STEM: Lit Reviews

A literature review is "a systematic, explicit, and reproducible method for identifying, evaluating, and synthesizing the existing body of completed and recorded work produced by researchers, scholars, and practitioners."

 - From Conducting Research Literature Reviews: From Internet to Paper, by Arlene Fink, 2nd ed. Sage Publications: Thousand Oaks, 2020.

A Literature review is the FIRST STEP in conducting STEM research.  A properly conducted review "helps the researcher gain familiarity with the existing work in the chosen area of research and subsequently allows for the expansion of knowledge based on this background" (p 311).

Literature reviews are "a prerequisite to get familiarized with the known content of the research topic of interest to:

• build new hypotheses;
• design new experiments; and,
• interpret new findings in the context of known facts" (p 311).

Proficiency in conducting and dissecting literature reviews leads to the following student learning outcomes (p 312):

1. Broaden their perspectives by learning the evolution of the research topic and identifying unanswered questions. 
2. Connect to the core scientific process by making evidence-based claims followed up through a literature review.
3. Gain experiential learning that research is collaborative in nature across disciplinary boundaries.
4. Develop skills in retrieving information through effective reading and analysis.
5. Hone skills in effective writing and communication to share knowledge.

Hati, S., & Bhattacharyya, S. (2024). Writing a literature review as a class project in an upper‐level undergraduate biochemistry course. Biochemistry and Molecular Biology Education, 52(3), 311-316.

Scope:

1. Background or Mini-review - short reviews focusing on the last few years, with a limit on the number of words and citations. Usually serve as background for an empirical study. Generally, these reviews: 
   1. justify research design decisions
   2. provide theoretical context, or
   3. identify a gap in the literature
       
2. Standalone or Full-review - advantage of more freedom to cover in detail the complexities of a particular scientific development. Generally, these reviews attempt to make sense of a body entire of of existing literature through:
   1. aggregation
   2. interpretation
   3. explanation, and/or
   4. integration

Format: 

1. Descriptive Reviews – most common - focus on methodology, findings and interpretation of each reviewed study - do not aim to expand upon the literature, but describe it
   1. Narrative Reviews - persuasive presentation of literature to support overall conclusions;  lacks a formal data extraction process
   2. Textual Narrative Reviews - various study characteristics are pulled out & compared for similarities & differences;  more rigorous due to standardized data extraction process
   3. Metasummary - adds a quantitative element to the summary through systematic data extraction & calculation of effect sizes
   4. Meta-narrative - identifies research traditions relevant to the research question and included studies
   5. Scoping Reviews - extracts as much relevant data from each reviewed piece of literature - comprehensive
      1. identify conceptual boundaries of field
      2. size of pool of research
      3. types of available evidence
      4. research gaps
          
2. Test - looks to answer a question about the literature or test a specific hypothesis
   1. Meta-analysis - quantitative data extraction; summary statistic common to each study extracted as the dependent variable (or effect size); meta-regression synthesis 
   2. Bayesian meta-analysis - addresses qualitative data - calculates prior and posterior probabilities to determine the importance of variables on an outcome
   3. Realist review - 
3. Integrative Review – find common ideas & concepts from reviewed material

Method:

1. Narrative Review – qualitative
2. Systematic Review - tests a hypothesis based on published evidence, gathered using a predefined protocol to reduce bias
   1. Meta-analyses – Systematic Reviews that analyze quantitative results in a quantitative way

Pautasso M.(2013). Ten simple rules for writing a literature review. PLoS Comput Biol., 9(7):e1003149. doi:10.1371/journal.pcbi.1003149. ; and,

Xiao, Y., & Watson, M. (2019). Guidance on conducting a systematic literature review. Journal of Planning Education and Research, 39(1), 93-112. https://doi.org/10.1177/0739456X17723971

1. Topic selection 
2. Extracting relevant information
3. Discussion & feedback
4. Compilation of results