Finding, reviewing and referencing papers:  The literature review

You will be asked to prepare literature reviews during this course.  This is something that has to be done frequently when preparing any kind of scientific document, whether it be a report, a thesis, a grant proposal for funding or a paper for publication.  Being able to find, read intelligently, interpret and quote published literature is a very important skill.

This is not as difficult as you think, but it takes time and practice to do it well.  You have to be able to read and to think clearly.  Then you have to be able to write down what you have read and think so that someone else can understand you.  No-one ever learned to do this in five minutes!

First you have to find your papers.  PubMed is a great source of medical papers and is free.  This will be demonstrated in class.  Get on to PubMed and type in keywords or authors names, whatever you think will help, just like a Google search.  You may have to narrow your search when too much comes up for you to sift through.

Mark the papers you want to include in your database and export them to your reference manager (See the RefWorks page).  Get full copies of the papers you want to quote.  I read them with a highlighter in my hand for key words and phrases--but everyone has their own method.  If it works for you, do it that way.

As you write your literature review you can call up the abstracts to remind you of the main content and to be sure it is the right reference.

Be very careful here about plagarism.  This can be quite difficult to sort out, particularly for those who are doing this for the same time.  It is NOT ACCEPTABLE to copy out what the papers says word for word--THAT IS PLAGARISM.  However it IS ACCEPTABLE to rewrite what the author says in your own words, but you MUST then quote the reference either with the name or a number that corresponds to the full reference in your reference list.  You must do this every time you quote something from someone else's work.

Remember that not everything that is written in black and white is true.  In fact, much of it may not be.  So be critical.  Are you convinced what you are reading is correct?  Was the author biased?  Do the data support the conclusions?  Was the study well or badly designed?  Many published papers are not all that good.  Learn to pick out the good ones, and (politely) dismiss the bad ones.