Lecture+2 Literature+Review+and+Resources r1

SENS 601
Research Methods and Ethics

Dr. Yusuf Bicer
Division of Sustainable Development
College of Science and Engineering
Hamad Bin Khalifa University
Literature Review and Resources

Why literature review?
Murphy’s Law
• To study a subject best, understand it thoroughly before you start
• Know the literature well because it informs every aspect of the research process:
introduction, lit review, methods, results, and conclusions
• “Six hours in the library may save six months in the laboratory” Wilson Bright
• Murphy’s Law “Whatever can go wrong will go wrong”
2 SENS 601 - Research Methods and Ethics | Literature Review and Resources | Dr. Yusuf Bicer
Literature review
• The goal is to inform about the extant knowledge about your variables that
informs your research
• Non-research reasons for undertaking a literature review:

ØAs an assignment for an academic course
ØTo update current personal knowledge and practice on a topic
ØTo evaluate current practices
ØTo develop and update guidelines for practice
ØTo develop work-related policies
Literature review process
Selecting a review topic
Searching the literature
Gathering, reading and analyzing the

literature
Writing the review
References
Defining the types of sources for a review
Source Definition
Primary source Usually a report by the original researchers of a
study
Secondary source Description or summary by somebody other
than the original researcher, e.g. a review article
Conceptual/theoretical Papers concerned with description or analysis of
theories or concepts associated with the topic
Anecdotal/opinion/clinical Views or opinions about the subject that are not
research, review or theoretical in nature. Clinical
may be case studies or reports from clinical
settings
Defining the types of sources for a review
Summary of information required in review
Primary sources Secondary sources– reviews Non-research literature
Title: Title: Title:
Author and year: Author and year: Author and year:
Journal (full reference): Journal (full reference): Journal/Website (full reference):
Purpose of study: Review questions/purpose: Purpose of paper:
Type of study: Key definitions: Credibility:
Setting: Review boundaries: Quality:
Data collection method: Appraisal criteria: Content:
Major findings: Synthesis of studies: Coherence:
Recommendations: Summary/conclusions: Recommendations:
Key thoughts/comments Key thoughts/comments Key thoughts/comments
e.g. strengths/weakness: e.g. strengths/weakness: e.g. strengths/weakness:
Framing the review
Approach Definition Advantages/disadvantages
Dividing the literature into themes or Distinct themes from the literature are Most popular approach. Allows
categories discussed integration of theoretical and empirical
(research) literature. Care must be taken
in ensuring that the themes are clearly
related to the literature
Presenting the literature Literature divided into time periods Useful when examining the emergence
chronologically of a topic over a period of time
Exploring the theoretical and Discussion of theoretical literature Useful when the body of literature is
methodological literature followed by exploration of largely theoretical with little or no
methodological literature that would empirical (research) literature. Can be
give some indication of why a particular used to identify the need for qualitative
research design might be appropriate studies
for investigating the topic
Examining theoretical literature and Where the topic has both theoretical May tend to be a description rather
empirical literature in two sections and empirical literature and each is than a critical review
discussed separately
Primary vs. Secondary Sources
• Secondary sources:
• Popular summaries of scholarly research
• Addressed to a general audience
• A great place to start for ideas
• Tip: DON’T only use secondary sources!
Resources
• Qatar National Library (QNL)
www.qnl.qa
• Consolidated databases
• eBooks (McGraw Hill, Oxford, etc)
• Journals (Wiley, etc.)
• Theses and dissertations (ProQuest)
• Open access journals www.doaj.org

• Interlibrary loan
A list of online research engines
• Google Scholar https://scholar.google.com
• Sciencedirect https://www.sciencedirect.com/
• Scopus https://www.scopus.com/
• Web of Science https://www.webofknowledge.com
• Microsoft Academic https://academic.microsoft.com/home
• Educational Resources Information Center https://eric.ed.gov
• ResearchGate https://www.researchgate.net/
• Bielefeld Academic Search Engine https://base-search.net
• Connecting Repositories https://core.ac.uk
• Semantic Scholar https://www.semanticscholar.org
Search Engines
• Just cover articles published • Peer-reviewed sources, patents, • Preprint articles, journal articles,
under Elsevier. conference proceedings, book books, patents, conference
• The articles from Springer, series, articles in press. proceedings, thesis, presentations,
Wiley, Taylor & Francis etc., will web-pages, non-peer-reviewed
not be available. sources.
Search Engines
Qatar National Library (QNL)
QNL Document Delivery Service
• Use the following to get articles
• http://www.qnl.qa/find-answers/dds
• or may be email Katia Medawar

• kmedawar@qf.org.qa
• 4454 7260
Search Strategies
• Browsing:
• “Browsing means manually examining a document (e.g., a printed
bibliography or an online directory) for useful information or references to
useful information”
• Examples: Reviewing a table of contents of a book/journal
Example Browsing
Search Strategies
• Keyword searches:
• “Keyword searches use search engines on the World Wide Web or on
specialized databases”
• Tip: Start broad, with a topic, then narrow your search by using more
specific words in your search phrases
• Examples: searching at http://www.sciencedirect.com

• “Search”
• or “Advanced Search”
Search Strategies
• Identify the keywords of your topic and use those as your search words.
• Each book and article has tags assigned to it, words or shorts phrases that make each
book or article searchable
• You want your search words to match those tags.
You can focus your search hits to:
• peer-reviewed or scholarly articles
• content type, such as journal articles, books, newspapers, or magazines discipline,
sources relevant to specific disciplines
• subject terms, to help you focus your topic and sources to specific subject areas of
interest
• publication date, so you get the most recent research
• language, such as just English articles
Search Strategies
• Boolean:
• A tool for focusing searches
• Three operators: AND, OR, NOT

• AND: Search will look for anything with all the terms
• OR: Search will look for anything with any of the terms
• NOT: Search will omit anything with these terms
• Use parenthesis ( ) to group words together

• Use quotation “ ” for exact phrase
• Use wildcards e.g. Nano*
Example of search strategies
• General search will show you numerous results and many results may not be related to the topic.
• Use of AND operator resulted in less search results but more specific to topic.
• Use of AND operator and more specific key words will lead to the papers you are looking for.
I can’t find anything on my topic. What do I do?
• The search words you're using to describe your topic may not match the tags that
have been assigned to books and articles on that topic
• Look through the Subject terms in the Refine Your Search sidebar and check the
boxes beside the topic areas that interest you
• When you find an article that looks interesting, look at its assigned tags Add any
relevant tags to your search
• This will also help you develop your research questions and search for articles about
your specific research questions
• There may not be research tying your main ideas together yet
• Try searching for your main ideas separately and linking their findings together If
you've found one article that's relevant for your topic, look through the sources in its
• References list to see if any of them are also relevant to your research
Search Strategies
• “Filtering”: Successful searching is all about:
• Finding some potentially helpful material
• Evaluating the relevance of the material
• Throwing out the irrelevant material you find
• Working with the remaining relevant material
• Checking the material you are working with for “hints” and “leads” about other possibly
valuable sources
Qatar National Library (QNL)
Indexed Journals & Conference Proceedings
Journal selection criteria

Category Criteria
Convincing editorial policy
Type of peer review
Journal Policy
Diversity in geographical distribution of editors
Diversity in geographical distribution of authors
Academic contribution to the field
Clarity of abstracts
Content
Quality of and conformity to the stated aims and scope of the journal
Readability of articles
Citedness of journal articles in Scopus
Journal Standing
Editor standing
Publishing Regularity No delays or interruptions in the publication schedule
Full journal content available online
Online Availability English language journal home page available
Quality of journal home page
CiteScore vs. Impact Factor
Older Version of CiteScore
CiteScore 2020 counts the citations

received in 2017-2020 to articles, reviews,
conference papers, book chapters and data The impact factor or journal impact factor of an
papers published in 2017-2020, and divides academic journal is a scientometric index calculated by
this by the number of publications Clarivate that reflects the yearly mean number of
published in 2017-2020 citations of articles published in the last two years in a
given journal, as indexed by Clarivate's Web of Science
Journal Details
Predatory journals
• Predatory journals and publishers are entities that prioritize self-interest at the expense of
scholarship and are characterized by false or misleading information, deviation from best
editorial and publication practices, a lack of transparency, and/or the use of aggressive
and indiscriminate solicitation practices.
KD, Grudniewicz A. Moher D. Cobey. "Bryson GL Cukier S Allen K Ardern C Balcom L Barros T Berger M Ciro JB Cugusi L Donaldson MR Egger M Graham ID Hodgkinson M Khan KM Mabizela M Manca A Lalu MM Predatory
journals: No definition, no defence." Nature 576.7786 (2019): 210.
Tasks
Using the “ScienceDirect” website, find 1 journal paper related to “Sustainable Cooling”.
What is the title of the paper?
Who published the paper and when?
Who are the authors? Which university?
Which journal is it in?
What is the impact factor and citescore of the journal?
When was the most recent paper was published in this topic?
Is there any review papers on this topic? When was it published?
Literature review
• Critical review (analysis) of the literature
• Not all research is created equal

• Determine which is better as evidence
• Which have more accurate effect sizes
• Determine why studies are contradictory

• Were they different in research designs
• Were different measurements or analyses used
• Try to determine why gaps & deficiencies exist

Literature review
• Synthesize literature, identify gaps/deficiencies
• Organize thematically using your variables, and connections among variables

• There may be sections that can be organized differently (e.g., chronologically)
• Don’t do “he wrote this” and “she wrote that” and “they wrote this and that”
Good
Example:
Literature review
• If there are two authors of a paper, then in literature you must cite them by
their surnames.
• For example, “Bicer and Dincer”
• If there are more than two authors of a paper, then in literature you must cite
the surname of first author and after that write et al.
• For example, Bicer et al.

Literature review
• You want to present the current thinking in the field, but to
understand current thinking, we often need to understand original
thinking. So, you may search the origin of the idea, or initial work
done on that topic.
• Why do we want to cite older resources?

• Over time, interpretations of older work change
• Don’t rely on the interpretations of others, sometimes they read it
differently than you
• Search for the origin of the idea.
Searching Order
Search the HIGHEST-RANKING
JOURNALS to find the trends.
Search journal DATABASES such
Is the topic novel and popular? as “ScienceDirect” and filter last Search PATENTS in the selected
What problems do researchers 2-3 years to find the recent area.
mostly focus on? developments?
• Nature, Science
Search GOOGLE to observe the

Search GOOGLE SCHOLAR for
basics, industries, commercial
diverse publications
products, general info etc.
Coding and Classifying
Classification
• Code and classify the resources you read for later
use,
based on:
• Some things will be useful in introduction • Methodology
• Some things will be useful in methods • Topic
• Some things will be useful in conclusions • Year Versions
• Relevance V1
• Include both theoretical and experimental • Etc.. V2
literature
Revisions
R1
• All claims of knowledge need citations R2
Thank You
SENS 601
Research Methods and Ethics
Dr. Yusuf Bicer

Division of Sustainable Development
College of Science and Engineering
Hamad bin Khalifa University

Lecture+2 Literature+Review+and+Resources r1

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SENS 601

Research Methods and Ethics

Literature Review and Resources

• To study a subject best, understand it thoroughly before you start

• Murphy’s Law “Whatever can go wrong will go wrong”

• Non-research reasons for undertaking a literature review:

Searching the literature

Gathering, reading and analyzing the

Writing the review

• Popular summaries of scholarly research

• Addressed to a general audience

• A great place to start for ideas

• Tip: DON’T only use secondary sources!

• Open access journals www.doaj.org

• or may be email Katia Medawar

• Examples: Reviewing a table of contents of a book/journal

• Examples: searching at http://www.sciencedirect.com

• Three operators: AND, OR, NOT

• Use parenthesis ( ) to group words together

• Finding some potentially helpful material

• Evaluating the relevance of the material

• Throwing out the irrelevant material you find

• Working with the remaining relevant material

Journal selection criteria

CiteScore 2020 counts the citations

• Not all research is created equal

• Determine why studies are contradictory

• Try to determine why gaps & deficiencies exist

• Organize thematically using your variables, and connections among variables

• For example, “Bicer and Dincer”

• For example, Bicer et al.

• Why do we want to cite older resources?

Search GOOGLE to observe the

Dr. Yusuf Bicer

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