The document discusses undertaking literature reviews for research projects. It notes that literature reviews are often weak aspects of student work due to insufficient time and poor execution. It emphasizes the importance of literature reviews for situating a research topic within a field of existing knowledge and avoiding unintentional plagiarism. The document outlines the process of conducting a systematic literature review, including defining the research topic, identifying relevant search terms, searching academic databases, and collating sources. It stresses evaluating sources based on type and reviewing hierarchy to ensure the use of appropriate academic texts.

1. Undertaking Research

2.  Literature reviews are often a weak link in
student research projects.
◦ Not enough time spent on them, poorly executed.
 Especially so in Media Studies where the inter-
disciplinary nature of the field has lead to
differing approaches to lit reviews.
 Historically:
◦ Social sciences do them.
◦ Humanities less so.
 On this degree you get a more social scientific
approach so we like lit reviews.
 Even so many consider them boring!?!

3. 1. To work at the ‘edge’ of a field -
finding out new stuff - you must
know what has been said about a
topic before.
2. If you present something as a new
idea and it is not, you risk two
accusations:
1. You are stupid and don’t know your
field;
2. You do know your field so are
plagiarizing – plag. Is not just copying –
it is presenting the ideas of others as
your own.
3. We can stand on the shoulders of
giants - we may find useful
techniques and information about a
topic way beyond what is written in
text books.

4.  Different types of literature serve different
purposes.
•Journalism, documentary, includes newspapers, books, reportage,
magazine articles, trade journals
•Can be trustworthy or not…
•Background or primary texts
Popular
Texts
•Governmental, institutional, pressure group and corporate
reports.
•May be good, but no guarantee. Will look official, have
references, but not subject to peer-review.
•May be subject to bias or pushing an agenda.
‘Grey’ Texts
•A hierarchy: see next.
•Can usually be trusted, stuff we are primarily
interested in.
Academic
Texts

5. • A hierarchy of journals
• A hierarchy (sort of) of publishers
Monographs,
peer-reviewed
journal articles
• Edited and often reviewed,
• Tend to be written to ‘fit’ a theme.
Edited / reviewed
book chapters
• Reviewed, but not as harshly as
journals.
• Published .
Conference
proceedings
• Light reviewing .
• Entry level publication
Conference
abstract /
posters

6.  Between 4-14,000 words.
 Go through a review process.
◦ Article submitted;
◦ Sent to 3 (or more) reviewers.
◦ ‘Double blind’ – author and reviewers names withheld.
◦ Comments and editors instructions sent back to author.
 Thanks but no thanks.
 Please make these changes
 We love you – to be published
◦ Editor-in-chief decision
◦ Copy editing
◦ Publication.

7.  There are a lot of journals out there,
thousands in fact.
 They operate in ‘fields’.
 Sometimes these fields are aligned to
academic disciplines but often not – often
interdisciplinary
 Journals are often ranked.

8.  There are different ways in which this is done:
◦ Polling academics to ask which are the most
important journals.
◦ Submission ratio – how many published to how
many submitted.
◦ Impact factors:
 A calculation of how many times on average each
article is cited in other journal articles each year.
 Number of citations of articles in a particular year /
number journal articles published = impact factor.

9. • In 2013 Journal of Community Informatics,
has articles cited in 16 peer reviewed papers
from the 14 articles it published in 2012.
• 16/14 = an impact factor of 1.14.
• The higher the impact factor the more often
the journal is cited –
• Nature (31.434),
• Science (28.103)
• Lanclet (7.78)

10.  More in science.
 Counts articles that have 10 or more citations
in other articles that also have 10 or more
citations.
 So an article with an I index of 2 it has been
cited in twenty + articles that have each been
referenced ten or more times.
 I index is very prestigious.
 Stephen Hawking’s is 275
 Mine is 3.

11.  Expands the impact of the scholar or research
group.
 Looks at the number of papers and the
number of times each paper has been cited.
 10 papers but each one cited 3 times = h-
index of 3.
 5 papers each cited 50 times = h-index of 5.
 Stephen Hawking is 104
 Mine is 5.

12.  3 types of literature review.
◦ Narrative based
◦ Meta reviews
◦ Systematic reviews

13.  Most common in arts, strong in social
sciences, less so in hard sciences.
 Basically it is an intelligent reading of
literature picking out themes that apply to
your research.
 As you come across new ideas you follow
them and chase up leads.
 In many cases the lit review is updated as you
progress through your research work.

14.  Collates research and other reviews on a
particular area.
 Then looks at common themes and ideas across
a field of research.
 Useful to get an overview of a field.
 May appear in edited collections as a starting
point for further research, as part of a larger
research project or commissioned by an agency.
 Often done by a research team – a professor,
researchers and PhD students.
 See this for example.

15.  Not really used in arts and humanities but big
in science and gaining ground in social
science.
 A systematic approach to finding literature on
a field.
 Here I will go over the process, for your EIS
you may do stage 1 - the ‘lighter’ version.

16. Coffee time.
You will need a laptop for the next bit…

17.  A ‘literature search’ is an actual stage in the
research process.
 Writing up the review may be done later but
searching is a distinct bit which you can
schedule – may take a good few days to
complete.
 There is a definite process, you describe this
process in your methods section.

18. 1. Define your topic;
2. FOREST;
3. Create a filter;
4. Decide on a database;
5. Run the filter;
6. Use title and abstract to exclude;
7. Collate list;

19.  Operationalize your question to limited and
detailed terms.
◦ “Is there a single form of masculinity represented in
advertisements in the monthly print media
magazine Men’s Health?”
 If you have your question to hand do this no
otherwise note down the above question in a
word document.

20.  Look at you question and identify / extract
the key terms.
 For “Is there a single form of masculinity represented
in advertisements in the monthly print media
magazine Men’s Health?”
This might be:
◦ Advertisement(s);
◦ Masculinity
◦ Print media
◦ Magazine
◦ ‘Men’s Health’

21.  Note down a column for each of your terms.
 Take each of these terms and see if they have any other forms,
what are the related terms and are there any synonyms.
◦ Advertisement, advertizement, advertisements.
◦ Masculinity, masculinities, masculine, male.
 Note these down under the column.
 You may find related terms, also FOREST these and keep going
until you have exhausted the words and yourself.
Advertisement Masculinity
advertizement masculinities
advertisements masculine
advertizements
advert
adverts
 You may find related terms, also FOREST these and keep going until
you have exhausted the words and yourself.

22.  The terms we identified using
forest can now be turned into a
‘filter’ or search tool .
 Use () to group words from a
single column.
 Use AND to link together these
column sets.
 We can run it on various
databases to find the relevant
academic texts for our study.
 You can gradually build and refine
your search tool and use it (with
minor modifications) on different
databases – occasionally it won’t
fit in the text box so you may
need to break it up.
(advertisement OR
advertisements OR
advertisement OR
advertisements) AND
(masculinity OR
masculinities OR
masculine OR male)

23.  You can use many different databases.
 So for UG projects I would recommend
Academic Search Premier.
◦ Has advantages of being user friendly and a wide
scope.
◦ Go to the University site > login> intranet home
page>library- under resources on left click
Databases>Academic Search Premier.

25.  You will get a mixed bag of results so you
need to select the appropriate ones by
reading the title and possibly the abstract.

27.  You can save the articles in a folder.
 Either email these to yourself or print it out.

28.  Getting some of the articles is very easy - just follow the link on the
database and if the University subscribes to that journal it will
appear like magic.
 Or you may have to order the article through the library (an intra
library loan, not expensive).
 Or you may have to contact other libraries to see who takes that
article and even visit them.
 Then you have to read it…

29.  Go over list and check against authors for
additional material – look at what else the same
author has written – unusual for just one paper
on an area and you may find lots of papers
related to the same research project concerning
methods, other findings etc.
 You may consider emailing authors to enquire
other research they may have published or be
aware of;
 Email mailing lists to offer your findings and ask
for additional resources not on your list;

30.  Collate all the bibliographic data from all
sources;
 Construct a list of which papers get cited the
most through to the least cited;
 This is the first ‘finding’ of your literature
search;
 The highest ranking texts are the ones your
read first.

31.  Often you will find citations and references in
texts that appear useful.
 It is OK to cite some one when they are cited
by some one else AS LONG AS YOU SAY SO.
 But be aware that mistakes get made and
reproduced…
 Example:

32.  “Books will be obsolete in schools” cited in 25
books, 34 journal articles and currently 237 web
pages.
 Each citation refers to an earlier citation.
 EG a 2007 book refers to the quote in a 2001
book that refers to a quote from 1987 which
refers to a quote in 1968 etc.
 The earliest I could trace the quote to was 1948.
 The original quote came from 1913.
 Being weird I wanted to check the original,
trouble finding it but…

34.  While the meaning is broadly the same it has
been copied incorrectly and it is not
acknowledged that the statement is redacted
– a bit naughty.
 The original mistake occurred in 1948 and
that has been reproduced ever since.
 25 books, 34 journal articles and currently
237 web pages all got it wrong.
 It is great fun being annoying.

35.  Academic research material is what we are
after.
 There is a hierarchy of texts with top ranked
peer reviewed journals at the top.
 Does not necessarily mean that the
information is more true but…
 Different types of review, aim for systemic
review if possible and Stage one is fine for
EIS.
 Check your sources.