Three Skills for Every Academic Literature Review

3 Skills for Every Academic Literature Review (Article Voiceover)

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I know, we've been out of touch for a bit. It's been a busy fall term for me. Two new course preps will do that to you. But I am slowly getting my time for the newsletter back and I promise to bring you my writing tips more regularly.

1. Mastering Backward Searching and Citation Chaining

When diving into a literature review, it's like exploring a forest; you need to know where to start and how to trace your steps back. Begin with the newest papers in your field. These are like fresh tracks in the forest. As you examine them, look at their references. This is your path backward. It's a journey through your topic's history, leading you to foundational papers.  Backward citation searches look at the references of a linked article to locate relevant sources. It helps you find relevant research in your field. To search backward citations, take these steps:

1. Find a recent, topic-related article with a long list of references. Search Scopus, Web of Science, or Google Scholar (alternatively use AI tools like Litmaps, Scite, Elicit, or Semantic Scholar but know that their results are not as vetted and comprehensive) for papers by, for example, keywords, authors, titles. This is your seed paper.
2. Find the most relevant sources in the article's reference list for your topic. Read source titles, abstracts, or entire texts to assess relevance and quality.
3. Repeat for each appropriate source until you exhaust the backward citation chain or reach your desired number of sources.

Backward citation searches may reveal a study topic's roots and evolution, as well as gaps and potential for subsequent investigation. However, it may have constraints like:

• Depending on the initial article's publication date, it may not include the latest findings.
• Author selection and citation may prejudice it, because they may not include all relevant or significant sources in their reference list.
• Manually assessing each source is time-consuming.

When searching for relevant sources, it's best to combine a backward citation search with a forward citation search. True citation chaining. For forward citation searches, the same databases as above generally include a link or number indicating how many times an article has been referenced by other publications. Find and read those, following the same process. Forward citation searches may identify the latest research and an article's effect and influence but still has some downsides:

• Because citing articles may reference a particular article for many reasons, it may not represent their quality or importance.
• Because of their many citations from many areas, some papers may be overwhelming and hard to parse.
• Some databases may not include all sources that quote an article or may update citation data incorrectly or slowly.

Thus, backward and forward citation searches should be balanced and are necessary to get multiple viewpoints on your research questions. 

2. How to Skim Academic Papers

Skimming is not just reading fast; it's reading smart. It's like driving; you don't just speed up but also focus on things like road signs and other indicators to maximize your efficiency.

• When you skim an academic paper, focus on the title, then abstract first. The abstract generally summarizes the research topic, methodology, findings, and conclusions. Read the abstract to understand the paper's major points. This gives you the gist of the research—its aims, key findings, and overall significance. You may also see whether the publication fits your research interests.
• Next, read introduction, and then conclusion. Authors discuss their research's motivation, background, goals, and implications in the introduction and conclusion. These sections explain the paper's background, importance, key arguments, and results.
• Then, glance over the headings and subheadings. They're like signposts, guiding you to sections that might need a deeper read. This saves time and helps you quickly determine a paper's relevance to your topic.
• If you're lucky and the paper is well-written, next read the first and last sentences of each paragraph in the main body. The first and last sentences of each paragraph usually contain the topic sentences and the transitions that link the paragraphs together (following the PEEL technique). These sentences let you follow the logical flow and structure of the paper and you should find the key points and evidence that support the main arguments.

• Finally, examine the paper's figures, tables, and graphs. Figures, tables, and graphs show the researchers' data and findings. These sections provide a brief idea of the research methodologies, results, and trends and patterns discovered by the authors.

3. Using Systematic Reviews and Meta-Analyses

Meta-analyses give you a high-level view of existing research and are usually regarded at the top of the hierarchy of evidence:

Systematic reviews and meta-analyses allow you to get a summary of key findings, methodologies, and gaps in the literature. Meta-analyses also help you evaluate the quality and consistency of the evidence in the literature. They often estimate the effect size and confidence intervals of the relationship or intervention of interest. You can then explore the sources of heterogeneity and potential moderators or mediators. This makes them full of new insights and implications for your future research, which can be a massive time saver. The purpose of these is to guide and supplement the process of a comprehensive and critical literature review, not to replace it. Your mileage may vary depending on your field.

I hope this newsletter issue was helpful to you. If you enjoyed reading it, please forward this email to a friend or a person who would benefit from such tips. If you want to support my work, please recommend it to others and follow me on social platforms.