Literature Review

What is literature?

Literature: A large body of published written work on a particular topic of interests.

Written work: documents

 

What can you find in literature?

1. Current (up-to-date) state of your research field (or RQ)

2. Research philosophies, methodologies and theories developed/used in your research field. (for your RQ)

3. Outstanding challenges in your research field

4. Ideas explored

5. Inspiration

6. The entire basis of a new research

7. A source of comparative data

8. A source of raw data (re-analyse)

9. A basis of comparison and bechmarking

10. A determinant of feasibility

 

Why literature review?

1. You do not re-invent the wheel

2. You do not waste time understanding what is already understood

3. You know what other people think about the topic

4. You have some idea of the value of what you want to do

5. You understand enough about your topic

 

What is literature review?

1. A body of text that aims to analyse critically a segment of a published body of knowledge through summary, classification, and comparison of prior research studies, reviews of literature, the theoretical articles.

2. Literature reviews are secondary sources, and as such, it does not report any new or original experimental work.

 

How to conduct a literature review? (steps)

1. Get literature from scientific resources

2. Read literature

3. Write review

4. Stay up-to-date

 

What is scientific resources?

Scientific resources:

1. Primary scientific resources: the 1st recordings of new results, published by researchers who found them.

2. Secondary scientific resources: Report about results (in magazines, newspapers), commented results (in a review paper), usually not by original researcher.

 

How to find and use scientific resources?

1. Use suitable keywords

2. keywords related research problems

 

What is the reading steps?

1. Start with reading available books.

2. Study tutorial/review journal articles.

3. Have a look at available dissertations.

4. Go deeper by studying journal articles and conference proceedings.

5. Summarize each article you read in a paragraph.

 

Where to get scientific resources:

Book

1. Unitec library                             library.unitec.ac.nz

2. NZ Library of congress              www.loc.gov

3. NZ National library                    www.natlib.govt.nz

4. Online bookstores                     www.amazon.com

Articles

1. INSPEC                                     inspecdirect.theiet.org

2. Science direct                            www.sciencedirect.com

3. CiteSeer                                    citeseerx.ist.psu.edu

4. Google scholar                          scholar.google.co.nz

5. IEEE Xplore                                ieeexplore.ieee.org

6. ACM                                         portal.acm.org

 

How to read scientific resources?

1. Where and when is the article published?

2. Is the problem clearly formulated?

3. Could the problem have been approached more effectively from another perspective?

4. Are there any sigificant assumptions taken by authors?

5. How does the problem relate to your review and other problems of general interests?

6. What are the main results and key contribution of the article?

7. Did the results appear to be convincing?

8. Have the authors published other papers closely related to this one?

9. Are there any limitations in the article that can be possibly improved in the future?

 

What is critical reading?

1. It is not simply close and careful reading. To read critically, one must active recognize and analyze evidence upon the page.

2. It is not concerned with WHAT the examples are, readers draw on prior knowledge and past experience to infer the appropriate meaning and to find out what the examples really tell about.

 

How to critical reading?

When reading evidence, ask yourself

1. How was the data gathered?

2. Was the methodology appropriate?

3. Is the sample size large enough to suppor the conclusions?

4. What methods were applied - are they appropriate?

5. What assumptions used - are the assumptions appropriate?

 

When judging the quality, ask yourself

1. Does the work cover solid fact, opinion?

2. Does the author present the information impartially?

3. Does the information have reliable sources? (from where?)

4. Are the ideas similar to, or very different from the bulk of the literature?

5. Does the work add new information?

6. Does the paper add to the progress of your topic?

7. What do you already know about the topic?

8. What background reading will help you understand the paper? Do you need to get this first? If not... why are you reading it? What interests you about this paper?

9. Does it add to your understanding of the wider field?

10. Does it add to your appreciation of methodologies?

11. Does it give you a template for reporting?

 

What should a literature review look like?

1. A discussion of your knowledge about the topic under study

2. A discussion of your knowledge supported by research literature

3. A critical survey

4. A foundation for your study (research)

 

How to write literature review?

1. Summarize the aricles you read;

2. Evaluate these works

3. Show the relationships between different works and show how it relates to your work.