Literature Review Guide

Definition & Goals

The literature review is a process of compiling and studying existing sources of information on a given topic. Researchers conduct it to get a grasp of the existing data in the field and see what others accomplished. It is important, as doing the same work twice rarely pays off.

A good literature review can be published as a separate paper and brings a lot of value to the scientific community. It gives new researchers an overview of the field and potential data sources. Working with the existing review is much easier, especially if it has been published recently.

Here we will list basic steps and some tips for a researcher willing to conduct their review. The last section is focused on writing a review for a paper or as a separate project. The first three apply to anyone who has to work with many sources.

Initial Understanding

It is impossible to conduct a good review in the field you are unfamiliar with. So the first step is to go through the most basic material. Ask your advisor, if you have one, or go to the library and look for a textbook. Google the topic and read a few recent articles that come up. Make sure there are no gaps in fundamental knowledge: go through necessary math and physics, chemical properties, etc.

To conclude this step, look up one review on the topic (the first one that pops up in google) and read the whole thing. Make sure there are no unknown words left. Make note of the common analysis methods, problems, and use cases. These come in handy during research and experiment design. Once this is done, you can move on to the next part.

Getting Data

This is where the work begins. Access your preferred database of publications (web of science is a good one, and google scholar is a free alternative). Put the keywords into the search bar and download everything that looks at least vaguely related to the research subject. I have a separate article on the sources right here.

While downloading, you are forced to use DOI. Use this opportunity to start compiling the bibliography. Export citations from the articles directly or using the doi2bib.org website (it is very convenient). You can use Zotero on Linux, Mendeley on Windows, especially with MS Word. I prefer plain .bib files as they are compatible with everything and very portable. Group files where possible, but don’t put too much thought into it, as the goal now is to get as much information as possible.

Sorting Information

The hardest part of the review: you have to sift through all the articles downloaded in the previous step and decide if they are useful to you. It is a good idea to make a separate file for notes on the papers you have. Put filenames there, along with titles, short descriptions, experiments, and types of data. This file will be referenced for navigation. It may take a few hours to make this, but this will save more time in the future.

Once you went through articles and have the description file, start reading papers that relate to your research. Extract relevant data along the way: tables, plots, pictures, numbers, experiments – everything you may need for your research. This is the most time-consuming part, especially for building models. When you go through the article, keep track of references that look useful.

Once this is done, go through these references and download what you can. Add them into the navigation file and extract data in the same manner. Repeat the process until there are no more papers that might interest you. Congratulations, fellow scientist, you have completed the literature research process! Now it’s ti9me to write it.

Writing a review

Start with an outline. The literature review usually includes a brief introduction, a few sections that contain the data extracted from sources, and a conclusion that points out blank spaces and unsolved problems in the field. It is tempting to start with an introduction, but I advise against it. Here is the process I tend to use.

1. Format everything. Make sure your headers look nice and an outline compiles automatically. Identifying problems with formatting before writing the text will save you a lot of time and resources later on. Pro tip: if you work in MS word, only paste things as plain text and format them by hand later. Otherwise, the formatting may be destroyed.

2. Connect your bibliography, either in Mendeley or using a .bib file, and test it. Make sure citations render properly and in the format you need. Again, it is much easier to fix these things with a small test file rather than a large paper.

3. Write all the headers for all the sections, then read them/ Aloud, if you have to. Keep changing the headers and their order until they make sense and can be connected into one thought. A good example would be: “Introduction – Fundamental Principles & Equations – Experimental Methods – Existing Data – Mathematical Modelling – Conclusion”.

4. Write the main text first, filling all the headers. Reread it and come up with an introduction, then finish with the conclusion. It is far easier to come up with an introduction after you have the work rather than staring at a blank page.

5. See if the sources can be summarised as a table. Include it as supplementary material if this is the case. People reading your work will be very grateful.

Last Words

It is the process I use now for my writing. It may be suboptimal, but it’s much better than the “throw everything in one folder and figure things out later” approach I’ve seen others using.