Tips and tricks from the experts

From Dr Tony Ward (Senior Lecturer in Marketing and Strategic Management, School of Marketing and Tourism)

• keep complete and accurate records of everything read (especially references)
• identify referencing requirements and learn the style as soon as you can
• summarise every paper you read
• think holistically (get the big picture)
• do not be afraid to think 'outside the square' - it is your review so try to find your own insights rather than just copy previous work
• break the review into thematic sections, treat each thematic area as a 'mini' review

The aim of a literature review is to find the relevant literature and read it. However people often have trouble starting there so I would suggest that you:

1. identify parent disciplines
2. go to leading journals and search for the recent issues for the latest information on the topic area. Use the references in those articles, and for "snowballing" - bouncing back and going through the history of the topic area.
3. From these articles it is possible to recognise names that reappear. They are often the leading people in the field.  This is necessary because when an examiner looks at a literature review they will expect to see certain names, leading names, and if they are not there you are not going to get the marks or approval.

  There are certain skills that are learnt from doing a literature review. These include:

• learning to identify a topic
• learning how to search literature and obtain legal copies of literature
• improving reading skills - in particular the skill of reading critically
• improving writing skills - academic writing is different in style to what you would use in business for example.
• learning to reference properly
• learning to place a topic within a discipline or framework
• learning to view a collection of papers holistically
• improving evaluative skills
• learning to identify research problems and gaps in literature.
• learning to focus a topic

Finally you obtain a detailed knowledge of the topic area and at the end of the day you should be regarded as the expert of that area in the world.

From Mr Aaron Coutts (Lecturer in Exercise Biochemistry, School of Health and Human Performance)

While writing the discussion part of the literature review, defining your key points, keep the web browser open with SportDiscus (for example). So when you are looking for key points when writing, do a search to get the abstracts (in that key area). This helps formulate ideas. A great way of keeping rhythm going in your writing.
 

From Dr Peter Reaburn (Triathlon Research Initiative, Head of School, School of Health and Human Performance)

Students will get a pile of articles and will regurgitate what article one said, what article two said. I can't emphasise enough, a well written literature review must evaluate all the literature, must speak generally, with general concepts they have been able to lift from all the articles, and they must be able to evaluate and critically analyse each one, then link and make a flow of ideas. Rather than separate little boxes, each box representing an article, make a flow of ideas, generalise and use specifics from one or two articles to back up a statement.

I think the student has gone to the supervisor generally because they see the supervisor as the expert, with some knowledge in the topic area. There will be journals the post graduate supervisor can identify and there will be names of researchers, either in journal articles or books. I think the supervisor has a major role in leading the student to the relevant literature.

From Dr Daniela Stehlik (Associate Professor of Sociology, School of Psychology & Sociology)

If you are reading something, take notes then and there. Don't think you will come back to it later, because you never do.

• take good notes
• keep your references
• write down the dates you took the notes
• keep a type of record eg. front page and abstract, or be like me a complete control freak and photocopy everything.

When writing the literature review.

For students who haven't done any writing before, there are a number of texts (on writing theses) available at the library or from your supervisor. I would encourage students to do some drafting. The drafting process is tiresome and many students feel that they can do it in one sitting and that is why they leave it to the last minute. It is important to do several drafts and I would, as part of my responsibility (as a supervisor), comment on these drafts, give feed back and we would discuss it and move on to the next version.

From Associate Professor Graham Pegg (Associate Dean (Research), Faculty of Arts, Health & Science)

I would recommend that a student develop a concept poster. ie. use a sheet of A3 paper and, for example use a herringbone structure, write keywords from a paper and the author. From there trace back the references. This helps to organise it all.  

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