1. Writing a Literature Review
Evaluating and describing
other people’s work
                          
What is a literature review?
How do I decide what goes where?
Learning From Secondary Research
Evaluating Primary Research
Additional information
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2. 1: What is a literature review?

3. What is a literature review?
A description of your topic area, supported by references
A summary, discussion and critical analysis of academic work related to your research question
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4. What can you gain from literature reviews?
Ideas about which approaches are likely to work, and which are the best
If you find something similar, you can get
Ideas for how to implement your deliverable
Ideas for how to evaluate your deliverable
The best ways to do things
E.g. the fastest search algorithm
Justification for the approach that you are taking
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5. What can you gain from literature reviews?
Knowledge of what everyone else has done so that you don’t exactly replicate it
Without a literature review you risk reinventing the wheel
If you find something similar you may have to slightly change what you are doing to make it novel, or build upon what you found
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6. Organising the review In a separate chapter In several chapters
The normal approach, used in this module
In several chapters
If it is the main part of the thesis, or very important
Incorporated throughout the thesis as and when needed
In addition to either of the other two approaches
Perhaps incorporating individual facts from books
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May use books as a reference source: e.g. the definition of SSL.

7. Overall Structure [Very important]
In this module, we insist on a 3 part approach
Part 1: Overview of your chosen broad topic
The field that contains your research question
Part 2: Explanation of your sub-area
The area containing your research question
Part 3: In-depth analysis of research relevant to your research question
Critical evaluation of the primary research papers directly related to your research question
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8. Overall Structure Broad Topic Specialist sub-area Relevant Primary
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Relevant
Primary
research
Your research question
Add your research topics

9. Melding the Structure
The three parts of the review need to be melded together by explaining:
how part 2 fits inside part 1
how part 3 fits inside part 2
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10. 2. How do I decide what goes where?

11. Conceptual models to help understanding
Conceptual models can help you understand how the different research fits together
Helps you decide upon an appropriate structure
Choose a technique that you are comfortable with
Spider diagram of the different papers?
Research territory map?
List of keywords?
Write and repeatedly rewrite the review (rapid prototyping)
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12. The literature review process
The literature review process should help shape
what you do, and
how you do it
You should be prepared to change your mind or alter your approach in response to what you discover
Always write up the literature review soon after reading the papers – otherwise you may forget what you have read
The finished review should also shape how others perceive the quality/value of your work
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13. The literature review process
The first role of
a literature review
is often to learn
the topic.
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From Dawson
– The essence of
computing projects

14. 3: Learning From Secondary Research
Secondary research includes books, research summaries and literature reviews

15. Secondary Research
Books, literature reviews and web pages can give an overview of a research area
These can help you to learn what a research area is about before having to read primary research
Literature reviews should always start with reading secondary research, if possible
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16. Reading books Not enough time to read many books all the way through
Can still use as a reference source, just read relevant chapters/sections
Books tend to be less controversial and may also summarise the pros and cons of topics discussed (i.e. like a mini-literature review)
The introduction of a relevant book should summarize the research area
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17. 4: Evaluating Primary Research
Primary research is research papers containing new findings - not a literature review

18. Your evaluation 1 Read the abstract and conclusions first
Is it really relevant and useful to you?
Summarise how it is useful
Read the whole paper
Are the methods correct?
[BOUNDARIES] Is the scope of the study appropriate for your use?
Make sure that you understand the findings
[CONCLUSIONS] Read the abstract and conclusions again
To make sure that you have understood the results and their context
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19. BOUNDARIES, LIMITATIONS, CONCLUSIONS
Your evaluation 2
[LIMITATIONS] The discussion of limitations
Should be near the end of the paper
Read to make sure that the findings really apply to the situation in which you are using them
How significant is the work?
Does it make a major contribution?
How does it complement other papers?
BOUNDARIES, LIMITATIONS, CONCLUSIONS
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BOUNDARIES, LIMITATIONS, CONCLUSIONS are the key ideas here

20. Multiple Papers Need more than one paper about important points
Discuss points of agreement
Discuss points of difference
In computing there can be differences of opinion, but should not be big differences of fact
The papers may try different techniques to solve the same problem
Must use your own opinion on differences, but try to argue your case
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21. Selective reading What to do if you do not understand the paper
Too complex maths
Too much terminology
>>Consider reviewing the outcomes of the research and not the technical details [black box approach]
When to just read the abstract
If it is clear that the paper is not relevant.
Can still cite the paper in the literature review if it is near to being relevant and explain briefly why it is not relevant
This shows that you have done a better literature review
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Maths – have to skip, in refereed publications, should be able to take it on trust that the referees have checked it, unless there are other reasons to suspect it.
Get other papers, do web search for terminology.

22. Common mistakes 1
Your own opinions without backup, no matter how strongly you believe them (it does not count!)
E.g. Microsoft is good/rubbish
Discussing irrelevant literature
Short literature reviews
Have not demonstrated the literature review skill
Have not shown that you understand the context of your work
Not targeting the review at an appropriate audience
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23. Common mistakes 2
Not joining the literature together into a coherent whole
Using chronological order, unless necessary
Including poor reference sources without comment
Too small
Not targeting the review to the research question
Missing an important reference
Your work is seriously undermined if you write about something as though you are the first, but someone else has already published on the subject
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24. Swales’ perspective "not sufficiently theme-based"
"not structured according to the issues"
"insufficiently informed by the research hypotheses"
"boringly chronological"
"just describe each piece of research one by one without adequate linkage"
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Professor John Swales, linguistics expert on the structure of scientific communication.

25. 5: Additional information

26. Plagiarism Plagiarism is passing off somebody else’s work as your own
In a literature review you are discussing other people’s work so must clearly reference it
In this module you must NEVER copy an entire phrase or sentence even if it is in quotes and properly referenced
If you cannot describe something in your own words then you must not include it in your literature review.
If you paraphrase other people’s ideas you still need to reference them
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27. Referencing your work You MUST reference your work
This means giving the author name and publication date for all ideas and facts you have used (Harvard format)
List the sources at the end (Harvard format)
Failure to reference your work is Plagiarism and is an automatic fail.
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28. Harvard reference style
You must follow the university Harvard style
(OR Google Harvard site:wlv.ac.uk)
Smith (1999) says that C++ is faster than Java.
C++ is faster than Java (Smith 1999).
SMITH, T. (1999) Programming. Programming Journal, 21(5), pp
SMITH, R. (1999) Programming. London: Birkett Computing.
Do not use numbers in brackets [1] – this is not Harvard.
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29. References and Bibliography
Reference list
List of books, articles etc. that you have cited in your thesis
Bibliography
List of books, articles etc. that you have not cited but have used in some way
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30. Writing tips
Structure to present an argument, discussing similar papers together
Do not list the papers and write separate reviews
Explain the useful information that each paper gives and compare and contrast to other similar papers
Build an argument that will support the main aim of your thesis
What you are doing/How you are going to do it/Why you are doing it
Show how what you are doing is different to what has been done before
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31. Exercise
Write a literature review for your chosen sub-area of your chosen topic. It should be a minimum of 2 sides of A4 (typed) and properly referenced (Harvard)
It does not need to be targeted at your research question because you do not have one yet [But use the first 2 parts of the 3 part structure]
As a practical consideration, you will not have time to get inter-library loans, so can focus on immediately available sources (e.g. Web, ACM)
Cover 5-10 papers for this assignment and the 20 most relevant for the main module assignment
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32. Exercise Structure Broad Topic Specialist sub-area
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Use 3 headings: 1) Broad Topic, 2) Transition, 3) Sub-area

33. Main module assignment
Guidelines for literature review component
Like a funnel with a few broad papers to set the context for the area and then to narrow down to focus on a specific issue.
E.g. Intelligent Agents.
First level is what they are and what areas they are being used in (~5 papers)
Second layer is to pick one area and consider different types being used (~8-10)
Third layer would be highly focused on a specific issue within that area (e.g. primary research) (~5-7)
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