RESEARCH METHODOLOGY

Literature Review
Part 1

1
What is literature review?

2
 What is literature review?

• A summary of all papers in the area?

• A summary of papers you’ve read?
• A document to show how bad other research is?
• An argument for your research?
• Something you write after you’ve done your
research?

3
 What is literature review?

You make the case for your

research

4
 What is literature review

“… a systematic…method for identifying, evaluating and

interpreting the …work produced by researchers,
scholars and practitioners.”

FINK, A., 1998. Conducting literature research reviews: from paper to the internet.
Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage
5
How many papers should one expect to read as
background reading for a thesis?

When should one be reading these ?

Do you need to understand them all in detail ?

6
 Purpose of Literature Review

• To identify research topic

• To get an overview of the selected topic
• To identify research gaps
• To propose hypothesis
• To develop research plan
• To perform evaluation

7
 Process of Literature Review

• Develop a search strategy

• Conduct the search
• Obtain full text resources
• Read and prepare bibliographic information and notes
• Evaluate the research reports
• Synthesize the studies
• Use the literature review
8
//http: How_to_write_a_literature_review_Worldvice Editing services 9
 The literature review
• Many researchers spend more than half of their time reading.– You can
learn a lot more quickly from other people's work than from doing your
own.
• A literature review
• Helps you learn everything about your subject
• Ensures that you are not “reinventing the wheel”
• Helps you learn about the people in the field
• Important for networking
• Convey the depth and breadth of research that has been accomplished on a
subject
• Describe methodologies used 10

• Describe existing data sets

• ….
 Goals
• To demonstrate to readers and examiners that we are familiar
with the field
• To provide an overview of current knowledge in a particular
area of application
• To review other studies critically
• To highlight a gap in areas of application
• To provide a context for our current study and to locate it
within a specific field
• How the proposed research contributes something new to the overall
Bank of Knowledge or advances the research field’s knowledge. 11
 How literature review can help
us formulate research question?
From literature review, we can:

12
 Before
entering
the maze

The literature Be sure of

what you are
looking for

13
 Literature search

Literature search is the process of querying the scholarly

literature databases in order to gather research manuscripts
related to the phenomenon under investigation.

14
 Sources of literature
• Books
• Journal Articles
• Conference Papers Primary
Vs.
• Theses
Secondary
• Abstracts
• Electronic Databases
• Government publications
• Interviews and other unpublished
research
15
 Sources of literature

Must be familiar with reputed

journals and conferences in your
area

16
 Small Homework

Find atleast 3 reputed conferences

and 3 reputed journals in the area
you prefer to work in

17
An extract from Journal article
18
An extract from a conference paper 19
 LITERATURE SEARCH

You just had your first meeting with your

supervisor and you have been asked to
read some material on your problem

20
 Where to look for….
• Google Scholar
• http://www.scholar.google.com
• ACM Digital Library
• http://www.acm.org/dl
• IEEE Digital Library
• http://www.computer.org/publications/dlib/
• NEC CiteSeer
• http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu
• Arxiv
• https://arxiv.org/
• Online Libararies
21
 Google scholar

• Google Scholar provides a simple way to search for

scholarly literature.

• Search across many disciplines and sources: peer-

reviewed papers, theses, books, abstracts and
articles, from academic publishers, professional
societies, preprint repositories, universities and
other scholarly organizations.
22
23
24
25
26
 Literature search

• Search Strategies
• Keyword searching

• Backward searching

• Forward searching

27
 Keyword search
• Querying of scholarly databases by the use of a specific word or
phrase (i.e. “keyword”) when attempting to find relevant literature

• Using an effective keyword search will produce some initial insight

• Keyword search should be just the initial, not the main step for a
literature search

• Keyword search does not yield all that is available from the literature
28
 Backward search

• Backward literature search

• Backward references search
• Backward authors search
• Previously used keywords.

29
 Backward search

• Backward References Search

• Reviewing the references of the articles yielded from the
keyword search
• Example
• You enter a keyword and download the first three articles
• Download and review the references listed in each of these
articles
• A second level backward references search can also be
done by pulling the ‘references of the references’.
30
31
 Backward search
• Backward Authors Search
• Reviewing what the authors have published prior to the
article.
• May search through author name
• Visit authors home page etc.

32
 Backward search
• Backward Authors Search

33
 Backward search
• Previously used keywords
• Reviewing the keywords noted in the articles yielded
from the keyword search

34
 Forward search

• Can be divided into two specific sub-steps:

• Forward references search
• Forward authors search

• Forward references search

• Reviewing additional articles that have cited the article
• Forward authors search
• Reviewing what the authors have published following the article
35
Forward search

36
 Make a Mind Map

Paper 1 Paper 1

Paper 2 Paper 2

Paper 3 Research Paper Paper 3

Paper 4 Paper 4

Paper 5 Paper 5
Backward Forward
37
 Assessing Literature

• Consider whether your sources are current

• Some disciplines require that you use information that is as
current as possible.
• For example Treatments for medical problems are constantly
changing according to the latest studies. Information even two years
old could be obsolete.
• Humanities, history, or social sciences, a survey of the
history of the literature may be is needed
• How perspectives have changed through the years or within a 38

certain time period.

 Assessing Literature
• Make a habit of following researchers in your field on the
internet using Social networking sites for researchers

39
 Assessing Literature
• Make a habit of following publications, conferences and
journals

40
 Assessing Literature
• Make a habit of following publications, conferences and
journals

41
 Assessing Literature
(Ratings and Rankings Can help)
• Assess the quality of the information source:
• Refereed journal article?
• Conference proceedings?
• Corporate report?
• Assess the standing of the author
• Academic?
• Journalist?
• Government employee?
• Is the work in their major field of research?
• https://libguides.oulu.fi/evaluatingpublications
42
The material in these slides is based on the following resources.

References
• Research method in Computer Science, Jiaheng Lu, Renmin University of
China
• Literature Search in Computer Science, Michiel van de Panne
• Literature Reviews, University of North Carolina.
• A Systems Approach to Conduct an Effective Literature Review in Support of
Information Systems Research, Yair Levy and Timothy J. Ellis. Information
Science Journal, Vol 9, 2006
• How to do a literature review: An overview, Frederic Murray.
• https://www.slideshare.net/DannyKingsley/academic-social-network-sites-a-r
ough-guide-for-researchers
• Lecture Notes of Dr. Momina Moetesum, Department of Computer Sciences,
Bahria University, Islamabad. 43