5 Easy Ways To Find The Gap in Literature | How To Identify Research Gaps

one of my most frequently asked research-based questions is how do I find a gap in literature like I know that I'm interested in this particular topic I know that this is something that I find so interesting I'm passionate about it but how do I find that subset of the topic that I can actually pursue and is a unique part that hasn't been studied yet so how do I find that um and as a new researcher you're probably really struggling as to where exactly to look without being spoon fed and just given the answer although it may seem really challenging a lot of the time is actually quite easy to find the Gap in literature and I'm going to go through a few points today of ways that you can find that Gap in literature by looking in the right places and asking the right questions so a gap in literature is a really important aspect because it identifies the key Concepts that you are going to be researching within your research field and it's something that has not been addressed before so it says it in its name it has to be a gap because it's something that we are not currently aware of it's something that we are ignorant of we don't know what it is and if you're applying for funding or Fellowship you're most likely going to need to show that there is a gap that is worthwhile putting money into to discover and research so if you want to see more videos like this then do press the Subscribe button to see more from me I have a whole research process a series and that I will just show you over here and it's linked down below so please make sure to click on that and check out the research process from start to end okay the first way is to use the most relevant articles within your research area so you need to find I would say the top five most suitable research papers that are relevant to your topic so this could be measuring them by how influential they are how important they are they could be they should really be as recent and as common as possible and once you've identified those you want to look at a few different sections the first section you want to look at is the introduction section so taking a look at the last like the first like the last two I would say the last two paragraphs of the introduction section are really good sections because that is where the authors usually say this is something that's missing and what they're going to be doing in their paper is identifying one aspect of it so they'll they'll basically tell you what the Gap in literature is but their Direction and and I guess is their kind of way of looking at that answer is by is by studying one part of it so that could open the door for you and tell you that actually you can maybe go down a different route there's always a sentence or two in the introduction always that says what the Gap in literature is because that is what they are going to be researching the next section to look at is the conclusion so you have this paper look at the conclusion again the conclusions will usually say they have identified X Y and Z in this research paper however there is still this to look at however we still don't understand like my research my research paper that I published and when I finished my PhD although we gave our results and we gave our conclusion at the end we did say that we are still unsure about X Y and Z and why they bind and why they don't bind and why that happened and why this looked like this and that could give you an answer and say actually maybe I'll go and that will be my research question the next part you want to look at within a paper is sometimes the limitations so around the results but normally towards the end of the results there might be a paragraph or two that talks about some limitations that the authors were faced with whilst they were doing their research and these are really good parts to look for because they will say that they were faced with these limitations with it could be the method it could be something to do with um the analysis and they weren't able to overcome it or they overcome it in a certain way however there's still space to be able to overcome it in a different way and that can give you a gap in literature and I actually have a few questions that I have written down within my um developing a research question template that I'll leave link down below which is really really helpful if you're someone that's in the research process in general but if you go to the for the the fourth page there is a whole summary a page about how you read research papers so thinking about things like what was really striking about the illustrations and what setbacks were there what did the author learn overall why does this research matter how significant is it and those are some questions that you can think about when reading research papers to maybe pull out the important bits to help you um with the Gap in literature so definitely think about um getting this in my link down below okay the next way is by using systematic reviews now systematic review papers are review papers that are more generalized they bring together a number of research primary research papers they bring them all together and they summarize that information within a review paper review papers are a good place to start from because they really do summarize everything relevant in the field and it's a bit of a cheat because someone's done that homework for you and if you get a review paper that's quite recent then most likely they've found most of the paper us that will be relevant to you and that are current and in that review paper they will usually say something like this is what we know this is what's still missing this is what we're looking for we could still you know use this information and there'll be statements within those review papers that essentially give you gaps in literature okay so what I've done is I have searched for the word understand within this review paper and it's all about I could get one which is a protein in the cell cortex and you can see here that by using the word understand to search in this review paper I've basically picked out all the places that this author has said that more research is needed to understand the effects of XYZ a better understanding will help us with this and things like this understanding will be important for this and even in the conclusion here it's basically given you a ton of ideas saying additional studies will be needed for X Y and Z and this is really how you can use review papers to search for like ketone times like understand the lack of Etc and these review papers they delve really deep into the literature and they look at Trends and changes and how things have developed over the years within that research space I think it's really helpful because it saves you so much time than going through like a bunch of primary research papers which is also really useful but if you just want to find like you know you want to know that you're con more confident in the Gap and knowing that that field is really lacking that information a review paper is a really good way to go and they're usually written by the most prominent people within the field so like I said you know that wherever they're saying is definitely something that you want to go by the Third Way is by going on to journal websites so um if you're someone within the Sciences you can go to like nature cell biology um whatever journals is that you are that are most relevant to your research topic you want to go to those websites and within those websites you'll find and I'm going to show it to you over here you'll find there are different articles that are published aside from primary research papers so journals are a bit like a I guess like a newspaper magazine um where they don't just have the primary research papers those are obviously the key component but they also have letters that are written by um professors researchers they also have comments of people that have like research academics that have commented on maybe a massive you know really a big breakthrough that was recently published and those comments and those thoughts are original thoughts of you know people like highly influential people within the field that you want to hear and mention these things and so by going to the website of the journal you'll find a lot more information there than in the primary research papers they often have a key concept section um and within that key Concepts they will have an academic speaking about And discussing a topic that is relevant um that's currently relevant and these topics are usually informed by present debates present theories things that are currently being researched and looked at they're really these short articles as I mentioned and they're really focused on a very small subset area so yeah definitely go to journal websites they are a Minefield for um hearing from experts okay the fourth way let's say one number am I in the fourth way is by looking at papers that are called state of the Arts papers now you may or may not have heard of this type of paper so it's different to a review paper or in a primary research paper these are state of the art papers which are papers that summarize the state of knowledge at present so you can see where I'm getting here we're trying to be efficient and productive and cut out the work that we are going to put into this and trying to find ways where people have already summarized the information for us they look at areas of research that are really fruitful or that are like influential promising possibly areas that are like up and coming so if you are someone who isn't really sure maybe even what topic you're interested in maybe go going to state of the art papers is a good way to start and maybe pick out some topics that you are um that you think could be could be up and coming the next way and this is maybe the an obvious way but maybe you haven't thought about it is just to ask your research advisor and I know that we're all really scared to approach our supervisors and our you know the academics and the experts we're scared to ask them but it shouldn't be you should have don't just go to them with nothing go to them with an idea say like this is what I found this is what I think what about this what about this what about that and then approach them with that and then sit down and you can discuss it and they will actually help you um a lot of the time even though they may have set the task it doesn't mean you can't go to them for help you can go to them you can ask them questions you can say what do you think they will know they will know exactly what the state of their academic space is right now the last way is by attending conferences and this is something that you may or may not be able to do I think nowadays you probably are able to do a lot more than in the past because a lot of conferences are online virtual streamed virtually so you can access those conferences for free so what you can do is um if you can get yourself into a conference or a talk session these academics will usually say something along the lines of this is what we don't know and this is what I aim to elucidate this is what I aim to look for um and so what you can do is take that this is what we don't know look at what they've done they might have used a particular method a particular approach and then you take a different approach or you think okay that's interesting what how can I expand on that like how can I extend what they've done that could be your Gap in literature that can be something original something new so by going to these conferences you will see all these posters you'll see you'll hear from all these like um experts and it'll I think it's a really good healthy space to be in especially as someone who is an aspiring researcher and it means that you're able to actually hear from those that are in you know right now in the trenches and you can even maybe if you're confident enough to speak to them um and there's no you know there's no accountability really because they don't know who you are you can just speak to them and say what do you think about this say oh yes it's a really good idea there you go there's your answer um but yeah I hope you guys found this video helpful let me know if any of these are ways that you what worked for you or ways that you're going to try I think that finding a gap in literature is it's difficult if you don't know what you're looking for but if you know what you're looking for it's in every single research paper like it's written everywhere that is how you justify the work that you're doing is important and significant it's by seeing what the Gap in literature is so it's literally in any academic writing but yeah if you enjoy this video um give me a huge thumbs up and don't forget to subscribe to see more on my channel and I'll see you guys in my next one bye foreign

Channel: Dr Amina Yonis

Views: 53,816

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Id: eQ5WDLp-c3M

Length: 12min 35sec (755 seconds)

Published: Tue Nov 15 2022