Information

Skills Trainingby Aurelie Gandour

A literature review aims to

review the critical points of

current knowledge on a

particular topic.

Literature review

The goal is to bring the

reader up to date with

current literature on a topic

and to form the basis for

future research that may

be needed in the area.

It entails:

• Finding a relevant topic

• Doing a literature search

• Writing up the actual review while

citing accurately the documents

found during the literature search

• In your findings, concluding on

the research possibilities on the

subject.

How to do the WORST literature search?

• Limiting oneself to particular timespan

• Problems with long titles

• Getting spelling wrong

• Not looking up other references in an important paper

• Not looking up the original ideas

• Not quoting directly from the source

• Not having the right year

• Only Wikipedia

• Quoting other people’s referencing, not finding the source

• Looking in only one place

• Too narrow a search

Find Search

Words

Sources

• Humans: your tutor, your personal librarian, your

colleagues, other students…

• Your reading list: check the references of the papers

in your reading list.

• The library's catalogue: to find books, e-books, dvds,

theses, pamphlets...

• Bibliographic databases

• Websites: be careful and check if they’re reliable!

• Blogs, tweets, etc.

What is a bibliographic database?

• A list of sources of information like:

• Journals ArticlesBooks...

• These information sources are shown as records.

• Each record contains everything you need to know about the information source (author, title, publication name, date, indexing subject terms...).

• Sometimes you only have the record. Sometimes you can directly access the article in Full Text.

PsycINFO

What to do if we don't have access

to the full-text?

• For articles, check in the One-Stop-Shop for journals if there isn't another way to access this journal (online or in print);

• Look for it on Google to check if the author hasn't put a pdf of it somewhere;

• Send an e-mail to the author to ask if s/he can provide you with a copy;

• Ask for an inter-library loan through the library's catalogue (cost: £6);

• Go to the British Library, you should be able to consult it there (photocopies: £0.25 a page).

S

A

Using Booleans

Author A and Subject S

Author A or Subject S

Author A but Subject S

AA

S

S

Found an interesting paper?First, save the reference by writing it down in Harvard Style and keep a copy of

the full-text on your computer if possible.

Then, using the

snowball technique,

try and find other good

papers related to this one.

This is

a good

paper

Other papers by the

SAME AUTHOR

Other papers in the

SAME JOURNAL

Other documents

that CITE this paper

References CITED

BY this paper

Doing a thorough literature search using

bibliographic databases

Pick a database

Pick a field

Input 1 or 2 keywords

Limit your search

Try this all again with

another database

Try again all of your

keywords in another

field

Try other keywords

Try limiting your search

another way

The Iterative Process of

the literature search

Break!We're starting again in 5 minutes...

CITING in-text

If the author’s name would not

naturally be included in the

sentence, add the author’s name

and year of publication in brackets.

If the author’s name occurs

naturally in the sentence, the year

of publication only should follow in

brackets.

(Author, YEAR) (YEAR)

Recent research in social work

(Smith, 2003) has shown that...

Smith and Jones (2003) found

that...

Page numbers

To this basic citation, you can add...

Other authors' names

• In a recent study Ndlov

(1996, p. 26) argued

that…

• A recent study (Ndlov,

1996, pp. 26-30) found

that…

You can add directly the names of a total of three authors:

• In a recent study (Smith and Jones, 2003)…

• In a recent study (Smith, Jones and Hill, 2003)…

For more than three authors, you have to write "et al.":

• In a recent study (Smith et al., 2003)…

YEAR troubleshooting

If you don't know the year of publication, you can use the

mention no date instead.

The earliest report (Harvey, no date, p. 231) showed that…

Harvey, P. (no date) Survey report. London: Sage.

If you need to cite two (or more) publications by an author published in the same year, distinguish them by allocating lower case letters in alphabetical order after the publication date.

Miller, S. (2006a) The Flemish masters. London: Phaidon Press

Miller, S. (2006b) Rubens and his art. London: Killington Press

In text: In his study of the work of Rubens, Miller (2006a, p. 18) emphasised the

painter’s mastery of drama in his larger compositions. However, his final

analysis (Miller, 2006b, pp. 143-152) argued that…

Reference List:

Citing Exercise

• In her first book, Rowling (1997) built the premises of her well-known series

of children's books.

• ... non-wizard people are called "muggles" (Rowling, 1997).

• One of them treats of imaginary animals (Rowling, 2001a). Another treats of

the history of the famous wizard sport, Quidditch (Rowling, 2001b).

• The last chapter of the fourth book is called "The Beginning" (Rowling,

2000, pp. 621-636).

• For example, Rowling (2000, p.621) depicts that...

• ... a collection of unofficial fan predictions (Gordon et al., 2006) before the

publication of Book 7.

Referencing a book

Schetina, E. (2002) Internet site security. Boston: Addison-Wesley.

Name, I. (YEAR) Title of the book. Town: Publisher.

You have to write all of the authors' names

You can add a book

series and number

If this not a first edition,

add the edition number

Smith, J., Jones, W.,

March, M. and Chapman,

B. (2004) Harvard

citations in easy stages.

London: Academic Press.

McIlroy, D. (2003)

Studying at university:

how to be a

successful student.

London: Sage (Sage

Essential Study

Skills, 23).

Christopher, M. (1998)

Logistics and supply chain

management. 2nd edn.

London: Prentice Hall.

AUTHOR troubleshooting

If the book has an editor, use her name + (ed.) or (eds) for plural instead

of the author.

Andresen, L. (ed.) (1994) Strategies for assessing students. Birmingham: SCED.

If your document doesn't have an author, use the title instead.

The silence of the lambs (2001) Directed by Jonathan Demme [DVD]. London:

MGM Home Entertainment.

> The movie (The silence of the lambs, 2001) depicted...

If a webpage doesn't have an author nor a title, use its URL instead.

http://www.newmedia.com/compression.html (2009) (Accessed: 16 July 2010).

> Compression may be required (http://www.newmedia.com/compression.html,

2009).

Referencing a Book Chapter

Jones, D. (2004) ‘Understanding Harvard referencing’, in Brown, P.

(ed.) Writing references in extremely easy stages. London: Academic

Press, pp. 21-25.

Name, I. (YEAR) ‘Title of the chapter’, in NameEditor,

I. (ed.) Title of the book. Town: Publisher, pp. xx-xx.

Pears, R. and Shields, G. (2010) 'How should I set out citations and

quotqtions in my text?', in Cite them right: the essential referencing guide. 8th

edn. Houndmills: Palgrave MacMillan, pp. 4-8.

Referencing an article

Haddock, M. (1994) ‘Are you thinking of writing a bibliography?’,

College and Research Libraries News, 55(8), pp. 471-474.

Name, I. (YEAR) ‘Title of the paper’, Name of the

Journal, Volume(Issue), pp. xx-xx.

Referencing electronic resources

Online books and articles

At the end of the reference add: ... [Online] Available at: <URL> (Accessed: <date>).

or ... [Online] doi: <doi> (Accessed: <date>).

Web pages Author (YEAR) Title of the page. Available at: <URL> (Accessed: date).

NHS Direct (2010) Colds and flu. Available at: https://www.nhsdirect.nhs.uk/en/

CheckSymptoms/SATs/coldandflu (Accessed: 10 August 2010).

Rose, M.R. (2007) ‘Adaptation’ in Levin, S.A. (ed.) Encyclopedia of biodiversity, pp. 17-23

[Online] Available at: http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/referenceworks/9780122268656

(Accessed: 5 March 2010).

Reid, K. (2011) ‘Changes to educational policy and management in Wales: facing the “cuts”

and new strategic challenges’, Educational Review, 63(4), pp. 439-453. [Online] doi: 10.1080/

00131991.2011.603825 (Accessed: 7 January 2012).

Referencing Jigsaw... an exercise

Writing references, exercise

• Lewis, C. S. (1950) The lion, the witch and the wardrobe. London: Geoffrey Bles.

• Tolkien, J. R. R. (1937) 'An unexpected party' in The hobbit. Crows Nest: George Allen & Unwin.

• Louwerse, M. M. and Benesh, N. (2012) 'Representing spatailstructure through maps and language: Lord of the Rings encodes the spatial structure of Middle Earth', Cognitive Science, 36(8), pp. 1556-1569.

• Gaiman, N. (2014) Why I am smiling in this picture. [online] Available at: http://journal.neilgaiman.com/2014/05/why-i-am-smiling-in-this-picture.html (Accessed on 5 August 2014).

Good luck with your

literature search!

agandour@tavi-port.nhs.uk @iSkillsTavi http://tavi-iskills.blogspot.co.uk