The Literature Review

Six steps: Select a topic-Search the literature-Develop the argument-Survey the literature-Critique the literature-Write the review

The book aims to help the students to conduct summary of the literature, to build the understanding of the existent knowledge of a certain topic. However for the aim of research, the literature review is often the first important step to go further, to notice the gap of knowledge, the conflicts between different opinions, the problem of methods and data used, or even the fallacies of the reasoning in order to start researcher's own new project. In six steps, actually for me the most important are the first two steps: select the topic and search the literature-refine the topic-new search. Then, it concerns the synthesize the contents of the literature and develop them.

1. Select a topic means you have to develop a research interest into a researchable academic topic.
Source of a research interest: Experience, Suggestion, Academic journals, Media
a) we have to refine a broad interest by specification; the most eficient way maybe is to ask yourself questions around the key terms to narrow the scope
b) focus on a specific level of the problem, or to focus on a specific subject
c) academic perspective
d) rewrite the interest into a topic using relevant academic terms which allow you to start the first literature search

Try to write five setences to describe the interest, refine them into three sentences by specifying them, add on data source, methods used, research significance, and expected results to form a proposal for academic conference.

2. Search the literature 

Scan-Skim-Map

a) Scan the books and monographs, journals, magazines, newspapers and web sites to compile the files that you man include

b) Skim the contents (abstracts, core concepts, topics, methodology, data source, conclusion) to decide finally which references would be included. 

c) connect the literature to a concept map

The main aim of this step is to refine your initial topic (narrow or expand) taking account the existent knowledge, which may trigger the new round of search of literature.

 

3. Argument of discovery (Survey the literature)

a) Identify the reasoning process of each reference

Body of evidence - Reasoning (one-on-one, side-by-side, chain, joint) - Claims

b) synthesize all the discoveries of the selected references into an integrated argument

Claims of each references (premises) - Reasoning (versus or comparative) - Argument

Compile the core ideas of the literature in a systematic way.

 

4. Argument of advocacy (Critique the literature)

Argument of discovery (premises) - Implicative deductive reasoning (cause and effect, effect to cause, population to sample, sample to population, parallel, analogy, sign, authority) - Answer to the question

In this step, I believe we should go further focusing on evaluate the quality of data, the validity of methods, the soundness of reasoning, which would be especially useful for the design of own project.

Literature Search

"Going a literature search" presents a general procedure to hit the relevante referenche, though it mainly focuses on the english language resources and sometimes outdated, it provides certain useful websites to begin with.



In the information age, internet should be considered as a gateway to identify and locate the literature. I do believe that any research should begin with a consult of a general and introductory book which presentes the most influencial work of the specific area and subject, as well as get familiar with the terms which should be used in searching the literature.



1. encyclopaedia, maybe nowadays most popular source is that open source wikipedia.

2. prepare terms to look for

3. book database : amazon and book google

4. abstract and index databases for journals : scholar google and other academic journal databases

5. find core texte by using citation index: ISI (need to have the name of the author or title of the article)

6. form the lists of literature and access possibility (online fulltexte or library photocopy)

7. List of authors, research centers, institutions, government agencies, etc.

8. Other less reliable sources such as newspaper, magazines, forum discussion.



The book is basically useless for me, as when a research project is so specific, the literature and data search, the evaluation of the searching results is by itself a serious work to carry on and could result in a paper to share with the colleagues who have the similar interests.

Research Process

Research process begins with the writing of the research project which is basically based on the first literature review and defining the research problem and methods carried.
1) more literature review - the literature review part of the article
2) methods and data collection - methods part of the article
3) data analysis - results and conclusion

In the personal small project which doesn't need approval, we can combine the writing of the project with the first step of research conduct.