Model for Writing a Literature Review

Finding your references
The library gives you access to a wide range of databases.  You need to become familiar with at least some of these.  The library also gives you free access to full text articles from a large range of journals, and you need to know how to find these.  Most of these come in Adobe Acrobat PDF format, so your computer needs to have the software.  (Read only Adobe is free on the web at http://www.adobe.com/products/acrobat/readstep2.html).
I usually use PubMed, which has most of the papers you will need for this class.  You should make sure you are familiar with this site.  http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/PubMed/  References you find on PubMed can be directly downloaded into your reference manager system (RefWorks or other) for you to use as you write.
If you go into PubMed through the school library site, instead of directly from the web, you can access full text journals directly, which is a neat way to work. 
 

Managing your references
Before you even start with a literature review, you need to have a system worked out that manages your references for you.  Most of the systems available not only allow you to download reference citations from PubMed or elsewhere so that you can sort them and find them, but allows you to "cite as you write" which means that as you write a sentence that needs the reference inserted you can go to your database, mark the reference and with one click of the mouse, insert in in the text in the right position.  When you have finished your document, with another couple of clicks the software makes your reference list and marks the text with numbers or names, according the format you chose.
There are several packages, Reference Manager, Endnote and RefWorks.  Reference Manager is probably the best but is expensive.  RefWorks is available at the library free of charge, so that is what we are going to teach you to use.  However, if you have access to one of the others, or any preference, use whatever works for you.
http://training.arc.ucla.edu/  is the website for a RefWorks tutorial.  This is your first assignment.
The nice thing about using these programs is that you can review the whole abstract of papers as you write to make sure you have the right references in the right place.
 

Model for writing a Literature Review

A literature review is a concise analysis of a number of research articles that all deal with the same topic. The goal of the assignment is to allow you to apply a number of readings about how to do a critical analysis of research articles to produce a simple literature review. Research findings can only be applied to professional practice when you look over many research studies and draw from them those pieces of the truth that appear to be reliable and valid and that provide practical benefits to your professional practice.

CRITICAL REVIEW OF AN ARTICLE

Before you can embark on a literature review you need to know how to read and critique a paper. This is not as simple as it sounds, and it takes quite a little practice. This we will give you in this course. Learning to critique other's papers objectively and in depth is essential in learning to write and critique your own. Some of you will already have had some experience, but the more you get the better scientist you will become. The following will help you get started.

First a definition. We will access peer reviewed journals for the most part. The term "peer review" is very important in science. It is the method by which we evaluate each other's scientific contributions, and it is fundamental to the way papers are selected for inclusion in a journal and is the method by which NIH selects grants for funding. Essentially the paper or grant is sent to three or four people in the same field, who read it carefully and critically, and send in their assessment and their comments. The final decision is made by looking at several reviews. All the journals you will find on PubMed are 'peer reviewed', and we refer to this as the 'peer reviewed' literature. This is where you want your scientific publications to be.

Book chapters are usually not peer reviewed. For this reason they are often not as tightly written, and contain more opinions, some of which may not be supported by data. Book chapters are always at least four years out of date, because that is the time it takes the editors to get all the chapters together and send them to the printers, edit the book etc. etc. Book chapters are useful but do not use them by themselves.

Nowadays there is a lot of information on line. Here you need to be very critical indeed. What is the site? Is it a credible site, such as a CDC or NCI site, in which case you can put some trust in the information? Or is it a site developed by a few fringe thinkers with a tub to thump who want you to believe something a little way out, but who may be clever enough to dress it up as something credible? Do not be deceived. You need to be very critical in reviewing this kind of material, but on the other hand an enormous amount of excellent information is available to you. The questions you must ask yourself are "Do I believe this? Have the authors the evidence to support what they say?"

ASSIGNMENT: Review a paper for this assignment and i) present it orally in class (10 minutes max) and ii) post a one page or so review of the same paper on the web. You will be graded on both of these.

Method for critically reviewing a paper: These are the questions:
1. Who wrote the paper, from which institution? Who are they?
2. Does the introduction contain all the information you need to understand the study area?
3. What are their scientific questions? Why? If you can't figure out from their paper what their questions are this is not a good paper. What was it they wanted to know? (If they cannot tell you what they wanted to know, they are unlikely to be able to find anything out.)
4. Is the literature review complete and well referenced?
5. Give an exact summary of their methodology. What did they do? Where? How? What was their study population? Etc.
6. Do the results answer the question they asked and reflect the methodology? Do they give results for all the methods (some papers describe a method, and you can find no results, others may give some results without describing the method)
7. Are their numbers and their statistics adequate and correct? Does everything add up as it should?
8. Do their tables and figures add useful information to the text, and are they clear and easy to understand?
9. Does their discussion summarize their most important findings accurately?
10. Do the authors interpret their findings correctly?
11. Do the authors discuss the problems they encountered and problems in interpreting their data?
12. Have the authors made a major contribution with their paper?
13. Finally. What is your interpretation of their study? Do you agree with them? If not, what do you think?

If you need to review grammar rules and etc.., please visit the writing resource link below. We hope you will find this resource helpful.

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