Analysing and summarization of already published work on a specific area of research into a single document is described as review paper and it also provides suggestions and feedbacks of that paper. It helps the readers to understand about all the problems it address and solutions for it.
Why to Write a Review Paper?
To summarize all the available existing literature from different sources, to bring solution for a problem in the particular topic of research is known as the review paper. The significance of writing a review paper is listed below:
- Create new network
- To improve CV
- To enhance the chance of grabbing a job
- To improve the skill of research and writing
- Helps in better understanding of a particular subject or topic
- It helps in determining the methodology followed in previous researches and gives a new perspective for future research
- When you have a review paper or review article with you then you can easily get a seat for PhD program
- You can improve your critical thinking
How to Select the Topic?
- While selecting a topic keep in mind about the key points related to it
- Choose a topic which is in current trend
- Consider about the problem it address
- If a single topic has more review papers in it then the importance of one more review paper in it will be less
- The reference and information available for a topic
How to collect material for review paper?
If you have chosen the topic for your research now you have to collect data from sources such as research papers, books and articles.
Get research papers from journals such as:
- Scopus
- Google Scholar
- Research Gate
- gov
- From many available reference research papers
Go through in the collected data carefully to avoid misunderstanding of the data and to interpret it carefully.
You have to carefully look and select the particular data you want from the high amount of data present. Then you have to take note of the data without dong any changes to the facts. Add more elements like figures, graphs and tables to make your paper more interactive and understand easily by everyone.
Basic Structure of Review Paper
- Abstract
Introduction section should be the first part of your abstract: Write about the main objective of the paper. Explain about the goals and scope of paper. Define about the importance of the topic and also literature gap and problem the review paper address. Mainly you should highlight about the goal and question of the review paper. Give explanation for the approach you used for review such as criteria for literature search, criteria for study inclusion, analytic and systematic procedures.
Write about the insights and key findings: Write briefly about insights and key findings of the review paper. Define about the trends, patterns and themes used in the literature.
Novelty and Contribution: Explain briefly about the unique view point of review paper, innovative insights and contribution it gives. Explain about how the review can advance the knowledge about particular field.
Make sure to use clear and concise language: be very clear and succinct with your language. Avoid using technical and jargon sentences which may cause difficulty for readers. Also make sure to define about the key information of review paper.
Recommendations and Implications: Make sure to suggest some more researches or about the field implications. Finally conclude the section with implications of what you found.
- Introduction
Hook statement: start the introduction part with a thought provoking or hook statement, which will grab the attention of reader. It can use anything like surprising statistic, tropical story or any pertinent phrase. To make your paper more relevant and contemporary you have to write about the background of the topic also. You can use the information such as the recent trends and developments related to the topic.
Research gap or problem: Talk about the problem which your paper is going to address. Discuss about questions and important themes which your paper is going to address. Explain about the objectives and goal of the review paper like synthesizing of information, knowing about the trends or giving a new perspective of the topic. Also explain about the scope of your review paper. Talk about how relevant your review paper is to the literature present. Provide a summary of the key terms and concepts of the paper to give the readers a relevant knowledge about the topic. To make your work more emphasis, list all the materials you included and excluded in your review.
- Methodology review
In this section include all the methods and approaches you used for doing literature review.
- Explain briefly about the goal and purpose of your process.
- Discuss about the methods you followed to find the source material.
- Describe about the criteria which you used to select or eliminate the research topic, it includes defining the publishing categories or the review of relevant criteria.
- Explain about the procedures and tools for data extraction.
- Explain about the techniques you used to gather the information from studies you conducted.
- Discuss about the complete critical analysis done on the literature.
- Explain how all the frameworks help you in understanding and organizing the paper.
- Make sure to mention about the revision for selection criteria and research approach.
- What’s missing?
- For the problem you are going to address do a complete literature study.
- Also conduct a review for the literatures with same kind of trends, patterns and themes.
- Evaluate the techniques you used for study.
- Mention about the different results from different literatures if they are inconsistent.
- The disciplines you follow more can overload your research with upcoming trends and technology.
- Calculate the significance of your study.
- Know about the area in which more research is needed in the topic.
- Identify the recent trend of the field and then formulate your review question.
- Make sure to choose a literature gap which not already discussed in some other review paper
- Find the research gap and identify the solution of it.
- What are the possible applications of this work?
Identify the literature gap and suggest the future scholars to study more about it and find relevant solutions. To enhance the range and the research field encourage the researchers to study more new innovative technology, multidisciplinary approaches or techniques. Suggest scholars to come up with new views to an already existing knowledge.
- What the author learned
At the end in conclusion part, you should highlight about the key results and the gaps you identified from the recent research to bring a new perspective on the topic. Your understanding of the topic should produce a new way and deeper understanding to the subject for future research.
- Give credit where credit is due
Make sure to acknowledge the institutions and individuals those who gave guidance, support and the required resources to complete the review paper at the last acknowledgement section.
- References of research which the author used
It is very important to cite the resources which you used for your study to avoid the plagiarism. The list of reference should be added at the end of paper. Every journal has their specific reference style. References in research paper are lower than reference in review paper.
Journal selection
Consider the following foe selecting a journal:
- Quality or standard of journal
- Scope of journal
- Indexing status
- Impact factor
- Time to get published
- Charges for publication
- Journals care like UGC
- Peer-review journal
- Reference style is important and if your paper didn’t selected for publication in the first attempt, don’t lose hope and work more on it to make it better and use your next chance.
