Literature review is the first step of every young researcher and an essential job while writing a research proposal. To know the state of art of anything, one has to read a lot. Extend of reading depends on which topic you chose to review. It could be hundreds of article or some dozens if it’s a new area and not much published articles is available.
Significance:
a. You can publish review papers.
b. Review papers are highly cited.
c. Completing a chapter of thesis.
d. To knows state of art.
e. Finding research gap and planning further research.
Three simple rules:
1. Search: Search is the main work for starting any work. Search for basics of that area, by another review paper or book to know the state of art.
Search engines: google scholar, Google patents, books, papers , sciencedirect.com, scopus.com, and thesis. Effective searching and gathering information is very important to get a complete picture of your research area. While reading a paper, you can search the important references. Read through the abstract, conclusion, methodology and download it. Another important thing is arranging and keeping files in searchable media. Rename files properly. Keep in folders with similar papers. You can use google desktop to search within the folders once you have more than hundred papers (in that case you need to put the folders in your desktop).
2. Compile: Once you have downloaded many files and read a lot, you will start forgetting. So, start writing as well. Keep writing the main points of every paper (methodology, sample name, key points in conclusion etc). Use EndNote software for keeping references.
3. Critical review: This is the most important and crucial part. If you read a lot and write a lot---that does not make a review paper publish-worthy. You have to critically review it. This is a work of an expert. But being an amateur, one can try with following simple steps
3a. Use new figures, tables. Blend figures from different sources to make a brand new representation. Make new figures from long prosy paragraphs. Like a classifications of many segmentation can easily be put in colorful figures using smart art in MS Word. (Examples).
3b. Similarly, tables can be good source of getting numerous citations. Tables with similar results or, summary of many types of methodology can be managed in a table with corresponding references.
3c. Find shortcomings of other research works. Find bold statements which are not properly backed by experimental results. Find contradictory results and reasons for such contradictions. But be very tactful and courteous in making this kind of statements.
Idea Mapping
Scope: After reading a lot, you might get an idea of whole research area with many different research approaches and sub-sectors. Now, narrow down the area and define scope of your article. Like, you may have gone through many articles on solar energy. But your article should be on a specific type solar cell/solar energy technology.
Outline: After defining scope of your article, please try to write the outline of your article. It could be changed later. But you must have an outline first so that anything that you read can be feed inside the skeleton of your article. Outlined points should have a flow which will also help to keep coherence of narration.
Selection of Figure and table: Review papers should not just cite table/figures from other articles. A review paper will get more citation if it contains some important figures or tables of its own which gives readers a brief overview of the subject.
If you have a thesis and you want to publish the literature review chapter as a paper, your first emphasis should be on updating the text with some recent articles and managing the references. Then you should look for a journal that is interested to publish review articles. Not all journals are interested in this type of article which does not have any research finding or results. So, author must check with that scope of the journal before submitting any review article. There are some journals which publish review articles only.
Review articles are long articles. It requires more time to process and format for submission than usual original research article. So, keep patience and keep going. Happy Publishing!
Submit your article at: publication.easy@gmail.com or editor@publicationeasy.com
Significance:
a. You can publish review papers.
b. Review papers are highly cited.
c. Completing a chapter of thesis.
d. To knows state of art.
e. Finding research gap and planning further research.
Three simple rules:
1. Search: Search is the main work for starting any work. Search for basics of that area, by another review paper or book to know the state of art.
Search engines: google scholar, Google patents, books, papers , sciencedirect.com, scopus.com, and thesis. Effective searching and gathering information is very important to get a complete picture of your research area. While reading a paper, you can search the important references. Read through the abstract, conclusion, methodology and download it. Another important thing is arranging and keeping files in searchable media. Rename files properly. Keep in folders with similar papers. You can use google desktop to search within the folders once you have more than hundred papers (in that case you need to put the folders in your desktop).
2. Compile: Once you have downloaded many files and read a lot, you will start forgetting. So, start writing as well. Keep writing the main points of every paper (methodology, sample name, key points in conclusion etc). Use EndNote software for keeping references.
3. Critical review: This is the most important and crucial part. If you read a lot and write a lot---that does not make a review paper publish-worthy. You have to critically review it. This is a work of an expert. But being an amateur, one can try with following simple steps
3a. Use new figures, tables. Blend figures from different sources to make a brand new representation. Make new figures from long prosy paragraphs. Like a classifications of many segmentation can easily be put in colorful figures using smart art in MS Word. (Examples).
3b. Similarly, tables can be good source of getting numerous citations. Tables with similar results or, summary of many types of methodology can be managed in a table with corresponding references.
3c. Find shortcomings of other research works. Find bold statements which are not properly backed by experimental results. Find contradictory results and reasons for such contradictions. But be very tactful and courteous in making this kind of statements.
Idea Mapping
Scope: After reading a lot, you might get an idea of whole research area with many different research approaches and sub-sectors. Now, narrow down the area and define scope of your article. Like, you may have gone through many articles on solar energy. But your article should be on a specific type solar cell/solar energy technology.
Outline: After defining scope of your article, please try to write the outline of your article. It could be changed later. But you must have an outline first so that anything that you read can be feed inside the skeleton of your article. Outlined points should have a flow which will also help to keep coherence of narration.
Selection of Figure and table: Review papers should not just cite table/figures from other articles. A review paper will get more citation if it contains some important figures or tables of its own which gives readers a brief overview of the subject.
If you have a thesis and you want to publish the literature review chapter as a paper, your first emphasis should be on updating the text with some recent articles and managing the references. Then you should look for a journal that is interested to publish review articles. Not all journals are interested in this type of article which does not have any research finding or results. So, author must check with that scope of the journal before submitting any review article. There are some journals which publish review articles only.
Review articles are long articles. It requires more time to process and format for submission than usual original research article. So, keep patience and keep going. Happy Publishing!
Submit your article at: publication.easy@gmail.com or editor@publicationeasy.com