Title: Background reading Literature review References
1Background readingLiterature reviewReferences
bibliography
2Overview
- Why review the literature?
- How do your background reading
- Writing your literature review
- Bibliographic references and citation
3Why review the literature?
- Find out more about your topic
- Show how your work fits into the context of what
other people have done - Absolute originality not expected (for MSc) but
some degree of novelty required - Show that you understand how your work fits into
the context of what other people have done - Clarify which parts of your work are original,
and which are based on other peoples work
4What other people have done
- General background to the topic
- Remember thesisantithesissynthesis?
- Your review may include some discussion of
conflicting opinions - Critical analysis is important say where you
stand on any debatable issues - You may (also) want to chart the development of
the topic historical perspective
5How to do your background reading
- Identify useful sources
- Your supervisor should help
- But see next slide
- But so should your reading
- Follow up references in what you are reading
- But not slavishly be selective
- Often-cited sources are a must-read, and should
be cited - You should try to recognise names that
reappear. They are often the leading people in
the field. ... 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.
(Tony Ward, CQU webpage) - At some point you will find that what youre
reading is covering the same ground
6Identifying useful sources
- Supervisor may make suggestions
- Though possibly not for general introductions
suitable for your background - May be able to vet what you have found
- Nowadays everyone starts with a web search
- But web-based sources can be very variable
- Learn how to recognize reliable sources
- Preferably, it will be an online version of a
published paper - (How would you know?)
- Otherwise check the URL, which may indicate its
source (a university or an official organization - You may find an existing review of your topic
- Use this as a guide, but not necessarily as a
model - And only if it passes the reliability test
7Identifying useful sources
- Be realistic about how much you can read
- Look at the date
- How relevant is that old stuff?
- Do a lot of other articles refer to it?
- Why does everyone refer to it?
- Because it expresses the fundamental theory
behind this approach - Because it has historical significance it got
everyone thinking in a new way, but its now
pretty much outdated - Beware of self-references
- You may just get the same thing over again
8Identifying useful sources
- Always prefer refereed, published articles
- Journal articles rather than books
- Books OK for general background
- Prefer textbooks or introductory books
- Book-length theses (monographs) try to find a
shorter article with the same author/title - Avoid web pages which are not signed (author/s
names) and dated
9Identifying the source of a web page
- PDF or RTF more likely to be a genuine article
- Look on the web page itself for its source
- Otherwise, search the web using
- The title of the page
- The author names
- Go to the authors home page and search under
their Publications list - In any case you will need this info for your
bibliography
10How to read
- For each source, ask yourself
- Has the author formulated a problem/issue?
- Is it clearly defined?
- Is its significance clearly established?
- What is the author's research orientation?
- What is the author's a priori theoretical
framework? - What is the relationship between the theoretical
and research perspectives? - Has the author evaluated the literature relevant
to the problem/issue? - Does the author include literature taking
positions she or he does not agree with? - ... cont.
11How to read
- In a research study, how good are the basic
components of the study design? - How accurate and valid are the measurements?
- Is the analysis of the data accurate and relevant
to the research question? - Are the conclusions validly based upon the data
and analysis? - In material written for a popular readership,
- Does the author use appeals to emotion, one-sided
examples, or rhetorically-charged language and
tone? - Is there an objective basis to the reasoning, or
is the author merely "proving" what he or she
already believes? - How does the author structure the argument?
- Can you "deconstruct" the flow of the argument to
see whether or where it breaks down logically
(e.g., in establishing cause-effect
relationships)? - How does the article contribute to our
understanding of the problem under study, and in
what ways is it useful in practice? - What are the strengths and limitations?
- How does the article relate to the your specific
topic?
12Writing your literature review
- The review should ...
- be organized around and related directly to your
topic - synthesize results into a summary of what is and
is not known - identify areas of controversy in the literature
- formulate questions that need further research
13Your review should ...
- be more than a simple summary of what you have
read - be organized around themes
- offer both summary and synthesis
A summary is a recap of the important
information of the source, but a synthesis is a
re-organization, or a reshuffling, of that
information. It might give a new interpretation
of old material or combine new with old
interpretations. Or it might trace the
intellectual progression of the field, including
major debates. And depending on the situation,
the literature review may evaluate the sources
and take a stand on the most pertinent or
relevant.(UNC web page, n.d. emphases added)
14How to organize your review
- Chronological?
- Go through your sources in the order they were
published - Usually makes it difficult to show connectivity,
and to bring out antithesis and synthesis - Thematic
- Better to have a structure which considers
different themes, and juxtaposes the different
viewpoints - There may still be a chronological element to
this of course
15Choosing what to cite
- In your review (and in general), citations
indicate the source of some fact/idea - To support its veracity
- Especially if it is quantitative
- Or surprising/controversial
- To identify it with some personality/school of
thought - To show that you are in touch with the literature
- To allow the reader to check thats what was said
(and the context) - So giving an accurate reference is important
- To show that you are not claiming it to be your
original idea
16Bibliographic references and citation Quotation
vs citation
- Use direct quotes sparingly. If its gt4 lines you
probably should be summarizing what they said - If its lt4 words, is it necessary to quote?
- Yes if its a technical term or an unusual turn
of phrase, and you want to give its original
source - No if its really the only way to say something
ordinary - Quoting (and citing sources) is not (necessarily)
a defence against a charge of plagiarism - Plagiarism is use of sources without citation,
i.e. passing it off as your own work - But if you dont contribute anything original,
this is almost as bad as plagiraism
Type, dont swipe
17Conventions in quoting
- Quote marks surround the entire quotation.
- But Sometimes you have to split the quotation
up. - Use square brackets to indicate
- Extra words
- Summarized words
- Explanation or correction
- Use dots to indicate omitted words
18Conventions in quoting
- In the example about Moby Dick above, the
writers refer to several other sources when
making their point. - A literature review in this sense is just
like any other academic research paper. Your
interpretation of the available sources must
show evidence ... that what you are saying is
valid.
- In the example above, the writers refer to
several other sources when making their point. - A literature review in this sense is just
like any other academic research piper. Your
interpretation of the available sources must be
backed up with evidence to show that what you are
saying is valid.
19Conventions in quoting
- sic
- Yes thats really what they said (e.g. a
misspelling or bad grammar that you dont want to
correct, or some other error) - emphasis (or emphases) added or original (at end)
- Give the source in the conventional manner (see
next slide(s)) and ... - ALWAYS give the page number
20Conventions in citing
- There are a number of citation conventions which
you will come across - Footnotes
- Numbered references in text, bibliography in
citation order Vancouver style - Numbered references in text, bibliography in
alphabetical order - Name (date) style Harvard style
- This is the system preferred in the School of
Informatics - Full details in Appendix 5 of Masters
Dissertation Project handbook
21Footnotes and numbered references
- Less disruptive to the text flow
- But involve more housekeeping
- Refs must be renumbered if you add a new one
- But bibliographic software can do this for you
- Note use of ibid. and idem. the same
- And op. cit. previously cited work
22Citing in the text
- Refer to the work by its authors family name and
the date of publication - In the normal text flow
- Smith (1997) claims ...
- In parentheses
- It has been claimed (Smith, 1997) that ...
- Multiple authors
- Smith and Jones (2001) (Smith and Jones, 2001)
- Smith et al. (1999) (Smith et al., 1999)
- Note italics and punctuation
23Citing in the text
- Multiple citations
- (Smith, 1997 Jones ,1999)
- Usually given in chronological (because more
logical) or alphabetical (because easier to look
up) order - Multiple citations by the same author (or two
authors with same surname) - (Smith, 1997, 1998)
- If the same year, use a,b,c,...
- (Smith, 1997a,b) or (Smith, 1997a, 1997b)
- Note possibility of Smith et al. (1997a,b) even
though et al. refers to different co-authors! - Beware of wrongly copying this notation from a
secondary source - When quoting (as opposed to citing), give the
page number - Smith (1997, p.48) or Smith (199748)
24Bibliography
- Remember the golden rule give as much
information as is necessary for the reader to
find the source - ALL the authors names (as they appear on the
publication) - The date
- The full name of the journal or conference, as it
appears on the publication - Place of publication, or where the conference
took place - Volume number and page numbers (of the whole
article, not just the page you quote) - List ONLY the sources you have cited or quoted in
the text
25Bibliography
- Even with Harvard system, exact layout differs
from publication to publication - Important thing is CONSISTENCY
- Bibliographic software should help
- List references in alphabetical order of first
authors family name - In case of multiple authors, give authors in the
order they appear in the source sort references
in order of second authors name - In case of multiple references by the same
author, arrange in chronological order
26Bibliography
- Books
- Give full title in italics, place and name of
publisher, e.g. - Dennis, A., Wixom, B.H. and Teagarden, D. (2002)
Systems Analysis and Design An Object-Oriented
Approach with UML, New York Wiley. - BE CONSISTENT in capitalization and punctuation
- Give first-named place of publication
- How do you find out the publication details?
- If edited collection, add (ed.) or (eds)
after author names - Give edition number if not 1st
27Bibliography
- Journal articles
- Give full title of article (optionally in
quotes), full name of journal in italics, volume
and page numbers. - No need to give place and name of publisher
- Some bibliographies use a set of standard
abbreviations in journal names - BE CONSISTENT in capitalization and punctuation
- van Quekelberghe, P.R., Jakob, T., Hoffmann, D.,
Wetter, T. and Finkeissen, E. (2005) Minimalist
knowledge representation of primary care diseases
in the medrapid.info knowledge base, Informatics
in Primary Care 13, pp. 239-48. - If article is also available on the web, add
available at and give the URL and last date of
access
28Bibliography
- Article in edited collection
- Give full title of article (optionally in
quotes), then full details of the book (as in
previous slide), then page numbers. - Zue, V. (1997) Transmission and storage, in
Cole, R.A., Mariani, J., Uszkoreit, H., Varile,
G.B., Zaenen, A., Zue, V. and Zampolli, A. (eds)
Survey of the State of the Art in Human Language
Technology, Cambridge CUP/Giardini, pp. 645-76. - If you are citing several articles form the same
book, give the book as a separate entry, and
refer as follows - Zue, V. (1997) Transmission and storage, in
Cole et al. (1997), pp. 645-76.
29Bibliography
- Paper in conference proceedings
- Give full title of article (optionally in
quotes), full name of conference in italics,
place and page numbers. - Some proceedings appear as edited collections
(notably in Springers LNCS series) treat them
as such if you like - BE CONSISTENT in capitalization and punctuation
- Newell, A.F.(1990) Speech technology Cross
fertilization between research for the disabled
and the non-disabled, in Proceedings of the
First ISAAC Research Symposium in Augmentative
and Alternative Communication, Stockholm, no page
numbers . - If article is also available on the web, add
available at and give the URL and last date of
access
30- Web page
- Think twice is the best source you can give?
- Does it appear elsewhere as a proper
publication? - Remember, it may disappear or change tomorrow
- OK, if you must give author (if any if not how
are you going to refer to it? Institution is OK),
date (or n.d.), title and URL, plus date last
accessed. - UNC (n.d.) Literature reviews, The Writing
Center, University of North Carolina at Chapel
Hill, http//www.unc.edu/depts/wcweb/handouts/
literature_review.html, last accessed 7.3.07. - Dont hyphenate the URL
- For other reference types see Handbook
31Final tips
- Keep complete and accurate records of everything
you read - Where did I get that quote from?
- Learn how to do references as soon as you can and
use this style for everything you write - Some sources dont give full references, so
youll have to look up the details - Be accurate with spelling (especially of proper
names watch out for accented characters) - Be consistent with your formatting
- Learn how to use a bibliographic referencing
package and use it to maintain your reference
list - Keep a back-up somewhere safe, and update it
regularly
32Useful sources
- http//www.utoronto.ca/writing/litrev.html
- http//www.unc.edu/depts/wcweb/handouts/literature
_review.html - http//www.library.cqu.edu.au/tutorials/litreviewp
ages/ - http//library.ucsc.edu/ref/howto/literaturereview
.html - http//www.kcl.ac.uk/iss/ir/refs/
- http//www.history.unimelb.edu.au/resources/style_
guide/footnotes.html