Week - 4

Journals, Paper Structure and Literature

Review

Dr. Muhammad Wasim

 Learning Objectives

• Subscription vs Open Access Journals

• Structure of a Research Paper
• How to Read a Paper and Write Literature Review
• The Importance of Bibliography
• Searching for the Literature Online
• Using Latex for Writing and Bibliography Management
 Subscription vs Open Access Journals
Open Access Subscription
Accessibility Open access journals provide free, Low – only subscribers have access to the published
immediate, online access to articles / articles / research papers
manuscript
Cost Article Processing Charges (APC) paid by Cost is paid by individuals or organizations who want
authors to access the published work
Copyright Authors retrain copyright of their work Transfers the copyrights to the Journal
Prestige Varies across journals – usually have Long standing reputation, credibility, authority to
moderate prestige compared to published research
subscription journals
Peer Review Quick and may not be rigorous at times Usually slow and ensuring the quality and reliability of
published research
Structure of a
Research Paper
Reader of a Research Paper
• Literature establishes that your work is indeed novel.
• Reading gives you confidence of a particular field.
• A successful reader can identify the contributions and value of paper.
• Reading informs new work.
• Reading also involves reviewing others work which bring
responsibility
How to read a Research Paper
• Papers are not textbooks and should not be treated like one.
• You are not preparing for an exam so no need to understand every line
of the paper.
• Usually need to have deep understanding of one or two base papers but
need to skim a lot of research papers.
• Skim for relevancy (abstract of the paper, conclusion)
• Finding all the relevant work is hard; you need to find the most
significant work!
• Save papers in a folder and add them to your bibliography file.
• Also, do not allow reading into a form of procrastination!
Critical Reading
• Do not accept a claim just because its in a published paper.
Look for the following:
1. Is there a contribution, is it significant?
2. Is the contribution of interest?
3. Are the results correct?
4. Is the appropriate literature discussed?
5. Does the methodology actually answer the initial question?
6. Are the proposal and methodology critically analyzed?
7. Are the technical details correct? Can they be verified?

• If any components of a paper are questionable, this should be reflected in your

literature review!
• Literature review continuous along-side your research.
Developing a Literature Review
• Not simply a list of papers
• The papers should be group by topic
• The papers should be analyzed critically for:
• Contributions in the field
• Limitation of the work
• Open question
• Being a rough review as start as you start reading (Folder, Bibliography)
• Think about how the work could have been done better – at start you
may have problem at it but it gets better when you read more papers.
• Over your research, different paper might get more important. Your
literature review will evolve accordingly
• Final literature review in a focused manner will only be done when you
have completed your research.
The Citations in a Research Paper
(Bibliography)
• Supporting Evidence
• Acknowledgement of Previous Work
• Avoiding Plagiarism
• Establish Context and Relevance
• Enabling Further Research
Do’s and Don’ts of Bibliography
• Always cite recent work – state of the art (SOTA) is considered the work
published in last three years.
• Always prefer paper published in well reputed journals and conferences
• Always prefer highly cited work
• Always use citation management software instead of doing it by hand (e.g. Latex
or Mendeley/Endnotes)
• Do not cite any website, Wikipedia or news source. The citations should be
specifically from published work. It may be good for broad understanding.
• Do not cite any preprints.
• Do not add few citations. Few citations (short bibliography) means you have not
reviewed the literature thoroughly