Literature Reviews and Searching

This webinar is a “Literature 101” providing a great explanation about the purpose and processes involved in a literature review. It explores methods of searching for the source; how to dig through extensive information; and how to put it together – from notes to narrative.

A literature review explores and evaluates the literature on a specific topic or question. It synthesises the contributions of the different authors, often to identify areas that need further exploration. The point of a stanalone literature review is to demonstrate that you have read widely in your field and you understand the main arguments. As part of a thesis or reserach paper, the literature review defines your project by establishing how your work will extend or differ from previous work and what contribution it will make.

What is a literature review? Western Alliance provides information on resources and contacts in the Western region, developing a question to guide the literature search, searching the literature, reading and evaluating papers, summarising the useful and relvant papers, further resources.

This introductory program was created by JSTOR to help you get familiar with basic research concepts needed for success in research. The course contains three modules, each made up of three short lessons and three sets of practice quizzes. The topics covered are subjects that will help you prepare for college-level research. Each module ends with an assessment to test your knowledge.

Take your literature searching skills to the next level with this online interactive course. With real interactive literature search examples, you’ll learn how to conduct a literature search with a systematic approach and refine your search for the best results. You’ll gain the competence to perform a comprehensive literature search, understand the value of citation analysis, and stay up to date with the latest research. We’ll also cover the role of reference management software in research writing.

Click on ‘Learn more’, then on the RET Program website, click on ‘log in’, sign up as a new member with your details. When you come to ‘Institution’ in the drop-down box, click on ‘@research’, you will then be asked to click on your health service in the drop-down box. In the next box where it asks for the @Research Access Code, enter ‘atResearch’. Registering this way will provide free access to the RET Program courses, courtesy of @research.

This guide provides information to understand the purpose of a Literature review, search for information, analysis; synthesis of the literature and writing the review.

This guide covers: Identifying key terms and concepts, Combining search terms and concepts, Advanced search operators – truncation and wildcards, Phrase searching, Subject headings, Creating a gold set.

Short quiz of 3 questions that directs you to the review most suited to your research design.

Links to topics: Concept and Planning, Searching and Literature Review, Data Collection and Analysis, Writing and Publishing, Promotion and Impact.

Assoc Prof Andrea Tricco explains how to conduct and report your scoping review using the latest guidance. Includes scoping review steps, how to develop a protocol, inclusion criteria, search stragey, sources of evidence selction, data extraction, analysis of evidence, presentation of results, the PRISMA-ScR checklist.

Grey Literature is best described by the type of document it embodies. In order to better enable the net-user to identify grey literature, explore this resource for the list of document types drafted.

Grey literature refers to material produced in non-traditional ways, outside the control of commercial publishers. Grey literature can be created at all levels of government, academia, and industry, in print or electronic formats (Schopfel, 2010). Types of grey literature include, but are not limited to, theses, conference proceedings, government and industry reports, and blogs.