R. Sarma

Checklist for a good literature survey

Some of the essential elements in conducting a good literature survey are listed below. The real world consequences of not conducting a thorough literature survey may be (a) you write up your entire work as a technical paper and find out that the reviewers reject your paper because they think the work has been done before, (b) you present your work to a group of people (may be a potential boss or a potential funder) only to have them question why you did not look at some article, (c) you keep working and spending time on something or the other, only to realize in the end that someone else has presented a solution to the very same problem, or (d) you are not confident that the work you are doing is really new. To avoid potentially embarassing situations, it is always advisable to have spent time conducting a good literature search. Besides, conducting a good literature search is a good confidence booster. So make yourself responsible enough (do not let anyone tell you to do what you should be doing on your own initiative), do not depend on anyone else, and read on ....

find/collect all relevant literature in area of interest

reasons for the above

to ensure that the wheel is not being reinvented
to ensure the relevance of the area of interest (very important in engineering)
to ensure up to date knowledge in field
to enable identification of new, useful problems in area of interest

what it means to do a good job of the above

to get to know all available library search engines thoroughly (ME students at ISU may use the EI Compendex)
to learn how to effectively use the search engines

learn keyword, author, title searches
get to know the librarians' tips for searching for articles

to identify important books in the area of interest (gives a concise and comprehensive idea of the area of interest)
to identify technical journals and journal papers in the area of interest (gives current trends in area that are not available in books)
to identify trade journals and journal articles in the area of interest (gives practical suggestions and food for thought about practical concerns in industry)
to identify conferences and proceedings in the area (gives current trends in area of interest)
to persevere in following up on a lead (even though it may not be directly in your area of interest) when you have the slightest thought that it may be helpful
to persevere in obtaining articles even though the articles are not available in the library or are checked out by other patrons

try the interlibrary loan
try placing a recall
try contacting professors in the department to check if they have the articles/books

to persevere and be patient when books or articles cannot be found in the locations where they are supposed to be
to patiently collect all material (usually this will take an entire afternoon or an entire day; you will get a significant aerobic workout, not to mention you will do weight lifting as well)

what it means to do a bad job of the above

to be ignorant about your library resources
to do an incomplete or halfhearted search in the library
to use a single set of keywords in a search engine, turn up with couple articles, and think that the search is over
to not be familiar with the important journals in the area of interest
to not be familiar with the important books in the area of interest
to give up or be lazy at the slightest hint of hard work
to complain or blame others for not being successful in search

understand all the literature collected

reasons for the above

to ensure that you have a good foundation on which to build research
to ensure that you are not unintensionally reinventing the wheel
to ensure that you propose a robust and useful solution to a problem in the area of interest

what it means to do a good job of the above

to not be discouraged when you read the latest journal article in the area of interest and do not fully grasp the concepts
to persevere in searching for the article(s) that started the idea so that you will understand the theory better
to know your own strengths and weaknesses and look for articles that present material in a way that you understand
to read all articles with the idea of understanding the overall concepts and not of routine details
to read an article; make list of concepts that are not clear; and conduct a search for articles in gray areas
to not get bogged down by details in a single article
to try to connect ideas from different articles
to implement the ideas in articles so that you know exactly how the algorithm/problem works
to not assume that everything in a published article is God's word
to question why a particular problem was solved in a particular way
to not get bogged down by presentation style
to give each article your utmost attention before deciding it is no good
to have your own criteria for judging the quality of each article before you go off spending enormous amounts of time trying to understand nada
to understand and accept the fact that there will be good, moderate and bad articles

what it means to do a bad job of the above

to criticize the authors of the articles saying that they do not know what they wrote
to be discouraged at the first sign that you do not understand an article (realize that others may have spent a significant time of their life trying to come up with the concepts that you are trying to understand in one hour)
to cursorily read an article and think you understand it
to read an article and not be able to answer simple questions about it; or claim that the article did not answer that particular question
to read an article and not look for other articles in areas you are not clear about
to not be able to judge the quality of articles
to spend enormous amounts of time on an article that is not relevant
to get caught up trying to figure out a single detail in an article
to read all articles and still not be able to answer simple questions in area
to have an attitude that you will try to understand material without implementing or doing the hard work

summarize the literature
identify literature, not necessarily directly in the area of interest, that may be important
identify the quality of the literature and take it for what it is worth
identify good authors/researchers who are active in the area of interest
keep up to date on current literature
organize the literature collected

http://www.public.iastate.edu/~cadcam