Literature Study

Literature study helps the researcher to

• gain needed knowledge on the research area
• plan and pursuing his research
• avoid repeating the same work someone has already done
• define the scope of his work
• evaluate his work
• develop skills at recognizing significant and relevant literature

Types of Literature

• Books
• The most comprehensive
• The most out of date, at least 5 years
• Types of books
• Text books
• Reference Manuals

• Journals
• The most respected research articles
• Probably a little out of date
• Types of journal articles
1. Review Articles
• Comprehensive and readable
• long
• Ex. ACM Computing Surveys
2. Articles (full papers)
• full report of the author's work
3. Communications and Letters
• The most recent findings and new topics
• short

• Conference Papers
• The most recent works on established areas
• Emerging research areas
• Less credible than books and journals

• Technical Reports
• Should be read after the author's journal or conference articles
• Contain more technical details
• Some are published later

• Thesis
• Should be read after the author's journal or conference articles
• Contain a review on the field and more details of the author's work

General Strategies

• Start with the most recent works and work back to earlier work
• Start with the most cited works
• Start with the most credible types of literature
• Start with the most respected journals and conference proceedings
• Start with the works of recognized writers dealing with the specific theme
• Continue with the cited articles.  Look in the reference section (bibliography) of the article.
• Use reference databases (bibliography databases) to search for relevant articles and get the abstracts.
• Obtain the articles from libraries, digital libraries, or the authors.

 

Which Journals?

• Most relevant
• Most cited
• Most frequent publication
• High impact factor (?)

 

Top-down Study

• Choose a broad topic
• Consult comprehensive literature for introduction and overview coverage
• Search reference databases
• Get some journal articles
• Get interesting cited articles
• Study the literature
• Take notes

 

Bottom-up Study

• Choose a specific topic
• Search reference databases
• Get an article related to the topic
• Get the articles cited in the Introduction section
• Study the literature
• Take notes
• Consult more comprehensive literature for explanation on the topics you don't understand

Taking Notes

• Read the abstract and summary to see whether the article is relevant
• Skim through the article to decide what should be noted.
• Take notes in your own words.  If quotations are needed, make them distinguishable.
• Write down its bibliography fields (title, author, source publication, year) and the source you obtain the article from.
• Many people use one record card for each article.

Related Topics

Journal Impact Factor

What is an impact factor?

Published in Journal Citation Reports by Institute for Scientific Information (ISI)

An article about impact factor

It has copyright but it's not difficult to find in the internet.

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