How to Write a Literature Review for Nursing

PLoS Comput Biol. 2013 Jul; ix(vii): e1003149.

X Simple Rules for Writing a Literature Review

Marco Pautasso

¹Centre for Functional and Evolutionary Environmental (CEFE), CNRS, Montpellier, France

²Centre for Biodiversity Synthesis and Analysis (CESAB), FRB, Aix-en-Provence, France

Philip East. Bourne, Editor

Literature reviews are in nifty demand in most scientific fields. Their need stems from the ever-increasing output of scientific publications [i]. For instance, compared to 1991, in 2008 three, viii, and xl times more than papers were indexed in Spider web of Science on malaria, obesity, and biodiversity, respectively [2]. Given such mountains of papers, scientists cannot exist expected to examine in detail every unmarried new paper relevant to their interests [3]. Thus, it is both advantageous and necessary to rely on regular summaries of the recent literature. Although recognition for scientists mainly comes from primary enquiry, timely literature reviews tin lead to new constructed insights and are oft widely read [4]. For such summaries to be useful, nonetheless, they demand to be compiled in a professional manner [5].

When starting from scratch, reviewing the literature can require a titanic amount of piece of work. That is why researchers who have spent their career working on a certain research issue are in a perfect position to review that literature. Some graduate schools are now offering courses in reviewing the literature, given that most research students start their project by producing an overview of what has already been done on their inquiry issue [vi]. However, it is likely that most scientists accept non thought in item nearly how to arroyo and bear out a literature review.

Reviewing the literature requires the ability to juggle multiple tasks, from finding and evaluating relevant material to synthesising information from diverse sources, from critical thinking to paraphrasing, evaluating, and citation skills [vii]. In this contribution, I share ten simple rules I learned working on about 25 literature reviews as a PhD and postdoctoral educatee. Ideas and insights also come up from discussions with coauthors and colleagues, too as feedback from reviewers and editors.

Rule 1: Define a Topic and Audition

How to cull which topic to review? There are so many issues in gimmicky science that you could spend a lifetime of attention conferences and reading the literature simply pondering what to review. On the one hand, if you accept several years to cull, several other people may accept had the same idea in the concurrently. On the other hand, merely a well-considered topic is probable to pb to a brilliant literature review [8]. The topic must at to the lowest degree be:

interesting to you (ideally, yous should have come up across a series of recent papers related to your line of work that call for a critical summary),
an important aspect of the field (so that many readers volition be interested in the review and there volition be plenty material to write information technology), and
a well-defined issue (otherwise you could potentially include thousands of publications, which would make the review unhelpful).

Ideas for potential reviews may come from papers providing lists of key research questions to be answered [9], but besides from serendipitous moments during desultory reading and discussions. In improver to choosing your topic, you should likewise select a target audience. In many cases, the topic (east.chiliad., web services in computational biology) will automatically define an audience (e.g., computational biologists), but that same topic may as well be of involvement to neighbouring fields (eastward.g., computer scientific discipline, biology, etc.).

Dominion 2: Search and Re-search the Literature

After having chosen your topic and audience, outset by checking the literature and downloading relevant papers. Five pieces of advice here:

keep track of the search items you use (so that your search tin can exist replicated [10]),
keep a list of papers whose pdfs you cannot access immediately (so equally to recall them later with alternative strategies),
use a paper direction system (e.g., Mendeley, Papers, Qiqqa, Sente),
ascertain early in the process some criteria for exclusion of irrelevant papers (these criteria tin so exist described in the review to help define its scope), and
exercise not just look for inquiry papers in the area you lot wish to review, just as well seek previous reviews.

The chances are high that someone will already have published a literature review (Figure 1), if not exactly on the consequence you are planning to tackle, at to the lowest degree on a related topic. If there are already a few or several reviews of the literature on your consequence, my advice is not to surrender, but to carry on with your own literature review,

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A conceptual diagram of the demand for dissimilar types of literature reviews depending on the amount of published research papers and literature reviews.

The bottom-right situation (many literature reviews but few research papers) is not just a theoretical situation; it applies, for example, to the study of the impacts of climatic change on establish diseases, where there appear to be more literature reviews than research studies [33].

discussing in your review the approaches, limitations, and conclusions of past reviews,
trying to find a new angle that has not been covered adequately in the previous reviews, and
incorporating new fabric that has inevitably accumulated since their appearance.

When searching the literature for pertinent papers and reviews, the usual rules apply:

be thorough,
use different keywords and database sources (e.grand., DBLP, Google Scholar, ISI Proceedings, JSTOR Search, Medline, Scopus, Web of Scientific discipline), and
look at who has cited past relevant papers and book chapters.

Rule iii: Have Notes While Reading

If you read the papers first, and simply afterwards kickoff writing the review, you lot will need a very good retention to remember who wrote what, and what your impressions and associations were while reading each single newspaper. My advice is, while reading, to start writing downwards interesting pieces of information, insights near how to organize the review, and thoughts on what to write. This way, by the time you have read the literature you selected, you volition already have a rough typhoon of the review.

Of course, this typhoon will still need much rewriting, restructuring, and rethinking to obtain a text with a coherent argument [eleven], just you volition have avoided the danger posed by staring at a blank certificate. Be careful when taking notes to use quotation marks if you are provisionally copying verbatim from the literature. It is appropriate so to reformulate such quotes with your ain words in the last typhoon. Information technology is important to be careful in noting the references already at this phase, so equally to avoid misattributions. Using referencing software from the very beginning of your endeavour will save yous time.

Rule 4: Choose the Type of Review You Wish to Write

Later having taken notes while reading the literature, y'all will have a rough idea of the corporeality of material available for the review. This is probably a proficient fourth dimension to decide whether to go for a mini- or a total review. Some journals are now favouring the publication of rather curt reviews focusing on the final few years, with a limit on the number of words and citations. A mini-review is non necessarily a modest review: it may well concenter more than attention from decorated readers, although it will inevitably simplify some issues and exit out some relevant material due to space limitations. A full review will have the advantage of more freedom to cover in item the complexities of a particular scientific evolution, simply may then exist left in the pile of the very important papers "to be read" by readers with little time to spare for major monographs.

There is probably a continuum between mini- and full reviews. The same indicate applies to the dichotomy of descriptive vs. integrative reviews. While descriptive reviews focus on the methodology, findings, and interpretation of each reviewed report, integrative reviews attempt to find common ideas and concepts from the reviewed material [12]. A similar stardom exists between narrative and systematic reviews: while narrative reviews are qualitative, systematic reviews attempt to test a hypothesis based on the published evidence, which is gathered using a predefined protocol to reduce bias [13], [14]. When systematic reviews analyse quantitative results in a quantitative style, they become meta-analyses. The choice between different review types volition take to be made on a case-by-case footing, depending non just on the nature of the material plant and the preferences of the target journal(south), only too on the time available to write the review and the number of coauthors [15].

Rule 5: Continue the Review Focused, just Brand Information technology of Wide Interest

Whether your plan is to write a mini- or a full review, it is skilful advice to keep it focused xvi,17. Including material just for the sake of it can easily pb to reviews that are trying to do besides many things at once. The need to go along a review focused can be problematic for interdisciplinary reviews, where the aim is to bridge the gap between fields [18]. If you are writing a review on, for example, how epidemiological approaches are used in modelling the spread of ideas, you may be inclined to include material from both parent fields, epidemiology and the study of cultural diffusion. This may exist necessary to some extent, but in this instance a focused review would only bargain in detail with those studies at the interface between epidemiology and the spread of ideas.

While focus is an important feature of a successful review, this requirement has to exist balanced with the need to brand the review relevant to a wide audition. This square may be circled by discussing the wider implications of the reviewed topic for other disciplines.

Rule 6: Be Disquisitional and Consequent

Reviewing the literature is non stamp collecting. A good review does not only summarize the literature, just discusses it critically, identifies methodological bug, and points out research gaps [19]. After having read a review of the literature, a reader should have a rough idea of:

the major achievements in the reviewed field,
the chief areas of fence, and
the outstanding inquiry questions.

It is challenging to achieve a successful review on all these fronts. A solution can exist to involve a set of complementary coauthors: some people are excellent at mapping what has been achieved, some others are very good at identifying dark clouds on the horizon, and some have instead a knack at predicting where solutions are going to come up from. If your journal gild has exactly this sort of team, then you should definitely write a review of the literature! In addition to critical thinking, a literature review needs consistency, for example in the choice of passive vs. active voice and present vs. past tense.

Dominion 7: Find a Logical Structure

Like a well-baked cake, a adept review has a number of telling features: information technology is worth the reader's fourth dimension, timely, systematic, well written, focused, and critical. It as well needs a good construction. With reviews, the usual subdivision of research papers into introduction, methods, results, and discussion does non piece of work or is rarely used. However, a full general introduction of the context and, toward the end, a recapitulation of the principal points covered and take-home messages make sense also in the case of reviews. For systematic reviews, there is a trend towards including information almost how the literature was searched (database, keywords, fourth dimension limits) [20].

How can you organize the flow of the principal body of the review so that the reader will be drawn into and guided through it? It is more often than not helpful to draw a conceptual scheme of the review, due east.g., with heed-mapping techniques. Such diagrams tin can help recognize a logical way to gild and link the various sections of a review [21]. This is the instance not just at the writing stage, only also for readers if the diagram is included in the review as a figure. A careful selection of diagrams and figures relevant to the reviewed topic tin can be very helpful to structure the text too [22].

Rule eight: Make Utilise of Feedback

Reviews of the literature are normally peer-reviewed in the same way as research papers, and rightly so [23]. As a rule, incorporating feedback from reviewers greatly helps improve a review draft. Having read the review with a fresh mind, reviewers may spot inaccuracies, inconsistencies, and ambiguities that had not been noticed by the writers due to rereading the typescript too many times. It is however advisable to reread the draft one more than time before submission, as a last-minute correction of typos, leaps, and muddled sentences may enable the reviewers to focus on providing advice on the content rather than the form.

Feedback is vital to writing a good review, and should be sought from a variety of colleagues, so equally to obtain a diversity of views on the draft. This may pb in some cases to alien views on the merits of the paper, and on how to meliorate it, but such a state of affairs is amend than the absence of feedback. A multifariousness of feedback perspectives on a literature review can help identify where the consensus view stands in the mural of the current scientific understanding of an upshot [24].

Rule ix: Include Your Ain Relevant Research, but Be Objective

In many cases, reviewers of the literature will have published studies relevant to the review they are writing. This could create a conflict of interest: how tin reviewers report considerately on their own work [25]? Some scientists may be overly enthusiastic about what they take published, and thus adventure giving besides much importance to their own findings in the review. However, bias could also occur in the other direction: some scientists may be unduly dismissive of their own achievements, so that they volition tend to downplay their contribution (if any) to a field when reviewing it.

In general, a review of the literature should neither exist a public relations brochure nor an practice in competitive cocky-denial. If a reviewer is up to the job of producing a well-organized and methodical review, which flows well and provides a service to the readership, then it should be possible to be objective in reviewing one's ain relevant findings. In reviews written by multiple authors, this may exist achieved past assigning the review of the results of a coauthor to different coauthors.

Rule x: Be Upwardly-to-Appointment, but Do Not Forget Older Studies

Given the progressive dispatch in the publication of scientific papers, today'southward reviews of the literature need awareness non just of the overall direction and achievements of a field of enquiry, but besides of the latest studies, and so as not to become out-of-date before they take been published. Ideally, a literature review should not identify as a major research gap an outcome that has just been addressed in a series of papers in press (the same applies, of form, to older, overlooked studies ("sleeping beauties" [26])). This implies that literature reviewers would practice well to keep an eye on electronic lists of papers in printing, given that it can take months earlier these appear in scientific databases. Some reviews declare that they take scanned the literature up to a certain signal in time, but given that peer review can exist a rather lengthy procedure, a total search for newly appeared literature at the revision stage may be worthwhile. Assessing the contribution of papers that have simply appeared is particularly challenging, because there is little perspective with which to gauge their significance and impact on further research and order.

Inevitably, new papers on the reviewed topic (including independently written literature reviews) will appear from all quarters after the review has been published, so that there may soon be the need for an updated review. But this is the nature of scientific discipline [27]–[32]. I wish everybody good luck with writing a review of the literature.

Acknowledgments

Many thank you to M. Barbosa, K. Dehnen-Schmutz, T. Döring, D. Fontaneto, M. Garbelotto, O. Holdenrieder, One thousand. Jeger, D. Lonsdale, A. MacLeod, P. Mills, K. Moslonka-Lefebvre, Thousand. Stancanelli, P. Weisberg, and X. Xu for insights and discussions, and to P. Bourne, T. Matoni, and D. Smith for helpful comments on a previous draft.

Funding Statement

This work was funded past the French Foundation for Research on Biodiversity (FRB) through its Centre for Synthesis and Analysis of Biodiversity data (CESAB), as function of the NETSEED research projection. The funders had no role in the preparation of the manuscript.

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