Need for literature in
research article and dissertation:
Biomedical research is
at its peak today and publicationsare also increasing exponentially in the last
few decades necessitating the need for dedicated medical
writing services with domain-related expertise. Despite
this, the number of rejections is on the rise. A good literature review,
identifying the area of research in a crisp manner and clearly defining
relevance of the research are often lacking resulting in rejection of
manuscripts. Biomedical
literature review is the first step towards any research.
·
Literature review
explores previous research conducted in the field of interest, the limitations
and conflict areas identified and the need for further research. This justifies
the relevance and originality of the research work.
·
It also helps one in
understanding and formulating one’s area of research in a better manner and
justifies the methodology used.
·
Literature
review helps connectthe statistical
findings of the research with prior research statistics.
Use of literature review:
There
are various circumstances under which one must do a literature review.
·
Introduction to a primary research topic – This
sets the context for the research article or dissertation by analysing
previously published literature and clearly defining the place of the current
research and its contribution to the advancement in the understanding of the
topic in question.
·
Systematic review –It is related to meta-analysis
and provide a quantitative or less often qualitative statistic summarizing
several papers.
·
Secondary data analysis projects-
It is a research project on its own and begins with a clear research
question. The project aims at analysing
available data in answering the question.
Source of data:
Data has been sourced from libraries as well as
digital sources. This is a cumbersome activity which continues throughout all
the stages of the study and hence, it should be started early in the phase of
research.
Citations:
·
Picking up articles for
review is another art and one should have clear inclusion and exclusion
criteria to perform a relevant review. Also, citations should be recent and not
too old and outdated in current context.
·
Adequate number of
citations is often defined by the journal and that needs to be followed. Too
few or too many citations fail to convey the crux in the correct proportions.
Organising data:
There are several ways to organize biomedical literature
review and are used by PhD students for their biomedical
dissertations.
·
Scientific
manuscript writing services commonly use
chronological sequence for listing out literature for review. This is often the
method adopted when we are talking about something that we wish to trace over
time and the topic has evolved over the years.
·
Another method often
used in scientific
article writing is a well-argued
format grouping those with one school of thought together to contrast with
those that are different from the first school of thought. This methodology is
useful whenever there are two or more contrasting views that have probably been
debated and still hold ground in different studies.
The road ahead:
Literature
review guidelines need to be defined in more precise
terms. There are many shortcomings in the review of literature in the absence
of uniformity of performing this task. Bias is to be reduced by clear
definition of the methodology that is the need of the hour.
And so:
With
increase in the number of publications, it becomes important to set the factual
context of the current research study that one wishes to get published. This is
relevant to participate in the ongoing ‘dialogue’ on the subject and contribute
positively to that area of research. A thorough and relevant review of
literature is paramount for this.
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