Hey guys, welcome to another episode of Grad Coach
TV, where we demystify the oftentimes perplexing world of academic research. My name is Derek, and
in this video, I am going to be speaking with one of our own coaches, David Fair. David has got
a BSC, an MSC, and of course a PHD. He has been involved in tutoring, and lecturing students on
all things research related, and he has also been involved in supervising research projects such as
dissertations, and theses. So, long story short, David really knows what he is talking about
when it comes to research. In this video we will be talking about seven common mistakes
that we see come up in literature reviews. We work with students day in and day out here at
Grad Coach, and very often we are working with them in their literature review chapters, and we
see the same mistakes over and over again. So, in this video we are going to be talking about seven
of the most common ones we see, so that you can be aware of them, and you can avoid these pitfalls.
This discussion is based on one of the many, many blog posts over on the Grad Coach blog, so, if you
are undertaking your literature review, if you are undertaking a research project dissertation, or
thesis, be sure to check out the Grad Coach blog for a lot more free content just like this, that
is over at grad coach.com/blog. Also, if you are looking for a helping hand with your literature
review, be sure to check out our private coaching services where we help you one on one, step by
step, through the literature review chapter, or through your entire research project. If you
would like to learn more about that, you can book a free consultation and learn more about
the service as a whole over at gradcoach.com. All right, so let us get started. David,
welcome to the Coach cast. Thanks Derek, it is great to be back. Looking forward to
today. Awesome, so, today we are talking about the common literature review mistakes that we see
here at Grad Coach, and number one on the list is an over reliance on low quality sources,
low quality literature. So, David, give us the lowdown on the low-quality sources. Yeah, this is
definitely something that does come up, and it is often enough also at a bit of the earlier stages
in supporting clients with literature reviews, but really, if we think about it, academia can
be a little bit of an elitist club, there is a gold standard, there is an ideal, and
we are always aiming to get to that, and so, within academic literature, most of the
time, specifically in your literature review, you want to be using peer-reviewed resources,
as that is really the gold standard, and we are talking journal articles, even better than
that it is review articles, and meta-analyses, they are really the key articles that you want
to be collecting. And then, a step down from that would be something like an industry report, which
is much more important in something like an MBA course than a hard science course. You could also
look at published books, particularly if published by a scientific publishing company. Think of
Blackwell, or Oxford, and also book chapters as well, are a good second best. Following
that we are looking at the sort of chain of papers and quality. We can then move into the
space of, you know, theses, dissertations, working on published papers, but those really are not the
ideal, and so, you should be trying to limit that, and then lastly we have got blog posts, opinion
pieces, you know, publications by advocacy groups, or articles that is sort of the lowest standard,
if you would, and that is not to say you cannot use them, you just need to ensure that the meat of
your review is from these gold standard sources, and that is really just ensuring that you have got
good quality research supporting your arguments, right. But it is interesting even to say within
that gold standard of peer-reviewed articles, there is even an elitist version there,
so, if we think about the articles, each journal has a quality associated with it, and
the common one we like to use is impact factor. So, a better journal with a wider reach, and more
audience is going to have a higher impact factor, and this does differ between fields. I mean
cancer gets way more research than say, insects, or honeybee literature, and so, those things are
relative, but even within a field you can have a great journal, and you can have a less great
journal, and so, ideally, you want to be looking at those really high impact factor journals, the
ones that are central to your field. And really, again, the benefit of the high-quality resources
is, you are using up-to-date peer-reviewed, well-received literature as your theoretical
basis, rather than something that is a little uncertain, and so, really, those are
some of the key points that I have in terms of that. Yeah, cool. I
think something to emphasize is that, just to revisit how we label this mistake, is that
it is over reliance on low quality sources, so, it is not to say that you cannot have, or
you cannot include in your literature review, you know, one of the lesser quality sources that
you mentioned, perhaps from an industry blog, or, you know, something that is not academic in
nature, not peer reviewed by experts. It is not just so that you cannot include these things, but
you want to minimize it, and more than anything, you do not want your whole argument to be sitting,
be laying on a foundation of some lower quality source. So, you certainly do not want your
whole argument sitting on some opinion piece written by some blogger, or some YouTube, or
whatever the case may be, you want to build your foundation and try and keep the majority of
your literature sort of peer-reviewed journals, ideally higher impact factor journals. And a
good a good indicator, although not perfect, is if you are using something like Google Scholar,
and you are searching for articles, a good impact, or a good indicator is just to have a look at how
many citations an article has got. Yeah. It is not a perfect metric, because articles can get a
lot of citations for the wrong reasons, you know, everyone is referring to it in a critical way, but
it is a reasonable indicator, and you can also, you can find out for any article that
you are looking at, you can look at which journal it is coming from, and you can go
and look up what the impact factor of that is. We will include a link below this video to help you
find the impact factor for various journals. So, the key is just do not be over reliant
on low quality sources. You are, especially when you are researching topics that
are fairly new, and something that is just kind of coming onto the scene, naturally the literature
is not as developed, but you do not want to be, you do not want your whole argument to be based
on the low-quality sources. Anything else to add to that David? I think Derek also raised a
good point there in terms of specifically for very new ideas, or new fields. Often
enough, there is a lot more literature, grey literatures what we call it, in sort of news
articles and things like that, and so, a really nice way to use them, is to use them as sort
of emphasis points, or to support a theoretical view from a paper. So, you might say, you know,
industry 4.0 is really coming on to the scene, but maybe, you know, there is some issues with
it, as many news articles are pointing out that Countries are not ready, you know, for
instance, South Africa's internet capacity is not really as great as say, the US, and so
it is aspects like that, that you can use those lower quality papers to support that argument,
but obviously, you are not relying on them, you have still got that gold standard journal
article that is from a peer-reviewed source. All right, so, that sort of links into our second literature review mistake, and that is a lack
of landmark, or also referred to as seminal literature, so, this is the key literature, the
sort of, the literature that broke the topic onto the scene. This is a lack of that sort of
literature in favour of everything else, so, tell us a little bit more about this issue David.
Yeah, so, this is definitely an issue when it comes to setting that real theoretical background.
There is often enough this feeling that you want to be citing the most recent papers, really
coming up to write current 2020, 2021 papers, but the counter point to that is, you have to be
showing the development of where the fields come from, and you have to also be citing the people
that got things going, and so really, that lack of seminal paper, or landmark studies, if you are not
covering that, you are actually doing a disservice to your literature review, and so, an easy way to
think about this is, you know in all those 2020 and 2021 papers that you have been reading,
is almost always the same author, sort of a 1998 paper, or a 2005 paper, and if you are seeing
that same paper come through all the time, that is likely to be a landmark, or seminal paper. Yeah.
And then, if you go search for that paper, I am telling you now its citation rate is going to be
astronomical, compared to the more recent ones, and so, that is really a key paper that you
want to be including in your literary view. Generally speaking, nearer to the start of your
literary view, because it is going to be the traditional section. One thing though
to be careful when you are looking at seminal papers that have been published is, do
be careful of publishing group bias, and what I mean by this is, there is just certain schools
of researchers that like to cite each other, because they are working on a similar topic, and
the unfortunate side effect for that is it can become a bit of a, you know, one-trick pony, and
so, they all cite each other, and they actually lose out on some of the external papers that
come up. So, do read a bit widely there to make sure that that seminal paper is seminal outside
of the research you have been reading as well, but really, it is important to have this, because
this is the sort of the deep rock, or the major foundation of your literature review. Yeah, it
is something we have mentioned previously on in, you know, in our previous video, is this
saying of, you need to stand on the shoulders of giants, and that is especially true for the
literature review, your whole literature review is saying that the purpose of the literature
review is to say, these are the giants, this is what they have said, and this is how I
am going to build my research on top of this. So, when we talk about seminal landmark literature,
these are the giants, these are the big boys that started the scene, and really, that gets
referenced the most, or cited the most. And again , I will throw Google Scholar into the
mix, and certainly not the be-all and end-all of finding your sources, but again, if you search
for, if you are doing research on, let us just pick any topic, let us say organizational trust,
if that is your keyword, if that is your topic, when you put that into Google Scholar, you are
very quickly going to find out who the landmark researcher where, or which the studies where
the landmark ones, because they will just be so heavily cited for a specific keyword. So yeah,
that is mistake number two, and it is a big one, this is the kind of mistake that can draw a lot
of criticism from a marker, or reviewer, when they are looking at your literature review. If you
are not acknowledging the grades, if you are not, you can have the most recent research, and you
can have a pretty comprehensive literature review, and up-to-date literature review, we will talk
about that in the next point, but if you are not acknowledging the greats, you are kind of
doing a disservice to those who came before you, and it is really frowned upon in academia,
so, even if that seminal work has been built upon and developed quite substantially, that does
not mean that it is irrelevant, and it still deserves intention, and you need to include it.
Is there anything else to say about this mistake, or is that, have we covered it? Yeah, I think,
well I mean, this leads into the next mistake as well, but it is important to put that seminal
paper into context as well, so you want to be sort of looking at how things have changed
from that seminal paper, and so it is really important to have it in, but do not rely on
that seminal paper, or landmark paper, to be your sort of framework for research, because we
know all research frameworks develop over time, with more data and more experience, but it
really helps, as Derek said, to stand on that shoulder of the giant, and then use the new more
recent research to reach even higher. So, really, that is what I would say here, again this relates
really strongly to the next topic as well. Right. All right, so let us jump into literature
review mistake number three, and this sort of goes hand in hand with mistake number
two, and that is to have a lack of current, or up-to-date literature in your literature
review. So, previously we spoke about the issue of sort of skipping the seminal work,
skipping the landmark studies, the old greats, and that is clearly a problem. But equally a
problem is to not bring your literature review, or not to incorporate new literature and up-to-date
current research into your literature review. So, David, tell us a bit more about this common issue.
Yeah, so, this is one of the issues that really worries me when reading a review, particularly
if I am looking at the review, and I am seeing that most of the papers cited, or sources
sites, that are sort of three years or older, that gets me worried, that makes me, as a reader,
or reviewer, question how up to date is this, is there any, you know, aspects that you are
missing. Has someone answered the research question that you are pursuing, and you just
have not included that reference. And so, really, this is something that you want to make sure you
are getting right, and ideally, you should be having studies published within the last three to
five years. This is obviously dependent on fields. Certain research fields move a lot quicker
than others, but really, if the majority of your references are five years or older,
definitely consider updating your literature, because that is going to lead to your reviewer, or
marker, getting worried, and being more critical. And also, something that I wanted to bring
up as well in the previous section is, it is including that seminal paper and including
recent literature just puts you on the right foot with your marker or reviewer, it puts them on a
slightly less critical path of reading, and as a quick tip, if you are struggling with this issue
of having the majority of your reference things being quite old, take a look at something
like Google Scholar, or your search engine, and take a look at who has cited those papers,
that is a really good way to get up to date with the recent papers. So, for instance, if you are
searching for a paper on organizational trust, and you are looking at a 1999 paper, it is
a seminal paper, it is really interesting, take a look at who has cited that paper.
In Google Scholar you literally click on the citation number, and then you can search
within that, and you can filter that by time and date as well, so, it is a really nice way to
see how the field has developed going forward. Another aspect there is, once you have those new
papers, you need to contextualize them again, so, we mentioned this in the previous topic, but you
want to be comparing how things have developed, or moved forward, so, it is not just
about reporting that paper, it is about comparing it to what has been done, as well. Yeah.
And then, a last bit of advice on this, I would say is it is definitely important to make sure
for whatever context, or topic you are working on, that you are looking into both sides of the issue
or argument, and this is another place where those recent literature is going to be helpful, so,
you want to be looking for papers that support an argument and that also do not support it. We
are pass the days of paper wars, where people used to fight, and you know, publish that Johnson et al
is totally an idiot, but this is the correct way, but we still get those issues where people
are looking at differences. For example, if you are looking at performance measures for
funds, you do not just want to be focusing on positive predictors, you also want to be
considering some negative predictors, also, for each of those predictors you want to see,
do they perform as well in different contexts, so, try and be quite wide reaching with that
research. Similarly, you know, some people will say we are going back to it, but industry
4.0 is the way forward for manufacturing, but then other researchers say listen, some regions
just are not ready for it, they do not have the technological capacity, and so, showing both
sides of that argument would be really helpful, particularly if it is recent arguments
as well. Yeah, I think, you know, the key thing to keep in mind when you are crafting
your literature review is balance, and to provide a comprehensive view, so, in mistake number two
and number three what we are talking about is, you know, being on the wrong side of
balance, where everything is old and seminal, or everything is too new, you know. Both
those are problematic, so, you want a mix of sort of old and new, and you want to show
how things have developed, and then as you say, another component of balance is to make sure
that your perspectives are balanced out, that you are showing the pros and the cons,
highlighting the disagreements etcetera, which is bleeding into the fourth mistake that
we will talk about. But you really want to make sure that you have a comprehensive far-reaching
literature review, that does not get stuck in a certain time period, does not get stuck
in a certain sort of industry lens, or a certain, if you have any concentration of
perspective, then that is probably going to run you into a bit of an issue. So, something
worth mentioning is that, for all of this, while you are digging up all of your literature,
it is really important that you are not just reading paper after paper after paper, and making
some disjointed notes, you really got to catalogue your literature, you really got to structure
that into something that will allow you to, once you have read your, whatever 100, 200 papers, you
ultimately get through something that you can then go back to and look through all your literature,
and to that end there are many ways to do that. We always encourage just using an Excel spreadsheet,
it is simple way, and it is a free way, you will find a template catalogue for that on
the Grad Coach blog, which are linked to below, but you can just as easily use anything that
works for you. Some people do that within their reference management software, like
Mendeley or Zotero, or whatever they use, but Excel is a nice way of doing it, because
you can then catalogue your literature according to whatever criteria you want. So,
for example, you can have a column for the date, you can have a column for the author, or the
multiple authors, you can have a column for what methodology they use, you can have a column for
what industry and context their study was made in, so, if you catalogue your literature with a
lot of detail, that is going to help you see quite quickly when you take a step back, it is
going to help you see if perhaps you have got a real bias towards a certain time period, a certain
methodological approach, a certain set of authors. You can see those things a lot quicker when you
have all of them in a spreadsheet, and you can sort that stuff out. So, we are digressing from
the key point, but from a practical perspective, it is very useful, and it is essential actually,
to catalogue all of your literature, and have it all in one space. Some students think, oh, I am
just going to take some notes, I am just going to put this in Evernote, or Word, or whatever, and
I am just going to have some rough notes, but literature reviews, if you do them right, you
are going to be reading tons and tons of papers, and there is no way you are going to remember
all those details. So, the potential for bias, and the potential for sort of a lens, a focus,
from a certain lens to creep in, becomes really, really great, so, you need
to have a clear catalogue. All right, so, on to mistake number four,
and this is, I do not know about you, David, but this is the one that I see the most, and it
is not even a literature review thing, it is an academic writing thing, and mistake number four
is that students tend to focus on description, rather than integration, and synthesis of the
literature, in other words, they end up describing the literature providing a he said, she said, they
said, they disagreed. A set of descriptions about what all happened in the literature, as opposed
to bringing that together, and synthesizing it, and relating back to their specific research
objectives, and research questions. So, drill down into this one, David, because this is a beast,
and I think really, if there is one takeaway that anyone watching this needs to put in their bag,
it is that you need to focus on integration, and synthesis, as opposed to description. Yeah, so,
I mean, you have hit the nail on the head there, Derek. This is sort of one of the biggest issues,
and realistically, it us one of the easier ones to notice, from a reviewing perspective, you
know, as soon as I start seeing just constantly that Johnson et al did this, Fred did this, Susan
did this, it gets really repetitive. Yeah. And so, in that regard, it is cutting down in terms
of how your literature review flows, but also, you are really not showing any criticality, and
that is always what is being looked at when people are marking your research, they want to see that
you as the researcher are putting things together, you are taking a look at how the different
papers fit together, and applying that to your research context. So, really, if you find yourself
simply reporting what a set of studies concluded, or summarizing the papers in the field, it is
time to stop. Really, you want to be putting things together, and it is a silly example,
but if I mention a triangle, three squares in a rectangle, those are three shapes. You put
together in context, you know, the big square, two small squares, a rectangle in the middle,
and a triangle on top, it is suddenly a house, so that context and putting it together is
really helpful. A more academic example would be, you know, reporting some studies about honeybee
declines, about honeybee disease, and RFID tracking technology, it is a little disjointed,
right, but if you link and integrate those, specifically linking the crashing honeybee
industry to the outbreak of something like American foul brood, and how you can use something
like RFID technologies to track honeybees, it is telling a much more cohesive story. And
really, what you are doing there is, you as the researcher, of finding how different aspects or
themes or topics link to each other. It is really important to do this because, as Derek says, this
is primarily what we are looking for when reading a literature review, we want to see that you are
building that theoretical framework, and that that framework is connected, rather than split up, and
so, you should be relating your papers together. If you are reporting about one paper, and then
a conflicting view, and a second paper, you need to point out that conflict, and then further, you
need to then synthesize what the overall view is, you know. Is there more disagreement
than agreement, if there is disagreement, what type of disagreement it is. It is also
important to say what is not there as well. Yeah. So, for instance, when you are presenting
papers, you might point out that not many studies are looking into diseases in ants, and tons of
research in honeybees, but not in ants, and so, pointing out that gap is also a form of
synthesis. You are saying that you have read through the papers, and seen what is missing,
so, that is really helpful in terms of building an integrated and synthesized literature review.
And a good example to think about structurally, as your literature review should be an upside
down pyramid, so, you are going to start broad, and you are going to start with a lot of support
for ideas, right, and then, as you move through your topics, you are going to be coming down and
getting more focused, until it gets to a point where there will not be support for the ideas
that you are putting forward, and that is ideally teeing up your research aims and objectives. So,
by having that strong synthesis, you actually also generate directionality towards your aims and
objectives, so, it is really helpful to keep this in mind, because your literature review
is the foundation of your study, it is just a collection of studies, it is just bricks, but if
you put it together with some water and cement, then you have that firm foundation that is super
helpful. I think to add to what you are saying, a good question to always ask yourself, as you
are crafting your literature reviews, to say, am I focusing, is my discussion focused on the what, in
other words, what so-and-so said, and this person said, or is it focused on the so what, in other
words, what does that mean, how is this relevant, what is the impact of what this person
said. And to take that a step further, you really want to be saying, so, what does this
mean in terms of my research objectives and my research questions. As you mentioned, David,
the research questions, the research objectives, and the broader research aims, these things
drive your entire piece of research, they drive every chapter of your dissertation or your thesis,
as you have spoken about before, and your proposal as well. So, everything, when you are asking
yourself, you know, am I talking about the water, am I talking about the, so what, obviously one
leans on the other, you cannot talk about the so what without first saying what this paper
said, or that paper said. You need to be, whenever you are writing something, you are going
to start with, the what, you are going to say, you know, Johnson et al argued that X, Y, Z happened,
or this caused that. Then you need to say, okay, so, what does this mean, does it conflict with
what other people have said, why am I to conflict, what does this mean for my research questions,
what does this mean for my research objectives, so, you have got to be bringing everything
back to those, that golden thread that we speak about so often, that golden thread of research
questions and objectives. You cannot just be, the literature review is not a summary of the
literature, it is not just, you know, this person said, that person said, this person said, it is
always the case, so, this person said X, Y, Z, therefore, whatever the case would be, you
have got to be pulling in that so what, and if you can just use that as a very, I am
oversimplifying it here, but if you can just use that question of what, or so what, if you can
use that as a common tool while you are writing a literature review, you will have a much more
cohesive literature review, and you will keep bringing things back to the research questions,
and the research objectives. Yeah, I think just to add to that, context is key, really, when
you are thinking of that so what, as Derek put, so, what does it mean for my case is really a
helpful case in getting that integration across. So, you might be seeing studies on prevalence of
a disease in certain racial groups, or cultural groups, that is great, but what does it mean
for the racial group or cultural group that I am pursuing for the study, and really putting that
linkage there is super important. If there is not a linkage, maybe consider, is that necessary, and
I guess that feeds into our next topic as well. Right, right, so, just to recap this, because
this is so important and such a common issue, is when you are writing your literature review,
remember that it is not a summary, it is not simply you going for a walk down memory lane
recapping on what every researcher has said, you have got to focus on synthesis integration, and
linking things back to your research objectives, your research questions, not on describing the
research, naturally you are going to describe, but you need to keep that as brief and concise as
possible, and focus on, okay, so what does this mean, how do we pull it together, how does this
drive my research further. And it might be that, you know, something you read then fill forms or
feeds into a hypothesis that you will go and test later, and it might be that something you read
feeds into your conceptual model, theoretical framework, so, always focus on so what, always
focus on the synthesis, not just description. Cool, so, on to mistake number five, and we
accidentally edged into it with our previous point, and that is mistake number five, in
terms of literature review issues, is to include irrelevant or unfocused content, to
include stuff that does not really fit into the literature review, or that is just
is not essential to the literature review. So, David, break this down for us. Yeah, so, this is
definitely sort of opposite to our previous issue, and I think it all points to the fact
that a literature review is a continuous, interactive, flowing bit of literature, but the
important part is to make sure you stay on port point, so, for example, going back to my previous
image of the shapes, you know, you have got the square triangles, and the house, if you add in
a flying spaghetti monster, things get a little confusing, right, or in the beekeeping issue, if
we start suddenly bringing up 5g radio networks, and their effect on bees, that does not really fit
in with the context of disease dynamics, and so, really, you have got to make sure that you are
introducing literature that feeds directly into your topic aims and objectives. Remember, in the
literature review, we are building a foundation for your research, so you really want to be
building up things, and ideas, and arguments, that provide support for your research. You do not
want to be pulling things too far apart, because then people are going to get lost, they are going
to get distracted, and it is a bit difficult. So, I know, I am one of those people as well, when
I am reading papers, something gets exciting, you just dive down and suddenly three hours have
passed, and you have gone down the link sort of pattern, and you are way out, and so, a good rule
of thumb I use is asking yourself, how does this relate to my core thesis message, or that golden
thread, and an easy way to find that golden thread is, what is your aims objectives, and research
questions. So, you have got to ask yourself, does this relate to that aspect, and there will be
times where you will say, not exactly, but, and if you have to make too many of those justification
steps for including that, it is time to cut it, and that can be difficult. Similarly, to any
form of writing, cutting content is difficult, because there are babies, there are thought
processes, you know, you want to keep them, but it is important to be to the point, because a
too broad and literal view also loses impact. So, stick to that golden thread, and make sure it is
clear throughout the literature review, but also throughout your whole thesis and dissertation. In
general, you want your aims and objectives to be key, and so, if we want to work through an
example of this, let us say your aim of your research is to identify potential early detection
factors associated with increased Alzheimers risk, in a particular culture group ,so, really, we are
looking at early detection factors of Alzheimers in a group, and so, we are working through
the literature, we found some papers on global Alzheimers risk factors, specific risk factors
for different racial groups, Alzheimers outcomes, environmental factors and Alzheimers prevalence,
that is quite a list that I have developed there, but one of them definitely stood out as a little
outside of that, and that would be the outcomes of Alzheimers. It is important, but is it really
linking to early detection, because outcomes come way down the line. Yeah. And so, that would
be something to consider cutting. Another one, to think about is Alzheimers prevalence, is that
necessary if you are looking at prevalence in the cultural group, or racial group, then maybe, but
if we are just saying globally, what presence is, that is really something you are going to
put right at the start of the introduction, or literature review, and then not come back to.
So, that is also something to consider, you know, pulling back on. I think where this issue
comes from at least sometimes, is that while you are undertaking your literature review,
and by undertaking I mean doing your reading, not your actual writing up of the review, while
you are sourcing content, you are invariably going to find, and you are going to come across content
that is not really aligned with your research objectives, your research questions, but you still
got to read it, in order to check whether it is aligned or not. So, you will be exposed to a lot
of content that is not completely irrelevant. And in fact, I would say, probably most of the stuff
that you initially read through is going to be not quite on point, but nevertheless, while you
read some of that stuff, you are going to go, oh, that is an interesting insight, you know, that
is a really interesting point that so-and-so raises there, and so, you are going to go
stick that into your catalogue, and you are going to put it down, and then, while you are
writing a literary review, you will have these little shiny objects that you go, it was such a
great point that someone raised, that is such an intellectual concept to bring into the discussion.
So, there will be these little temptations, where you, something sticks in your mind, a piece of
literature sticks in your mind, because it was clever, it was catchy, it was thought provoking,
but it was not necessarily directly related to your research objectives, and your research
questions, so, you have got to be careful, and you will you have to accept that you are going
to spend through the literature review process, through the sourcing process, you are going to
spend a lot of time reading and cataloguing stuff that is not really tightly linked to your research
topic. And you need to accept that, you know, as I said, the majority of the stuff that you
read, you are probably not going to use. That is the purpose of the literature review process is to
sift through everything that exists, find what is relevant, and then speak about that exclusively.
So, you have got to be, as you say, you got to be prepared to just kill your babies, and to
let go of the stuff that is not relevant, and when a piece of literature appeals to you because
it seems really clever, or it seems really thought provoking, or really wise, that is the stuff that
you got to be really careful of, because you are probably interested in it for the wrong reasons.
So, just use, as you as you have said, David, use the research objectives, the research questions,
use those as your guidepost to make sure that you are staying on track. If you are sitting on
the fence about, should I include this point, should I not include this point, go back to
your research questions, say, is this relevant, is it not relevant, if it is really relevant, you
have got to be able to really clearly justify why it is relevant in that, and when you present that
piece of content, be sure to justify it as well. So, yeah, the tool, the litmus test of is this
relevant, is this focused piece of content, is look at your research aims, objectives, and
questions, and that will tell you whether you are on track or not. Yeah, just to add to that
as well, do not be afraid of reading those papers that are slightly unrelated. One of the important
parts in a literature review is making connections that are not explicit, that is where
good research questions come in and gaps, so, your literature review is always going to be
a period where you are going to be reading a lot, getting a lot of ideas, some of them might come
into your thesis, others might not. Yeah. But really, do not be afraid of that, but when it
comes to actually writing it, then make sure you are applying that litmus test. And one thing to
say is, that reading period, where you are reading all those different resources, is truly powerful
in terms of helping you to identify potential new research questions, and giving you insight
for your discussion chapter later on, so do not feel like you cannot read that literature,
because it is not related to your aims, but just when it comes to putting it
into structure, think about how it fits, definitely. Yeah, that is a great point. I
think to sum it up in one line is, you have got to read widely, and then write narrowly,
and you have got to be focused on. Exactly. So, just because we spoke about this in our
previous video, about the research proposal, where we said your research has to be
narrow, narrow, narrow, you have got to have, you know, one of the big mistakes with research
proposal is having a topic that is too broad, so your topic has to be narrow, your research
objectives, aims etcetera, those need to be narrow, but your reading is going to be quite
broad, because you cannot get a comprehensive understanding of the area if you are absolutely
brutal about not reading anything from a paper that directly links to what you are researching,
so, you go read wide, and then write narrow. All right, so, on to literature review mistake
number six, and this is, this one is a difficult one for me to see, because you can have
a student that does all the right things, but they do not do this one, and the issue is poor
structure and layout of the literature review, so, a student can do wide reading, narrow writing,
they can stay on track, they can have the seminal literature, the new literature, they can tick all
the boxes that we have spoken about previously, but if your literature review is not
structured well, does not present a logical and clear narrative, it really does degrade it
substantially. So, David, dig into this one for us. Yeah, so, as Derek rightly pointed out,
this is really one that, when I read reviews, makes me sad to see, because it is easily fixed,
or avoided, if you put the right steps in place. But when it is not avoided, the best information
can be missed, because it is sandwiched between unnecessary information, or similarly you
might have a really great idea, but because you have split it across too many paragraphs
and sections, it is lost, and your reviewer, or marker, or reader, you have got to think
of them as intelligent people, but they do need a bit of a handheld as well, so, ensuring
that that structure is there can really ensure your literature review has really good flow,
and that raises the quality of your research. And a saying that I have heard a lot, and it is
really applicable to writing is, is if you fail to plan, you plan to fail, and that is such a
key aspect to keep in mind. So, when thinking about your literature review, and this has to,
I am going to be really explicit about this, but you plan after you have read, so,
we said, read widely, read with depth, and then plan before writing, but realistically,
it is very worth your while to set up a rough structure for your literature reviews
right at the start, before you begin. Again, the plan is not set in stone, writing is a
process that evolves and develops as you do it, but not having a plan means you are going to have
come across with a sort of unstructured smudgy kind of review. So, you really want to make that
focus, and we have a whole video on this as well in terms of how to structure literature
review, so, you can take a look at that, but broadly speaking, you want to make
sure that your literature review has three main sections. There will be more
sub sections, but you need an introduction, and so this is where you are going to sort of
outline and define your topic, as well as bring up any potential jargon or definitions
that need to be made, and set the scope, and this is an important one for a literature
review, because we have mentioned already, you are reading widely, fields are massive, but
you cannot read everything. And so, setting the scope says, this is what our literature review
is focused on, this is what we are engaging with, and this is something we are aware of, but we will
not be engaging with, and so, in the introduction, you want to make that clear. Then the body of
your literature, that is the meats of what you are doing, and this needs to be carefully arranged.
We have mentioned it before, but you want to be going from broad to specific, but also you need to
be ensuring that you are bringing out those gaps, and that it has got a structure, or a flow
to it, and you can do that based on themes, on chronological coverage of the data, or even
just measures or frameworks. Just think about how you want to put it together, and lastly, you are
going to have your conclusion, and the conclusion in the literary view is important. Many people
feel like I have presented all the information, we will dive straight into the methodology, but
here is where you really tie it all together, this is sort of the ending piece that
most people will read most heavily, and here you want to pull up some key points
from the literature review, and key gaps, and set the scene for your aims, objectives,
and the research that is going to follow. So, really think about the conclusion as an important
aspect for pulling together that literature review overall. And really, in all these cases, definitely from my experience, making a plan at
the start is great, and you can do that in Word, you can do that on paper, you can just do headings
and topics, but having that is super important. One other thing to think about is, there is also
ways that you can structure your writing itself to improve flow and structure, so, if you
have found yourself constantly going back and making changes, and putting things back in, this
might be an issue that you are struggling with, so, having that plan will help you
weave in those papers easier. But also, there is a point where too much planning is
stopping right things, so, there is always a bit of a factor to keep in mind, so, make
a plan, do not feel you have to stick to it, but also do not just plan forever, because I am
a procrastinator, I know that is how it works. And lastly, just an extra tip in terms
of structuring your literature review, make sure you are signposting
things quite clearly, so, it really helps to have good transitions
between sections and paragraphs, and to make those linkages clear, this is another form
of that synthesis we were talking about, where you are relating one topic or section to
another one. And one of the ways to do this is to just use the standard paragraph structure.
You have a topic sentence that introduces what idea is being covered in the paragraph, you
have the body sentences that is the support, that is where your references are going
to come in, and then a leading sentence that transitions from the current paragraph to
the next topic sentence of the next paragraph, and that is really helpful for getting a good flow
between your paragraphs, but you can apply the same thing to your sections as well. So, you can
have a topic paragraph that introduces the idea, body paragraphs that are the specifics, and then
a leading paragraph that helps you transition from the current section into the next, and all
these things are pretty straightforward to do, but if you do not account for them, things feel
muddy and lack flow, and when it lacks flow, readers get tired, they are not paying attention
as well, and it is an easy way to lose marks. Yeah, so, just to recap on that, I
think the key takeaways are that, one, you need to, when you when you start writing
your literature review, before you start writing your literature review, you need to have
some sort of outline, this does not need to be ultra-detailed, but you need to have some bullet
point list where you map it up and you say, okay, well, first I am going to introduce this, then
I am going to talk about that , then I want to talk about that, then I want to bring these things
together etcetera. You have got to understand what are, the sort of, broad movements, what is the
narrative, what is the story that you are trying to tell. You have got to know what that story is,
and you have got to plot it out, in bullet point form, before you start writing, otherwise you are
going to just waffle, you are just going to talk, and talk, and talk, and as you say, David, your
reader is just going to get tired. And then, in terms of the overarching structure, I think
you mentioned the sort of, the introduction, the body, and the conclusion to the literature
review, I think the old saying about effective communication of, tell them what you are going to
tell them, tell them more than what you told them, I think that is really something to keep in mind,
yeah, is that you need to be reinforcing those things at all levels, and then within the actual
body, the part where you tell them, and when you actually feature the literature review, you have
some choices there in terms of how you structure that. Most commonly your literature review will
be structured by way of themes, so, you might do things pro antecedent if you are doing that
kind of research, but it could be any kind of theme, or group, that you could discuss things.
You could discuss things chronologically, in other words, how the theory has developed over
time, or you could discuss things per methodology, so, if you have got a really quite narrow focus,
and you want to look at what the literature said, based on the different methodologies that
were used, so, that can be a useful way of understanding sort of the key, the key findings
from a qualitative perspective, versus the key findings from a quantitative perspective.
So, yeah, all of the stuff we do touch on, on a post on the Grad Coach blog, so, I will
include a link to that below, but the key thing is, plan it out, and then start writing, and
of course, as you write, writing is a form of thinking, as you are writing things, you are going
to evolve, your outline is going to change, your total structure will develop a bit, but you have
got to have something to start with, otherwise you will end up waffling, and literature review
chapters is generally one of the biggest ones, so, you really do not want that major portion of
word count to be flip-flopping all over the place, because you will just lose your reader,
and they will get bored and confused. That is not a good foundation for marking.
One thing to add as well is, having that rough plan is also really helpful, in getting you
going with the writing process. I know lots of people get really stuck up on, I have so much
information in my head, and in my catalogue, that I do not know how to get it on the page.
That planning section is really helpful for that, and it is also helpful in another format, so
obviously, in an ideal World, we just write from beginning to end of the literature review, and be
done with it, but unfortunately, writer's block is a thing, you know, motivation is a thing,
and factors like that are problematic, and so, if you find yourself getting stuck in one section
of your literature, if you have got a structure in mind, you can jump and start working on another
section, and often enough that is an easy way to build that momentum you need to keep writing.
And so, think about it in that way as well. It is not just something to stick to, but it is also
a tool to use in helping you make progress going forward. Right. And the last bit of advice I would
like to give is just, make things smaller, if it feels too big a task, make it more focused,
so, in that structure, and again, this is not for everyone, you can take that structure as detailed
as you want, and that can make really easy small sections that you can tick off on your checklist,
to give you the momentum to hit the bigger tasks. All right, so let us jump on to the seventh
and final mistake that we see with regards to literature reviews, and this one grinds
me endlessly, because it is such an easy thing to get right, and not getting it right
really cost students a lot of marks, and that is, mistake number seven is that we see poor
referencing per use of citations, and references, and as a consequence of that just outright
plagiarism. So, David, take us through this issue. Just do not do it, that is all
I can say about plagiarism. I have seen too many students have had their academic journey
cut short because, you know, in some cases it is a dock of marks taken off your
final result, but in other cases the outcomes of plagiarism are much more dire, so,
really try not to do this as much as possible. And that is a scary thing, everyone always
tells you do not plagiarize, but really, how do we make sure we do not plagiarize. And
the important thing is, when citing your work, make sure it is in your own words, and this
is hard to do when the original piece said it so perfectly, you know, the way they put
it, they made sure there was no extra words, they got the point across perfectly, can I
just, you know, fit it in, unfortunately not, you need to reword it, and sometimes that is
important, because in rewording it you can come up with new ideas, and new thinking. But if there
is absolutely no way around rewording a sentence, there is a way you can use a direct quote, but
I want to expressly say, use this sparingly. Too many times you see reviews that are just
quotation after quotation after quotation, and that becomes really difficult for me as a
reader, and I will start questioning, where is your voice in this paper. So, think about quotes
as emphasis, not for ways to skirt plagiarism, or to get around things, so, you should have very
few direct quotes. In the ideal World you will be taking that work, repurposing it, seeing how it
links, and putting it in a new way in your own words. Yeah. And generally speaking, if we go back
to our previous comment on the topic of synthesis versus reporting, this is one of the techniques
you can use to really help avoid plagiarism. If instead of just being reporting what studies
have found, you are instead identifying the relationships that exist between studies,
that is going to help you avoid plagiarism, because you are not directly citing what they
have said, you are putting it into new context, and so, that is a really nice way to avoid
plagiarism. So, to put that in simple words, look at the relationships rather than the facts,
and that is what you should be aiming for when citing work. Another thing is, there are tools
out there, there are ways to check for plagiarism, and the Institutions are using them, you can
as well. It is not to say that you should aim to see how much plagiarism you can
get in, I am not saying that at all, but it is important to know there is some times
where you might just have done it accidentally, and so, having those checks before submitting
is absolutely so helpful, and kind of related as Derek has mentioned, is related to plagiarism,
there is often enough poor referencing as well, often enough that can be as simple
as just formatting it incorrectly, and that is, fortunately we live in an era
where we have things like reference managers, I personally love Mendeley, but you know, there
is Zotero RefWorks, there is a range of the. So, definitely make use of those, they really help
your life out. But as a word of warning, keep that idea in mind of gigo, which is garbage
in, garbage out. So, when you are referencing papers, make sure you put them into your
reference manager correctly, you know, that you have got the right author, the right
dates, etcetera. One of the nice things is most recent reference managers will actually allow
you to search by a DOI score, which is just a series of numbers, and that will automatically
update it for you correctly, so, definitely make sure that is correct. But also related
to citing incorrectly is not citing enough, that is something that we see a lot as well,
presenting ideas that should be cited as your own, and if it is not your idea, rule of
thumb is cite it, or do not include it. If you are unsure if it is your original idea,
go out and look see if anyone has said it before, Google Scholar is a great search engine for that,
but you can also take a look at the databases that you are using for your search engine, but really
make sure you are citing as much as possible. I do not think they ever say this paper has too
many citations, that is never really an issue, rather have more citations than less.
Right, yeah, just to add to that, and to emphasise your last point, David, is that
you definitely need to err on the side of citing more, rather than less. As a general rule of
thumb is that, if you are making some point in in your paper that is not common knowledge,
that is not just something that everyone knows, generally you need to cite that, because it
means someone else's idea, someone else's work, that needs to be cited, and that is students, when
they think of plagiarism, they think it means, okay, well, I copy paste it out of a journal
article, or textbook, and I did not cite it, I did not put it in quotes, but it is the same
thing when you are just presenting an idea in your own words, but it is someone else's idea, it is
someone else's research that you have read. If you do not cite them, it is essentially plagiarism,
so, you need to cite more often than not. And then, just to touch on the point of reference
management software again, citing, putting in your citations, putting in your parentheses, author
date, whatever, that is not something you need to do manually, and it is definitely not something
you should be doing manually, because you are in a dissertation with hundreds of citations,
you are going to mess it up. It is just way too technical, to get it right hundreds of times over
and over again, so, make sure that you are using some piece of reference management software. There
are great free ones, we have got on the Grad Coach YouTube channel, we have got a how-to guide for
Mandalay and for Zotero, those are two completely free pieces of software, check those out. If
you do not like them, check something else out, if you are totally stuck, use the referencing
tool in Word, it is not great, but it is better than you are doing it manually, but use some sort
of software and make sure that you are putting the right information in. If you are loading in
the wrong piece of information, if there is spelling errors, or something, and the reference
management software is not magically going to fix that, so, you have got to make sure that you
put that data in. And my suggestion is always to, while you are doing your initial sourcing of
literature, when as you read each journal article, just slap it into the reference management
software, you might use it, you might not, chances are you will not, but if you do, it is already
there, and you do not need to then go and load that stuff in manually afterwards, so, while you
are building your literature catalogue, just as an extra step, just put that reference into your
reference manager, and then things will be easily taken care of. You will write your piece of copy,
and you will just use the reference management software to insert the citation. It will add it in
the document, and it will add it to your reference list, and it will be perfect, provided you set
it up correctly so, there is really no reason to lose marks with plagiarism and referencing, and
as you have said, David, losing marks is the best case scenario, some Institutions will just say
plagiarism, you are out, you failed, or whatever, and that is really a tragedy, because you could
put all the, or you could do all the right things, you can tick all the other boxes you have spoken
about, but then you go down for plagiarism, it is just really not worth it. So, yeah,
make sure that you do not plagiarise, make use of reference management software
and you will stay on top. Yeah, just to add, we are at the end of the list here, but I think
Derek has mentioned it, and I have mentioned it as well, but putting a little bit of thought into
your literature review in terms of building a catalogue, building your reference management pool
of resources, doing the work at the start is going to help you in the long run at the. It is really
hard to go back and fix all those little issues as they come in, rather put the effort in when you
are reading the literature to catalogue well, to add it to your reference manager correctly, so
that, going forward, your writing process is as smooth as can be, because the writing
process is where you really want to be driving and developing your ideas, not
worrying about is the comma in the right place, do I have a reference for this, so, definitely,
I would say, focus on those, and the planning really helps make your literature review as strong
as it can be. All right, so that pretty much wraps up our seven literature review mistakes, of course
these are not the only mistakes you can make, sadly there are many, many more, and I am sure
we will be circling back and doing another seven literature review mistakes video at
some point in the future. Yeah, those are seven common ones that you really need to look out
for, and if you avoid those, you will be avoiding the most common pitfalls. So, David, thanks again
for your time, it has been great having you here, again, thanks for sharing your endless knowledge
with our viewers, and yeah, thanks for your time. All right, so, that pretty much wraps up
this episode of Grad Coach TV. Remember, if you are interested in learning more about
literature reviews, about the research process in general, be sure to check out the Grad
Coach blog over at gradcoach.com/blog, where you can find loads of free information on
literature reviews, proposals, methodologies, pretty much everything research related. Also,
if you are looking for a helping hand with your research, whether that is a dissertation, or
thesis, or any other kind of research project, be sure to check out our private coaching services
where we hold your hand step by step through the research process. You can learn more about
that and book a free consultation with one of our friendly coaches over at gradcoach.com. So,
that is all for today, until next time, good luck.
