0:11Skip to 0 minutes and 11 secondsMy area of research at the moment is how virtual reality can

be used for making behavioural changes. And there are a lot of applications available which is under
researched, and I'm just trying to extend and add on to that research, to the apps, hardwares available
that can be integrated with the softwares like mobile VR or when in a clinical VR scenario where a
patient or a person can undergo certain doses or exposure to the VR methods that could be changing
the neural network and that can eventually become a habit. So my area of research is in learning
analytics, which is all about information to do with the student learning experience. My research is
broadly is women in science, technology, mathematics.

1:07Skip to 1 minute and 7 secondsAnd specifically, I'm talking about a new approach where we
need to attract more women to engineering field. So I'm looking at-- I'm taking sustainability as a
strategy to invite more women in engineering. My research is on data analysis in breast cancer patient
data for predictive and decision making purpose, especially for early diagnosis and treatment and
some other aspects. So I did my research in chemistry, specifically looking at how bacteria replicate
their DNA, the enzymes that they use to do that. And I used x-ray and neutron radiation to study the
structure and the dynamics of these enzymes. My research was in creative arts, specifically in
painting.

2:03Skip to 2 minutes and 3 secondsSo it was a professional doctorate, which is slightly different to
a PhD in that half of the volume of work, I guess, was a major exhibition of paintings. And the thesis
function was more like an exegesis of the work. So looking at different contexts for the work. Well, a
literature review basically formed the bulk of the introduction chapter of my thesis. So aside from the
bits where I explain what the thesis is about and what I did, most of that introduction was a literature
review really.

2:46Skip to 2 minutes and 46 secondsA literature review is a very important aspect of your research
because it allows you to understand what are the currently available researches in that area and what
aspect of your topic they have researched so there is no duplication. And also we can stand on the
shoulder of giants, those have already done a lot of research and continue and extend our research
based on what they have deflected and what they have included in their research that allows us to
speed up and not to do duplications.

View 368 comments

Your topic of interest
What do you want to research?

Conversation starter
Now you’ve heard some of our students talking about
their research topic, we’d love you to share a bit about
yours. You may have a clear idea of your topic, or be
trying to narrow it down to something specific and
researchable - doesn’t matter, we’d love you to share
your general area of interest with us.
Blog
You can also see the topic I’ve chosen to read and write
about during this course right here in my blog.

Key words
When you meet new words, write them down!

Although we aim to keep this online course easy to

understand, there will probably still be technical terms in
play that may be new to you, or that may have different
meanings in other contexts, so it’s always a good idea to
keep your own glossary handy.

To get you started, we have a template here you can

download and keep adding to as you go.
0:03Skip to 0 minutes and 3 seconds[TYPEWRITER TYPING]

0:12Skip to 0 minutes and 12 secondsThere are many ways of doing it. It can be a systematic review
or just more descriptive in a report like most of us are doing. But it could be an argument to point out-
- to state out the problem. I don't know if there is another way of doing it. It can be both descriptive
and also critical in nature. And most of the research, as we find, is a good blend. So we can see it's
more critical or more descriptive, depending on at what stage of research we are in. We could choose
either of them. The purpose for using the literature may be, for example, say for PhD, definitely we
need to be critical. Yes.

0:54Skip to 0 minutes and 54 secondsAnd there should be more arguments on literature. Or maybe
it's particularly systematic literature or just literature review for publication. Maybe you're just like
collecting literature and put that into a framework and doing it. So it all depends on where you want to
go. The destination is a PhD or a publication or whatever it is. Yeah, it definitely depends with our
need, actually. Do we need to get some critical thing that we need to understand? Or other ways
maybe we just have to gathering information. So it depends on our purpose, actually, to conduct the
literary review. But basically, when we do the literary review, we need to understand descriptively at
the same time. We also need to develop our understanding.

1:39Skip to 1 minute and 39 secondsSo not only getting information, but we need to get a little bit of
a conclusion to get into our research, actually. So what do you think? If you are doing something-- an
argument like qualitative research and you will explore something, a phenomena or causes or
something, so probably you need to think about their arguments and opinions on that. But if you do it
like you will develop some technical prototypes or something, I think you need to see what is the last
thing. So you have to understand the story from the beginning. Literature can be done in many
different ways, because sometimes when I do a literature review, the research problems evolve during
the research. And sometimes it just changed dramatically.

2:35Skip to 2 minutes and 35 secondsAnd I will have to do the literature review again and again and
again. And that makes this literature review more critical than just on the presentation of what I have
read from this article. And especially if it's more geared towards PhD, it's going to be more critical in
nature. If it's for the initial undergrad research, it would be more descriptive in nature. True.
[BUZZING SOUND]

View 209 comments

Types of literature review

Various approaches to reviewing literature

The video shows some of our students discussing their

experience of doing a literature review for the first time.
They’re all working at Masters or PhD level, but in
various disciplines. See what they have in common, and
where their experience of research writing differs.

Conversation starters

 Have you written a literature review before?

 What types of literature review are you aware of?

 Do you think your literature review should be a

critical discussion?

Defining terms
What is a literature review not?
You may or may not have read many literature reviews
before, so it’s worth beginning with what a literature
review is, and what it is not. This may or may not be
obvious. First of all – the key words.

‘Literature’ in this context refers to scholarly publications,

not literary art. And we’re talking here about a body of
texts on a particular topic – a collection of publications -
not a single book. The collection to be discussed by a
reviewer might include books, government reports and
media broadcasts where relevant, but it will mainly be
made up of research articles, which are published in
peer-reviewed academic journals.

‘Review’ in this context means extended written

discussion of publications, not just summarising them. A
scholarly review of literature might be conducted on any
topic that is researched and written about - what matters
is that the reviewer appraises various sources of
information, and discusses them.

‘The’ literature does not mean everything published on a

topic, but a selection. Carefully selecting publications
worth discussing in relation to a research project is a key
part of the reviewer’s task, and involves broad reading
and tough choices. Defining what is in and out of the
collection to be discussed is hard work, and will be done
differently by each reviewer. Not only is ‘the’ literature
different for everyone, the approach and scope of
reviews can vary enormously. What a literature review
should look like depends on the level of study, the
academic discipline, and/or the publication context.
A review of literature on a technical or medical topic
might be approached very differently from a review of
literature on a humanities topic. An undergraduate level
literature review assignment is very different in scope
and purpose to a literature review chapter in a PhD
thesis… which is different from the literature review
phase of a published journal article… which is different
from a stand-alone published review article. The size,
complexity and style of a literature review can vary
greatly according to the norms of particular disciplines,
and the time and space allocated to the task. But while
there are great differences between the various types of
literature review we might consider, there are enough
things in common between the various types for us to be
able to talk about them all as belonging to a recognisable
genre, and to give some general guidance on how to
approach this kind of task.

Conversation starter

 What discipline are you reading in?

 Have you noticed any patterns in the way

researchers review their literature in your field?
0:13Skip to 0 minutes and 13 secondsI thoroughly enjoy reading literature reviews. I've taught a
literature review subject for many years. And so students know how to write them. I also read
literature reviews in thesis that I'm examining for other universities or in journal articles. And
generally, they're well done. But there are also some that, at least if it's their first or second time
having a go at one, there are ways that they can improve. Currently I'm reading eight undergraduate
honours theses, two master philosophy theses, and I have two PhD student just on the point of
submitting. So over the years I've probably read hundreds of literature reviews.

0:54Skip to 0 minutes and 54 secondsI read a number of literature reviews either as part of a mini
literature review as part of a research proposal and end of first proposal and then as part of a thesis
itself, so a variety of them. And so from those types of literature reviews, they vary in length. I read
quite a few student lit reviews, both at honours level, so that's the fourth year of the undergraduate
programme. And then I read introductory ones that PhD students read and also the ones that finally
appear in their written theses. So yes I do read quite a few. Well, so yeah, I do read a lot of literature
reviews in various contexts.

1:38Skip to 1 minute and 38 secondsSo I coordinate a pharmacology subject in the third year and I
personally read about 30 to 60 literature reviews every year for that subject. I also read third year
project literature reviews, honour student literature reviews, and about five to six PhD student
literature reviews a year. So quite a few literature reviews through the different levels, both within the
undergraduate and the HDR curriculum. I do read a few. I supervise quite a lot of HDR students. So I
read them from their early beginnings through to their resolution as a product. So in engineering, we
have a number of different types of literature review.

2:21Skip to 2 minutes and 21 secondsAnd it depends on whether the topic is a very specific,
technical topic whereby the literature review will be tight and will probably cover the basics of the
theory behind the topic. It will cover the previous work that has happened in that. It will help to
establish the methodology and the experimental techniques that are going to be used later in the thesis.
On the other hand, many engineering theses are cross disciplinary. I supervise quite a few students
who work in engineering education. And so this takes an engineering student where they understand
the topics of engineering but don't really have a background in the education literature.

3:13Skip to 3 minutes and 13 secondsSo in that case, I ask my students to basically write a narrative
picking out the main educational frameworks and theories that are going to be used in their theses. I
don't expect them to do a full literature review on all the educational topics, rather to pick out the best
bits and the bits that will justify their approach. So in that case, we have a mixed mode of literature
review. We've got some of the technical side of things, but also maybe a social science aspect to it
which is more narrative and explaining to again validate the student's understanding of a domain that
they may not have a formal teaching in.

3:58Skip to 3 minutes and 58 secondsCommon in my area, my area is management discipline and

more specifically organisational communication, so they're looking at-- depending on the research
question obviously-- they will be looking at defining the types of terms of organisation that they are
looking at. They're looking at the types of communication. Well, from the student's perspective they
will be literature reviews as the introductory chapter. So it's also about setting the scene for the thesis
as well as critiquing the literature to date. That will be true if honours theses and for PhDs. But in the
field as a whole in the literature, you find opinion pieces. You find syntheses.

4:45Skip to 4 minutes and 45 secondsAnd you find very extensive literature reviews which really
are about going through the sort of the bulk of the literature and trying to assess what's happened in
the last 10 or 15 years in this field and where are we up to. The systematic literature view is really
what's expected but obviously couched in a narrative form. Mostly we are looking at critical reviews.
So well within the undergraduate and the HDR space, we are mostly dealing with critical reviews. So
that's where somebody has a scientific topic and they are critically analysing the literature and the
progress in that field. So in my field, it's mostly a systematic literature review with sort of social
science model.

5:30Skip to 5 minutes and 30 secondsAnd sometimes there are separate literature reviews in
different chapters really. For instance, sometimes there's a kind of methods literature review in the
methods section, in a methods chapter in a thesis. Sometimes that's combined in with the content. So
for instance, I supervise quite a lot of interdisciplinary projects, PhD theses. And often they're a
combination of linguistics with something like literature or maybe sociology. And so it can be quite
hard to work out the play between the sort of literature review that a sociologist or a literary specialist
will do.
6:21Skip to 6 minutes and 21 secondsAnd often they're more kind of woven into the topic chapters
themselves, rather than brought, especially in literature, they're less likely to be brought into a specific
literature review chapter although that also occurs, but from my perspective, and I tend to work with
that more systematic review model myself. I read lots of student literature reviews, both post graduate
students and also undergraduate students. And I guess I find that a real mix. I think the main thing that
strikes me is that irrespective of the level that the student's at, I think students find literature reviews
really challenging. And that shows in the writing. And I feel like it's a process. It's an iterative process.

7:11Skip to 7 minutes and 11 secondsYou know, it's a lot of back and forth that goes on. And it
actually takes the doing of the literature review for the student to work out how to do it.

View 130 comments

Learning from experience
Reviewing the literature on any topic can be
interesting, satisfying…and confusing.

Academics across all disciplines are constantly reading

and thinking about literature reviews – by students and
peers. They are keen observers of how researchers at
various levels of experience write about published
research. As you listen to these observations, think about
how a literature review might be shaped differently by
each particular discipline and course it is written for.

Conversation starter

 Have you read many literature reviews?

 What is the context for the literature review you want
to write?
 How long does your literature review need to be?

Expectations and common

problems
Talking openly about expectations is the best policy.
Everyone doing research of any kind is expected to read
and critically discuss the previously published research
on their topic, but the processes involved in this are not
always made explicit. Very often it’s just assumed that
researchers know what to do, and that writing about
others’ research is a simple, straight forward process.
Actually, many research students get into deep trouble
when there’s silence around this, because fear and
shame set in, preventing them from asking simple, basic
and essential questions.

Those of us who teach literature reviewing and talk often

and openly about it with researchers across the
disciplines encounter quite a range of expectations,
experiences and beliefs about the processes of finding
information, analysing it and writing about it in an
academic style - it all depends on context and
experience. When we investigate the experience of
research writing, some interesting patterns emerge – not
only in what is regarded as normal in different disciplines,
but also in the types of problems writers experience
when they start doing this kind of writing for the first time.

A key finding in this area of educational research over

the past decade or so is that the literature review tends to
be experienced as the most difficult part of a research
project, especially at PhD level. It has also become clear
that as the number and diversity of students engaging in
research rises, the need for explicit discussion and
instruction in this area has become more important and
in demand.
One of the most common problems that readers of
literature reviews notice is a tendency to want to display
and prove how very much they have read. This may lead
to impressively long bibliographies, but that can evidence
poor selection and discussion of sources. What
supervisors, examiners and general readers prefer to see
is careful selection of sources that show you recognise
what is most important, and what you think about those
publications that you have decided are most relevant and
valuable to the particular question you are aiming to
answer in your study.

Rather than a simplistic listing of previous research on

the topic, what supervisors and critical readers want to
see is a carefully considered digest of how the various
studies out there might relate to each other and to your
new investigation. Readers of any literature review want
to be given a clear focus and ‘synthesis’ in the
presentation of existing research – they want you to offer
something they haven’t had opportunity or energy to do
themselves, namely, think seriously about those
publications, understand what is brilliant about them, and
what they have not paid attention to, and what might yet
be known about the topic. So while the job of a literature
reviewer begins with broad reading, it quickly moves on
into careful selection and critical analysis. It describes
what others have done, but it also has to explain what
the casual reader might miss. A proper review prioritises
and interprets the reading material it presents. It’s
intellectually satisfying, for both the writer and readers of
the review. Easier said than done!
Another common problem in student writing about
published research is a tendency to shy away from
serious critique, and to misunderstand what ‘criticism’
means in academic contexts. Being ‘critical’ of the
literature is not a matter of finding fault. It is often a
matter of finding value in what has been done by others.
Being critical means asking questions, and discovering
the relevance, value and limitations of previous studies.
It’s careful, informed appraisal, aiming to identify what is
most useful from past studies for the new study being
proposed or presented. It’s a matter of carefully
explaining how the work of others informs the new
research project’s vision and planning. It’s about proper
analysis of previous publications – in terms of their
findings and their method of creating and analyzing data,
and their theoretical perspective.

Other problems that research supervisors observe in

draft research writing have to do with the need to keep
up to date with the literature, to move beyond the comfort
zone of an already familiar intellectual environment, to
understand how various researchers relate to each other,
and to design a literature review for the reader. These
various concerns inform the rest of this course.

Conversation starter

 Are you clear or confused about the size and shape

of your own literature review?

 How long do you think your literature review will take

you to complete?
0:14Skip to 0 minutes and 14 secondsI think in engineering, many students find it difficult to write,
particularly narratives, and to explain things in a way that is succinct and takes the technical as well as
the non-technical aspects of their discipline. Is it traumatic for them? For quite a few, it can be a
traumatic experience. The primary difficulty that some students seem to present is structuring the
literature review and getting a framework for covering the various aspects that they will need to show
mastery in. One challenge is when people just dump everything they've ever read and they let it all
out. There's no structure, no themes. It's just letting people know they've read a lot of stuff. That's a
big problem.

1:04Skip to 1 minute and 4 secondsSo they need to learn how to organise things into themes and to
put the related articles together. They can do that and still go wrong in that they sometimes just put a
whole string of authors and say, they wrote about this. And in fact, what they need to do is tease out
the nuances. If they all said the same thing, there's no point in citing all of them. Whereas if they said
different things, we need to know what was different about it. Another thing that they do is do a he-
said, she-said type of approach. So they're still looking at authors rather than themes.

1:37Skip to 1 minute and 37 secondsAnd that's quite common initially, where people are trying to
structure it and they very often think about it chronologically but they really don't get to grips with
doing the work for the reader and understanding, what do we already know about this particular topic?
And finally, I would say that the other main weakness-- so this is when they've already got to themes--
but simply doing a summary isn't enough. The literary review is important, because it sets the
foundation for your own research. So you need to know that that foundation is strong. And to do that,
you need to know that the research you're citing is reliable. It's valid. It's appropriate. It isn't
somebody's opinion.

2:18Skip to 2 minutes and 18 secondsAnd so students need to learn how to do a critical literature,
review and not just accept that something has been published and therefore it's reliable. I notice
particular challenges with some students in writing their literature review, and that is around the
ability to move beyond describing literature. So it's quite common, particularly for international
students, to just list, like a list-- some researcher did this, someone did that, someone did this,
someone did that, with no critical engagement with the literature. And to kind of give a breakdown in
detail of what that literature is about, rather than be able to succinctly synthesise the key points and
why they are relevant to the research that the person or student is doing.

3:03Skip to 3 minutes and 3 secondsSo that listing particularly is quite difficult. And trying to help
students come up from purely descriptive writing about literature into critical writing is what I say is a
key problem in student writing. How do I find literature reviews when I read them? Some are quite
frustrating, because they're trying to do too much. They're not clear on what terms they're actually
defining, so positioning the literature review within an area. Frustrating from the point is they try and
describe the paper rather than taking the essence of the paper and positioning it against other literature.
That can be very frustrating. You're saying, get to the point. The literature review is kind of a
standalone in a sense, but it also isn't a standalone.

3:54Skip to 3 minutes and 54 secondsSo it to be standalone in that you read it as a chapter, as a

whole, and it has to have its own beginning, middle, and end. So I've mentioned its organisation, how
crucial that is. But not only that-- it's got to fit as part of a much bigger whole. Actually being able to
tell whether something is a good piece of work, and therefore the critiquing part of it-- have you read
something that's good, or is not so good? And if it's not good, why is it not good? And it's explaining
those things which the students often find hard to do.

4:27Skip to 4 minutes and 27 secondsAnd that's partly about the experience in the field and not
necessarily wanting to critique people's work, but it's also about the ability to do that type of writing, I
think. Yeah. I think the main problem is that students, even people who've come through their
undergraduate degree-- and sometimes honours or master's-- still don't understand to what extent the
literature review is a discussion, a debate, an argument, a persuasive kind of genre piece of writing,
persuasive job that they've got to do. So they still concentrate on getting a whole lot of detail in, and it
becomes much too much like a list of things I know about this topic.

5:20Skip to 5 minutes and 20 secondsI think the biggest thing is lack of self-proofreading-- so
writing a document probably up against a deadline, and then not going back and looking at it, along
with not having a plan. So getting good information, but just kind of writing it down without having a
plan, and then not going back and revisiting it. I think various different things can go wrong with a
literature review. And maybe it's not so much going wrong, but it's just a case of what sorts of hurdles
students need to try to overcome. And probably the main one is actually knowing what a literature
review is, what it's supposed to be. There's lots of guidebooks and so on out there.

5:59Skip to 5 minutes and 59 secondsAnd actually, we all read-- established academics and students
read literature reviews all the time, but we're often not looking at the pace of writing as a literature
review. We're looking at it for the data, for the findings, for the results. So when we're reading, we
don't necessarily realise we're reading literature reviews all the time. And so I think one of the
challenges for students is to begin to see that they are actually reading literature reviews often, and to
understand from the practise of reading what it is. So one of the big challenges is that, is working out
what a literature review is.

View 116 comments

Observations
Reviewing the literature on any topic can be
interesting, satisfying…and confusing.

While the process of writing a literature review is always

interesting, the experience can also be pretty painful. It’s
a bit of a roller coaster, as the learning deepens and the
confusion rises! It’s complex, and can be rather
frustrating. But it’s worth going through the pain, as there
is great gain in the end, when you really engage with it.
As you listen to the further observations of some UOW
academics, think about the challenges you might face in
the process of developing a literature review.

Conversation starters
  Do any of the comments made in the video relate to
your own experience?
 Do you think you have a good understanding of
what a literature review is and does, at this stage?

Search terms
Finding the right information comes down to
knowing the right key words and phrases.

There are a few basic tools you should get together

before you begin the process of finding and reviewing
literature. One of the most basic is a good list of words
and phrases that you can use to search for literature
online, particularly in a library database.

You may be enrolled at a university which gives you

access to large databases of journal articles, or you can
get started with a basic search for literature using other
tools, such as Google Scholar. But to find anything, you
need a good list of search terms. As well as the most
obvious ones, you might find more by using a thesaurus
to find synonyms.

Blog
On my blog, I’m writing about the problem of plastics in
the oceans. To start a search for useful literature on this
topic, I first needed to expand my list of words. You can
see how I began on this blog post.

Your turn
Think carefully about the words and phrases that might
best help you find the information you need to conduct a
review of literature on your topic of interest. Consider this
example from a research student at UOW:

Topic of study: how hailstones affect buildings (roofing

and cladding)

Search terms: natural hailstones, roofing materials, dent

resistance, high velocity impact, bake hardening, terminal
velocity measurement, kinetic energy, hailstorms, high
strength steel, stiffness, boundary conditions, finite
element analysis.

 What is your topic and which search terms did you

try first?
 How long did it take you to find something useful?
0:02Skip to 0 minutes and 2 seconds[TYPEWRITER CLACKING]

0:13Skip to 0 minutes and 13 secondsWe get a lot of research consultation inquiries from students,
and I would say more than half of those would be regarding how to do a literature review or how to
find information on literature review. Well, the first thing we would say to a student that came to the
library would be, did I understand their question? So we find a lot of the times they haven't really
thought about the question that well. So the first strategy would be pulling apart the question before
they could do any searching. Most students that come to us don't really know what they're doing or
where to start.

0:52Skip to 0 minutes and 52 secondsSo the strategies that we would say is, first, get clarity what it's
asking you to do, what the question is. If you're not sure, check with your supervisor, and then come
back and see us. And then we can help them extract the information. So the two main areas would be,
where do I search? So where do they look? They don't know where to start. And then once they find
that, we help them with their strategies. So what we find is even before they'll search a database, we'll
actually get them to type up a table with their questions, list the key concepts. And then beneath each
key concepts, we'll ask them can they identify alternative terms, synonyms to those terms.

1:32Skip to 1 minute and 32 secondsWe make them aware that different authors use different
language to say the same thing. They're not aware of that because, sometimes, I might punch in a
search and go I didn't find anything, but I haven't really thought about other ways of saying the same
thing. So that's a really big one actually, that really identifying a range of keywords they can use and
then how to connect those together. They struggle with not knowing where to start. And when they do
start-- so when we should say we refer them to a database-- of a time saving, something they can do to
save time is each database allows you the option to create your own account within that database.
2:08Skip to 2 minutes and 8 secondsSo when you start doing your search, it's not like you have to
complete all your searching in one go. You can do your search and save your searches. And then when
they go back to that particular database, log back in, all their search history is still there, so they're not
starting again. So that's a big time saver. So we'll always show that if you just do a search here, if you
don't create your own account, everything will be gone. Create your own account within each
database, and you can save a record of your searches.

View 90 comments
Ways to document reading
The librarian - a researcher’s best friend

Your university or local public library will have great

people to talk to about research. They’re experts at
finding information, thinking about useful keywords,
synonyms, and keeping good records of information
searches. They understand how search tools work, how
research publications are categorised and labelled in
databases – and they can also help you choose software
to manage the material you find.

When you start gathering a lot of reading material, it’s

crucial to keep it organised and properly labelled, so that
you can always find things quickly again whenever you
need them. You will be reading scores, maybe hundreds,
of papers, so you won’t be able to remember where
particular ideas came from a week after you’ve read
them – it’s essential to get organized. There are loads of
software products to help you keep proper records of
your reading, so get familiar with some, and talk to others
to find what might suit you best. I‘ve added some links to
popular software on the blog, at the bottom of the page
(in the footer) under the heading ‘Bibliographic Tech’.
Another useful tool for keeping accurate records of your
searches for information are spreadsheets, and many
university libraries make search record templates
available to students. At UOW, the library has created
a ‘Search Tracker’ which you might like to download. We
will look at how to use such templates in week two.

Tips & tricks

Before we start with our Conversation Starter for this step
we have added some extra tips and tricks from our UOW
Librarian Nick who you met in the video:

 You can’t really do a good search of the literature

without using a Database. Students often start with
Google Scholar and that’s ok for grey literature like
conference proceedings and business reports, but it
doesn’t have advanced search features and there is
no way of knowing if your search is returning high
quality data.

 Subscription databases (which the library pay for)

will provide high quality articles. Databases the
UOW Library recommends are Web of Science and
Scopus which are aimed more towards science, but
there are also discipline specific subject databases
known as Lib Guides (Library Guides).

 Open access journals are also useful. A lot of

databases are starting to index open access
journals which is important for people who are
searching through the literature from home and don’t
have access to a library’s databases.
Useful links

 Web of Science have an Unpaywall add-on or plugin

for Chrome – this allows the latest published
journals to be freely and legally available as a full
text download.

 The University of Wollongong ‘Literature Review

Search Tracker’ - an excel spreadsheet which lets
you plan, organise and retrieve your searches
across numerous discipline specific databases.

Conversation starter

 Have you spoken with a librarian lately? What

valuable tips and insights has your librarian shared
with you about finding research publications on your
topic?

 Which reference management software do you use,

and what do you like about it?
© University of Wollongong

A field of your own

Find and share an openly published review article

Literature reviews take many different shapes and sizes.

They might form the introduction to a specific research
project, addressing a very particular question, or they
might be giving a comprehensive survey of current
research and consider a broader range of questions and
issues. Looking at the surveys of current research is
actually a very good way to begin a new research
project, so if you’re not already familiar with review
articles, now is a good time to find out about them.
Your turn
As a quick exercise, see if you can find a sharable
published literature review from your own discipline. Just
use Google Scholar, to find one, or search with your
favourite search engine online using ‘review article’ + the
name of your discipline, and see what you find. You can
also find many journals which publish review articles via
the website Annual Reviews.

Once you’ve found one in your area of interest that is

open source (legally sharable), add it to our course
bookshelf. If you find one via a subscription database at
your university, just share the reference, not the actual
text - we don’t want to violate anyone’s copyright, and
that way others will be able to find it in their own library, if
they’re interested in that topic too.

Posting to the bookshelf

1. Once you have found your review: open the link to

our course Bookshelf.
2. Click the pink ‘+’ sign in the bottom right corner
3. Click the ‘sheet of paper’ - add attachment icon to
upload your review.
4. Once your attachment has uploaded click ‘ok’
5. Where it says ‘Title’ write the name of the discipline
you represent eg. Education, Law, Science,
6. Next to ‘Write something’ write an observation you
have made about your published literature review.

Conversation starter
  Which academic journals in your field publish review
articles?
 Can you see some good examples of stand-alone
literature reviews in the bookshelf?
 How do they differ from the sort of literature review
you need to write?
0:12Skip to 0 minutes and 12 secondsThe first step that I actually used for a literature review was to
actually look at my own topic and then think about what's the actual problem that my research has. So
once I identified my problem statement, I try to narrow it down and try to make it as precise as
possible to the extent where I can start my research. So once my research question was ready, then I
created a couple of queries and started off with a Scopus database search. So I created for queries
based on 12 keywords that was an integral part of my topic so that I don't miss out on anything.

0:56Skip to 0 minutes and 56 secondsSo first based on those four queries, I researched and then
came up with 986 researches of available topics and research papers that I need to look into further.
Then I imported all the research that I did in Scopus into a note so I can have an annotated
bibliography later on.

1:20Skip to 1 minute and 20 secondsSo one of the first things that I'd look to do with literature
review is to make use of technology, and in particular search technology to narrow down what would
be the seminal papers and to understand and maybe profile the authors for those seminal papers as
well. I think the first step would be to-- well, I guess like an annotated bibliography would be the very
first step. But then that's sort of the research aspect, I suppose. But then taking that and looking at
themes, different themes, and grouping authors' works that way. I'll definitely be using bibliographic
software and any tools and tips and tricks that can help me along the way.

2:15Skip to 2 minutes and 15 secondsI thank my supervisor because she advised me to use the
software which allows you to store your queries and whatever bibliography you have created for
further references and also to update it later on. So in the software version, it's always there and easily
accessible. At the moment, I'm using the IEEE referencing style. I think it's the most common
referencing style for engineering area. And I'm using the EndNote software to manage my
bibliography and reference. So I use the UOW variant of the Harvard Author-date style. So my
referencing style will be APA sixth edition. And I'm not too concerned about referencing style
because I will be making use of the software to allow for various styles to be output.

View 84 comments
Getting the process started
Have problem, will find information

With the right tools and strategies, we can quickly find

and store information, but the process of finding and
selecting good sources is also helped by starting with a
statement of the specific problem the research project as
a whole will be investigating. Research problems and
driving questions develop and clarify during the process
of reviewing the literature, but it helps to begin with some
articulation of these things, as well as the basic topic
search terms.

In the video, some research students are talking about

how they began their review of literature, and why they
use bibliographic software. As you listen to them, think
about how their experience is similar or different to your
own.

Conversation starter

 Which referencing style do you need to use?

 Does your review need to be comprehensive or very
narrowly focused?

Gathering information
Tools & strategies to help find and manage reading
material

A reviewer’s job is to know what’s out there, so you need

to start scanning a lot of publications. But the job is also
to select wisely. The first sources you happen to find are
just the tip of an iceberg. If you get stuck in a search for
information, and think nothing has been published on
your topic, you probably need to use different search
terms and databases, because there is generally too
much information out there these days, on every topic. A
wide range of search terms and modern technology
makes it so easy to find literature, we can find more
information on anything in ten minutes today than we
could have in a year, just a decade or two ago. And
confronted with so many sources instantly, and finding
many are quite contradictory, it’s easy to feel
overwhelmed and confused in the search stage. So a
statement of your research problem and question will
help you judge which sources will be most and least
relevant to your project. You need to read broadly on
your topic, but you also need to set very clear boundaries
of relevance, so you mainly read what will actually help
you discuss the specific problem your research needs to
address.

Search strategies
If your literature review is going to be read by academic
supervisors and examiners, or inform an organization, it
will never do to just ‘google it’, because that strategy
doesn’t put you in control of the search results. Google
Scholar is a better place to begin, but to tackle the giant
haystack of digitized information actually available online,
you need databases to quickly find what matters most to
your project. Databases online also help narrow a search
according to the year of publication, the type of
publication, and even the most frequently cited papers.
You can also set up ‘alerts’ in databases or Google
Scholar, to notify you of new material related to your
previous searches.

You should continue to develop your list of search terms

as you read more, picking up key words from
publications, realizing which are most relevant. And as
well as topic terms, you should include ones that help
you find research using the theoretical approach and
methods you’re interested in – such as quantitative or
qualitative, tests or surveys, empirical or postmodernism,
or whatever is relevant to you.

Other simple tips that help refine your search include

combining various terms, by using ‘AND, ‘OR’ and ‘NOT’,
and quotation marks. Play around with these options until
you see what difference it makes. Using plastics pollution
OR marine environments in Google Scholar, for example,
gives about 1.5 million results, but using plastics pollution
AND marine environments gives a lot less (around
124,000). To reduce the results further, and get only
publications that use those exact words, typing in
“plastics pollution” AND “marine environments” (in
quotation marks) gives just 116 results. Even fewer
results come up when a particular ocean is excluded
(“plastics pollution” AND “marine environments” NOT
“Pacific”).

Spelling accurately is obviously important, but also

consider that some words in English may be spelled in
more than one way, and that words change form to suit
different grammatical functions in a sentence. Using the
‘*’ symbol helps you find various forms of the same word
in the title of a publication – just type in the beginning of a
word with * to find papers that use the word in any of its
possible forms. Each database might have slightly
different ways of refining searches, so explore and play.

Most importantly, you need to keep a careful record of

what you’re finding online. When you’re scanning dozens
or hundreds of papers, you can’t remember from one day
to the next what you’ve viewed, so you need to document
your process. It will save you much time in the long run if
you begin and continue your searching for information by
noting down all the search terms you’re using, where
you’re looking, and what you find (or don’t find).

Bibliographic software
Bibliographic software helps you store, organise and
quickly re-find sources of information, and also format
your references in any of the common styles used in
academic writing and publishing. Popular software for
managing references and PDFs include Mendeley,
Zotero, Endnote, Paperpile, and there are many others. If
you’re enrolled in a university, your library probably
provides this kind of software. If not, just search for
bibliographic software products online, and check their
features and costs – some of the very best ones are free.
Many are also available in a web-based version that will
sync with your desktop version, so you can access and
add to your bibliography when you’re away from your
own computer.

Review articles
As part of sharing topics last week, we searched for
some review articles. Reading review articles is a useful
short-cut to finding current literature. If someone else has
spent months or more carefully selecting and discussing
sources, for the benefit of other researchers, it’s wise to
consult them. They can give an excellent overview of a
field, and identify questions and problems that need to be
considered in the future, and might help you identify an
important gap that your research could address. Review
articles can also help you identify who is who in your
field, so you can further explore what else they’ve written,
who is citing them, and who they are citing – these are all
good strategies for building up your own bibliography,
and working out where to focus your attention.

Conversation starters

 Are you having any difficulty finding literature on

your topic?
 Do you have search terms to identify research
methods and theoretical frameworks as well as
topics relevant to your literature review?
 Do you find it easy to see the difference between a
review article and a research article that reports on a
single project?

Documenting sources
Bibliographies, reference lists and styles

A bibliography is a professionally referenced list of

readings. It’s not a random list of everything read on a
loosely defined topic, but a useful guide for reading that
defines a specific area. Your bibliography is the record of
your reading for a research project, and shows the
development of your knowledge of the topic and what
other researchers are doing. Your final written discussion
of literature may not include all the items you’ve selected
and read, but your bibliography keeps it all together in
one place, and might serve more than one project. It
records all the publication details that you will need to
include in a list of publications actually cited in your
writing.

All entries in your bibliography have to be accurate and

adequate, so you and anyone else can always quickly
trace the source of anything you are discussing. Using
bibliographic software makes it easy to keep an accurate
record of important papers you’re reading, and to keep
notes on what you’re thinking about each item as you
select and read it. The value of doing this will become
clearer later in the course, but it’s generally a good habit
to record your immediate thoughts as well as the
publication details of your selected literature.

Referencing styles
Your reference list (publications cited in a particular piece
of writing) should be formatted to follow a particular style,
so it helps to get this right at the beginning of your
research process – you don’t want to finish a literature
review and then have to spend days re-formatting
hundreds of references. The format, or style, of your
referencing is determined by your discipline or publishing
context, so find out now what style of referencing you
should be using, and record all your reading in that style.
There are too many different styles in use around the
world for us to illustrate and name them here – what
matters is that YOU know which style you’re using, and
that you maintain all your references in the SAME style.

Referencing styles vary in the ordering of elements, not

in the type of information they include. The style guide I
follow is based on the Australian Government Publishing
Service’s version of Harvard (author-date) style.
Whichever style you follow, the basic information to be
included is the same, even if the ordering varies:

 the author’s family name and personal name (or

initial letter, depending on the style);

 the year of publication (perhaps in brackets,

depending on the style);

 the title of the paper/article (perhaps in single or

double quote marks, depending on the style);

 the name of the academic journal (in italics or

underlined, depending on the style);

 the volume number and the issue number (if there is

one) and

 the page range

Rules are similar for referencing books and book

chapters, and other kinds of source – just find a style
guide and follow it exactly and consistently for each type
of publication. It might be easy to copy references from
journal articles and databases, but you need to carefully
check the formatting, because the style may be different
to what you need to follow. Be sure to format every single
source in your own bibliography and reference lists in the
same way. It might seem a bit much to demand that all
referencing is always accurate, complete and consistent,
but it’s not about making the writer’s life miserable – it’s
about the reader. Reading a lot of academic literature
trains the mind to see patterns and to read ever more
quickly, and errors and inconsistencies in referencing
interfere with that. As an academic writer, you need to
make sure you don’t disturb the established norms that
enable academics to read very quickly.

Conversation starter

 Do you recognise the difference between a

bibliography and a reference list?

 Do you think the reference list at the end of a journal

article represents everything that author has ever
read on the topic?

 Have you read a journal article that seems to be

citing lots of sources for the sake of making it look
like they are well informed, but doesn’t seem to
show good understanding of the sources?

Building a bibliography - together

A topic of interest and concern

On my blog, I’ve shared a couple of review articles I

found on the topic I’m interested in, and formatted the
references to those publications in a style commonly
used at my university.

You might like to put a review article in your own

bibliography, using the style of referencing you prefer.
Whichever style you use, be sure to do all your
references in the same one, and include all the
necessary information, so that anyone else can also find
the source if they want to.

To practice searching and referencing, see if you can find

some more sources of information on my topic of plastics
pollution in the oceans, so we can all watch how quickly
a bibliography can grow when the task is shared. You
can format your reference in the style you prefer, just
name it so we can all check for accuracy.

Conversation starter

 What can you find on the topic of plastics pollution in

the oceans? Add your contribution here.
 What do you find most difficult about referencing?
 Do you have a favourite referencing style guide you
can share?
0:14Skip to 0 minutes and 14 secondsIn my field in wireless network, there's a number of high rank
journals, almost like IEEE or IEEE Security or IEEE Wireless. So for me, the best source of
information related to my topic, I find it in IEEE journals. Google Scholar and to find the cures and to
search how many papers or publications are part of this field. And then I will open one paper to find
that relation out the paper with my research study. As of now, we find that reference in his paper or
her paper and find papers he cited on the relation between these and how it can contribute to my
research topic.

1:08Skip to 1 minute and 8 secondsI need to be specific and find out or figure out, OK, so these are
the databases where I can get more use of it. So first of all, maybe you can get your experts, or seniors,
your lecturer's knowledge. OK which database should more particularly useful for your own
discipline, then you can go on that, rather jumping here there. That will be [INAUDIBLE]. So
basically, I use ScienceDirect and I use some of most high ranking journals like, Canadian Technical
Journal. And the ASC Library, like that.

1:42Skip to 1 minute and 42 secondsAnd most commonly, if I can download some papers through
the internet-- when I find it difficult to download, but I've been searching the research gate, then there
are some papers that is available for download for us. You could come up with 1,000 articles just from
Scopus search, or from whichever a journal or database you're searching. So it could be ScienceDirect,
PubMed, and then, once you have those, you need to go through the abstracts. So what I have done is,
myself, I'm going through the title in the abstract and came up with 90 articles.
2:21Skip to 2 minutes and 21 secondsAnd further, now I'm going to read all those 90 articles, the
full text, but those 90 articles are just in the database in Excel, which is requires further screening.
And then I will arrive to my full text. What I do is I skim read. I read the abstract and also I read--
there are some journals that they have a key highlight of the article, so it can provide you more insight
of what the research was doing and what is the finding they had. And I just eliminate the one that I
think is not relevant or not similar to what I'm looking for.

3:04Skip to 3 minutes and 4 secondsAnd then I read the other ones more carefully, so maybe more
about the matter because they are-- you have to accept that there is a risk of a lot of article is not very
high quality. So when you start reading them, they tell you in real life that they are not doing
something correctly. And if you read more you're just wasting your time. True. And then later, I even
found some researcher that they-- what they've done is they only had one experiment, but they write
two papers out of that experiment. They just paraphrased-- A duplication. Yeah, so I saw duplication.

3:45Skip to 3 minutes and 45 secondsAnd I was very surprised because those articles show up in
Scopus database and also in CBI PubMed's database when I thought that these database already have
the high quality journal. Yeah. So I think I met that situation two or three times. And I even had to ask
my supervisor to check it again with me that it's really a duplication. [INAUDIBLE] the same
[INAUDIBLE],, but take a look with me and [INAUDIBLE] paraphrase the work and modify the
graph a little bit. So how did everybody find sharing the information and sharing the ideas of their
research, helpful and improving and refining the objectives of your research? So do it benefit you? Do
find that it's helpful? Definitely. Definitely beneficial.

4:44Skip to 4 minutes and 44 secondsSo the task provided all the information likes it. OK, there are
certain techniques, technologies that you can use. And the only thing, let's say, we are not using these
things effectively, and always, maybe sometimes, still people like reading literature on maybe with
audio sync and auto, and not something maybe manually do it. So you feel comfortable actually doing
it manually. It takes a long time. It takes a long time and it's-- you are not supposed to waste your time
on that. You need to waste your time on productive things. So this class taught us there are many
ways, many things, to which there are shortcuts which we never ever think of using. So that's maybe
the best part of it.

5:25Skip to 5 minutes and 25 secondsWith researchers in one class, I try to share the more
techniques we actually excavate and improve our own technique for ourselves. So it helps everyone.
And then they ask questions that we even haven't think of it and sometimes that questions helped us a
lot to think of that fact. Yeah. Everything's related to a collaboration actually. Each question,
collaboration. Comes from that, we get new knowledge from our friends. For example, we haven't
seen that before, but when we come to discussion, we get new information. So I think discussion,
collaboration is really helpful for our research actually. And you learn to speak to a general public.

6:13Skip to 6 minutes and 13 secondsSo these students are from different fields, so we learn how to
convince our ideas to the general public. It caused and a lot of practise and also instant feedback from
the people. A language, which is more understood by the common public, rather than just the
scientific community. And also it's a great thing that in our class we had a very big variety of people
from different areas. Yes. So when we have that variety and diversity, the feedback that we receive,
and also the viewpoint we have, is multiple times. It's not just speaking to the people from your same
area. Someone from another area, yet speaking to allow people from a lot of different areas.

7:08Skip to 7 minutes and 8 secondsAnd the question is-- the question that sometimes you never
think of before, because you assume that everybody knows that or understand that. So I
[INAUDIBLE] in my research, I do look after my first presentation in front of you guys. So you're
saying, "Why that? Why? Why?" And I'll say, so at first it annoyed me. Actually because I thought,
OK, my research is the best research or something like that. And then you question me. Then I thought
OK, so they have a lot of questions. So which means, I need to repress my things and everything.
[INTERPOSING VOICES] -- or spent-- -- or to rethink as well because some sort of things are not
relevant.

7:43Skip to 7 minutes and 43 secondsI want to do research, so it's a turning point of my life, the
presentation. So a lot of changes in there. What are the most vital things in your research? Why people
should invest or take interest in your research, is what you should put in the presentation. The detailed
scientific formula does not matter because people will not understand. That is going to be in your
detailed thesis anyway. So its like you are a salesperson trying to sell your idea to everyone in the
common public.

View 64 comments
Writing notes
Why bother?

In the video, students are talking about how they found

their literature and moved from summarising to
evaluating their reading material. As you listen to what
they say, think about your own search and selection
process, and whether you’re currently just summarising
what other researchers have done, or also making notes
on what you think about their work, and how it relates to
your own research plans.

Adding annotations to your bibliography is a great way to

start your writing of a literature review. It’s easier to
develop a critical discussion when your bibliography
includes many well written annotations, as you have
already articulated what you think about the sources and
can then quickly compare them – which we will be
focussing on next week.

Conversation starter
  What do you think is most important to note about a
publication in an annotation?

Summarising others' work

Simple note-taking

While it helps to copy the published abstract of journal

articles into your bibliography (to remember what the
paper is about), it helps much more to paraphrase that
summary into your own words, because this process
creates memory. You won’t have time to write careful
annotations for everything you read, but it’s definitely
worth doing so for publications that seem most important
for your review.

A simple and effective technique for paraphrasing is to

read a paper, or even just the abstract, then look away
from the text and write down what you remember:

 what is the study about?

 what problem does it address?

 how did they conduct the research?

 what were the main findings?

 why is it important?

If you can’t recall all this from one reading, go back to the
text and try again. Say out loud what you recall, and write
it down. Even if your paraphrasing is imperfect, just
putting yourself through this process, often, trains your
mind. It makes you pay attention when you read if you
have to recall and write a summary, and answering these
questions makes you very aware of the structure of
research articles. Most importantly, this process creates
a working memory of the texts read, which builds your
ability to write a review. The assignment this week is
based on this process.

Blog
I’m adding annotations to the bibliography that I’m
developing on my blog. Starting with publication details
for what looks like an interesting paper, I first copy the
published abstract under the reference:

Breene, K 2017, ‘This tiny pacific island is officially the

most plastic-polluted place on earth’, WEF, 22 May,
viewed 5 March 2018,
https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2017/05/the-
untouched-south-pacific-island-choking-on-38-million-
bits-of-plastic/

An uninhabited Pacific island thousands of miles away

from the nearest city has been named as the most
plastic-polluted place on earth. The beaches of the World
Heritage-listed Henderson Island, in the Pitcairn Group
off South America, contain an estimated 38 million items
of debris with a total weight of 17 tonnes. The scientists
who discovered the extraordinary level of pollution say
this gives the island the highest density of plastic rubbish
anywhere in the world. They believe their study is a
wake-up call that plastic pollution is as grave a threat as
climate change.
To check that I can recall what this paper is about, I stop
looking at that abstract and write a paraphrase:

This is a short report published online by the World

Economic Forum last year, highlighting the extraordinary
amount of plastic garbage accumulating in the oceans. It
summarises a recent investigation which found more
plastic garbage (in terms of density per square meter) on
a remote uninhabited island in the middle of the Pacific
Ocean than on the mainlands from where it originates. It
describes the impact of plastics pollution on wildlife,
gives statistics on the increase in plastics production
since the 1950s, and also refers to a 2016 report that
predicts there will be more plastics than fish in the
oceans by 2050.

I found the paper easy to recall because it left a strong

impression on me when I first read it, but the aim here is
not to repeat what is in the abstract. The point of writing
my own summary of the report is to clarify to myself how
it’s useful to my review. So I note the kind of publication,
and the points I find important at this point in time.

To annotate your own bibliography in a way that helps

you develop your thinking and writing, start by just
summarising the key readings that you’re finding. Just
note the facts first, keeping personal opinion out of it
(we’ll look at evaluation in the next step).

Conversation starter

 Do you find it easy or difficult to summarise and

paraphrase academic papers?
  Would it help to play with paraphrasing software?
Why / why not?

Paraphrasing and evaluating

others' work
Adding appraisal & explaining relevance

Summarising a paper in your own way, noting what kind

of publication it is and the points that seem most
important to you, is a great start, but not sufficient. The
next thing to do is add some evaluation – what you think
about the text, why you think it should or shouldn’t be
included in your review. It’s a really good idea to keep a
record of what you think now, because your review in the
end is going to be much more than a summary of what
others have done and said – it should be primarily about
what you think of the research you are reading about.
The more you note your responses to readings, the more
material you have to work with as you develop your
argument (next week).

Why is it important to separate description of what others

have said and done from what we think about it, and how
we think we might use their work? I’m glad you asked (!).
I think (on the basis of much experience working with
novice writers) that it’s critically important to recognise
what would be agreed by anyone as an accurate
summary of what another has written, and what is a
personal interpretation. We need to constantly practise
and develop ability to distinguish between description
and evaluation of reading material, because writing about
others’ work is complex and delicate. The last thing you
want to end up doing is misrepresenting other
researchers – which can easily happen when X gets all
mixed up with personal responses to X. Both are
important, but we need to be able to recognise whose
voice is being presented at any given moment in the
discussion.

Blog
The next post on the blog illustrates the difference
between description of what someone else has said or
done, and evaluative response to it, and shows the
progression from basic bibliographic entry to annotation.

In this example, you can see three distinct functions of

the annotation. First there is a summary of the
publication, then a more personal response and
evaluation (what I think about it), and finally an
explanation of why the source is or isn’t useful to the
review I want to write (what I think I might be able to do
with this information).

Breene, K 2017, ‘This tiny pacific island is officially the

most plastic-polluted place on earth’, WEF, 22 May,
viewed 5 March 2018.

This is a short report published online by the World

Economic Forum last year, highlighting the extraordinary
amount of plastic garbage accumulating in the oceans. It
summarises a recent investigation which found more
plastic garbage (in terms of density per square meter) on
a remote uninhabited island in the middle of the Pacific
Ocean than on the mainlands from where it originates. It
describes the impact of plastics pollution on wildlife,
gives statistics on the increase in plastics production
since the 1950s, and also refers to a 2016 report that
predicts there will be more plastics than fish in the
oceans by 2050.

The findings of research summarised here are shocking

– nowhere on earth is safe from being inundated by
plastic garbage, and it poses as great a threat to the
world as climate change. The statistics cited here
suggest we are now using, and throwing away, 300 times
the amount of plastic products than in the 1950s, and no
matter where on earth an everyday plastic item is
discarded (cigarette lighters, razors, toothbrushes,
spoons, baby dummies), it can end up in the ocean and
be moved by currents to the middle of the Pacific.

These WEF reports circulate on social media and provide

useful introductions to various global issues. Although I
don’t need to include this particular text in my review, it’s
important because it’s one of the things that led me to the
research by Lavers and Bond, and to other reports on
entrepreneurial responses to this problem.

Writing this kind of annotation really helps you prepare

for writing the critical discussion of literature, as it forces
you to consider and note down both the information and
your own thoughts about it, and how someone else’s
work relates to your own research project. So as a rule,
aim to make notes about other researchers’ work in
these three ways:
  synopsis of the facts (what authors have done,
found and said)
 comments on aspects of their research design or
findings that you find interesting, new, important,
problematic, limited etc
 comment about how the publication relates to your
research project (what seems most useful for your
own quest to answer a particular question or
articulate a particular problem)

Conversation starter

 Do you find it difficult to evaluate the research you

are reading about?
 What criteria would you use to evaluate someone
else’s research?

Assignment
Talking to consolidate

Now that you have started scanning a lot of reading

material, selecting what seems most useful, and reading
some of it more carefully, it’s time to talk about it. Why?
Because going through this process, of turning what you
read into a talk, is the best way to make you think about
what you are reading, and articulate your thoughts
quickly.

For your assignment this week, we would like you to

record yourself talking about what you have been reading
on your topic. You may post an audio clip of just your
voice, a video of yourself, or a moving powerpoint We’d
also love you to leave feedback for other learners.

Instructions

1. Create a recording (select software you’re familiar

with to create a video or audio file) . Or use the
Padlet Wall Voice recording function.
2. Upload it to our assignment one padlet wall.
3. Leave feedback to the contributions of 2-3 other
learners

Blog
I’ve posted an example on my blog – it’s a 1 minute talk
about some of the material I’ve been reading on my
topic. My example is also available on our padlet wall of
knowledge.

Conversation starter

 Did you find it helpful to talk about what you have

been reading?
 Did you find it helpful to hear others talk about what
they had been reading?
0:16Skip to 0 minutes and 16 secondsAs a student and as a realised academic, maybe I think I'm
good at literature. But then when I saw this HDR writing course then I realised there are so many
things myself to explore, with things I don't know exactly. So there's techniques and how to use
technology properly because we don't have much time. A PhD is defined for 3 and 1/2 years. So I
need to finish. I don't have much time. So therefore, I need to be specific. I need to use technology
properly. For that, definitely, I need guidance and a good teacher. For me I found it useful to get some
guidance to do anything. Because I can always learn from what others have experienced.

1:04Skip to 1 minute and 4 secondsAnd I can always get myself improved and I will always get help
from a course or a teacher. Absolutely. Yeah, even if it's just to say you're not meant to know how to
do this. You're learning as you go. And you don't really know the shape of it until you're pretty much
there. And it's that sort of not knowing that is torture when you're trying to do something like that. I
would say that literature review is a mixed process. You can, of course, go and read and review
different methodologies and different ways how we search the literature. However, having a
supervisor and having a teacher's guidance cuts down the chase. And you save a lot of time.

1:55Skip to 1 minute and 55 secondsDo I see the need for instruction in how to put together a
literature review? I certainly do. As students, particularly in engineering, have been schooled in their
technical discipline to quite a high level, we probably haven't put as much emphasis on the writing
skills. Probably not enough on the research methodology skills. And so I think the need for a course
which will guide the students through the options for writing their literature review and explaining the
purpose and the importance of the literature review, I think that's a no brainer. We should definitely
have it. Everyone can benefit from instruction in how to do a proper literature review regardless of
whether they're students or academics.

2:46Skip to 2 minutes and 46 secondsThere are good ways and less good ways of writing a literature
review. And just having somebody remind you of what those are is really helpful. There is no doubt in
my mind that it helps to have instruction in writing a literature review because it's a really difficult
thing to do. Even as a sort of mid or senior scholar I find the literature review still can be quite
difficult. And it's an uncommon sense way of writing. It's specialised. It's technical. And it's different
for different disciplines. So I think it's really helpful to students when there's instruction around how
to do it.

3:22Skip to 3 minutes and 22 secondsYou know, I think we can do a better job actually at teaching
critical thinking and critical analysis at the undergraduate level so that students are better equipped
when they reach the postgraduate level to do these things, to engage with the literature in that kind of
way. And to then write literature reviews and write critical pieces. I think that's a role for all different
kinds of resources. I think there's a role for online resources, for one-to-one support, for peer support. I
think we just need to kind of cover as many ways as we can to support students in the different styles
of learning and to also reinforce the learning that happens in different ways.

View 50 comments
To teach or not to teach?
Speeding up the process

Compared to the sorts of essays and reports you might

write at undergraduate level, research writing is generally
expected to consider and critically compare more
sources. And in gathering sources of information, the
research writer is also expected to define for themselves
what constitutes a valid body of literature to read and
discuss, to frame a serious investigation that will produce
new knowledge. So the task here is not simply to find
information and use it to develop an argument or show
some understanding of a topic. The aim in doing a
literature review for research purposes is to consider the
work of other researchers as a body of knowledge, which
provides context for further research.

Generations of researchers have been learning how to

do research and how to write about it by just doing it, and
getting feedback along the way - so why are we even
teaching this? One reason is that there have been some
very significant changes to universities over the past
decade or so, and there is more pressure to complete
research programs quickly. At the same time, there are
more people participating in higher education, and in
research. And there is now also much more movement of
students around the world, and much greater diversity in
students’ prior experience of academic learning and
writing. These are some of the factors making everyone
feel a need to be very explicit about what is expected in
research writing.

In the video, research students and academics share

their thoughts on the need to teach new researchers how
to do a literature review. As you listen, think about what
motivated you to enrol in this course.

Conversation starter

 Why do you feel the need for instruction on how to

do a literature review?
 Do you think it will speed up your process?
 Do you think essays and reports written at
undergraduate level use sources of information
 sources differently to what is expected in higher
level research writing?

Systematic approach
Comparing sources

Whatever the discipline, reviewing literature involves lots

of analysing, evaluating and comparing sources of
information, not just cherry-picking from them. And when
you need to compare many different sources, it helps to
use a spreadsheet, as suggested back in week one.
Using a simple spread-sheet or table can help you keep
track of your search activity, and avoid falling down a
labyrinthine rabbit hole. Your own library might provide
spread-sheet templates, or you can use the UOW’s
library template. Feel free to adapt these to include
criteria that seem most useful to your topic and points of
comparison between publications. When you make notes
in this kind of way it’s easy to quickly see patterns of
similarity and difference across a range of publications,
and draw conclusions. You might note, for example, that
across 25 different studies on your topic, most have used
the same research method, or some have produced very
different findings, or none address the particular question
you want to pursue. This kind of observation will help you
frame your own research project, so it’s important to
read, evaluate and compare the literature you’ve
selected with this in mind.

To be or not to be comprehensive?
As noted earlier, reading review articles is a great way to
find out what other researchers are doing and what
remains to be done in your field. The key to a good
literature review is generally quality rather than quantity,
but you may need to actually write a stand-alone,
systematic review of literature, as a publication of your
own. That will depend on the nature and discipline of
your research project, but if you do need to write a large
and comprehensive review, there will be a standardized
method for doing so in your discipline. These vary, so
this kind of literature review needs to be done in
consultation with research supervisors, not least because
it involves formal double checking of search results.

Blog
On the blog this week I posted an example of how I’ve
used a spread-sheet to keep track of and to compare
various sources of information.

Conversation starter

 Do you think a table or spread-sheet would help in

your literature review process?
 Does your literature review need to be very large
and systematic?
 Do you know of any particular protocols for
conducting a systematic literature review?

Week two in review podcast

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In this final activity for the week we summarise the
main points covered, and encourage you to reflect
on what you’ve learnt so far.

Weekly feedback
At the end of each week, Emily will record some
feedback to questions you asked this week. Listen here,
or download the file at the end of the step.

Conversation starter

 What stood out for you during week two?

 Do you have any questions about this week?

And what do you think?

The one thing that challenges you the most!

Some people find the most difficult part of doing a

literature review is finding and choosing the right sources
of information. Others find that part of the process fun
and easy, but then get stuck when it comes to writing.

Conversation starter

 In the discussion, tell us what you think is the most

challenging part of doing a literature review?
 Do you think most researchers can teach
themselves how to do a really good literature
review?
© University of Wollongong