) RefWorks

4) Reading/Skimming the material, using their abstracts,

5) Grouping the material into the themes and sub-themes of your topic,

6) Identifying with sub-themes materials that agree, disagree, and points which are not covered at all.

What is a literature review?

A quick definition:

Literature Review

(Social Sciences) A formal,

reflective survey of the most significant

and relevant works of published and

peer-reviewed academic research on

a particular topic, summarizing and

discussing their findings

and methodologies in order to reflect

the current state of knowledge in the

field and the key questions raised.

Literature reviews do not themselves

present any previously unpublished

research. They may be published as

review articles in academic journals or

as an element in a thesis or

dissertation: in the case of the latter,

they serve to situate the current study

within the field.

Chandler, Daniel, and Rod

Munday. "literature review." In A

Dictionary of Media and

Communication. : Oxford

University Press, 2011.

http://www.oxfordreference.com/vi

ew/10.1093/acref/9780199568758.

001.0001/acref-9780199568758-e-

1550.

A much longer and practically-orientated

definition:

Literature Review

Noel A. Card

Literature reviews are systematic

syntheses of previous work around a

particular topic. Nearly all scholars

have written literature reviews at some

point; such reviews are common

requirements for class projects or as

part of theses, are often the first

section of empirical papers, and are

sometimes written to summarize a

field of study. Given the increasing

amount of literature in many fields,

reviews are critical in synthesizing

scientific knowledge. Although

common and important to science,

literature reviews are rarely considered

to be held to the same scientific rigor

as other aspects of the research

process. This entry describes the

types of literature reviews and

scientific standards for conducting

literature reviews.

Types of Literature Reviews

Although beginning scholars often

believe that there is one predefined

approach, various types of literature

reviews exist. Literature reviews can

vary along at least seven dimensions.

Focus

The focus is the basic unit of

information that the reviewer extracts

from the literature. Reviews most

commonly focus on research

outcomes, drawing conclusions of the

form of “The research shows X” or

“These studies find X whereas other

studies find Y.” Although research

outcomes are most common, other

foci are possible. Some reviews focus

on research methods, for example,

considering how many studies in a

field use longitudinal designs.

Literature reviews can also focus on

theories, such as what theoretical

explanations are commonly used

within a field or attempts to integrate

multiple theoretical perspectives.

Finally, literature reviews can focus on

typical practices within a field, for

instance, on what sort of interventions

are used in clinical literature or on the

type of data analyses conducted within

an area of empirical research.

Goals

Common goals include integrating

literature by drawing generalizations

(e.g., concluding the strength of an

effect from several studies), resolving

conflicts (e.g., why an effect is found in

some studies but not others), or

drawing links across separate fields

(e.g., demonstrating that two lines of

research are investigating a common

phenomenon). Another goal of a

literature review might be to identify

central issues, such as unresolved

questions or next steps for future

research. Finally, some reviews have

the goal of criticism; although this goal

might sound unsavory, it is important

for scientific fields to be evaluated

critically and have shortcomings noted.

Perspective

Literature reviews also vary in terms of

perspective, with some attempting to

represent the literature neutrally and

others arguing for a position. Although

few reviews fall entirely on one end of

this dimension or the other, it is useful

for readers to consider this perspective

when evaluating a review and for

writers to consider their own

perspective.

Coverage

Coverage refers to the amount of

literature on which the review is based.

At one extreme of this dimension is

exhaustive coverage, which uses all

available literature. A similar approach

is the exhaustive review with selective

citation, in which the reviewer uses all

available literature to draw conclusions

but cites only a sample of this

literature when writing the review.

Moving along this dimension, a review

can be representative, such that the

reviewer bases conclusions on and

cites a subset of the existing literature

believed to be similar to the larger

body of work. Finally, at the far end of

this continuum is the literature review

of most central works.

Organization

The most common organization is

conceptual, in which the reviewer

organizes literature around specific

sets of findings or questions. However,

historic organizations are also useful,

in that they provide a perspective on

how knowledge or practices have

changes across time. Methodological

organizations, in which findings are

arranged according to methodological

aspects of the reviewed studies, are

also a possible method of organizing

literature reviews.

Method of Synthesis

Literature reviews also vary in terms of

how conclusions are drawn, with the

endpoints of this continuum being

qualitative versus quantitative.

Qualitative reviews, which are also

called narrative reviews, are those in

which reviewers draw conclusions

based on their subjective evaluation of

the literature. Vote counting methods,

which might be considered

intermediate on the qualitative versus

quantitative dimension, involve tallying

the number of studies that find a

particular effect and basing

conclusions on this tally. Quantitative

reviews, which are sometimes also

called meta-analyses, involve

assigning numbers to the results of

studies (representing an effect size)

and then performing statistical

analyses of these results to draw

conclusions.

Audience

Literature reviews written to support an

empirical study are often read by

specialized scholars in one's own field.

In contrast, many stand-alone reviews

are read by those outside one's own

field, so it is important that these are

accessible to scholars from other

fields. Reviews can also serve as a

valuable resource for practitioners in

one's field (e.g., psychotherapists and

teachers) as well as policy makers and

the general public, so it is useful if

reviews are written in a manner

accessible to educated laypersons. In

short, the reviewer must consider the

likely audiences of the review and

adjust the level of specificity and

technical detail accordingly.

All of these seven dimensions are

important considerations when

preparing a literature review. As might

be expected, many reviews will have

multiple levels of these dimensions

(e.g., multiple goals directed toward

multiple audiences). Tendencies exist

for co-occurrence among dimensions;

for example, quantitative reviews

typically focus on research outcomes,

cover the literature exhaustively, and

are directed toward specialized

scholars. At the same time,

consideration of these dimensions

suggests the wide range of

possibilities available in preparing

literature reviews.

Scientific Standards for Literature

Reviews

Given the importance of literature

reviews, it is important to follow

scientific standards in preparing these

reviews. Just as empirical research

follows certain practices to ensure

validity, we can consider how various

decisions impact the quality of

conclusions drawn in a literature

review. This section follows Harris

Cooper's organization by describing

considerations at five stages of the

literature review process.

Problem Formulation

As in any scientific endeavor, the first

stage of a literature review is to

formulate a problem. Here, the central

considerations involve the questions

that the reviewer wishes to answer,

the constructs of interest, and the

population about which conclusions

are drawn. A literature review can only

answer questions about which prior

work exists.

For instance, to make conclusions of

causality, the reviewer will need to rely

on experimental (or perhaps

longitudinal) studies; concurrent

naturalistic studies would not provide

answers to this question. Defining the

constructs of interest poses two

potential complications: The existing

literature might use different terms for

the same construct, or the existing

literature might use similar terms to

describe different constructs. The

reviewer, therefore, needs to define

clearly the constructs of interest when

planning the review. Similarly, the

reviewer must consider which samples

will be included in the literature review,

for instance, deciding whether studies

of unique populations (e.g., prison,

psychiatric settings) should be

included within the review. The

advantages of a broad approach (in

terms of constructs and samples) are

that the conclusions of the review will

be more generalizable and might allow

for the identification of important

differences among studies, but the

advantages of a narrow approach are

that the literature will likely be more

consistent and the quantity of literature

that must be reviewed is smaller.

Literature Retrieval

When obtaining literature relevant for

the review, it is useful to conceptualize

the literature included as a sample

drawn from a population of all possible

works. This conceptualization

highlights the importance of obtaining

an unbiased sample of literature for

the review. If the literature reviewed is

not exhaustive, or at least

representative, of the extant research,

then the conclusions drawn might be

biased. One common threat to all

literature reviews is publication bias, or

the file drawer problem. This threat is

that studies that fail to find significant

effects (or that find counterintuitive

effects) are less likely to be published

and, therefore, are less likely to be

included in the review. Reviewers

should attempt to obtain unpublished

studies, which will either counter this

threat or at least allow the reviewer to

evaluate the magnitude of this bias

(e.g., comparing effects from

published vs. unpublished studies).

Another threat is that reviewers

typically must rely on literature written

in a language they know (e.g.,

English); this excludes literature

written in other languages and

therefore might exclude most studies

conducted in other countries. Although

it would be impractical for the reviewer

to learn every language in which

relevant literature might be written, the

reviewer should be aware of this

limitation and how it impacts the

literature on which the review is based.

To ensure transparency of a literature

review, the reviewer should report

means by which potentially relevant

literature was searched and obtained.

Inclusion Criteria

Deciding which works should inform

the review involves reading the

literature obtained and drawing

conclusions regarding relevance.

Obvious reasons to exclude works

include the investigation of constructs

or samples that are irrelevant to the

review (e.g., studies involving animals

when one is interested in human

behavior) or that do not provide

information relevant to the review

(e.g., treating the construct of interest

only as a covariate). Less obvious

decisions need to be made with works

that involve questionable quality or

methodological features different from

other studies. Including such works

might improve the generalizability of

the review on the one hand, but it

might contaminate the literature basis

or distract focus on the other hand.

Decisions at this stage will typically

involve refining the problem

formulation stage of the review.

Interpretation

The most time-consuming and difficult

stage is analyzing and interpreting the

literature. As mentioned, several

approaches to drawing conclusions

exist. Qualitative approaches involve

the reviewer performing some form of

internal synthesis; as such, they are

prone to reviewer subjectivity. At the

same time, qualitative approaches are

the only option when reviewing

nonempirical literature (e.g.,

theoretical propositions), and the

simplicity of qualitative decision

making is adequate for many

purposes. A more rigorous approach is

the vote-counting methods, in which

the reviewer tallies studies into

different categories (e.g., significant

versus nonsignificant results) and

bases decisions on either the

preponderance of evidence (informal

vote counting) or statistical

procedures (comparing the number of

studies finding significant results with

that expected by chance). Although

vote-counting methods reduce

subjectivity relative to qualitative

approaches, they are limited in that the

conclusions reached involve only

whether there is an effect (rather than

the magnitude of the effect). The best

way to draw conclusions from

empirical literature is through

quantitative, or meta-analytic,

approaches. Here, the reviewer codes

effect sizes for the studies then applies

statistical procedures to evaluate the

presence, magnitude, and sources of

differences of these effects across

studies.

Presentation

Although presentation formats are

highly disciplinary specific (and

therefore, the best way to learn how to

present reviews is to read reviews in

one's area), a few guidelines are

universal. First, the reviewer should be

transparent about the review process.

Just as empirical works are expected

to present sufficient details for

replication, a literature review should

provide sufficient detail for another

scholar to find the same literature,

include the same works, and draw the

same conclusions. Second, it is critical

that the written report answers the

original questions that motivated the

review or at least describes why such

answers cannot be reached and what

future work is needed to provide these

answers. A third guideline is to avoid

study-by-study listing. A good review

synthesizes—not merely lists—the

literature (it is useful to consider that a

phonebook contains a lot of

information, but is not very informative,

or interesting, to read). Reviewers

should avoid “Author A found …

Author B found …” writing. Effective

presentation is critical in ensuring that

the review has an impact on one's

field.

Card, N 2010, ‘Literature

Review’, in Neil J. Salkind (ed.),

SAGE Publications, Inc.,

Thousand Oaks, CA, pp. 726-9,

viewed 28 June 2013, doi:

10.4135/9781412961288.n222.

This last definition was found on the Sage

Research Methods Online database by

searching for “literature reviews’” – there are

plenty more to be found there – some general,

some usefully subject-specific:

Online Film Presentation

Presented by an academic rather than a

librarian, and available at:

http://vimeo.com/37318843

I took a few quick notes from this one while

watching it:

Lit review primarily requires getting a

grasp and background on the field,

making a framework for your own

research. An interdisciplinary is like

two separate lit reviews – how one

goes about weaving together two

separate stories. (Alex conclusion –

focus would/could be on similarities

and differences in the stories.)

How organise lit and impose order on

it - in this film six drafts of (the same)

lit review were examined, with

particular emphasis on stance and

language and development of a more

certain narrative and expert voice

through the drafts, from what was

originally an very uncertain-sounding

listing of research papers - the title of

title of presentation is “telling a

research story”. The lit. review should

tell a story.

(Alex notes – presenter is against

simple chronological listing – true – but

story often implies some chronology –

beginning, middle, end, future

possibilities - narrative animal that we

are. The Hegelian dialectic

progressions of academic argument,

traced through the literature – thesis,

antithesis, synthesis, new thesis….

etc. corresponds to the beginning,

middle, end, future possibilities of

narrative.)

QUALITY FIRST, NOT QUANTITY.

Should one critically evaluate each

piece? (Alex note, means in the written

review – obviously one does evaluate

each piece mentally.) In early drafts

examined in the presentation, the

writer spent too much space on

articles that were not v. important. This

not only wastes space but can cause

one to drift away from the point – a Lit

Review should make a POINT. Not

just he said, she said, but also a root

of argument/point to shape it. (Alex

note - “A peg to hang the story on” as

journalists phrase it. Often a sort of

yes or no question can serve as this

peg.) Any good story has to have a

point – a point implies not just a

description about the lit, but your views

on it – how well, if at all, it answers a

question.

Presenter points out that different

disciplines have different approaches

to reviews – hard sciences,

engineering, humanities, but maintains

that even in very “factual” reviews –

the authors of the literature have a

stance, obvious or not. (Alex note –

not always evident in some subject

areas, but it is likely that, while one

might not start out with a stance, one

tends to develop one in response to

reading the literature and weighing it

up.)

Narrative structure is not always

chronological though, other aspects of

arrangement might be to criticise the

methodologies or themes in the lit or

group things together by their

methods, assumptions, themes

coverage.

The presenter advises also that one

starts out with material and findings

that are not controversial and from

these moves into areas that are

controversial, where there are

debates, thesis, antithesis – you would

then find a synthesis or pick a side.

YOUR BIG AIM IS TO FIND A GAP IN

THE LITERATURE …. Typical

phrases in your lit review that signal

this might be things like, “Much has

been done in this area/ topic, however,

no studies have examined …..” You

might also identify a need for a

reanalysis and reconceptualization of

past views in the literature, applying a

new theory or research technique.

The question of the presenter; what is

your new contribution to the field?

What do you add to the story of the

literature so far….

Setting limits to the literature review:

potentially it is never ending – there is

always, potentially one more piece you

can include, or a new tangent or a new

direction, that one paper leads on to

another to suggest.

YOUR REAL PURPOSE IN THE LIT

REVIEW IS TO SAY THAT THERE IS

A GAP TO BE FILLED OR A DEBATE

TO BE LAUNCHED OR SUPPORTED

OR COUNTERED. (Alex takeaway-

point here, once you find the gap, and

can demonstrate it, you can stop.)

The presenter advises that a literature

review should include a section

explaining what you did, and why and

justifying your decision not to include

materials – because they were

outdated, peripheral, much the same

as before, vey derivative…. EXPLAIN

WHAT YOU ARE NOT DOING AND

WHY. (Alex takeaway points –

anticipate, and cover yourself against,

questions about why you didn’t do

such and such.)

Be very clear about your decision to

examine some sources or use some

finding aids in particular and not others

– e.g. particular newspapers and not

others…..

The presenter, pragmatically, points

out that the examiner (“reviewer” in

USA parlance) as well as the

supervisor (“advisor” in USA parlance)

will expect to see their own papers in

the review is they have written on the

subject.

It is vital to be aware that your readers

will have expectations of the literature

review – anticipate and meet the

expectations, (Alex note - or explain

and justify why you are not.)

How far back should you go? Depends

– it is a judgement call - but presenter

warns against just including recent

material (and Alex concurs very

strongly –there are tides and seasons

in the history of any literature, a

subject might have been very hot

some years ago, but not recently – if

you are reviving it you might have to

go back to when it was hot. Alex also

notes that a good subject

encyclopaedia can often give a clear,

and brief articulation of the history of

academic debate on a subject, listing

the key works that shaped that

history.)

So, how far back should you go? Go

back as far as you need to go to tell a

good story about the development of

the thought and literature on your

topic.

Should you use evaluative language in

your review, such as “novel” or

“interesting” or “important”….? The

presenter says that some evaluative

language can help put your to put your

stamp on the literature – articulating

what you really think. Not just what

you found.

FOR THE PRESENTER, THIS

SIGNALS YOUR TRANSITION FROM

BEING A USER OF INFORMATION

TO BEING A CREATOR OF

KNOWLEDGE – ALL NEW FROM

YOUR OWN HEAD – VIA YOUR

APPLICATION OF KNOWLEDGE,

JUDGEMENT AND REASONING.

Presenter then explores the various

ways of arranging your lit. review.

Presenter acknowledges the value of a

bit of chronology, but says it should

not be your main strategy – (Alex

places a bit more emphasis on

chronology actually, since it is good for

outlining the history of the field and

articulating the swings of THE

ARGUMENT over time – the debate.

However, Alex understands that the

presenter here is criticising the

technique of predominantly listing

material as it comes, without

specifically making a debate-story out

of it.)

Presenter suggests different ways of

arranging the information, and, indeed,

of looking at it in the first place -

maybe look at field of study from a

particular disciplinary perspective

(Alex’s example – Perspective on

Early Years Education from standpoint

of anthropology or psychology or

sociology- we are in interdisciplinary

age after all), or arrange the literature

by positive, neutral, and negative

perspectives on the topic, or by

country/culture of origin, or by

methodology – quantitative,

qualitative, theoretical basis, sample

sizes or sample location – if your point

is that these make a difference to the

outcomes of the studies, e.g. studies

that focus on urban versus rural

dwellers, or rich versus poor, or, age

groups, or educational level. The

presenter notes that this is really up to

your imagination.

(Alex notes – however you arrange it,

you are demonstrating your perception

of PATTERNS IN THE LITERATURE

– for example, identifying the shaping

views of different disciplines – which

your arrangement demonstrates.)

The presenter emphasises that the

purpose of a literature review (for a

university student) is in part to

demonstrate a clear grasp of the

development and dynamics of the

literature and of the field. (Alex notes

again the value of subject

encyclopedias in providing an

overview of the field, as can existing

bibliographies or literature reviews -

can also include words “Literature

review” or “review article” or “review

paper” in your database searches to

benefit from previous syntheses of the

literature – more on this below.)

The presenter emphasises the

importance of focus – you must pick

information for inclusion that

addresses your Yes or No question…

your judgement is based on whether it

is relevant or irrelevant TO YOUR

TOPIC.

In evaluating individual material, the

presenter points out the value of

abstracts in helping one categorise a

lot of stuff quickly, also subject

headings in papers, that are clues to

the gist of that section. Also advises to

look specifically for seminal papers

(more on this below) or top journals.

Presenter advises to look for existing

review literature in a discipline –

adding that you can type “Review

paper” and subject field on your

search engine (actually, just says “on

Google Scholar” – librarian grinds

teeth audibly.) Also follow major

authors who cite because they or

agree or disagree with a key seminal

article (more on citation searching

below – though must acknowledge

that Google Scholar has a very good

“cited by” link below each hit.) The

presenter advises identifying and

reading the key journals – where the

seminal articles and cutting edge

arguments happen. (Alex note – often

very helpful to mention and outline a

clash of views conducted in the pages

of a major journal - for example in

Science Fiction the debate between

Postmodernists and Humanists in the

journal Science Fiction Studies a real

humdinger of a clash conducted in a

major journal in that field.)

The presenter again emphasises that

chronology can come into this, but

only if it is tracing an argument/battle

over time. In other words THERE

MUST BE A POINT TO THE

CHRONOLOGY.

The presenter refers to the traditional

and, by implication, boring, boring

pattern of dissertations as that of

IMRD = Introduction, Methodology,

Results, Discussion/Conclusion. She

suggests that many variants on this

can be used - (though Alex cautions

here on the advantage of the tradition

in giving your examiner/supervisor

what they expect to see, and may ask

tricky questions about not seeing.)

The presenter stresses the importance

of writing like a person in your field –

use the verbs common to descriptions

of literature in your fields – “suggests”

“argues’ “examines” - write like you

BELONG in the field. Maybe your field

avoids terms like “demonstrates” –

therefore avoid these terms too.

Writing style can also be an important

aide in grouping authors together

rather than listing them individually:

You don’t have to keep saying that

Smith argues and Jones argues… You

can say rather that “A number of UK

writers have argued that XXXX (Refs

to Smith 2009, Heston 2009, Wales

2008, Jones….) By contrast, a

predominantly American, approach

has been to argue that XXXXX….

(Refs to Haines 2009 , Parsons 2010,

Blake 2011….)

Another example might be not writing

that “Jones investigated….” But

instead saying that “In recent years

there has been growing interest in

…..(REFS to x, y, z ,w)”

Presenter advises that as arguments

get a lot closer to current debates, you

can start signalling this by writing

“argues that” instead of “argued that.”

In terms of storytelling, the presenter

notes that in telling a story, we add our

stories on to previous stories and take

them further, up to date – and

speculate about their ending…

For the presenter, increased

readability and more varied sentence

structure are the symptoms of a good

story developing, as opposed to just a

list of facts and papers. The presenter

notes that a literature review should

also identify areas of uncertainty,

areas that should be treated with

caution, or are problematic, or still

developing. The ability to identify these

areas makes it clear that you really are

an authority on the literature and topic.

Signs of this development can be seen

in your language, which is – in later

drafts of the review - becoming

evaluative, and more certain,

detectable through the use of phrases

such as “an innovative approach to

the study….” or “the emerging trend”,

or, “narrowly focussed” or “polemical”,

or “There is a growing debate…” or “A

small but widely distributed body of

research has recently emerged in the

United States….”SHOWS THAT

THERE IS A THINKING,

EVALUATING, PERSON BEHIND

THE REVIEW – ONE WHO HAS

KNOWLEDGE OF THE FIELD AND

CAN EXERCISE JUDGEMENT - ONE

WHO IS NOT JUST REPEATING

FACTS, BUT ACTUALLY HAS

SOMETHING TO SAY ABOUT THE

LITERATURE.

THE PRESENTER STRESSES THAT

YOU MUST SOUND AS THOUGH

YOU ARE IN CONTROL OF THE

LITERATURE, NOT THE OTHER

WAY AROUND.

The presenter reiterates the

importance of language use and

arguments conveyed through

language – how does one develop this

language? By learning from the

patterns and habits of expression

common in the literature and reviews

of your discipline. You will develop a

preference for certain accepted

patterns of expression and phrase and

tone in your discipline – thus

developing your own style – but it will

still be an acceptable style within the

conventions of your discipline. (Alex

notes here that a great guide to

developing appropriate language is

gained by paying attention to your

supervisor’s critique of the language

and expressions you use – these

critiques are not just a matter of your

supervisor’s personal taste, but

judgement gained from regular

exposure to writing in that discipline.)

The presenter’s last main point is on

the importance of telling your reader

what you doing and what you are

going to do next – for example, telling

your reader that you will address this

topic in the next section.

The presenter describes this as

“Metadiscourse.”

Metadiscourse tells your reader how

your argument is mapped. It outlines

what you are doing, and puts

signposts throughout, so that the

reader knows where they are – and

what to expect in each section.

Alex’s Guide

But my focus, as a librarian, is mainly on

how to find the material to review:

So Here Is My Lit. Review Survival guide –

together with Librarianly Tips and Tools

(and I still think it is probably the most

useful one of its type you’ll find.)

A literature review is:

1) A list of books and journal articles,

2) on a specific topic, 3) grouped by theme, 4) and evaluated with regard to your

research. This evaluation would identify connections, contradictions and gaps in the literature you have found.

The purpose of a literature review, therefore, is:

1) To get a feel for the agreed academic opinion on the subject (the connections).

2) To discover the disagreements on the subject (the contradictions). 3) To find opportunities, (the gaps), for

developing and expressing your own opinions.

The classic pattern of academic arguments is

Thesis + Antithesis = Synthesis

An Idea (Thesis) is proposed, an opposing Idea (Antithesis) is proposed, and a revised

Idea incorporating (Synthesis) the opposing Idea is arrived at. This revised idea sometimes sparks another opposing idea, another synthesis, and so on…

If you can show this pattern at work in your literature review, and, above all, if you can suggest a new synthesis of two opposing views, or demolish one of the opposing views, then you are almost certainly on the right track.

Steps in compiling a literature review are:

1) Select a specific topic (the more focussed, the better, or you’ll go on for ever).

2) Collect the most relevant (usually “peer reviewed”) books and articles.

3) Read/skim them, using the abstract (a short summary attached to the article).

4) Group the articles into the sub-themes of your topic.

5) Identify within each sub-theme those points on which the articles agree, those points on which they disagree, and those points which they don’t cover at all.

7) Choosing your topic

Seek advice from a lecturer or tutor on this, if a topic is not already assigned. It is very common for students to bite off more than they can chew, simply because they have not realised the full breadth and complexity of an apparently simple topic. It is usually better to cover a tiny topic perfectly, than a huge topic superficially.

Look for a topic on which there is polarised opinion. It often helps to pick one in which a question is being asked, for example: Is a particular taxation policy beneficial or disadvantageous to a developing country?

When authors disagree, this provides an opportunity for you to enter the debate and argue for one side or another in your essay. Taking a hatchet to someone’s opinions:

(a) gives you something to write about,

(b) affords a certain amount of brutal fun,

(c) is the foundation of most modern scholarly writing (cf. points (a) and (b) above).

8) Collecting the most relevant (and usually “peer reviewed”) articles and books

The main tools for finding these books and articles are

(a) Subject Reference Books,

(b) the Library Book Catalogue, and then the National Book Catalogue and then, perhaps, International Book Catalogues.

(c) the Library Databases of Electronic Journal Articles, which usually include abstracts to Theses and to Chapters in Books,

d) Thesis databases – Local and National. Searching out OPTs (Other People’s Theses) can give you warning on whether your work has already been done, and can give you a good guide to ideas for lit reviews and layout and topics to take further, and the recent ones in particular are often a good guide to cutting

edge work and trends in scholarship – think young PhD’s anxious to make a name for themselves by breaking new ground. Also, the thesis may have some unique data, stemming from first-hand research on the ground, and unavailable anywhere else, and on those grounds at least, may be well worth including in a literature review.

e) Citation databases – for following the literature forward; i.e. finding people who have used or agreed with or disagreed with a particular core article.

Before you search these tools, spend a minute thinking about the best terms to use.

Make a list of alternative words that describe your subject, and also think about general terms and more specific terms. As you search, more terms will suggest themselves, often from the subject terms assigned to the records you find by keyword searching. Keep a running note of these for use in other catalogues. This is important because while journal databases are good for finding very specific terms in articles, book catalogues, in

local, national and international libraries, tend to use more general terms and do not search within the full text of the book.

Subject Encyclopedias can often suggest a set of search terms appropriate to that topic – or define a term as it is used in that area of specialization. A lot of our searching success or failure will revolve around our choice of search terms – so we need all the help we can get in picking them – especially if you are doing interdisciplinary research.

Words like paternal or maternal as used in Anthropology have a lot more to do with a very specific focus on kin-structures and bloodlines, than on mothering or fathering behaviours, for example, as they might in Sociology or Psychology.

It is important to be aware of this if you are a Sociologist thinking of using those terms in an Anthropology-related search…. They may not mean what you think they mean, and so your searches will bring up useless hits, which ever database you try them on.

So – whatever your level of expertise, I’d recommend starting off a lit. review by using

Subject Encyclopedias for a map of the territory

Subject Encylopedias

I’m not talking about the Britannica here, or Wikipedia, though both can be very useful in fact, even at University, when it comes to getting a bird’s eye map of the territory of your research.

I’m talking about thousands of genuinely specialized reference works – all narrowly focused and with each section written by an expert in that field.

An entry in a good subject encyclopedia can give a background history of research trends (i.e. the history of academic thought on that subject), as well as outlining likely issues for current and future research (as in the example below).

Example:

If you want to get a quick understanding of “African legal systems”, , you will find a short discussion alphabetically on pages 229-232 of International encyclopedia of the social & behavioral sciences / editors-in-chief, Neil J. Smelser, Paul B. Baltes. (Amsterdam : Elsevier, 2001.) Vol. 1

The 4-page article is broken up into helpful headings:

Opening Definition

Customary and Religious (Non-state) Legal Systems

State Legal Systems

Past and Present Trends in Legal Development

Current and Future Issues in Legal Development, Theory and Research

Cross-references to other articles in the encyclopedia

A Bibliography of 13 major sources

The article is signed and you can check the author’s affiliation –University of Birmingham. And the articles are overseen by section editors and editors in chief, also with affiliations listed.

Above all, a good subject encyclopedia entry will have a short bibliography which usually lists the seminal works, or at least most commonly sought works, on that subject.

Indeed, some exist to do nothing but this task:

BookData Description: This volume is the first to aim at summarizing all of the scientific literature published so far regarding male-female differences and similarities, not only in behavior, but also in basic biology, physiology, health, perceptions, emotions, and attitudes. In this title, results from over 18,000 studies have been condensed into more than 1,900 tables, with each table pertaining to a specific possible sex difference. Even

research pertaining to how men and women are perceived (stereotyped) as being different is covered. Throughout this book's eleven years in preparation, no exclusions were made in terms of subject areas, cultures, time periods, or even species. The book is accompanied by a CD containing all 18,000+ references cited in the book. "Sex Differences" is a monumental resource for any researcher, student, or professional who requires an assessment of the weight of evidence that currently exists regarding any sex difference of interest.

At any rate – references from works like these can form the core of a research bibliography – the past sources which you can’t not read if you want to be taken seriously.

They can also be a very useful starting point in a citation search. We’ll come to a citation search later, but in essence it involves finding a really key article or book and seeing who has cited it more recently – either because their research supports it, or disagrees with it,

or takes it forward by adding a new dimension to it.

It might also be a good idea to do a search for any other/more recent books or articles by one of these key authors, or by the writer of that section in the encyclopedia – experts tend to write a number of other books or articles on their topic of expertise, and, if contemporary writers, may still be at it.

Note also that this article has been written in 2001 – so it gives a good background of the scholarship to that date, and leaves you at a point from which you can take it further in your own review.

How to find subject encyclopedias? Ask Us. We can usually find good ones for particular topics.

Or search for things like “Encyclopedia and violence” on the catalogue.

Searching the Library Catalogue

Start by typing in the main, simple

keywords that describe your subject,

separated by ANDs – Gender AND

Poverty AND Africa, for example, or

Violence AND Television.

Avoid typing in a phrase like Television

violence – that will call up only those

books which use exactly that phrase

(possibly very few, or none whatsoever).

The results list might be quite wide-

ranging. If you get too many results, or

they don’t seem very relevant, try adding

another word – Violence AND Television

AND Children, for example.

(Note, btw, that a useful-looking subject

encyclopaedia has come up in this

search.)

If you find a book that looks promising

(Kirsh, Children, adolescents, and media

violence, for example) you can open the

full record and see what formal subject

terms the librarians have assigned to that

record, and search again using those

formal terms, to get a more focused list of

books just like the Kirsh one.

Using simple keyword searching (in the “all fields” box) rather than restricting the catalogue search to just author, title or subject fields allows you to search the entire record – title, author, subject, and table of contents, if one is attached.

This allows you to find things you would definitely have missed if searching only in the title or subject headings, and is especially useful for more recent records which often have the tables of contents attached to them, as in the example above. This gives the book catalogue some of the advantages of a journal database, where the keyword search searches the abstracts of the articles as well as the title and assigned subject headings.

If you find a good subject heading on the catalogue, and clicking on it brings up too limited a selection of hits, try using some of the subject heading words in a keyword search – this gives you the best of both worlds; everything with that subject heading will come up, as well as everything which mentions that subject term in the title or table of contents.

Searching our book catalogue will also bring up theses on that topic written at UCT, though there are better ways of finding theses, which I’ll get to in a minute. If you are looking for a list of UCT theses in a particular subject, the best search is Thesis and Anthropology, or Thesis and Education, btw.

So - if you find a good book reference, scroll down to the bottom of the reference and you will find the subject terms the library cataloguers have assigned to it. Click on that term to call up more books just like the one you have found, or paste it into a keyword search.

Once you have the thing in your hand, quickly check the relevance by glancing at the table of contents, the introduction and any descriptive blurbs on the back cover. The index at the back of the book not only helps you dive to very narrow topics in the book, but also gives you an indication of how much attention (i.e. how many pages) the book spends on that specific topic.

If you are satisfied with the book, look at the bibliography in the back – this can help

identify other relevant sources. Following a chain of references in a bibliography like this, whether in a book or a journal article, is one of the most basic techniques of scholarship – find something that is relevant and look at the sources it used.

Often our journal databases will have reviews of that book – these are particularly useful since a good reviewer will usually try to contextualise the book in terms of the existing literature which it reinforces or challenges. So, any promising book titles you find can also be profitably typed into the journal databases.

Searching National and International Book Catalogues

The other thing to watch out for in catalogues

generally, but national and international

catalogues particularly, is the difference

between USA and British standard spelling;

words like labour/labor, behaviour/behavior or

colour/color, can radically effect your search

results. Use wildcards for these (* or ?)

Also, be especially careful about differences in terminology between American and Standard British English. Not just spelling – but actual terminology - American business databases tend to use “corn” where we would use “maize”, for example.

There are also social taboos which vary from country to country - terms for race, poverty, or social class, in particular, can vary wildly, not only from database to database but also between journals of different national origins or different disciplines within a database.

Right, back to our searches….

Searching the National Catalogue

Having done a search on UCT catalogue, it is a good idea to repeat it on the National Catalogue, SACAT, found under S on our databases list:

You can get to our A-Z database list by mousing over Search & Find on the library web page:

This covers the holdings of all the major libraries, including university and major research institution libraries in South Africa.

You will pick up titles of books, reports, papers, theses, etc. which UCT does not have, but which can usually be obtained by inter-library loans, at no cost.

Again, I find keyword searches are usually most effective since they can pick up words in title and other areas of the record – though because the national catalogue does not often give detailed contents for its book records, your keyword searches will be a bit less comprehensive than they would be on the UCT catalogue.

For this reason, although the National catalogue will show material that is in UCT library amongst its findings, it is best to search our own catalogue separately – the search on our interface can be simultaneously more comprehensive and more precise.

Also, our catalogue gives our specific shelf numbers.

Also, it works slightly differently with regard to finding phrases:

If you search the UCT catalogue for Poverty and South Africa and Gender , our catalogue will treat South Africa as a phrase. The SA Catalogue, on the other hand, will treat South and Africa as separate words, unless they are put in inverted commas.

At any rate, searching for Poverty and “South Africa” and Gender on the National Catalogue brought up 152 hits (below.) The same search on UCT catalogue (minus the inverted commas) brought up 34.

Searching WorldCat

Found under W on our Database list and does what it says on the can – searches internationally across library catalogues. Here is the blurb:

WorldCat - via OCLC FirstSearch The world's most comprehensive bibliography, with more than 44 million bibliographic records covering books, manuscripts, computer data files, maps, computer programs, musical scores, films and slides, newspapers, journals, sound recordings, magazines, and videotapes. Provides holdings information for South African libraries.

So pretty much what the SA Cat does for South Africa, only MUCH BIGGER since it includes a lot of other countries (not all, but still very many.)

A search of this for Poverty and “South Africa” and Gender - you’ll note that it also requires inverted commas around phrases - brought up 531 results. I’m glad to see that we have

some at UCT, but if we don’t have a book that your need, and it is not available in SA, then let me know and I would think about trying to buy it rather than doing an interlibrary loan from overseas.

With so many hits it might be an idea to try to use the limiting functions on this database:

Limiting by year, or range of years (e.g. 2000-2012) is often helpful, as is limiting by Number of Libraries – on the (occasionally justified) assumption that a really good book will be held by a fair number of libraries.

Incidentally – the formal subject headings used on UCT, the National Catalogue and International Catalogues are assigned by subject cataloguers all using the same rule book, so the same subject headings should work the same way across all catalogues, and in a really big international catalogue, some ruthless refinement by formal subject heading is often necessary.

Searching for Theses

Having got a sense of what books have been published, or what is available in print in South Africa, it is now time to see if there is a gap in the research industry for your own interests, and to see what is being written at the cutting edge of unpublished research.

It is useful to see what similar work has been done on your topic – you can use a thesis’s references and bibliography as a starting point and take the research further, or explore a different angle. Often the thesis itself will

constitute a body of material that is available nowhere else – results from an individual’s primary research in a local town or suburb, for example.

Most importantly, searching them allows you to check that your exact thesis has not been, or is not at this moment being, written at a university down the road.

Of course, there may often be some overlap of interests – plenty of people might be working in or close to your area, and the fact that others like you are writing on this is evidence that you are taking part in a hot debate or being part of the cutting edge on this topic – adding your own unique perspective and study and methodology. So finding similar-ish work is not automatically a train smash.

But you do not want to discover, just before, or just after, handing in, that exactly your uniquely South African, cutting edge, thesis has been written a

couple years earlier. This happens to people, and it would be soul-destroying to find

that you have spent a year or two repeating somebody else’s work; even worse if it were to lead to suspicion of plagiarism.

If a Master's or Doctoral thesis was done at UCT, you will find it on the catalogue the same way you would a book – look for the author’s last name or words from the title or both.

You can also do a very quick and dirty search for theses by subject on the UCT catalogue, just type Psychology and thesis, for example.

If it was done at another South African university we can get a copy through Inter-library loan or, increasingly, simply download it for free from that university’s web site.

This is sometimes possible for overseas theses too, but most likely we would have to buy a copy. This can often be done, but the thesis might take some time to arrive.

Finding South African Theses

South African Theses, in full text, can be

found on: National ETD Portal South Africa:

South African theses and Dissertations

“This site is run by the South African National

Research Foundation (NRF) in collaboration

with the Committee of Higher Education

Librarians of South Africa (CHELSA).It

provides access to the full text of many

thousands of doctoral PHD and some other

dissertations produced in South African

universities. These cover the full range of

science, social science and humanities topics.

There is some coverage from as early as the

1970s although there are larger numbers of

post 2009 records. Search by keyword or

browse.”

However – this site lists only those theses

which have been digitized in full text: On the

plus side – there are a lot of them, and they

can go back quite a long way due to

retrospective scanning.

A Search for Child Psychology AND Poverty

brought up 85 hits, though some of them were

a bit broad – it does not seem to take the

phrase “Child Psychology”... I suspect, in fact,

that it is regarding the two words as separated

by an OR – and so bringing up results for

child and poverty as well as psychology and

poverty ….

Whereas a search for Child AND Psychology

AND Poverty, which should, in theory,

broaden the search from “Child Psychology”,

in fact shrunk it, bringing up 24 hits – thus I

suspect that it only now includes all three

words:

Nevertheless – it is a very useful database, if

one is prepared to play around with alternative

terms.

An alternative index, going back right to the

earliest theses, though not with full text, can

be found on the Nexus database from the

National Research Foundation, on our A-Z

database list.

Nexus Database System

Provided by the National Research

Foundation, Nexus includes databases of:

Current and Completed Research Projects in

the Humanities and Social Sciences;

Professional Associations; Forthcoming

Conferences; Periodicals’ Submission

Requirements; Research Organisations;

Research Networking; Research Methodology

Courses; and Women in Research. The

database of Current and Completed Research

Projects requires a password – please contact

the Chancellor Oppenheimer Library on 021

650 3703/4 or the Law Library on 021 650

2708/9.

Actually, theses are also indexed on the

Union Catalogue of Theses and Dissertations

(UCTD) and on the Africa Wide Database, but

Nexus is more up to date, covers current as

well as completed research, and gives better

abstracts. On the downside, it is a bit clumsier

to search – it does not take Boolean operators

very well other than AND.

I usually search both Nexus and UCTD for

this reason.

Nexus:

Click on the Current and Completed Research

Projects Database:

I find it is best to do a simple keyword search

in the Titles, subjects, abstracts field:

A search for child psychology and poverty

brought up 29 theses (A search for child and

psychology and poverty brought up the same,

btw):

Selected items can be displayed on a

separate list:

And viewed with their abstracts by changing

the “short report” option to “full report”

Any South African thesis not at UCT can be

ordered by inter-library loan. Quite a lot of the

most recent ones are available on the web

nowadays too, so putting the title into a

Google search can often be rewarding.

Any thesis at UCT can be found on the book

catalogue and borrowed from level five (rows

of blue volumes near the lift in the Research

Wing.) Increasingly they are digitized – the

UCT catalogue record will have a hotlink to

the full text if this is the case.

Union Catalogue of Theses and

dissertations

Again, available under U on the Databases A-

Z list.

Union Catalogue of Theses and Dissertations

(UCTD) - via Sabinet Online

Bibliographic records of theses and

dissertations at Master and Doctorate level

submitted to universities in SA since 1918.

Updated annually.

Interestingly, a search for Child psychology

and poverty (With or without inverted

commas around “Child psychology” brought

up only 1 result, unlike the 29 on Nexus. This

is because the Nexus search also picks up

keywords in the abstracts, and the UCTD

search does not, simply because it doesn’t

have those abstracts.

However, clicking on the record opens up a

list of the subject headings associated with

each record, which can be helpful:

Using these terms brings up three more hits,

but still, nothing like the Nexus results.

However – I have on occasion found that

UCTD brings up a hit which an identical

search on Nexus doesn’t….

So you really do have to search them both to

be sure. It is also a good idea to search a third

source… a wider-ranging database, Africa-

Wide Information- via EBSCOhost, which

holds records of theses as well as book

chapters and journal articles, and is also very

helpful in bringing up SA theses.

International Theses

For international theses, a good tool is

ProQuest Dissertations and Theses - A&I

Blurb goes:

With more than 2 million entries, PQD&T

is the single, central, authoritative

resource for information about doctoral

dissertations and master's theses.

Dissertations published from 1980 forward

include 350- word abstracts written by the

author. Master's theses published from

1988 forward include 150-word abstracts.

Titles available as native or image PDF

formats include free twenty-four page

previews. UMI offers over 1.8 million titles

for purchase in microform, paper or

electronic formats.

With big abstracts, this database offers the

same keyword searching flexibility as Nexus.

Another source for international theses is

WorldCat Dissertations and Theses

This database provides access to the

dissertations and theses available in OCLC

member libraries. With no, or few, abstracts,

this database suffers the same problems as

UCTD. As with its sibling databases, you will

get different results for “Child psychology” and

poverty, with or without inverted commas.

However, it does link to theses which are

available free on the web – often the only

practical way to get hold of foreign theses

without paying for a pricey inter-library loan or

having them bought for the library.

Some of our other databases, particularly Humanities International, SocIndex (for general social sciences), MLA for literature, EconLit for economics, and PsycInfo for psychology, provide abstracts of theses along with abstracts of books and journal articles. You will often encounter a reference to a relevant thesis when searching for journal articles or book chapters on these databases.

Interestingly – people who have written a thesis, particularly a Doctorate, on a particular topic often go on to publish articles on the same topic, so if you find a good thesis, it might be worth searching the journal databases for the writer’s name to see if they have continued to write on that theme.

Journal databases

The library subscribes to about 180 databases – containing journal articles, but also references to book chapters, theses, government documents, and miscellaneous research papers.

WorldCat Local is an interface which lies over

our catalogue and many (though not all!) of

our 180 or so databases. It allows you to

cross search them together with the

catalogue. Or rather it will allow you to do this

when we have it set up – we don’t at the

moment.

The snag is that WorldCat Local is designed

as a one-stop-shop for undergraduates. It is

good for quick searches for full text, But it is

not well suited to complex searches.

For complex searches it is better to go to our

databases directly, than to rely on the

WorldCat Local mask across them.

It is still possible to cross-search many of our

databases that if they share the same

platform (i.e. database provider.)

To do this, select “Databases by Platform”

under the SEARCH & FIND tab:

Select, as a first choice (in the Humanities),

the EBSCO set of databases since the Ebsco

platform provides some of our main subject

databases for disciplines such as Psychology,

Sociology, Literature, Economics, Film &

Media, Religion and African Studies - as well

as two good general databases – Academic

Search Premier and Humanities International

Complete.

Nice, tight, better set of results. Not always full

text on the MLA in particular – but use SFX

link to see if it is full text on any of our other

databases.

They do not, alas, share the same indexing

protocols, which are often database-specific,

but, coming from the same platform, they do

respond identically to nice, detailed, Boolean

searching:

In other words, you can do:

(SU Caribbean or SU Afric*) and

(postcolon* or decolon*) and (writing or

literat* or novel or fiction) and theor*

A quick digression on BOOLEAN

SEARCHING

Consider this search string:

(SU Caribbean or SU Afric*) and

(postcolon* or decolon*) and (writing or

literat* or novel or fiction) and theor*

The AND operator narrows a search – all listed elements must be mentioned in each article.

The OR operator expands a search – any of the listed elements must be mentioned in each article. The OR operator is useful for dealing with alternative terms which different authors might use when writing on a similar topic.

The Brackets tie the options to the required material. In this example they make sure that any articles we get on literature or fiction are concerned with the Caribbean or Africa. If we didn’t have brackets here the

search would just bring up every reference to literature in the database, whether relevant to the With Caribbean or Africa or not.

The Wildcard * expands a search: The * deals with related words. In this example theor* = theory, theories, theorists, theoretical….

The ? fills in a missing letter, and is used for covering alternative spellings in British and American English. (Labo?r and behavio?r are notorious traps, for example, and the presence or absence of a “u” in the word can radically affect your hit rate.)

NOT weeds out anything you’ve got too

much of. (I might have put NOT India*) into

this search, for example.

SU is an example of command-language

searching – it restricts the words Caribbean

or Afric* to the subject field of the record

only – in other words SU makes sure that

these are the major focus of the article, not

just mentioned in passing.

Other command-language searching

tags that are occasionally useful are “TI”

for Title and “AU” for Author.

Right, back to databases and journals….

Finding a specific Electronic Journal

The library subscribes to +- 80 000 electronic journal titles in full text. The databases are used for finding journal articles by subject.

If you are looking for a specific article, in a specific journal title, you can go click on the E-Journals tab on the library homepage.

Type in the journal title on the search screen….

…. which calls up a link to the electronic journal on whichever of our databases hosts it. You can either search that journal for the title of an article, or by keywords, or simply drill down through each issue until you find the specific article that you wanted.

This is handy both for looking for a particular article – a reference you are following up – but also for reading in its entirety, issue by issue, or for simply keeping tabs on, a particular journal that is key to your area of research.

You can also set up alerts on most electronic journals – you’ll get the table of contents e-mailed to you whenever a new issue of that journal comes out, or you can set up an RSS feed to Google Reader to achieve the same effect.

Use the Alert/Save/Share link on the Ebsco databases, or something similar on others:

You can set it up to e-mail you with new articles:

If you use the search option to search that journal for articles on a particular topic, you can set up an alert for new articles that match that topic only:

So – that saves you from missing any up-to-the minute material that you would like to include in your review (or research in general.)

Right – that’s the finding done.

Or rather, it isn’t – because we’ve still got to cover citation searching:

Using a Citation Database

Citation Databases are used for following the influence of a particular author or article forwards – seeing who has cited that work.

Once upon a time Citation databases were very specialized beasts, in fact they were printed indexes well before they became electronic. The ISI Citation database, for example, is a direct descendant of these indexes.

It is found under the ISI web of Science database, under I on our Databases list.

Click on Cited Reference Search:

Input the author’s name and the official abbreviation of the work cited as indicated. There is a list of the abbreviations.

You will then get a list of citing articles. From the list of citing articles you can see

which articles have cited them in turn – and so on down the chain:

I used to demonstrate the ISI database in some detail – but I don’t do that so much nowadays because the ISI database now has competition – which is good because the ISI database only shows citing articles from those journals which are on its own (admittedly quite big) database. It misses others, and does not do books or book chapters.

Other databases like the EBSCO databases now have a similar function – and in fact are a bit more user friendly:

In fact you don’t even have to use this search interface – simply searching for the article normally brings up a times-cited-in-this-database link:

But one of the most effective challengers by far is Google Scholar. You don’t even have to do a specialized citation search on this. Just search for the article and a link to the citing articles comes up too.

On Google Scholar there are 45 links to citing articles, on ISI there were 7, on Academic Search Premier there was 1.

Btw - you’ll notice that Google Scholar brings up a full text link to our database holdings on this search – it only does this when searched on campus or through the off campus UCT login.)

There is also a more sophisticated way of getting the citation searches out of Google Scholar – a tool called Harzing’s Publish or Perish can be downloaded to your desktop (just Google the term) and strip mines Google Scholar very efficiently indeed.

According to the blurb on this page:

Publish or Perish is a software program that retrieves and analyzes academic citations. It uses Google Scholar to obtain the raw citations, then analyzes these and presents the following statistics:

Total number of papers Total number of citations Average number of citations per paper Average number of citations per author Average number of papers per author Average number of citations per year Hirsch's h-index and related parameters Egghe's g-index The contemporary h-index The age-weighted citation rate Two variations of individual h-indices An analysis of the number of authors per

paper.

The results are available on-screen and can also be copied to the Windows clipboard (for pasting into other applications) or saved to a variety of output formats (for future reference or further analysis). Publish or Perish includes a detailed help file with

search tips and additional information about the citation metrics.

Er… Right. This is evolution……

But for a quick and dirty citation search you are probably better off with a straight Google Scholar search and a click on the cited-by link.

At any rate - it is becoming clear that there is a lot of material out there and that you are going to be generating some monster reference lists.

To keep track of them, and to generate a pain-free bibliography it helps to know about….

RefWorks RefWorks is a database on which you can open a personal account. You can save your references to RefWorks, either by typing them

in, or by exporting them directly from our databases, as we have done here. You can find RefWorks on the Library Homepage under the Research Help menu.

Once you have opened an account on RefWorks and added some citations to it, you can download a program called Write-N-Cite:

Write-N-Cite will exist as an icon on the

desktop of the PC on which you do your

writing, and will also attach itself to your Word

program, under Add-Ins:

When you open Write-N-Cite, you will be able

to search through your saved references (over

time you’ll find that it really helps if you

organize them into topic-specific folders, btw.)

and cite as you type. You can them click on

the Bibliography tab and generate in-text

citations and bibliography in any one of a

number of styles:

Viz:

My Paper

Blether Blether Blether

Blurgle, blether drone (Clukey 437), drone,

drone (Brown 568)

Works Cited

Brown, J. D. "Textual Entanglement: Jean

Rhys's Critical Discourse.(Critical Essay)."

Modern Fiction Studies 56.3: 568. . Clukey,

Amy. ""no Country really Now": Modernist

Cosmopolitanisms and Jean Rhys's

Quartet.( Critical Essay)." Twentieth Century

Literature 56.4: 437

And so done – all that remains is to

3) Read/Skim the articles, using their abstracts

Most of the articles will have an abstract. This is a short paragraph at the head of the article that lists the main facts and arguments in each article. By reading these you will quickly get the gist of what each article is about and where it fits into the pattern you are building up in your literature survey.

How many books and articles should you have? It’s wise to check this with your lecturer or tutor. In general, though, your aim is not to cover every single book or article, but every major opinion or theme on the topic. Many of the books or articles will add very little that is new.

Therefore a short list of really scholarly, relevant, comprehensive articles is often more effective than a list of hundreds of superficial or tangential articles.

What you are ideally looking for are the “seminal” articles (seed articles) on which

most of the other authors are basing their work.

4) Group the Articles into the themes and sub-themes of your topic

Obviously, it helps to have a structure in mind already, but the articles you find will often help to suggest a structure or cause you to redesign your existing one.

Herewith a hard-learned tip:

There are tides and seasons in academic publishing – a topic is often hot for a few months, then dies, then is revived to be attacked from a different angle, then dies, then is revived again to be discussed from a third angle… remember, Thesis, Antithesis and Synthesis?

This has two implications for studying the results on a database search:

Just because there is nothing much in the recent articles does not mean that it was not hot a few months or years ago, so scroll back in time down the list, or jump

right to the earliest reference and scroll up through time to look for a hot spot.

The tides of article titles often tell a story that can help you shape your literature review.

For example, in a list of journal articles on Information Technology and Employment you might find that:

The earliest articles are all about how hard it is to find skilled IT workers.

Later you get articles about UK and US firms desperately recruiting school-leavers and training them in IT skills on the job.

A year later you get articles about how countries like India and South Africa are doing the same thing.

And not long after that you get articles about India and South Africa having a huge, skilled IT workforce, working far more cheaply than the US and UK workforce, and lots of UK and US projects being outsourced to them.

Then you get complaints about unemployment in the IT sector in the UK and USA.

Then you get stories about how employers in the UK and USA have become very choosy about whom they employ, insisting on really good academic training, loads of experience and very-specialised skills.

Then you get the latest stories which are all about how new IT entrants, without that experience, start packing their bags to gain experience elsewhere…

See? Story!

Many database lists of academic articles tell this sort of story when they are looked at in date order. Either they reflect swings in world events or they are reflecting swings in academic debate and opinion. In fact, book catalogues can do this too, when the results are viewed in date order.

Seeing such a story in the literature is a great help in structuring any literature review.

In particular, look out for the major triggers of such changes: When did the first swing to a new track happen, and what event or book or article provoked it?

When you find an article that has provoked a major swing, or started a whole new debate, then you are looking at the “Seminal” (Seed) article that I mentioned earlier. This sort of article is often the best sort of article to identify in a literature review – many of the other articles will just build on, comment on, or attack its basic arguments.

5) Identify within each sub-theme those points on which the articles agree, those points on which they disagree, and those points which they don’t cover at all.

The abstracts can help with this, of course. The main trick is coming up with, or spotting, the sub themes and that is simply a matter of brain work. But if it is done well, and you have taken the trouble to find good sources, then you will find, quite magically, that you have constructed the skeleton and a good bit of the flesh and blood not only of the literature review, but of your research project itself.

In fact, a good literature review can result in a research project that virtually writes itself.

Alex D’Angelo, UCT Libraries, 2014

[email protected]