The literature review primer 2015

The Literature
Review Primer
(Alex D’Angelo)
CONTENTS
 What is a literature review? Definitions.
 Link to online film of how to write a lit-
review (with quick notes by Alex.)
 Alex’s Guide: Finding material for your
literature review
1) Choosing your topic
2) Collecting the most relevant (and
usually “peer reviewed”) articles and
books
3) Using the tools (with worked
examples):
(a) Subject Reference Books,

(b) The Library, National and
International Book Catalogues.
(c) Databases of Electronic
Journal Articles
(d) Thesis databases
(e) Citation databases
(f) Boolean Searching
(g) Finding a specific Electronic
Journal
(h) Setting up alerts
(i) Using a Citation Database
(j) RefWorks
4) Reading/Skimming the material,
using their abstracts,
5) Grouping the material into the
themes and sub-themes of your
topic,
6) Identifying with sub-themes
materials that agree, disagree, and
points which are not covered at all.
What is a literature review?
A quick definition:

Literature Review
(Social Sciences) A formal,
reflective survey of the most significant
and relevant works of published and
peer-reviewed academic research on
a particular topic, summarizing and
discussing their findings
and methodologies in order to reflect
the current state of knowledge in the
field and the key questions raised.
Literature reviews do not themselves
present any previously unpublished
research. They may be published as
review articles in academic journals or
as an element in a thesis or
dissertation: in the case of the latter,
they serve to situate the current study
within the field.
Chandler, Daniel, and Rod
Munday. "literature review." In A
Dictionary of Media and
Communication. : Oxford
University Press, 2011.
http://www.oxfordreference.com/vi
ew/10.1093/acref/9780199568758.

001.0001/acref-9780199568758-e-
1550.
A much longer and practically-orientated
definition:
Literature Review
Noel A. Card
Literature reviews are systematic
syntheses of previous work around a
particular topic. Nearly all scholars
have written literature reviews at some
point; such reviews are common
requirements for class projects or as
part of theses, are often the first
section of empirical papers, and are
sometimes written to summarize a
field of study. Given the increasing
amount of literature in many fields,
reviews are critical in synthesizing
scientific knowledge. Although
common and important to science,
literature reviews are rarely considered
to be held to the same scientific rigor

as other aspects of the research
process. This entry describes the
types of literature reviews and
scientific standards for conducting
literature reviews.
Types of Literature Reviews
Although beginning scholars often
believe that there is one predefined
approach, various types of literature
reviews exist. Literature reviews can
vary along at least seven dimensions.
Focus
The focus is the basic unit of
information that the reviewer extracts
from the literature. Reviews most
commonly focus on research
outcomes, drawing conclusions of the
form of “The research shows X” or
“These studies find X whereas other
studies find Y.” Although research
outcomes are most common, other
foci are possible. Some reviews focus
on research methods, for example,
considering how many studies in a

field use longitudinal designs.
Literature reviews can also focus on
theories, such as what theoretical
explanations are commonly used
within a field or attempts to integrate
multiple theoretical perspectives.
Finally, literature reviews can focus on
typical practices within a field, for
instance, on what sort of interventions
are used in clinical literature or on the
type of data analyses conducted within
an area of empirical research.
Goals
Common goals include integrating
literature by drawing generalizations
(e.g., concluding the strength of an
effect from several studies), resolving
conflicts (e.g., why an effect is found in
some studies but not others), or
drawing links across separate fields
(e.g., demonstrating that two lines of
research are investigating a common
phenomenon). Another goal of a
literature review might be to identify
central issues, such as unresolved

questions or next steps for future
research. Finally, some reviews have
the goal of criticism; although this goal
might sound unsavory, it is important
for scientific fields to be evaluated
critically and have shortcomings noted.
Perspective
Literature reviews also vary in terms of
perspective, with some attempting to
represent the literature neutrally and
others arguing for a position. Although
few reviews fall entirely on one end of
this dimension or the other, it is useful
for readers to consider this perspective
when evaluating a review and for
writers to consider their own
perspective.
Coverage
Coverage refers to the amount of
literature on which the review is based.
At one extreme of this dimension is
exhaustive coverage, which uses all
available literature. A similar approach
is the exhaustive review with selective

citation, in which the reviewer uses all
available literature to draw conclusions
but cites only a sample of this
literature when writing the review.
Moving along this dimension, a review
can be representative, such that the
reviewer bases conclusions on and
cites a subset of the existing literature
believed to be similar to the larger
body of work. Finally, at the far end of
this continuum is the literature review
of most central works.
Organization
The most common organization is
conceptual, in which the reviewer
organizes literature around specific
sets of findings or questions. However,
historic organizations are also useful,
in that they provide a perspective on
how knowledge or practices have
changed across time. Methodological
organizations, in which findings are
arranged according to methodological
aspects of the reviewed studies, are

also a possible method of organizing
literature reviews.
Method of Synthesis
Literature reviews also vary in terms of
how conclusions are drawn, with the
endpoints of this continuum being
qualitative versus quantitative.
Qualitative reviews, which are also
called narrative reviews, are those in
which reviewers draw conclusions
based on their subjective evaluation of
the literature. Vote counting methods,
which might be considered
intermediate on the qualitative versus
quantitative dimension, involve tallying
the number of studies that find a
particular effect and basing
conclusions on this tally. Quantitative
reviews, which are sometimes also
called meta-analyses, involve
assigning numbers to the results of
studies (representing an effect size)
and then performing statistical
analyses of these results to draw
conclusions.

Audience
Literature reviews written to support an
empirical study are often read by
specialized scholars in one's own field.
In contrast, many stand-alone reviews
are read by those outside one's own
field, so it is important that these are
accessible to scholars from other
fields. Reviews can also serve as a
valuable resource for practitioners in
one's field (e.g., psychotherapists and
teachers) as well as policy makers and
the general public, so it is useful if
reviews are written in a manner
accessible to educated laypersons. In
short, the reviewer must consider the
likely audiences of the review and
adjust the level of specificity and
technical detail accordingly.
All of these seven dimensions are
important considerations when
preparing a literature review. As might
be expected, many reviews will have
multiple levels of these dimensions
(e.g., multiple goals directed toward

multiple audiences). Tendencies exist
for co-occurrence among dimensions;
for example, quantitative reviews
typically focus on research outcomes,
cover the literature exhaustively, and
are directed toward specialized
scholars. At the same time,
consideration of these dimensions
suggests the wide range of
possibilities available in preparing
literature reviews.
Scientific Standards for Literature
Reviews
Given the importance of literature
reviews, it is important to follow
scientific standards in preparing these
reviews. Just as empirical research
follows certain practices to ensure
validity, we can consider how various
decisions impact the quality of
conclusions drawn in a literature
review. This section follows Harris
Cooper's organization by describing
considerations at five stages of the
literature review process.

Problem Formulation
As in any scientific endeavor, the first
stage of a literature review is to
formulate a problem. Here, the central
considerations involve the questions
that the reviewer wishes to answer,
the constructs of interest, and the
population about which conclusions
are drawn. A literature review can only
answer questions about which prior
work exists.
For instance, to make conclusions of
causality, the reviewer will need to rely
on experimental (or perhaps
longitudinal) studies; concurrent
naturalistic studies would not provide
answers to this question. Defining the
constructs of interest poses two
potential complications: The existing
literature might use different terms for
the same construct, or the existing
literature might use similar terms to
describe different constructs. The
reviewer, therefore, needs to define
clearly the constructs of interest when

planning the review. Similarly, the
reviewer must consider which samples
will be included in the literature review,
for instance, deciding whether studies
of unique populations (e.g., prison,
psychiatric settings) should be
included within the review. The
advantages of a broad approach (in
terms of constructs and samples) are
that the conclusions of the review will
be more generalizable and might allow
for the identification of important
differences among studies, but the
advantages of a narrow approach are
that the literature will likely be more
consistent and the quantity of literature
that must be reviewed is smaller.
Literature Retrieval
When obtaining literature relevant for
the review, it is useful to conceptualize
the literature included as a sample
drawn from a population of all possible
works. This conceptualization
highlights the importance of obtaining
an unbiased sample of literature for

the review. If the literature reviewed is
not exhaustive, or at least
representative, of the extant research,
then the conclusions drawn might be
biased. One common threat to all
literature reviews is publication bias, or
the file drawer problem. This threat is
that studies that fail to find significant
effects (or that find counterintuitive
effects) are less likely to be published
and, therefore, are less likely to be
included in the review. Reviewers
should attempt to obtain unpublished
studies, which will either counter this
threat or at least allow the reviewer to
evaluate the magnitude of this bias
(e.g., comparing effects from
published vs. unpublished studies).
Another threat is that reviewers
typically must rely on literature written
in a language they know (e.g.,
English); this excludes literature
written in other languages and
therefore might exclude most studies
conducted in other countries. Although
it would be impractical for the reviewer

to learn every language in which
relevant literature might be written, the
reviewer should be aware of this
limitation and how it impacts the
literature on which the review is based.
To ensure transparency of a literature
review, the reviewer should report
means by which potentially relevant
literature was searched and obtained.
Inclusion Criteria
Deciding which works should inform
the review involves reading the
literature obtained and drawing
conclusions regarding relevance.
Obvious reasons to exclude works
include the investigation of constructs
or samples that are irrelevant to the
review (e.g., studies involving animals
when one is interested in human
behavior) or that do not provide
information relevant to the review
(e.g., treating the construct of interest
only as a covariate). Less obvious
decisions need to be made with works
that involve questionable quality or

methodological features different from
other studies. Including such works
might improve the generalizability of
the review on the one hand, but it
might contaminate the literature basis
or distract focus on the other hand.
Decisions at this stage will typically
involve refining the problem
formulation stage of the review.
Interpretation
The most time-consuming and difficult
stage is analyzing and interpreting the
literature. As mentioned, several
approaches to drawing conclusions
exist. Qualitative approaches involve
the reviewer performing some form of
internal synthesis; as such, they are
prone to reviewer subjectivity. At the
same time, qualitative approaches are
the only option when reviewing
nonempirical literature (e.g.,
theoretical propositions), and the
simplicity of qualitative decision
making is adequate for many
purposes. A more rigorous approach is

the vote-counting methods, in which
the reviewer tallies studies into
different categories (e.g., significant
versus nonsignificant results) and
bases decisions on either the
preponderance of evidence (informal
vote counting) or statistical
procedures (comparing the number of
studies finding significant results with
that expected by chance). Although
vote-counting methods reduce
subjectivity relative to qualitative
approaches, they are limited in that the
conclusions reached involve only
whether there is an effect (rather than
the magnitude of the effect). The best
way to draw conclusions from
empirical literature is through
quantitative, or meta-analytic,
approaches. Here, the reviewer codes
effect sizes for the studies then applies
statistical procedures to evaluate the
presence, magnitude, and sources of
differences of these effects across
studies.

Presentation
Although presentation formats are
highly disciplinary specific (and
therefore, the best way to learn how to
present reviews is to read reviews in
one's area), a few guidelines are
universal. First, the reviewer should be
transparent about the review process.
Just as empirical works are expected
to present sufficient details for
replication, a literature review should
provide sufficient detail for another
scholar to find the same literature,
include the same works, and draw the
same conclusions. Second, it is critical
that the written report answers the
original questions that motivated the
review or at least describes why such
answers cannot be reached and what
future work is needed to provide these
answers. A third guideline is to avoid
study-by-study listing. A good review
synthesizes—not merely lists—the
literature (it is useful to consider that a
phonebook contains a lot of

information, but is not very informative,
or interesting, to read). Reviewers
should avoid “Author A found …
Author B found …” writing. Effective
presentation is critical in ensuring that
the review has an impact on one's
field.
Card, N 2010, ‘Literature
Review’, in Neil J. Salkind (ed.),
SAGE Publications, Inc.,
Thousand Oaks, CA, pp. 726-9,
viewed 28 June 2013, doi:
10.4135/9781412961288.n222.
This last definition was found on the Sage
Research Methods Online database by
searching for “literature reviews’” – there are
plenty more to be found there – some general,
some usefully subject-specific:

The literature review primer 2015

Online Film Presentation
Presented by an academic rather than a
librarian, and available at:
http://vimeo.com/37318843

I took a few quick notes from this one while
watching it:

Lit review primarily requires getting a
grasp and background on the field,
making a framework for your own
research. An interdisciplinary one is
like two separate lit reviews – how one
goes about weaving together two
separate stories. (Alex conclusion –
focus would/could be on similarities
and differences in the stories.)
How organise lit and impose order on
it - in this film six drafts of (the same)
lit review were examined, with
particular emphasis on stance and
language and development of a more
certain narrative and expert voice
through the drafts, from what was
originally an very uncertain-sounding
listing of research papers - the title of
title of presentation is “telling a
research story”. The lit. review should
tell a story.
(Alex notes – presenter is against
simple chronological listing – true – but
story often implies some chronology –

beginning, middle, end, future
possibilities - narrative animal that we
are. The Hegelian dialectic
progressions of academic argument,
traced through the literature – thesis,
antithesis, synthesis, new thesis….
etc. corresponds to the beginning,
middle, end, future possibilities of
narrative.)
QUALITY FIRST, NOT QUANTITY.
Should one critically evaluate each
piece? (Alex note, means in the written
review – obviously one does evaluate
each piece mentally.) In early drafts
examined in the presentation, the
writer spent too much space on
articles that were not v. important. This
not only wastes space but can cause
one to drift away from the point – a Lit
Review should make a POINT. Not
just he said, she said, but also a root
of argument/point to shape it. (Alex
note - “A peg to hang the story on” as
journalists phrase it. Often a sort of
yes or no question can serve as this

peg.) Any good story has to have a
point – a point implies not just a
description about the lit, but your views
on it – how well, if at all, it answers a
question.
Presenter points out that different
disciplines have different approaches
to reviews – hard sciences,
engineering, humanities, but maintains
that even in very “factual” reviews –
the authors of the literature have a
stance, obvious or not. (Alex note –
not always evident in some subject
areas, but it is likely that, while one
might not start out with a stance, one
tends to develop one in response to
reading the literature and weighing it
up.)
Narrative structure is not always
chronological though, other aspects of
arrangement might be to criticise the
methodologies or themes in the lit or
group things together by their
methods, assumptions, themes
coverage.

The presenter advises also that one
starts out with material and findings
that are not controversial and from
these moves into areas that are
controversial, where there are
debates, thesis, antithesis – you would
then find a synthesis or pick a side.
YOUR BIG AIM IS TO FIND A GAP IN
THE LITERATURE …. Typical
phrases in your lit review that signal
this might be things like, “Much has
been done in this area/ topic, however,
no studies have examined …..” You
might also identify a need for a
reanalysis and reconceptualization of
past views in the literature, applying a
new theory or research technique.
The question of the presenter; what is
your new contribution to the field?
What do you add to the story of the
literature so far….
Setting limits to the literature review:
potentially it is never ending – there is
always, potentially one more piece you
can include, or a new tangent or a new

direction, that one paper leads on to
another to suggest.
YOUR REAL PURPOSE IN THE LIT
REVIEW IS TO SAY THAT THERE IS
A GAP TO BE FILLED OR A DEBATE
TO BE LAUNCHED OR SUPPORTED
OR COUNTERED. (Alex takeaway-
point here, once you find the gap, and
can demonstrate it, you can stop.)
The presenter advises that a literature
review should include a section
explaining what you did, and why and
justifying your decision not to include
materials – because they were
outdated, peripheral, much the same
as before, vey derivative…. EXPLAIN
WHAT YOU ARE NOT DOING AND
WHY. (Alex takeaway points –
anticipate, and cover yourself against,
questions about why you didn’t do
such and such.)
Be very clear about your decision to
examine some sources or use some
finding aids in particular and not others

– e.g. particular newspapers and not
others…..
The presenter, pragmatically, points
out that the examiner (“reviewer” in
USA parlance) as well as the
supervisor (“advisor” in USA parlance)
will expect to see their own papers in
the review if they have written on the
subject.
It is vital to be aware that your readers
will have expectations of the literature
review – anticipate and meet the
expectations, (Alex note - or explain
and justify why you are not.)
How far back should you go? Depends
– it is a judgement call - but presenter
warns against just including recent
material (and Alex concurs very
strongly –there are tides and seasons
in the history of any literature, a
subject might have been very hot
some years ago, but not recently – if
you are reviving it you might have to
go back to when it was hot. Alex also
notes that a good subject

encyclopaedia can often give a clear,
and brief articulation of the history of
academic debate on a subject, listing
the key works that shaped that
history.)
So, how far back should you go? Go
back as far as you need to go to tell a
good story about the development of
the thought and literature on your
topic.
Should you use evaluative language in
your review, such as “novel” or
“interesting” or “important”….? The
presenter says that some evaluative
language can help put your to put your
stamp on the literature – articulating
what you really think. Not just what
you found.
FOR THE PRESENTER, THIS
SIGNALS YOUR TRANSITION FROM
BEING A USER OF INFORMATION
TO BEING A CREATOR OF
KNOWLEDGE – ALL NEW FROM
YOUR OWN HEAD – VIA YOUR

APPLICATION OF KNOWLEDGE,
JUDGEMENT AND REASONING.
Presenter then explores the various
ways of arranging your lit. review.
Presenter acknowledges the value of a
bit of chronology, but says it should
not be your main strategy – (Alex
places a bit more emphasis on
chronology actually, since it is good for
outlining the history of the field and
articulating the swings of THE
ARGUMENT over time – the debate.
However, Alex understands that the
presenter here is criticising the
technique of predominantly listing
material as it comes, without
specifically making a debate-story out
of it.)
Presenter suggests different ways of
arranging the information, and, indeed,
of looking at it in the first place -
maybe look at field of study from a
particular disciplinary perspective
(Alex’s example – Perspective on
Early Years Education from standpoint

of anthropology or psychology or
sociology- we are in interdisciplinary
age after all), or arrange the literature
by positive, neutral, and negative
perspectives on the topic, or by
country/culture of origin, or by
methodology – quantitative,
qualitative, theoretical basis, sample
sizes or sample location – if your point
is that these make a difference to the
outcomes of the studies, e.g. studies
that focus on urban versus rural
dwellers, or rich versus poor, or, age
groups, or educational level. The
presenter notes that this is really up to
your imagination.
(Alex notes – however you arrange it,
you are demonstrating your perception
of PATTERNS IN THE LITERATURE
– for example, identifying the shaping
views of different disciplines – which
your arrangement demonstrates.)
The presenter emphasises that the
purpose of a literature review (for a
university student) is in part to

demonstrate a clear grasp of the
development and dynamics of the
literature and of the field. (Alex notes
again the value of subject
encyclopedias in providing an
overview of the field, as can existing
bibliographies or literature reviews -
can also include words “Literature
review” or “review article” or “review
paper” in your database searches to
benefit from previous syntheses of the
literature – more on this below.)
The presenter emphasises the
importance of focus – you must pick
information for inclusion that
addresses your Yes or No question…
your judgement is based on whether it
is relevant or irrelevant TO YOUR
TOPIC.
In evaluating individual material, the
presenter points out the value of
abstracts in helping one categorise a
lot of stuff quickly, also subject
headings in papers, that are clues to
the gist of that section. Also advises to

look specifically for seminal papers
(more on this below) or top journals.
Presenter advises to look for existing
review literature in a discipline –
adding that you can type “Review
paper” and subject field on your
search engine (actually, just says “on
Google Scholar” – librarian grinds
teeth audibly.) Also follow major
authors who cite because they or
agree or disagree with a key seminal
article (more on citation searching
below – though must acknowledge
that Google Scholar has a very good
“cited by” link below each hit.) The
presenter advises identifying and
reading the key journals – where the
seminal articles and cutting edge
arguments happen. (Alex note – often
very helpful to mention and outline a
clash of views conducted in the pages
of a major journal - for example in
Science Fiction the debate between
Postmodernists and Humanists in the
journal Science Fiction Studies a real

humdinger of a clash conducted in a
major journal in that field.)
The presenter again emphasises that
chronology can come into this, but
only if it is tracing an argument/battle
over time. In other words THERE
MUST BE A POINT TO THE
CHRONOLOGY.
The presenter refers to the traditional
and, by implication, boring, boring
pattern of dissertations as that of
IMRD = Introduction, Methodology,
Results, Discussion/Conclusion. She
suggests that many variants on this
can be used - (though Alex cautions
here on the advantage of the tradition
in giving your examiner/supervisor
what they expect to see, and may ask
tricky questions about not seeing.)
The presenter stresses the importance
of writing like a person in your field –
use the verbs common to descriptions
of literature in your fields – “suggests”
“argues’ “examines” - write like you
BELONG in the field. Maybe your field

avoids terms like “demonstrates” –
therefore avoid these terms too.
Writing style can also be an important
aide in grouping authors together
rather than listing them individually:
You don’t have to keep saying that
Smith argues and Jones argues… You
can say rather that “A number of UK
writers have argued that XXXX (Refs
to Smith 2009, Heston 2009, Wales
2008, Jones….) By contrast, a,
predominantly American, approach
has been to argue that XXXXX….
(Refs to Haines 2009 , Parsons 2010,
Blake 2011….)
Another example might be not writing
that “Jones investigated….” But
instead saying that “In recent years
there has been growing interest in
…..(REFS to x, y, z ,w)”
Presenter advises that as arguments
get a lot closer to current debates, you
can start signalling this by writing
“argues that” instead of “argued that.”

In terms of storytelling, the presenter
notes that in telling a story, we add our
stories ion to previous stories and take
them further, up to date – and
speculate about their ending…
For the presenter, increased
readability and more varied sentence
structure are the symptoms of a good
story developing, as opposed to just a
list of facts and papers. The presenter
notes that a literature review should
also identify areas of uncertainty,
areas that should be treated with
caution, or are problematic, or still
developing. The ability to identify these
areas makes it clear that you really are
an authority on the literature and topic.
Signs of this development can be seen
in your language, which is – in later
drafts of the review - becoming
evaluative, and more certain,
detectable through the use of phrases
such as “an innovative approach to
the study….” or “the emerging trend”,
or, “narrowly focussed” or “polemical”,

or “There is a growing debate…” or “A
small but widely distributed body of
research has recently emerged in the
United States….”SHOWS THAT
THERE IS A THINKING,
EVALUATING, PERSON BEHIND
THE REVIEW – ONE WHO HAS
KNOWLEDGE OF THE FIELD AND
CAN EXERCISE JUDGEMENT - ONE
WHO IS NOT JUST REPEATING
FACTS, BUT ACTUALLY HAS
SOMETHING TO SAY ABOUT THE
LITERATURE.
THE PRESENTER STRESSES THAT
YOU MUST SOUND AS THOUGH
YOU ARE IN CONTROL OF THE
LITERATURE, NOT THE OTHER
WAY AROUND.
The presenter reiterates the
importance of language use and
arguments conveyed through
language – how does one develop this
language? By learning from the
patterns and habits of expression
common in the literature and reviews

of your discipline. You will develop a
preference for certain accepted
patterns of expression and phrase and
tone in your discipline – thus
developing your own style – but it will
still be an acceptable style within the
conventions of your discipline. (Alex
notes here that a great guide to
developing appropriate language is
gained by paying attention to your
supervisor’s critique of the language
and expressions you use – these
critiques are not just a matter of your
supervisor’s personal taste, but
judgement gained from regular
exposure to writing in that discipline.)
The presenter’s last main point is on
the importance of telling your reader
what you doing and what you are
going to do next – for example, telling
your reader that you will address this
topic in the next section.
The presenter describes this as
“Metadiscourse.”

Metadiscourse tells your reader how
your argument is mapped. It outlines
what you are doing, and puts
signposts throughout, so that the
reader knows where they are – and
what to expect in each section.
Alex’s Guide
But my focus, as a librarian, is mainly on
how to find the material to review:
So Here Is My Lit. Review Survival guide –
together with Librarianly Tips and Tools
(and I still think it is probably the most
useful one of its type you’ll find.)
A literature review is:
1) A list of books and journal articles,

2) on a specific topic,
3) grouped by theme,
4) and evaluated with regard to your
research. This evaluation would identify
connections, contradictions and gaps in the
literature you have found.
The purpose of a literature review, therefore,
is:
1) To get a feel for the agreed academic
opinion on the subject (the connections).
2) To discover the disagreements on the
subject (the contradictions).
3) To find opportunities, (the gaps), for
developing and expressing your own
opinions.
The classic pattern of academic arguments is
Thesis + Antithesis = Synthesis
An Idea (Thesis) is proposed, an opposing
Idea (Antithesis) is proposed, and a revised

Idea incorporating (Synthesis) the opposing
Idea is arrived at. This revised idea
sometimes sparks another opposing idea,
another synthesis, and so on…
If you can show this pattern at work in your
literature review, and, above all, if you can
suggest a new synthesis of two opposing
views, or demolish one of the opposing views,
then you are almost certainly on the right
track.
Steps in compiling a literature review are:
1) Select a specific topic (the more focussed,
the better, or you’ll go on for ever).
2) Collect the most relevant (usually “peer
reviewed”) books and articles.
3) Read/skim them, using the abstract (a
short summary attached to the article).
4) Group the articles into the sub-themes of
your topic.
5) Identify within each sub-theme those points
on which the articles agree, those points on
which they disagree, and those points
which they don’t cover at all.

7) Choosing your topic
Seek advice from a lecturer or tutor on this, if
a topic is not already assigned. It is very
common for students to bite off more than
they can chew, simply because they have not
realised the full breadth and complexity of an
apparently simple topic. It is usually better to
cover a tiny topic perfectly, than a huge topic
superficially.
Look for a topic on which there is polarised
opinion. It often helps to pick one in which a
question is being asked, for example: Is a
particular taxation policy beneficial or
disadvantageous to a developing country?
When authors disagree, this provides an
opportunity for you to enter the debate and
argue for one side or another in your essay.
Taking a hatchet to someone’s opinions:
(a) gives you something to write about,
(b) affords a certain amount of brutal fun,

(c) is the foundation of most modern scholarly
writing (cf. points (a) and (b) above).
8) Collecting the most relevant (and
usually “peer reviewed”) articles and
books
The main tools for finding these books and
articles are
(a) Subject Reference Books,
(b) the Library Book Catalogue, and then the
National Book Catalogue and then, perhaps,
International Book Catalogues.
(c) the Library Databases of Electronic
Journal Articles, which usually include
abstracts to Theses and to Chapters in Books,
d) Thesis databases – Local and National.
Searching out OPTs (Other People’s Theses)
can give you warning on whether your work
has already been done, and can give you a
good guide to ideas for lit reviews and layout
and topics to take further, and the recent ones
in particular are often a good guide to cutting

edge work and trends in scholarship – think
young PhD’s anxious to make a name for
themselves by breaking new ground. Also, the
thesis may have some unique data, stemming
from first-hand research on the ground, and
unavailable anywhere else, and on those
grounds at least, may be well worth including
in a literature review.
e) Citation databases – for following the
literature forward; i.e. finding people who have
used or agreed with or disagreed with a
particular core article.
Before you search these tools, spend a
minute thinking about the best terms to use.
Make a list of alternative words that describe
your subject, and also think about general
terms and more specific terms. As you
search, more terms will suggest themselves,
often from the subject terms assigned to the
records you find by keyword searching. Keep
a running note of these for use in other
catalogues. This is important because while
journal databases are good for finding very
specific terms in articles, book catalogues, in

local, national and international libraries, tend
to use more general terms and do not search
within the full text of the book. They are
therefore far more reliant upon consistent
subject headings assigned by cataloguers.
Subject Encyclopedias can often suggest a
set of search terms appropriate to that topic
– or define a term as it is used in that area of
specialization. A lot of our searching success
or failure will revolve around our choice of
search terms – so we need all the help we
can get in picking them – especially if you are
doing interdisciplinary research.
Words like paternal or maternal as used in
Anthropology have a lot more to do with a
very specific focus on kin-structures and
bloodlines, than on mothering or fathering
behaviours, for example, as they might in
Sociology or Psychology.
It is important to be aware of this if you are a
Sociologist thinking of using those terms in an
Anthropology-related search…. They may not
mean what you think they mean, and so your
searches will bring up useless hits, whichever
database you try them on.

So – whatever your level of expertise, I’d
recommend starting off a lit. review by using
Subject Encyclopedias for a map of the
territory
Subject Encylopedias
I’m not talking about the Britannica here, or
Wikipedia, though both can be very useful in
fact, even at university, when it comes to
getting a bird’s eye map of the territory of your
research.
I’m talking about thousands of genuinely
specialized reference works – all narrowly
focused and with each section written by an
expert in that field.

An entry in a good subject encyclopedia can
give a background history of research
trends (i.e. the history of academic thought
on that subject), as well as outlining likely
issues for current and future research (as in
the example below).
Example:
If you want to get a quick understanding of
“African legal systems”, , you will find a short
discussion alphabetically on pages 229-232 of
International encyclopedia of the social &
behavioral sciences / editors-in-chief, Neil J.
Smelser, Paul B. Baltes. (Amsterdam :
Elsevier, 2001.) Vol. 1
The 4-page article is broken up into helpful
headings:
 Opening Definition
 Customary and Religious (Non-state)
Legal Systems
 State Legal Systems
 Past and Present Trends in Legal
Development

 Current and Future Issues in Legal
Development, Theory and Research
 Cross-references to other articles in the
encyclopedia
 A Bibliography of 13 major sources
The article is signed and you can check the
author’s affiliation –University of Birmingham.
And the articles are overseen by section
editors and editors in chief, also with
affiliations listed.
Above all, a good subject encyclopedia entry
will have a short bibliography which usually
lists the seminal works, or at least most
commonly sought works, on that subject.
Indeed, some exist to do nothing but this task:

BookData Description: This volume is
the first to aim at summarizing all of the
scientific literature published so far
regarding male-female differences and
similarities, not only in behavior, but also
in basic biology, physiology, health,
perceptions, emotions, and attitudes. In
this title, results from over 18,000 studies
have been condensed into more than
1,900 tables, with each table pertaining to
a specific possible sex difference. Even

research pertaining to how men and
women are perceived (stereotyped) as
being different is covered. Throughout this
book's eleven years in preparation, no
exclusions were made in terms of subject
areas, cultures, time periods, or even
species. The book is accompanied by a
CD containing all 18,000+ references cited
in the book. "Sex Differences" is a
monumental resource for any researcher,
student, or professional who requires an
assessment of the weight of evidence that
currently exists regarding any sex
difference of interest.
At any rate – references from works like these
can form the core of a research bibliography –
the past sources which you can’t not read if
you want to be taken seriously.
They can also be a very useful starting point
in a citation search. We’ll come to a citation
search later, but in essence it involves finding
a really key article or book and seeing who
has cited it more recently – either because
their research supports it, or disagrees with it,

or takes it forward by adding a new dimension
to it.
It might also be a good idea to do a search for
any other/more recent books or articles by
one of these key authors, or by the writer of
that section in the encyclopedia – experts
tend to write a number of other books or
articles on their topic of expertise, and, if
contemporary writers, may still be at it.
Note also that this article has been written in
2001 – so it gives a good background of the
scholarship to that date, and leaves you at a
point from which you can take it further in your
own review.
How to find subject encyclopedias? Ask Us.
We can usually find good ones for particular
topics.
Or search for things like “Encyclopedia and
violence” on the catalogue.
Searching the Library Catalogue

Start by typing in the main, simple
keywords that describe your subject,
separated by ANDs – Gender AND
Poverty AND Africa, for example, or
Violence AND Television.
Avoid typing in a phrase like Television
violence – that will call up only those
books which use exactly that phrase
(possibly very few, or none whatsoever).
The results list might be quite wide-
ranging. If you get too many results, or
they don’t seem very relevant, try adding
another word – Violence AND Television
AND Children, for example.

(Note, btw, that a useful-looking subject
encyclopaedia has come up in this
search.)
If you find a book that looks promising
(Kirsh, Children, adolescents, and media
violence, for example) you can open the
full record and see what formal subject
terms the librarians have assigned to that
record, and search again using those
formal terms, to get a more focused list of
books just like the Kirsh one.

Using simple keyword searching (in the “all
fields” box) rather than restricting the
catalogue search to just author, title or subject
fields allows you to search the entire record –
title, author, subject, and table of contents, if
one is attached.
This allows you to find things you would
definitely have missed if searching only in the
title or subject headings, and is especially
useful for more recent records, which often
have the tables of contents attached to them,
as in the example above. This gives the book
catalogue some of the advantages of a
journal database, where the keyword search
searches the abstracts of the articles as well
as the title and assigned subject headings.
If you find a good subject heading on the
catalogue, and clicking on it brings up too
limited a selection of hits, try using some of
the subject heading words in a keyword
search – this gives you the best of both
worlds; everything with that subject heading
will come up, as well as everything which
mentions that subject term in the title or table
of contents.

Searching our book catalogue will also bring
up theses on that topic written at UCT, though
there are better ways of finding theses, which
I’ll get to in a minute. If you are looking for a
list of UCT theses in a particular subject, the
best search is Thesis and Anthropology, or
Thesis and Education, btw.
So - if you find a good book reference, scroll
down to the bottom of the reference and you
will find the subject terms the library
cataloguers have assigned to it. Click on that
term to call up more books just like the one
you have found, or paste it into a keyword
search.
Once you have the thing in your hand, quickly
check the relevance by glancing at the table
of contents, the introduction and any
descriptive blurbs on the back cover. The
index at the back of the book not only helps
you dive to very narrow topics in the book, but
also gives you an indication of how much
attention (i.e. how many pages) the book
spends on that specific topic.
If you are satisfied with the book, look at the
bibliography in the back – this can help

identify other relevant sources. Following a
chain of references in a bibliography like this,
whether in a book or a journal article, is one of
the most basic techniques of scholarship –
find something that is relevant and look at the
sources it used.
Often our journal databases will have reviews
of that book – these are particularly useful
since a good reviewer will usually try to
contextualise the book in terms of the existing
literature which it reinforces or challenges. So,
any promising book titles you find can also be
profitably typed into the journal databases.
Searching National and International Book
Catalogues
The other thing to watch out for in catalogues
generally, but national and international
catalogues particularly, is the difference
between USA and British standard spelling;
words like labour/labor, behaviour/behavior or
colour/color, can radically effect your search
results. Use wildcards for these (* or ?)

Also, be especially careful about differences
in terminology between American and
Standard British English. Not just spelling –
but actual terminology - American business
databases tend to use “corn” where we would
use “maize”, for example.
There are also social taboos which vary from
country to country - terms for race, poverty,
or social class, in particular, can vary wildly,
not only from database to database but also
between journals of different national origins
or different disciplines within a database.
Right, back to our searches….
Searching the National Catalogue
Having done a search on UCT catalogue, it
is a good idea to repeat it on the National
Catalogue, SACAT, found under S on our
databases list:
You can get to our A-Z database list by
mousing over Search & Find on the library
web page:

This covers the holdings of all the major
libraries, including university and major
research institution libraries in South
Africa.
You will pick up titles of books, reports,
papers, theses, etc. which UCT does not
have, but which can usually be obtained
by inter-library loans, at no cost.
Again, I find keyword searches are usually
most effective since they can pick up
words in title and other areas of the record
– though because the national catalogue
does not often give detailed contents for
its book records, your keyword searches
will be a bit less comprehensive than they
would be on the UCT catalogue.
For this reason, although the National
catalogue will show material that is in UCT
library amongst its findings, it is best to
search our own catalogue separately – the
search on our interface can be
simultaneously more comprehensive and
more precise.

Also, our catalogue gives our specific
shelf numbers.
Also, it works slightly differently with
regard to finding phrases:
If you search the UCT catalogue for
Poverty and South Africa and Gender, our
catalogue will treat South Africa as a
phrase. The SA Catalogue, on the other
hand, will treat South and Africa as
separate words, unless they are put in
inverted commas.
At any rate, searching for Poverty and
“South Africa” and Gender on the National
Catalogue brought up 152 hits (below.)
The same search on UCT catalogue
(minus the inverted commas) brought up
34.

Searching WorldCat
Found under W on our Database list and does
what it says on the can – searches
internationally across library catalogues. Here
is the blurb:
WorldCat - via OCLC FirstSearch
The world's most comprehensive
bibliography, with more than 44 million
bibliographic records covering books,
manuscripts, computer data files, maps,
computer programs, musical scores, films
and slides, newspapers, journals, sound
recordings, magazines, and videotapes.
Provides holdings information for South
African libraries.
So pretty much what the SA Cat does for
South Africa, only MUCH BIGGER since it
includes a lot of other countries (not all, but
still very many.)
A search of this for Poverty and “South Africa”
and Gender - you’ll note that it also requires
inverted commas around phrases - brought
up 531 results. I’m glad to see that we have

some at UCT, but if we don’t have a book that
you need, and it is not available in SA, then
let me know and I would think about trying to
buy it rather than doing an interlibrary loan
from overseas.

With so many hits it might be an idea to try to
use the limiting functions on this database:

Limiting by year, or range of years (e.g. 2000-
2012) is often helpful, as is limiting by Number
of Libraries – on the (occasionally justified)
assumption that a really good book will be
held by a fair number of libraries.

Incidentally – the formal subject headings
used on UCT, the National Catalogue and
International Catalogues are assigned by
subject cataloguers all using the same rule
book, so the same subject headings should
work the same way across all catalogues, and
in a really big international catalogue, some
ruthless refinement by formal subject heading
is often necessary.
Searching for Theses
Having got a sense of what books have been
published, or what is available in print in
South Africa, it is now time to see if there is a
gap in the research industry for your own
interests, and to see what is being written at
the cutting edge of unpublished research.
It is useful to see what similar work has been
done on your topic – you can use a thesis’s
references and bibliography as a starting point
and take the research further, or explore a
different angle. Often the thesis itself will

constitute a body of material that is available
nowhere else – results from an individual’s
primary research in a local town or suburb, for
example.
Most importantly, searching them allows you
to check that your exact thesis has not been,
or is not at this moment being, written at a
university down the road.
Of course, there may often be some overlap
of interests – plenty of people might be
working in or close to your area, and the fact
that others like you are writing on this is
evidence that you are taking part in a hot
debate or being part of the cutting edge on
this topic – adding your own unique
perspective and study and methodology. So
finding similar-ish work is not automatically a
train smash.
But you do not want to discover, just before,
or just after, handing in, that exactly your
uniquely South African, cutting edge, thesis
has been written a couple years earlier. This
happens, and it would be soul-destroying to
find that you have spent a year or two

repeating somebody else’s work; even worse
if it were to lead to suspicion of plagiarism.
If a Master's or Doctoral thesis was done at
UCT, you will find it on the catalogue the
same way you would a book – look for the
author’s last name or words from the title or
both.
You can also do a very quick and dirty search
for theses by subject on the UCT catalogue,
just type Psychology and thesis, for example.
If it was done at another South African
university we can get a copy through Inter-
library loan or, increasingly, simply download
it for free from that university’s web site.
This is sometimes possible for overseas
theses too, but most likely we would have to
buy a copy. This can often be done, but the
thesis might take some time to arrive.
Finding South African Theses
South African Theses, in full text, can be
found on: National ETD Portal South Africa:
South African theses and Dissertations

“This site is run by the South African National
Research Foundation (NRF) in collaboration
with the Committee of Higher Education
Librarians of South Africa (CHELSA).It
provides access to the full text of many
thousands of doctoral PHD and some other
dissertations produced in South African
universities. These cover the full range of
science, social science and humanities topics.
There is some coverage from as early as the
1970s although there are larger numbers of
post 2009 records. Search by keyword or
browse.”
However – this site lists only those theses
which have been digitized in full text: On the
plus side – there are a lot of them, and they
can go back quite a long way due to
retrospective scanning.

A Search for Child Psychology AND Poverty
brought up 85 hits, though some of them were
a bit broad – it does not seem to take the
phrase “Child Psychology”... I suspect, in fact,
that it is regarding the two words as separated
by an OR – and so bringing up results for
child and poverty as well as psychology and
poverty ….

Whereas a search for Child AND Psychology
AND Poverty, which should, in theory,
broaden the search from “Child Psychology”,
in fact shrunk it, bringing up 24 hits – thus I
suspect that it only now includes all three
words:

Nevertheless – it is a very useful database, if
one is prepared to play around with alternative
terms.
An alternative index, going back right to the
earliest theses, though not with full text, can
be found on the Nexus database from the
National Research Foundation, on our A-Z
database list.
Nexus Database System
Provided by the National Research
Foundation, Nexus includes databases of:
Current and Completed Research Projects in
the Humanities and Social Sciences;
Professional Associations; Forthcoming
Conferences; Periodicals’ Submission
Requirements; Research Organisations;
Research Networking; Research Methodology
Courses; and Women in Research. The
database of Current and Completed Research
Projects requires a password – please contact
the Chancellor Oppenheimer Library on 021
650 3703/4 or the Law Library on 021 650
2708/9.

Actually, theses are also indexed on the
Union Catalogue of Theses and Dissertations
(UCTD) and on the Africa Wide Database, but
Nexus is more up to date, covers current as
well as completed research, and gives better
abstracts. On the downside, it is a bit clumsier
to search – it does not take Boolean operators
very well other than AND.
I usually search both Nexus and UCTD for
this reason.
Nexus:
Click on the Current and Completed Research
Projects Database:

I find it is best to do a simple keyword search
in the Titles, subjects, abstracts field:

A search for child psychology and poverty
brought up 29 theses (A search for child and
psychology and poverty brought up the same,
btw):

Selected items can be displayed on a
separate list:

And viewed with their abstracts by changing
the “short report” option to “full report”

Any South African thesis not at UCT can be
ordered by inter-library loan. Quite a lot of the
most recent ones are available on the web
nowadays too, so putting the title into a
Google search can often be rewarding.
Any thesis at UCT can be found on the book
catalogue and borrowed from level five (rows
of blue volumes near the lift in the Research
Wing.) Increasingly they are digitized – the
UCT catalogue record will have a hotlink to
the full text if this is the case.
International Theses
For international theses, a good tool is
ProQuest Dissertations and Theses - A&I
Blurb goes:
With more than 2 million entries, PQD&T
is the single, central, authoritative
resource for information about doctoral
dissertations and master's theses.
Dissertations published from 1980 forward
include 350- word abstracts written by the
author. Master's theses published from

1988 forward include 150-word abstracts.
Titles available as native or image PDF
formats include free twenty-four page
previews. UMI offers over 1.8 million titles
for purchase in microform, paper or
electronic formats.
With big abstracts, this database offers the
same keyword searching flexibility as Nexus.
BUT THE THESES DO NEED TO BE PAID
FOR.
Another source for international theses is
WorldCat Dissertations and Theses
This database provides access to the
dissertations and theses available in OCLC
member libraries. With no, or few, abstracts,
this database suffers the same problems as
UCTD. As with its sibling databases, you will
get different results for “Child psychology” and
poverty, with or without inverted commas.
However, it does link to theses which are
available free on the web – often the only
practical way to get hold of foreign theses

without paying for a pricey inter-library loan or
having them bought for the library.

Some of our other specialist subject
databases, particularly Humanities
International, SocIndex (for general social
sciences), MLA for literature, EconLit for
economics, and PsycInfo for psychology,
provide abstracts of theses along with
abstracts of books and journal articles. You
will often encounter a reference to a relevant
thesis when searching for journal articles or
book chapters on these databases.
Interestingly – people who have written a
thesis, particularly a Doctorate, on a particular
topic often go on to publish articles on the
same topic, so if you find a good thesis, it
might be worth searching the journal
databases for the writer’s name to see if they
have continued to write on that theme.
Journal databases
The library subscribes to about 180 databases
– containing journal articles, but also
references to book chapters, theses,

government documents, and miscellaneous
research papers.
It is sometimes possible to cross-search a
number of databases at once, if they share
the same platform (like Ebsco or Proquest.)
Other databases will need to be searched
individually though.
Why cross search databases? Remember
that just because you are doing, for example,
a Psychology thesis on parenting, you do not
need to confine your search only to a
psychology database of psychology journals.
Plenty of psychologists could be writing about
parenting in a Sociology journal, or an
Education journal or a Gender journal….
To do a cross database search, select
“Databases by Platform” under the SEARCH
& FIND tab:

Select, as a first choice (in the Humanities),
the EBSCO set of databases, since the Ebsco
platform provides some of our main subject
databases for disciplines such as Psychology,

Sociology, Literature, Economics, Film &
Media, Religion and African Studies - as well
as two good general databases – Academic
Search Premier and Humanities International
Complete.

Nice, tight, set of results. Not always full text
on the MLA in particular – but use SFX link to
see if it is full text on any of our other
databases.

The different databases do not, alas, always
share the same indexing protocols, which are
often database-specific (so using a particular
subject index term effectively weeds out all
the other databases), but, coming from the
same platform, they do respond identically to
nice, detailed, Boolean searching:
Journal database searching is particularly
suited to complex general searches such as:
(SU Caribbean or SU Afric*) and
(postcolon* or decolon*) and (writing or
literat* or novel or fiction) and theor*

A quick digression on BOOLEAN
SEARCHING
Consider this search string:
(SU Caribbean or SU Afric*) and
(postcolon* or decolon*) and (writing or
literat* or novel or fiction) and theor*
The AND operator narrows a search – all
listed elements must be mentioned in each
article.
The OR operator expands a search – any
of the listed elements must be mentioned in
each article. The OR operator is useful for
dealing with alternative terms which different
authors might use when writing on a similar
topic.
The Brackets tie the options to the required
material. In this example they make sure
that any articles we get on literature or
fiction are concerned with the Caribbean or
Africa. If we didn’t have brackets here the

search would just bring up every reference
to literature in the database, whether
relevant to the Caribbean or Africa or not.
The Wildcard * expands a search: The *
deals with related words. In this example
theor* = theory, theories, theorists,
theoretical….
The ? fills in a missing letter, and is used for
covering alternative spellings in British and
American English. (Labo?r and behavio?r
are notorious traps, for example, and the
presence or absence of a “u” in the word
can radically affect your hit rate.)
NOT weeds out anything you’ve got too
much of. (I might have put NOT India*) into
this search, for example.
SU is an example of command-language
searching – it restricts the words Caribbean
or Afric* to the subject field of the record
only – in other words SU makes sure that
these are the major focus of the article, not
just mentioned in passing.

Other command-language searching
tags that are occasionally useful are “TI”
for Title and “AU” for Author.
Right, back to databases and journals….
Finding a specific Electronic Journal
The library subscribes to +- 80 000 electronic
journal titles in full text. The databases are
used for finding journal articles by subject.
If you are looking for a specific article, in a
specific journal title, you can go click on the
E-Journals tab on the library homepage.
Type in the journal title on the search
screen….

…. which calls up a link to the electronic
journal on whichever of our databases hosts
it. You can either search that journal for the
title of an article, or by keywords, or simply

drill down through each issue until you find the
specific article that you wanted.

This is handy both for looking for a particular
article – a reference you are following up – but
also for reading in its entirety, issue by issue,
or for simply keeping tabs on, a particular
journal that is key to your area of research.
In fact, it is very likely that in a database
search you will find that most of your best hits
are coming from a core half dozen journals –
you might well want to go through all of these
journals, read the editorials, etc….
You can also set up alerts on most electronic
journals – you’ll get the table of contents e-
mailed to you whenever a new issue of that
journal comes out.
Use the Alert/Save/Share link on the Ebsco
databases, or something similar on others:

You can set it up to e-mail you with new
articles:

If you use the search option to search that
journal for articles on a particular topic, you
can set up an alert for new articles that match
that topic only:

So – that saves you from missing any up-to-
the minute material that you would like to
include in your review (or research in
general.)
Right – that’s the finding done.
Or rather, it isn’t – because we’ve still got to
cover citation searching:
Using a Citation Database
Citation Databases are used for following
the influence of a particular author or article
forwards – seeing who has cited that work.
Once upon a time Citation databases were
very specialized beasts, in fact they were
printed indexes well before they became
electronic. The ISI Citation database, on
Web of Knowledge, for example, is a direct
descendant of these indexes, though it has
become a lot more user-friendly lately. It
covers citations from 16 959 journals, last
time I checked, and has recently begun
adding a number of books published within

the last five years – so it is not completely
universal in coverage, though it is big.
Yu can find the ISI Citation database found
under the ISI Web of Science link, under I
on our Databases list.

If you click on the number of the “Times
Cited” you will get a list of the articles which
cited that article by Chidester:

From that the list of citing articles you can
click on the Times Cited link again if you
wish to see which articles have cited them in
turn – and so on down the chain….
I used to demonstrate the ISI database in
some detail – but I don’t do that so much
nowadays because the ISI database now
has competition.
Other databases like the EBSCO databases
now have a similar function – and in fact are
a bit more user friendly:

In fact you don’t even have to use this
search interface – simply searching for the
article normally brings up a times-cited-in-
this-database link:

But one of the most effective challengers by
far is Google Scholar. You don’t even have
to do a specialized citation search on this.
Just search for the article and a link to the
citing articles comes up too.

On Google Scholar there are 45 links to
citing articles, on ISI there were 10, on
Academic Search Premier there was 1.
Btw - you’ll notice that Google Scholar
brings up a full text link to our database
holdings on this search – it only does this
when searched on campus or through the
off campus UCT login.)
There is also a more sophisticated way of
getting the citation searches out of Google
Scholar – a tool called Harzing’s Publish
or Perish can be downloaded to your
desktop -
(http://www.harzing.com/pop_win.htm or
just Google the term) and strip mines
Google Scholar very efficiently indeed.

According to the blurb on this
page:
Publish or Perish is a software
program that retrieves and
analyzes academic citations. It
uses Google Scholar to obtain the
raw citations, then analyzes these
and presents the following
statistics:
 Total number of papers
 Total number of citations
 Average number of citations
per paper
per author
 Average number of papers per
author
per year
 Hirsch's h-index and related
parameters
 Egghe's g-index
 The contemporary h-index
 The age-weighted citation rate
 Two variations of individual h-
indices

 An analysis of the number of
authors per paper.
The results are available on-
screen and can also be copied to
the Windows clipboard (for pasting
into other applications) or saved to
a variety of output formats (for
future reference or further
analysis). Publish or Perish
includes a detailed help file with
search tips and additional
information about the citation
metrics.
Er… Right. This is evolution……
For a quick and dirty citation search, for a
known author and title, you are probably
better off with a straight Google Scholar
search and a click on the cited-by link.
However, there is one very powerful
option on Harzing’s which allows you to
search by subject, just like Google
Scholar, but, unlike Google Scholar, then
allows you to bring up the results in the
order of the most highly cited – a useful

tool for picking up the most influential
books or papers in a particular subject:
In other words, on Harzing’s Publish or
Perish you can rank subject search results
by citation order:

At any rate - it is becoming clear that there
is a lot of material out there and that you are
going to be generating some monster
reference lists.
To keep track of them, and to generate a
pain-free bibliography it helps to know
about….
RefWorks
RefWorks is a database on which you can
open a personal account. You can save your
references to RefWorks, either by typing them
in, or by exporting them directly from Primo or
from our other databases, as we have done
here.
You can find RefWorks on the Library
Homepage under the Research Help menu.

Once you have opened an account on
RefWorks and added some citations to it, you
can download a program called Write-N-Cite:

Write-N-Cite will exist as an icon on the
desktop of the PC on which you do your
writing, and will also attach itself to your Word
program, under Add-Ins:

When you open Write-N-Cite, you will be able
to search through your saved references (over
time you’ll find that it really helps if you
organize them into topic-specific folders, btw.)
and cite as you type. You can them click on
the Bibliography tab and generate in-text
citations and bibliography in any one of a
number of styles:

Viz:
My Paper
Blether Blether Blether
Blurgle, blether drone (Clukey 437), drone,
drone (Brown 568)
Works Cited
Brown, J. D. "Textual Entanglement: Jean
Rhys's Critical Discourse.(Critical Essay)."
Modern Fiction Studies 56.3: 568. . Primo.
Clukey, Amy. ""no Country really Now":
Modernist Cosmopolitanisms and Jean
Rhys's Quartet.( Critical Essay)." Twentieth
Century Literature 56.4: 437. . Primo.

And so done – all that remains is to
3) Read/Skim the articles, using their
abstracts
Most of the articles will have an abstract. This
is a short paragraph at the head of the article
that lists the main facts and arguments in
each article. By reading these you will quickly
get the gist of what each article is about and
where it fits into the pattern you are building
up in your literature survey.
How many books and articles should you
have? It’s wise to check this with your lecturer
or tutor. In general, though, your aim is not to
cover every single book or article, but every
major opinion or theme on the topic. Many of
the books or articles will add very little that is
new.
Therefore a short list of really scholarly,
relevant, comprehensive articles is often more
effective than a list of hundreds of superficial
or tangential articles.

What you are ideally looking for are the
“seminal” articles (seed articles) on which
most of the other authors are basing their
work.
4) Group the Articles into the themes and
sub-themes of your topic
Obviously, it helps to have a structure in mind
already, but the articles you find will often help
to suggest a structure or cause you to
redesign your existing one.
Herewith a hard-learned tip:
There are tides and seasons in academic
publishing – a topic is often hot for a few
months, then dies, then is revived to be
attacked from a different angle, then dies,
then is revived again to be discussed from a
third angle… remember, Thesis, Antithesis
and Synthesis?
This has two implications for studying the
results on a database search:
 Just because there is nothing much in the
recent articles does not mean that it was

not hot a few months or years ago, so
scroll back in time down the list, or jump
right to the earliest reference and scroll up
through time to look for a hot spot.
 The tides of article titles often tell a story
that can help you shape your literature
review.
For example, in a list of journal articles on
Information Technology and Employment you
might find that:
 The earliest articles are all about how hard
it is to find skilled IT workers.
 Later you get articles about UK and US
firms desperately recruiting school-leavers
and training them in IT skills on the job.
 A year later you get articles about how
countries like India and South Africa are
doing the same thing.
 And not long after that you get articles
about India and South Africa having a
huge, skilled IT workforce, working far
more cheaply than the US and UK
workforce, and lots of UK and US projects
being outsourced to them.

 Then you get complaints about
unemployment in the IT sector in the UK
and USA.
 Then you get stories about how employers
in the UK and USA have become very
choosy about whom they employ, insisting
on really good academic training, loads of
experience and very-specialised skills.
 Then you get the latest stories which are
all about how new IT entrants, without that
experience, start packing their bags to
gain experience elsewhere…
See? Story!
Many database lists of academic articles tell
this sort of story when they are looked at in
date order. Either they reflect swings in world
events or they are reflecting swings in
academic debate and opinion. (In fact, book
catalogues can do this too, when the results
are viewed in date order, but a bit less visibly
because there are no abstracts and the titles
are often less detailed in their
descriptiveness.)
Seeing such a story in the literature is a great
help in structuring any literature review.

In particular, look out for the major triggers of
such changes: When did the first swing to a
new track happen, and what event or book
or article provoked it?
When you find an article that has provoked
a major swing, or started a whole new
debate, then you are looking at the
“Seminal” (Seed) article that I mentioned
earlier. This sort of article is often the best sort
of article to identify in a literature review –
many of the other articles will just build on,
comment on, or attack its basic arguments.
5) Identify within each sub-theme those
points on which the articles agree, those
points on which they disagree, and those
points which they don’t cover at all.
The abstracts can help with this, of course.
The main trick is coming up with, or spotting,
the sub themes and that is simply a matter of
brain work.
But if it is done well, and you have taken the
trouble to find good sources, then you will
find, quite magically, that you have

constructed the skeleton and a good bit of the
flesh and blood not only of the literature
review, but of your research project itself.
In fact, a good literature review can result in a
research project that virtually writes itself.
Alex D’Angelo, UCT Libraries, 2015
Alexander.DAngelo@uct.ac.za

The literature review primer 2015

The literature review primer 2015

The literature review primer 2015

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