In order to improve the quality of systematic researches, various tools have been developed by well-known scientific institutes sporadically. Dr. Nader Ale Ebrahim has collected these sporadic tools under one roof in a collection named “Research Tool Box”. The toolbox contains over 720 tools so far, classified in 4 main categories: Literature-review, Writing a paper, Targeting suitable journals, as well as Enhancing visibility and impact factor.
Literature Review: Outline, Strategies, and Examples [2021]
by StudyCorgi
Writing a literature review might be easier than you think. You
should just understand its basic rules, and that’s it! This article is
just about that.
Why is the literature review important? What are its types? We will uncover these and other possible questions.
Whether you are an experienced researcher or a student, this article will come in handy. Keep reading!
Let’s start with the literature review definition.
Literature review
outlooks the existing sources on a given topic. Its primary goal is to
provide an overall picture of the studied object. It clears up the
context and showcases the analysis of the paper’s theoretical
methodology.
In case you want to see the examples of this type of work, check out our collection of free student essays.
Importance of Literature Review
In
most cases, you need to write a literature review as a part of an
academic project. Those can be dissertations, theses, or research
papers.
Why is it important?
Imagine your final research
as a 100% bar. Let’s recall Pareto law: 20% of efforts make 80% of the
result. In our case, 20% is preparing a literature review. Writing
itself is less important than an in-depth analysis of current
literature. Do you want to avoid possible frustration in academic
writing? Make a confident start with a literature review.
Sure,
it’s impossible to find a topic that hasn’t been discussed or cited.
That is why we cannot but use the works of other authors. You don’t have
to agree with them. Discuss, critique, analyze, and debate.
So, the purpose of the literature review is to make an outlook of existing ideas or thoughts. Abstracting from personal opinions and judgments is a crucial attribute.
Types of Literature Review
You
can reach the purpose we have discussed above in several ways.
Considering that means there are several types of literature review.
What indicates them?
In short, it’s research methods and structure. Let’s find out why and break down each type:
Systematic literature review
is the most precise and well-defined type. It identifies, evaluates,
and appraises the studied topic. The purpose is to get the lay of the
land in a given research area. It falls into meta-analysis and meta-synthesis. They differ in the undertaken approach: deductive or inductive.
Meta-analysis
implies the deductive research approach used. At first, you gather
several related research papers. Then, you carry out its statistical
analysis. As a result, you answer a formulated question.
Meta-synthesis goes along with the inductive research approach. It bases qualitative data assessment.
Theoretical literature review implies
gathering theories. Those theories apply to studied ideas or concepts.
Links between theories become more explicit and clear. Why is it useful?
It confirms that the theoretical framework is valid. On top of that, it
assists in new hypothesis-making.
Argumentative literature review starts
with a problem statement. In other words, in making an argument. Then,
you select and study the topic-related literature to confirm or deny the
stated question. There is one sufficient problem in this type, by the
way. The author may write the text with a grain of bias.
Narrative literature review focuses
on literature mismatches. It indicates possible gaps and concludes the
body of literature. The primary step here is stating a focused research
question. Another name for this type — a traditional literature review.
Integrative literature review drives
scientific novelty. It generates new statements around the existing
researches. The primary tool for that is secondary data. The thing you
need is to review and criticize it. When is the best option to write an
integrative literature review? It’s when you lack primary data analysis.
Remember: before writing a literature review, specify its type.
Another step you should take is to argue your choice. Make sure it fits
the research framework. It will save your time as you won’t need to
freeze on strategies and methods.
Annotated Bibliography vs. Literature Review
Some would ask: isn’t what you are writing about is just an annotated bibliography?
Sure, both annotated bibliography and literature review list the
research topic-related sources. But no more than that. Such contextual
attributes as goal, structure, and components differ a lot.
For a more visual illustration of its difference, we made a table:
Attribute
Annotated Bibliography
Literature Review
Purpose
Informative nature. Listing additional sources for a reader is possible.
Squeezes the top research sources to get the most of a topic.
Content
Proofs of sources’ relevance and credibility.
The complete picture of the studied object.
Structure requirements
Alphabetical sorting
Separation from each other
Easy navigation
Advanced representation of sources in the text
Sources can appear several times
Components
List formatted in the formal citation styles (MLA, APA, Chicago, etc.).
Introduction, main body, and conclusion.
To
sum up: an annotated bibliography is more referral. It does not require
reading all the sources in the list. On the contrary, you won’t reach
the literature review purpose without examining all the sources cited.
Literature Review: Step-by-Step Strategy
After
choosing a type, it’s time for step-by-step literature review
guidelines. We are getting closer to a perfect literature review!
Step 1. Select the Topic
Selecting a topic requires looking from two perspectives. They are the following:
Stand-alone paper. Choose an engaging topic and state a central problem. Then, investigate the trusted literature sources in scholarly databases.
Part of a dissertation or thesis. In this case, you should dig around the thesis topic, research objectives, and purpose.
Regardless
of the case, you should not just list several literature items. On the
contrary, build a decent logical connection and analysis. Only that way,
you’ll answer the research question.
Step 2. Identify the Review Scope
One more essential thing to do is to define the research boundaries. Find a balance: don’t make it either long or narrow.
Push
back on the chosen topic and define the number and level of
comprehensiveness of your paper. Define the historical period as well.
After that, select a pool of credible sources for further synthesis and
analysis.
Step 3. Work with Sources
Investigate
each chosen source. At this step, you should start writing your review.
Note each important insights you come across. Learn how to cite a literature review to avoid plagiarism.
Step 4. Write a Literature Review Outline
No
matter what the writing purpose is: research, informative, promotional,
etc. The power of your future text is in the proper planning. If you
start with a well-defined structure, it’s about 100% you’ll reach
exceptional results. What you need is writing the literature review
outline.
Step 5. Review the Literature
Once
you’ve outlined your literature review, you’re ready for a writing
part. While writing, try to uncover insights, be selective and
critical-thinking, and don’t forget to keep your voice. In the end, make
a compelling literature review conclusion.
On top of that, explore some other working tips to make your literature review as informative as possible.
Literature Review Outline
We’ve already discussed the importance of a literature review outline. Now, it’s time to understand how to create it.
An
outline for literature review has a bit different structure comparing
with other types of paper works. It has the following parts:
Introduction. In this part, you should outline the following characteristics:
Selected topic
Research question
Related research question trends and prospects
Research methods
Expected research results
Body. Each
paragraph should focus on one of the sources. The number of literature
is equivalent to the number of paragraphs. What do you need to outline
here? Write a summary of each selected resource. The following are
examples of subjects to cover:
Overview of literature core areas
Research problem consideration through the prism of this piece of literature
Methods, controversial points, gaps
Outcomes
Conclusion. Make clear points of inference and explain the relationships between the studied literature. A good conclusion should contain:
Cumulative list of arguments around the research question
Links to existing literature and a place of your paper in the existing system of knowledge.
It can be a plus if you clarify the applicability of your literature review in further research.
Once
you outline your literature review, you can slightly shorten your
writing path. Let’s move on to actual samples of literature review.
Literature Review Examples
To
consolidate the above, let’s look through some examples. How does a
well-prepared literature review look like? Check three samples at
StudyCorgi to understand. Follow the table:
Sociology
literature review raises issues of single African American parents. You
can see how the author describes emerging trends and patterns. It
contains the causes of single parenting trend growth: general and
related to African American people. In the end, the author explains the
paper’s contribution to the current literature.
In
this nursing literature review example, the author notes the complexity
and intricacy of managing chronic pain. The paper enumerates the
current studies on the topic, its advantages, and disadvantages. In the
synthesis, the author proposes a new and improved framework for chronic
pain management.
Psychology
literature review explains the dependency of the students’ academic
success on their behavior. Both environment and psychological states,
including ASD, determine the behavior. The author states that the
majority of children with ASD are likely to engage in disruptions. After
reviewing the existing literature, the author illustrates the
effectiveness of the token economy in autism.
Take your time and read literature review examples
to solidify knowledge and sharpen your skills. You’ll get a more
definite picture of the literature review length, methods, and topics.
Now
you understand the core milestones regarding the introduction to the
literature review. Understanding its purpose, types, outline rules, and
examples will help you to kick off.
Do you still have any
questions? Don’t hesitate to contact us! Our writing experts are ready
to help you with your paper on time.
FAQ
What Is the Purpose of a Literature Review?
Literature review solves several problems at once. Its purpose is to
identify and gather the top insights, gaps, and answers to research
questions. Those help to get a general idea of the degree of topic
exploration. As a result, it builds a basement for further research. Or
vice versa: it reveals a lack of need for additional studies.
How Do You Structure a Literature Review?
Like any other academic paper, a literature review consists of certain
conceptual parts. These are three: introduction, main body, and the
conclusion. Each of them needs full disclosure and logical
interconnection
The introduction contains the topic overview, its problematics, research methods, and other general attributes of academic papers.
The body reveals how each of the selected literature sources answers the formulated questions from the introduction.
The conclusion
summarizes the key findings from the body, connects the research to
existing studies, and outlines the need for further investigation.
To ensure the success of your analysis, you should equally uphold all of these parts.
What Must a Literature Review Include?
A basic literature review includes the introduction with the research
topic definition, its arguments, and problems. Then, it has a synthesis
of the picked pieces of literature. It may consist of possible gaps and
contradictions in existing researches. The practical relevance and
contribution to new studies are also welcome.
What Are the 5 C's of Writing a Literature Review?
Don’t forget about these five C’s to make things easier in writing a literature review:
Cite. Make a list of references for research you’ve used and apply proper citation rules. Use Google Scholar for this.
Compare.
Make a comparison of such literature attributes as theories, insights,
trends, arguments, etc. It’s better to use tables or diagrams to make
your content visual.
Contrast. Use listings to categorize particular approaches, themes, and so on.
Critique.
Critical thinking is a must in any scientific research. Don’t take
individual formulations as truth. Explore controversial points of view.
Connect. Find a place of your research between existing studies. Propose new possible areas to dig further.
How Long Should a Literature Review Be?
In most cases, professors or educational establishment guidelines
determine the length of a literature review. Study them and stick to
their requirements, so you don’t get it wrong.
If there are no specific rules, make sure it is no more than 30% of the whole research paper.
If
your literature review is not a part of the thesis and goes as a
stand-alone paper — be concise but explore the research area in-depth.
Bibliometric
analysis refers to the cross science of quantitative analysis of all
knowledge carriers with mathematical and statistical methods. It is a
comprehensive knowledge system that integrates mathematics, statistics,
and Philology and pays attention to quantification. The main objects of
bibliometrics are the amount of literature (various publications,
especially journal papers and citations), the number of authors
(individual group or group), the number of vocabulary (various
literature marks, among which the majority are descriptors). The most
essential feature of bibliometrics is that its output must be
"quantity".
1.Definitions and objectives of the paper
The term 'bibliometric analysis'
is defined as a statistical evaluation of published journal papers,
books, or other scientific articles, etc. and it is an effectual way to
measure the influence of publications, scholars, or institutions in
the scientific community.
Based on thebibliometric analysis and from the perspective of macro development, this paper systematically aims to:
Summarize the latest research outcomes of industrial heritage in China and Western countries;
Describe the development process of the industrial heritage discipline scientificallyand quantitatively;
Compare the outcomes and dynamic evolution laws of industrial
heritage protection research inChina and Western countries under two
different development states horizontally, providing avaluable reference
base for subsequent heritage conservation research
2.Usage
Bibliometrics analysis is now being used
to evaluate academic outcomes quantitatively, which is beginning to
threaten practice-based research [1].
The process of bibliometric analysis
includes four modules: data acquisition, data preprocessing,
statistical calculation, and application analysis. Data sources are
divided into database data and web data, and the acquisition methods are
divided into a manual acquisition and automatic acquisition. Data
preprocessing is mainly format conversion, splitting and extraction, and
filtering the data that does not meet the requirements. A statistical
calculation can be divided into Top N statistics, singular value
statistics, quantity distribution statistics, annual growth statistics,
and other related statistics.
Bibliometrics analysis has become an
important branch of information science and philology. At the same time,
it also shows the important methodological value and becomes a special
research method of information science. In the internal logical
structure of information science, bibliometrics analysis has gradually
occupied the core position and is an academic link closely related to
science communication and basic theory.
3.Historical Background
From a historical point of view, bibliometrics has been used to track the relationship between citations in academic journals. Citation analysis, that is, examining the references of a project, is used to find materials and analyze its advantages [2].
Citation indexes, such as the science network of the Institute of
scientific information, allow users to search for the latest
publications with references to known projects from known articles in a
timely manner [3].
People's research on quantitative
literature analysis can be traced back to the early 20th century. Some
important milestones are included below:
In 1917, F.J. Cole and N.B. Ayers first studied the literature of
comparative anatomy published from 1543 to 1860 by using a quantitative
analysis method [4]. The relevant books and journal articles were counted and classified by country.
In 1923, E.W. Hume put forward the word "documentary statistics" and
explained it as: "through the statistics of written communication and
the analysis of other aspects, we can observe the process of written
communication and nature and development direction of a certain
discipline."[5]
In 1969, A. Pritchard, a philologist, proposed to replace documentary statistics with bibliometrics [6]. He expanded the research object of literature statistics from journals to all books and periodicals.
4. Applications
According to this scientific analysis, researchers can do including but not limited to the following researches [7]:
Quantitatively evaluate the academic quality of a certain domain of
journals, authors, or institutions by statistical methods such as
citation rates [8].
A quantitative analysis of academic literature of a certain domain
based on metrics such as citations. It consists of a review of the
literature, indicating the number, evaluation, and main trends of
publications concerning the domain [9].
Analysis of a series of publications in a certain domain based
on quantitative indicators, such as its evolution over time, number of
citations, most prolific authors, etc [10].
A quantitative method used to examine the knowledge structure and
development of a certain domain based on the analysis of related
publications, such as research status, hot-spots, development forecast,
etc [11][12].
5. The difference and connection between literature review and bibliometric analysis
Literature review, referred to as
review, is a kind of academic paper that collects a large number of
relevant materials on a certain field, a certain specialty or a certain
aspect of a topic, problem or research topic, and refines the latest
progress, academic opinions or suggestions of the current topic, problem
or research topic through analysis, reading, sorting out and
summarizing.
Both literature review papers and
bibliometric papers emphasize the collation of previous studies in order
to find out the current situation and shortcomings of the research.
Differences:
The literature review emphasizes the content, that is, what aspects
of the existing research include and what are the deficiencies. In terms
of the number of search papers and references that can be included,
representative papers should be extracted from the existing literature
and written according to a predetermined research context.
Bibliometrics is mainly to collect papers from different sources as
far as possible in a general research direction. The number of search
papers should be more than that of a literature review. It is not
necessary to analyze the research content of each article in detail but
to summarize the number of published papers, research hotspots, research
methods, and distribution of authors. Most of the references cited are
highly cited papers. We can use CiteSpace, histiocytes, and other
professional software to analyze
6. Results
Both China and Western Europe attach
great importance to the study of industrial heritage tourism and
industrial heritage value evaluation, and interdisciplinary research is
increasingly close. In the past 16 years, the research on industrial
heritage has shown a stable growth trend, and in recent years, the
number of international publications has increased significantly.
Nonetheless, according to the bibliometric analysis,
there are differences in the development of industrial heritage
research between China and Western Europe. The research methods and
means in China are greatly influenced by foreign countries and a lack of
innovation.
As the leading region, Western European
research is guided by factual development. The research has several
branches, such as applying new techniques, community restoration, and
ecological environment restoration, etc. Notwithstanding, they have
extended in many directions but there not is a unified category.
Andrea
Moretta Tartaglione; Giuseppe Granata; Retail Customer Engagement.
Advances in Marketing, Customer Relationship Management, and E-Services
2019, 1, 1-26, 10.4018/978-1-5225-7856-7.ch001.
Siran
Mukerji (IGNOU, India) and Purnendu Tripathi (IGNOU, India). Handbook
of Research on Transnational Higher Education (2 Volumes); IGI Global:
the United States, 2013; pp. 750.
Gilbert
Ahamer; Karl A. Kumpfmüller; Education and Literature for Development
in Responsibility. Integrating Social Justice Education in Teacher
Preparation Programs 2014, 1, 526-584, 10.4018/978-1-4666-4458-8.ch027.
F.
J. COLE and NELLIE B. EALES; The history of comparative anatomy: Part
I.—A statistical analysis of the literature. Science Progress 1917, 11,
44, https://www.jstor.org/stable/43426882.
I.
N. Sengupta; Bibliometrics, Informetrics, Scientometrics and
Librametrics: An Overview. Libri 1992, 42, 2, 10.1515/libr.1992.42.2.75.
Jiazhen
Zhang; Jeremy Cenci; Vincent Becue; Sesil Koutra; Christos S.
Ioakimidis; Recent Evolution of Research on Industrial Heritage in
Western Europe and China Based on Bibliometric Analysis. Sustainability
2020, 12, 5348, 10.3390/su12135348.
Ronald Rousseau; Forgotten founder of bibliometrics. Nature 2014, 510, 218-218, 10.1038/510218e.
Michael
Henderson; Simon Shurville; Ken Fernstrom; The quantitative crunch.
Campus-Wide Information Systems 2009, 26, 149-167,
10.1108/10650740910967348.
Philipp
Schaer; Applied informetrics for digital libraries: an overview of
foundations, problems and current approaches. Historical Social Research
2013, 38, 145, 10.12759/hsr.38.2013.3.267-281.
Bibliometrics in Wikipedia . Bibliometrics. Retrieved 2020-7-17
A
well executed search engine optimization strategy is vital to ensure
that all of your research content is visible and ranks high in the
results displayed by popular search engines such as Google and Google
Scholar.
As with any other kind of ranked search results, articles displayed in the top positions are more likely to be read and cited. Academic Search Engine Optimization (ASEO)
ensures not only that your articles are found (crawled) and indexed,
but it also has a strong effect on the order the articles are displayed.
While search engine optimization (SEO) is mostly associated with
websites and webpages, scientific articles can be optimized as well.
Tips for Academic Search Engine Optimization | ASEO
Title
Your
title should be short, descriptive, and incorporate a keyword or phrase
related to your topic. Make sure to include 1 or 2 keywords related to
your topic and ensure they appear within the first 65 characters of the
title. Consider moving a keyword or phrase from your title to the first
or second sentence of your abstract.
Abstract
Make
sure to carefully craft your abstract using the appropriate keywords
and phrases from your article. Think of a 2–4 word phrase that a
researcher might search for when looking to find your article. You can
also look up specific popular keywords on Google Trends or the Google
Adwords keywords tool.
Only the first two sentences normally display in search engine results
so make sure to place essential phrases and keywords at the beginning
of your abstract. Also, make sure to repeat your keywords and phrases
3–6 times throughout the abstract but in a natural, contextual way.
Always remember that the purpose of your abstract is to clearly and
concisely express the key points of your research, BUT don’t go
overboard with repetition as search engines may un-index your article as
a result.
Keywords
Make
sure you use appropriate and relevant keywords throughout your article.
You should provide at least 5 keywords or phrases in the keywords field
and always include the keywords and phrases you used in your abstract.
You also want to provide additional relevant keywords and synonyms for
those keywords as they relate to your article. Keywords are not only
important for SEO, they are also used by abstracting and indexing
services as a mechanism to tag research content.
Keyword Tips
Include
keywords in your title (1–2 words), abstract (3–6 words), and keyword
fields (5–7 words). Remember, keywords may be phrases as well as single
words
Incorporate keywords in your headings. Headings can tip off search engines as to the structure and content of your article.
Use
keywords that are consistent with your topic. If you’re unsure, you can
check the words used in major papers on similar topics.
Let
your keywords flow naturally and in the right context.Search engines
tend to dislike a lot of keyword repetition (known as keyword stuffing),
and may “un-index” your article as a result.
Stay consistent
when it comes to authors’ names and initials. Use them in same manner
throughout the paper and make sure you’re referring to them in the same
way they’ve been referred to in other online publications.
Make
sure you use headings for the various sections of your article to tip
off search engines as to the structure and content of your article.
Remember to incorporate your keywords and phrases in these headings
wherever it’s appropriate.
Remember to cite your own and your
co-authors previous work. This is very important as these citations of
your past work influence how search engines will rank your current and
future work.
Building Links
The
more in-bound links to your article, the more search engines such as
Google will value and highlight your content. To do this, you want to
make sure you link to your article across all your social media,
networking, and institutional sites. Also, the more links that come from
respected individuals and trusted sites the more powerful the effect.
You will also want to encourage your colleagues to link to your article
but don’t forget to do the same for them!
Google Scholar and Other Search Engines: How They Work
An
article is ranked by its relevance to the terms being searched. The
number of search terms that appear in the article itself is crucial in
determining this factor. Also, a search term used in the title will be
weighted more heavily than a search term that appears in the abstract.
Another factor is the length of title, with shorter titles preferred
over longer ones.
The specific citations you have used in your
paper play a large role in your article’s ranking. Citing articles that
have high rank will give your article a higher rank.
Keep in
mind that author and publication names in citations matter. Google
Scholar favors “big names” in its searching system. “Big names” are
people and publications that possess extensive expertise in a certain
area.
Google Scholar is known as an “invitation-based search
engine” since it only indexes articles coming from trusted sources. Even
if Google Scholar has received the pdf file of an article, it will
still search the web for the different versions of the same file and
then bundle them together in terms of indexing and ranking.
I recently read an interesting article by Beel et al. (2010)
who studied Academic Search Engine Optimization. Essentially, they
looked into the mechanisms of Google Scholar and similar search engines
for research publications. Their work gives some valuable insights into
how to improve the visibility of your research by making it easier to
find by others. Here are the key takeaway messages that I got from their
paper:
Personal website. While publication of most
journal paper gets automatically indexed by search engines, it can still
be helpful to have your own research website. For example, my
researcher website can be found here: folk.ntnu.no/richahan.
Keywords.
To make sure that certain search terms (e.g. “UAV icing”) are connected
to your publication, they need to occur in the document. Search engines
give higher relevance to keywords that occur more often. High relevance
is given for keywords that occur in the title and abstract, so make
sure that they are included there (this is part of the reason why most
of my papers start with “UAV Icing: …”):
Synonyms.
Building on the keyword topic, it is also helpful to include synonyms
of your research keywords in your manuscript several times in a
manuscript, for example, “uncrewed aerial system”, “drone”, “UAS”,
“RPAS”. In my work, I usually include a few of these synonyms in the
introduction, but I will consider using them more frequently – as long
as it does not affect the readability.
Metadata.
For search engines to identify a document as an academic publication,
the body of text must include standard sections that are usually found
in scientific papers, e.g. “Abstract”, “Introduction”, “Methods”,
“Results”, “References”, and so on. Following the popular IMRaD
structure is a good idea! Also, make sure that the published pdf
metadata for title and author are correct!
Searchable figures.
For search engines to be able to “read” what is inside of a figure or
picture, it needs to be vector graphic. The opposite of vector graphics
is raster graphics, which are not readable by search engines. All .bmp,
.jpg, .png, .tif, .gif files are rasterized and text in these figures
will not be identified by search engines. Myself, I have not been paying
much attention to this and will update here once I have a good way of
generating vector images for publications.
Citations.
The biggest factor for increasing the relevance and visibility of a
paper is of course the number of citations it receives. The higher the
citation count, the more likely it is that a paper will appear on the
top in search results. It is this good academic practice to cite all
work that relates to your publication, but not to inflate it
artifically.
Access. It has been shown that
open access papers have typically higher citation rates compared to
publications behind a pay-wall. It is certainly a good idea to make sure
that all your work is easily accessible by making it open-access or by
sharing pre-prints (e.g. on your researcher website).
Author reputation.
While the paper was not able to show (due to lack of data) that journal
impact factor and author reputation play a role in the search
relevance, search engines likely take this into account.
Some other good tips are to make sure you are registered on major science networking sites such a Researchgate and ORCiD.
Congratulations on the publication of your article. Promoting your work
is an important part of the post-publication process which will increase
the visibility, impact and citation of your work. MDPI will support you
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well as to a wide audience.
What You Can Do to Promote Your Article
Social Media
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Send a short text (up to 200 characters) to the MDPI assistant editor
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Write a blog post to explain the meaning and possible outcomes of your
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community.
Ask your institution or society to post your paper on their social
media accounts and to include a story about your paper in their
newsletters.
Link Share
Share the article link directly with colleagues and peers in your field.
Add a link to your article in your email signature.
Update your personal and institutional websites by adding the title of your article and a link to it.
Academic Research-sharing Platforms
Set up your profile on academic research-sharing platforms, such as SciProfiles, ResearchGate, Academia.edu, or Google Scholar, and add a short summary of your article.
Register an ORCID author identifier and add the article information to your profile.
Deposit your article to repositories (such as those run by your university) to make your research more discoverable.
Conferences
Present your publication at conferences in the form of a
presentation or a poster. You may participate in conferences relevant
for your field organized by MDPI on Sciforum.net.
Video
Produce a video abstract that briefly introduces your article.
Wikipedia
Find a Wikipedia page on a topic related to your article and add a reference to your paper.
What We Do to Promote Your Article
MDPI takes a number of actions to promote and increase the visibility of your research articles.
High Visibility
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All authors cited in your article are notified that you cited their article through our scitations.net service.
Editors and reviewers are notified as soon as your paper is published.
Articles are listed in the journal’s Table of Contents Alerts and sent to regular subscribers.
Selected articles are reprinted for their promotion at conferences and other events.
Partnering Organizations
Metadata and other information are passed on to partnering organizations, including CrossRef, ORCID, and Publons.
Multiple Formats for Article
Multiple formats are available for each article, including machine-readable XML, PDF, and Epub.
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Books
Many Special Issues are compiled into books, which are announced via social media, available for purchase in hard copy, and displayed at conferences.
Network maps are essential tools in
quantitative research studies. In this blog post I argue for interactive
maps that show both overview as well as details, are openly accessible,
and based on open data. Such maps add value by providing more
information, enhanced transparency and interpretability.
Bibliometric maps have been created for decades to
provide overview of research and to make it possible for researchers to
study different aspects of the research landscape, such as collaboration
patterns, structure of research fields and citation relations. Several
tools have been created that make it easy to create maps from
bibliographic records imported from different data sources. Using these
tools, maps can be created without any coding. The end result is often a
static image showing some nodes and their relations. The maps are
useful, because they simplify large amounts of data and highlight
patterns in the data.
Static maps must be reduced to a limited number of nodes and edges to
be readable. If we deal with large publication sets, this means that
data must be either heavily restricted or aggregated. A lot of detail is
being lost in this process, leading to reduced transparency and
decreased interpretability. A new version of VOSviewer
has made it possible to create bibliometric maps and publish them
online. Such maps offer more interactivity by zooming capabilities and
information can be shown when clicking nodes or edges. This
interactivity makes it possible to visualize more nodes and to provide
more information.
In a visualization
of a classification of biomedical research literature, based on more
than 3 million publications in PubMed, I go one step further. The
visualization provides interactive features to navigate from broad
disciplines down to narrow topics and retrieve the publications
underlying the classification. Thereby, the visualization provides both
overview of a vast amount of research literature as well as details down
to individual publications.
Figure 1. Map of biomedical research (2018-January 2021). View in separate tab. The map may take a while to load and may not display properly using smart phones or tablets.
The visualization, which shows the recent three years
period (2018-January 2021) is based on a classification of publications
created by clustering publications in a citation network. The full
classification currently contains about 18 million publications in
PubMed from 1995 onwards and has been based on open data (PubMed and the
NIH Open Citation Collection). All data are available in figshare.
Three levels are visualized in the map: (1) broad disciplines shown
as large nodes, (2) underlying specialties shown as a network of smaller
nodes and (3) topics shown as lists when clicking a specialty. From the
list of topics, a link takes the user to the underlying publications in
PubMed. Details about the classification and visualizations are
described in a recent preprint titled “Improving overlay maps of science: combining overview and detail”.
Using the map, one can for example study research
related to the ongoing pandemic caused by SARS-CoV-2. The underlying
topics in the Covid-19 cluster shows research focusing on mathematical
models of the outbreak, clinical treatment, psychological impact,
testing methodologies and specific symptoms. By the possibility to
retrieve the individual publications, the map can be used for
exploration and information retrieval. Most maps of research do not
provide this feature.
Figure 2. Map of SARS-CoV-2/Covid-19 research. View in separate tab. The map may take a while to load and may not display properly using smart phones or tablets.
Another application is the opportunities given by
overlays. We may for example set node sizes or colors based on some
variable, such as open access publishing, citation rates or growth rate.
This makes comparisons of fields possible. For example, this map of open access
publishing shows a high share of open access publishing in corona virus
research, but a low rate in biophysics and biochemistry. The map
provides both overview of the open access publishing as well as details
down to narrow topics.
Figure 3. Map of open access publishing in biomedicine 2018-2020. View in separate tab. The map may take a while to load and may not display properly using smart phones or tablets.
Interactivity and detail facilitate interpretation. The
user can use information about relations to other clusters, underlying
topics and retrieve publications when interpreting the contents of
clusters. Nevertheless, many challenges remain. Clustering methodologies
can be improved by making the resulting classifications easier to
interpret, also outside the field of quantitative science studies.
Overlaps of fields may be integrated into the maps and there might be
better ways to position the nodes in the maps. I think that
visualizations of this kind make weaknesses more apparent and provide a
good point of departure for further development.
The results of the clustering methodologies are made transparent by
providing interactive features and by making the maps and underlying
data openly available. Anyone can navigate the map and get an impression
of its validity, and anyone can download it and evaluate its strengths
and weaknesses. My hope is that this transparency can contribute to
improved clustering methodologies and more user-oriented maps of
research. I think that bibliometric maps of other types should follow
this example: (1) make the maps interactive, (2) provide as much detail
as possible, and (3) make the underlying data openly available.
Today, the Internet universe marks all the guidelines and stages of
scientific information. From access to information, digital channels
condition its processing and final dissemination.
In this sense, in the specific field of scientific dissemination, the
process does not end with the publication of the work, but it is from
that moment when a key phase for the life of the work begins: its
dissemination and impact. Traditional libraries, and where appropriate
physical bookstores, have given way to new channels, previously
unthinkable, for the dissemination and knowledge of scientific research
results: common social networks, scientific social networks
(specifically designed for this purpose and for the exclusive use of the
research community), audiovisual channels (such as YouTube, Vimeo and
others), institutional repositories, selective newspaper libraries… In
short, a wide range of possibilities for the work to move and be visible
beyond any physical boundary.
In this specific post, we would like to highlight three key spaces
for the life of any scientific researcher aspiring to international
impact.
Publons (https://bit.ly/3dgb5cM) is the official portal of the Web of
Science (WoS), the maximum reference in the scientific field as it
contains the Journal Citation Reports (JCR), the articles of the most
prestigious indexed journals in the world. It contains other databases
such as A&H (Arts & Humanities), ESCI and regional databases
such as Scielo.
Publons provides researchers with a visible, internationally
recognized space where indexed articles are hosted. The portal also
calculates the H Index of indexed publications, as well as the number of
citations globally and for each specific paper, offering public and
auditable information that is invaluable for evaluating a researcher’s
curriculum and trajectory. In addition, Publons also incorporates an
original section with the scientific reviews made by the researcher in
the different indexed journals that have been registered on the
platform. This is an essential space because the academic review is
acquiring a remarkable value, both for the reviewer and the scientific
publications, and it is necessary to make it visible and give it a
higher value.
Another strategic portal for the visibility of research results is
Scopus, which automatically generates a personal space for all those who
have published in some of the nearly 40,000 journals hosted in this
database. Their number of publications, citations, H-index, and even
graphs illustrating the progression of production and impact are
displayed in a histogram. Like Publons, for researchers who direct their
scientific production towards journals with high international
projection – fortunately more and more of them – this website, freely
accessible through Scopus Preview (https://bit.ly/3h8jxfh), is a
privileged space to have an auditable external curriculum vitae, an
image of the progression of a researcher.
Third, Google, the world’s most important repository of information
and scientific literature, also has a personal space option for Gmail
users who have registered. In Google Scholar Metrics
(https://bit.ly/3xUS7QJ), researchers can access a complete repository
of their production (not only articles, but also books, chapters,
communications and other academic literature), with information on the
citations of their contributions and their co-authors. Particularly
significant is the summary table with total citations, those of the last
five years, with their corresponding H-index and H-5-index, as well as
the i10 index (papers with more than 10 citations) and a complete
histogram of the impact throughout the researcher’s academic life.
In short, these three tools generate a complete visibility of the
scientific production and impact of researchers, being key tools to know
their curriculum, in terms of volume and impact on the community
(measured in citations), as well as the progression of their academic
life cycle.
![Literature Review: Outline, Strategies, and Examples [2021]](https://studycorgi.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/10/book-bible-close-up-beautiful-terrace-morning-time-space-text-448x528.jpg)
Step 1. Select the Topic
FAQ
What Is the Purpose of a Literature Review?
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