Research literature review dr majdi

Dr. Majdi N. Al-Jasim
Consultant Family Medicine
Research Literature Review
“A Practical Guide”

OBJECTIVES
By the end of this lecture, you should be able to:
 Explain how to search the literature.
 Explain the different parts of literature review writing
scheme.
 Explain how to write research objectives.
 Explain what plagiarism is in literature writing.
Dr. Majdi N. AlJasim

A comprehensive, in depth,
systematic scanning and
critical review of previously
done researches in the
topic of interest.
What is Literature Review?

To the reader:
Summarize the knowledge and ideas that
have been already established on a
particular topic of research.
To you as a researcher:
▪ Improving methodology of your research.
▪ Developing data collection tool.
▪ Avoid problems in previous researches.
▪ Shed light on any knowledge gap of
previous researches.
Why Literature Review?

Resources of Literature
Review

Are those which are collected for the first time, and used for the
original purpose it is collected for.
It is written by a person who developed the theory or conducted
the research.
Examples:
Observational and experimental studies (all original articles).
Primary Resource
ALWAYS try to use primary resources while writing
research literature review as much as possible!

Refer to re-usage of pre-existing data that have been collected
by someone else for another purpose.
It is written by people other than the individuals who developed
the theory or conducted the research.
Examples:
Systematic review and meta-analysis articles, guidelines article...
etc.
Secondary Resource

Searching for
Resources

Computer-assisted literature search has
revolutionized the review of literature.
General literature search can be conducted
through search engines like Google Scholar
and Microsoft Academic; however, other
platforms like Pubmed, Medline, Scopus,
ResearchGate and Embase are still the
corner stone for literature review searching.
Searching for Resources
KEEP IN MIND there is NO such a PERFECT search engine.

Searching for Resources
TAKE THIS TIP !!
SNOW BALLING Searching Tactic:
By looking into each article reference section.
This section will show you other possible
articles that might be useful to your research
to look into.

Searching

Before starting your search
Search
Operators
MeSH
Descriptors
HINT 1
HINT 2
IT IS
IMPORTANT
TO KNOW
ABOUT:

Search Operators
HINT 1
Define the relationship between KEYWORDS
OR GROUPS OF KEYWORDS during the
process of search.

Search Operators
HINT 1 AND
Used to retrieve articles that have all keywords togethers.
FOOD HABITS
FOOD
HABITS
food AND habits

Search Operators
HINT 1 OR
Used to retrieve articles that have any keyword.
FOOD HABITS
food OR habits

Search Operators
HINT 1 NOT
Used to eliminate articles that contain certain keywords.
FOOD HABITS
food NOT habits

Quotation Operator
HINT 1 “ ”
Used for phrase search.
DISTANCE
EDUCATION
DISTANCE
LEARNING
“distance education” NOT “distance learning”

Wildcard Operator
HINT 1 ?
Used to replace character variations in the middle of a word.
ANALYZE
ANALYSE
ANALY?E

Truncation Operator
HINT 1 *
Used when searching for words with the same root.
Epidemy
Epidemic
Epidemiology
Epidemiological
Epidem*

MeSH Descriptors
HINT 2
Medical Subject Headings (MeSH) are standard terminology that
help defining topics and retrieving related articles.
Example:
Consider you are interested in mortality of certain disease, you should
search other synonyms that have the same meaning.
Here this could be Mortality, Fatality, Death… etc.
By using MeSH, your search will include all other synonyms (QUALIFIERS)
that have the same meaning defined by search engine.

Formulate Search Strategy
Sinusitis treatment with amoxicillin
Exercise 1

Sinusitis treatment with amoxicillin
Exercise 1
Main topic Main topic
Qualifier
(found by
MeSH)
AND
operator
SEARCH: Sinusitis/drug therapy AND amoxicillin

Sinusitis treatment without amoxicillin
Exercise 2

Sinusitis treatment without amoxicillin
Exercise 2
Main topic Main topic
Qualifier
(found by
MeSH)
NOT
operator
SEARCH: Sinusitis/drug therapy NOT amoxicillin

Psychological aspects of obesity
Exercise 3

Psychological aspects of obesity
Exercise 3
Qualifier
(found by
MeSH)
Main topic
SEARCH: Obesity/psychology

Writing Scheme of Research
Literature Review

Literature Review Writing Scheme

Gives a quick idea about the topic of the
literature review.
Here you show to the readers how important
this subject is, and highlight some important
facts about the topic and show the gaps in
current knowledge.
Background

Important facts
to draw reader
attention

Efforts done to
see the
magnitude of
the problem

Here you will discuss the results of all relevant studies done on the
same topic. This part SHOULD BE written extensively.
Body
Organizing the literature review body:
1. Chronological approach: by publication date from oldest to
newest study.
2. Methodological approach: by separating qualitative from
quantitative studies.
3. Funnel approach: by starting with general researches ending
with more specific ones, OR by starting with studies from far east
and west countries, going towards local studies.
A. ORGANIZING

Mostly Used Funnel Approach Theme
Body A. ORGANIZING
Studies in Saudi Arabia
Studies in gulf countries
Studies in middle-east
countries
Studies in far west and far
east countries

The body is
written by
funnel
approach

Use your language skills to link between studies either by
agreement or disagreement phrases.
Body
Example of agreement phrases:
▪ Similarly, author A points to…
▪ Likewise, author B makes the case that…
Example of disagreement phrases:
▪ However, author C points to…
▪ On the other hand, author D makes the case that…
▪ Conversely, Author E argues…
▪ Nevertheless, what author F suggests…
B. LINKING

As a general rule, use ACTIVE voice unless there is a good reason
to use passive voice.
Body
Example:
Active voice: Majdi wrote a paper about disease X.
Passive voice: A paper about disease X was written by Majdi.
It is clear that ACTIVE VOICE is more clear to the reader than
passive voice and less wordy.
C. VOICE

Using particular reporting verbs help the reader understand the
relevance of the sources in your writing and can help you to
strengthen your argument. DO NOT use certain verb repeatedly.
Body
Common Reporting Verbs:
Argue, Assert, Assume, Challenge, Claim, Contend, Comment,
Compare, Conclude, Contradict, Confirm, Declare, Define,
Describe, Deny, Dispute, Discuss, Emphasize, Endorse, Establish,
Examine, Explain, Explore, Find, Focus on, Identify, Indicate,
Interpret, Maintain, Note, Object, Observe, Oppose, Persuade,
Point out, Propose, Prove, Purport, Recommend, Refute, Reject,
Remark, Report, Reveal, Show, State, Suggest, Support.
D. REPORTING VERBS

Using of Reporting
Verbs [found, showed,
revealed, examined]

PAST TENSE: Used to describe previous SINGLE research.
Example: Majdi etal found that…
PRESENT TENSE: Used when you describe your point of view regarding
previous researches or certain facts.
Example: The wide confidence interval here is due to small sample size…
PRESENT PERFECT: Used when several researches share same findings.
Example: Several studies have shown that…
FUTURE TENSE: DO NOT use FUTURE TENSE while writing literature review.
Body E. VERB TENSE

Conclusion
The sequence of summarization is as following:
1. Summarize major contributions of significant studies.
2. Pointing out major methodological flaws or knowledge gaps in
previous researches.
3. Finding areas of improvement to fit your study in (what extra
knowledge that your research will provide, what kind of
methodology you will use to improve the outcome).
A. SUMMARIZING

Pointing out
knowledge
gaps, proposing
another method

Conclusion B. OBJECTIVES
Objectives are there to guide you to the right direction and to
focus on certain parts and to avoid unnecessary findings.
Types of objectives:
General objective: Is the broad goal you want to achieve. Usually it
will be the same as your research title.
Specific objectives: Are the broken down parts of general
objective. It should be SMART (Specific and focused, Measurable,
Attainable, Realistic, and Time-bound).

Example:
General objective:
We aim in this study to assess the adherence of pregnant women to
folic acid intake in Al-Ahsa area of KSA.
Specific objectives:
1. To identify factors affect pregnant women awareness about
folic acid intake.
2. To identify factors affect adherence to folic acid intake.
3. To assess the role of family physicians on adherence status.

The specific objectives SHOULD BE written using ACTION VERBS.

Plagiarism

Plagiarism refers to using some other person's exact wordings and
expression of ideas and information without acknowledging that
person.
Plagiarism
What to do to use others wordings?
1. Quotation: If you are going to take the exact sentence, you
should enclose it in between quotation marks " ". However, some
journals don't like that either.
2. Rephrasing: Rephrasing (paraphrase) the sentence using your
own unique words. Using only synonymous of words will be
considered plagiarism as well.

Plagiarism Example
Original paragraph:
Because of their unique perspective, Americans fear globalization
less than anyone else, and as a consequence they think about it
less than anyone else. When Americans do think about
globalization, they think of the global economy as an enlarged
version of the American economy.
(Source: Thurow, L. (1993). Fortune Favors the Bold (p. 6). New
York: Harper Collins.).

Plagiarism paragraph:
According to Lester Thurow (1993) Americans fear
globalization less than people from other countries
and as a consequence spend less time thinking
about it. Indeed, Americans see globalization as an
enlarged version of their own economy.
Why is this plagiarism?
The writer has only substituted synonyms here and
there. Even though Thurow is credited with a
citation, this would be considered plagiarism.
Plagiarism Example

Rephrasing paragraph:
Lester Thurow (1993) maintains that because
Americans see globalization simply as a bigger
form of their own economy, they are less
concerned about it than is the rest of the world.
Why is this acceptable?
The writer has kept the meaning of the original
paragraph without copying any of its structure.
Plagiarism Example

There are different online tools used to check for plagiarism. One of
these online plagiarism checker is available on:
www.grammarly.com
Use this tool to check your paper for plagiarism in Literature Review and
Discussion Section ONLY.
Plagiarism Checker

There is no such accepted rate of plagiarism;
however, in general for post-graduate
papers, it must be ≤ 20%; and for master and
PhD degree papers, it must be ≤ 10%
However, this may vary from journal to
journal.
Accepted Rate of Plagiarism

SUMMARY - LR SCHEME
Gives a quick idea
about the topic of
the literature
review.
Discusses the results of
all relevant studies done
on the same topic.
Summarizes, points
out flaws and area
of improvement.

Research literature review dr majdi

Research literature review dr majdi

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