Effective Literature Review

Workshop Series 1N27, FSKSM UTM

18 Nov 2011

Literature Review Stages

Three stages• Stage 1– Acquire general knowledge about high level domain– Identify domain and problem(s)

• Stage 2– Identify the solution approaches– Identify active community

• Stage 3– Build solution to your problem

Where to find Related Literature?

• Google is better than ask Bing or Yahoo• Google Scholar is better than Google• ScienceDirect• Springer• IEEEExplore• ACM

‘Algorithm’ for Relevant Literature Review

Step (1) : Find a couple of papersStep (2) : Get their referenced papersStep (3) : Get papers that cited these papersStep (4) : Repeat (1) -> (3) until you hardly find

different papersStep (5) : At later stages, research community

websites also best resources

From Dr Anjum’s Talk (FSKSM, UTM) 2011

STAGE 1: Objective

Highly recommended for starters, once every year or two or experienced ones– General knowledge of high level domain• What’s new (domains and problems) ?• Can there be something (domain and problem) new ?• Is something obsolete ?• Is there a rebirth ?• Is there a new knowledge resource ?

• Always start with research papers– Use books where you need help

• Survey papers• Books (ONLY if required)– Reading/skimming, not eating

• How to read papers at this stage– Introduction and Conclusion– Rephrasing and writing in your own words is

important

STAGE 1: Procedure

• Should not be prolonged beyond 4 months in any case

• After reading papers from one domain, ask yourself :– Have I found “THE” problem ?– If NOT

• Have I found some problems ?

– If YES• Try finding “THE” problem or reject all

– If NOT• Seek help, something is probably wrong somewhere

STAGE 1: Conclusion

Stage 1 : Closing in on a problem

• After reading X number of papers, you should ask yourself :– What is t problem that I shall be working on?• In the beginning, there can be more than one problems

that you think you should work on

– Of the X papers that I have read, how many are related to my problem ?

Stage 2 : Start & Objective

• By this time, you should be focused on only one problem– This problem may change later on and most likely

it will change• Changing the problem in last 6 months of your PhD

means …

• Identify approaches to solve “THE” problem

Stage 2 : Methodology

• Read research papers related to your problem• List down possible methods of solving the

problem, i.e– Information theory is always used– Stochastic or optimization theory is always used– Closed form solutions are achieved OR heuristics

are applied– Also focus on paper writing style– Skimming through body of papers helps

– You still do not need to eat papers» This can cause serious digestion & stagnation problems

Stage 3 : Objective• Solving your problem

– Generally after stage 2, you select a couple of papers– Extract a solution– Extend a solution– Modify a solution

• Paper eating, chewing and digesting stage

• Possible solution approaches that are applicable on your problem• This statement makes some unrelated papers to be related

• That’s where understanding of domain (not problem) comes in• That’s where general knowledge also comes in• That’s where undergrdauate courses come in

Stage 3 : Methodology

Either• You entirely build your own solution– Highly unlikely : Remember its not rocket science

• Most likely world will not be different within 1 year of your PhD completion (Exception excluded)

OR• You should provide incremental solution by

modifying one of the existing solution OR applying existing technique– You need to understand existing technique to minute

level of details, hence paper chewing

How to Write a Paper

DESIGN• To write well, you need a design. • Design activity involves 5 steps

The Market Need. What is the purpose of the document? Who will read it? How will the reader use it? The answers help you decide the length, the level of detail, the style.

The Concept. Good writing starts with a plan. Writers havedifferent ways of developing plans.

The Embodiment. The embodiment is the first draft. Get the facts down on paper without worrying about style; make drafts of each section; develop the calculations; sketch the figures; assemble references.

Detail. Now comes the crafting: clarity, balance, readability; in a word —style The End-Product. Appearance is important: good

layout, clear headings, well-designed figures

THE MARKET—Who are your readers?

CONCEPT—Making a Concept-Sheet

When you can’t write, it is because you don’t know what you want to say. The first job is to structure your thinking.

Another example of Concept Sheet

EMBODIMENT—The First Draft• Now the hard work. Break the job

down into stages. The usual stages in writing a paper are set out in the boxes below. Papers are not drafted sequentially; do it in any order you wish.

• Get the scientific facts and technical details down, the ideas formulated, the graphs and figures planned.

• If good ways of expressing the ideas occur to you now, use them; but do not deflect effort from the key job of assembling the pieces, in whatever form them come.

INTRODUCTION

ABSTRACT

METHOD

RESULTS

DISCUSSION

CONCLUSION

ABSTRACT

• Try for one sentence each on motive, method, key results, conclusions.

• Don’t exceed 3 sentences on any one• The reader of an Abstract has been lured by the

title (title must be informative ~reflects the contents & interesting)

• Tell them, in as few sentences as possible, what they will find. No waffle, no spurious details.

• Try not to exceed 100 words.

INTRODUCTION

• Outline the problem and why it was worth tackling. Review the literature, recording briefly the main contributors and summarizing the status of the field when you started the research

• Provide any specialized information that the reader might need if he is to understand what follows. State what you will do that has not been done before (new experimental approach? new data? new model? new interpretation?) Keep it as brief as you can whilst still doing all this.

• What is the problem and why is it interesting?• Who are the main contributors?• What did they do?• What novel thing will you reveal?

METHOD• Experimental paper: equipment, materials, method • Modelling paper: assumptions, mathematical tools, method• Computational paper: inputs, computational tools, method

• Explain what is especially different about your method• Give sufficient detail that the reader can reproduce what you did• Don’t mix Method with Results or Discussion—they come next• This should be an easy section to write: just say what you did, succinctly• Use “we” but do so sparingly: too many “we’s” sounds• like a child’s day out: “first we did this, then we did that.”• Build up a reference list as you go• It is one of the principles of science that a paper should contain• sufficient detail to allow the work to be repeated by someone else

RESULTS

• Easy section to write• Report your results simply, without opinion or interpretation at this stage. • Define all symbols and units. Present data in a form other people can use• Give emphasis in the text the most important aspects of the tables, graphs or

figures. • Give error-bars or confidence-limits for numerical or graphical data. Statistics

should be meaningful; avoid confidence-eroding statements such as “33.3% of the samples failed: 33.3% survived; the third sample was unfortunately misplaced.”

• Aim for a concise, economical style.• Poor: It is clearly shown in Figure 3 that the shear loading had caused the cell-

walls to suffer ductile fracture or possibly brittle failure.• Better: Shear loading fractures cell-walls

• Present the output of the experiments, model or computation

• Don’t mix Results with Discussion

DISCUSSION• Extract principles, relationships, generalizations• Present analysis, model or theory• Show relationship between the results and analysis, model or theory

• Here you are seeking to extract principles, relationships, or generalizations from the results. Sometimes the results speak for themselves

The novel heat-treatment described in Section 2 gives steels which are 10% stronger and 20% tougher than those heat-treated in the normal way.

• Most of the research we do aims at why materials behave as they do, and this requires ideas about mechanisms, models and associated theory.

• Discussion is to describe the ideas, models and theories and lead the reader through a comparison of these with the experimental or computational data.

• Bring out the most significant conclusions first; develop subsidiary conclusions after that.

• Be clear and concise

CONCLUSION

• Draw together the most important results and their Consequences

• List any reservations or limitations

• The reader scanning your paper will read the Abstract and the Conclusions, glance at the Figures and move on.

• Do not duplicate the Abstract as the Conclusions or vice versa. • The Abstract is an overview of the entire paper. The

Conclusions are a summing up of the advances in knowledge that have emerged from it

ACKNOWLEDGEMENT

• Thank people who have helped you with ideas, technical assistance, materials or finance

• Keep it simple, give full names and affiliation, and don’t get sentimental

The research was supported by the EPSRC under grant number EJA S67, by the DARPA-ONR MURI program under contract number N00014-1-96- 1028, and by a Research Fellowship from the National Research Council of Canada.

REFERENCES

• Cite significant previous work• Cite sources of theories, data, or anything else

you have taken from elsewhere• References must be complete: name, initials,

year, title, journal, volume, start-page and finish-page

• References tell the reader where an idea, prior results and data have come from

FIGURES• Flow charts show methods, procedures• Graphs plot data• Schematics show how equipment works, or illustrate a mechanism or

model• Drawings and photographs illustrate equipment, microstructures etc

• Anyone scanning your paper will look at the figures and their captions, even if they do not read the text. Make each figure as self-contained as possible, and give it both a title (on the figure itself) and an informative caption (below it). Make sure that the axes are properly labelled, that units are defined and that the figure will tolerate reduction is size without becoming illegible.

• Label each curve of graphs

GRAMMAR (SOME TIPS)

• Grammar tells the reader the function of words and their relationship. Mess up the grammar and you confuse the reader

References

• Anjum Naveed, PhD “Effective Literature Review:

• Mike Ashby, University of Cambridge “How to Write a Paper”