Housekeeping

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Housekeeping

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GSOE9400 2009 Day 5 Part 1Thinking and Writing
the Literature Review

• Presented by Pam Mort and Dr Andrew Dempster

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Expectations?

• a comprehensive and critical review of the
  literature relevant to the topic. This review
  should contain a critical assessment of past work
  and conclude with a clear indication of your
  projects relevance to it
• (From School of Chemical Engineering
  Industrial Chemistry Postgraduate Information
  handbook, 2001, p 10)

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Purpose?

• Define and limit the area of study
• Place your project in context of previous
  research
• Evaluate promising research methods
• Suggest directions for your research
• Present a rationale for your study

C A R S
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Audience?

• helps you understand the context and significance
  of your ideas/work.
• gives your lecturer/supervisor an idea of the
  breadth of your knowledge.
• shows your review committee or examiner that you
  have a good understanding of the research in your
  field.

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Finished?

• A core preliminary literature review early
• Could be your first publication!
• Gaps in the review may become obvious as you do
  research - new articles will be published- your
  research direction/scope may change...
• Preliminary literature reviews are usually
  revised during writing up the thesis

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Pitfalls?

• Avoiding writing
• Looking for the perfect article with all the
  answers
• Not showing your insights
• Being longwinded and descriptive
• Ignoring your reader

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Structure?

• ? Introduction
• introduce the topic and its importance/value,
• present the purpose or function of the chapter,
• give an explanation/outline of the chapter.
• Body - aims to answer the following questions
• What is the field of research or the topic being
  reviewed?
• What keyconcepts, theories, or laws relate to the
  topic?
• What aspects of the topic have previous
  researchers already studied?
• What is lacking in previous research, or what
  requires further investigation?
• What possibilities emerge from the literature for
  your research topic?
• ? Conclusion
• State the significance of what you have
  discussed,
• Summarise key questions /aspects that are worth
  investigating further.
• Summarise key methods, or approaches that show
  potential.

General problem
Describing
Explaining
Comparing
Evaluating
Gap/CARS
Specific problem
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Managing Information ideas?

• Write a page which summarises your ideas on the
  area.
• Sort your notes by grouping authors and articles
  
• Write a plan, draft TOC, mind-map or flowchart
• Develop your argument by linking literature to
  your research aim
• Back up your opinion with facts and theory
• Account for different opinions
• Make clear connections between the sections of
  the review
• Draft and redraft
• Be clear about whose work is presented
• Look at good models
• Get feedback

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Task Organising your literature review

• Develop some specific questions you need to
  answer when reading about your topic area.
• Decide what the major themes of your literature
  review might be.
• 3. Create a draft table of contents for your
  literature review.
• 4. Discuss your ideas with your peers

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Demonstration- Text types in literature review
extracts

• Where is the writer describing?
• Where is the writer explaining?
• Where is the writer comparing?
• Where is the writer evaluating?
• What gap/s or problems are identified?

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• The removal of contaminated materials
  appears to solve the contamination problems but
  several factors need to first be considered
  (Boulding 1995)
• The excavation and handling of the contaminated
  soil
• The distance and method of transport and the
  risks to the public on the transport route,
• Political, social, and economic factors
  associated with locating a new site,
• The disposal of contaminated ground water at both
  sites,
• The control of nuisances and vectors during
  excavation, and
• Reclamation of the excavated site.
• When combined, these factors often mean that the
  cost of removing contaminated substances to a new
  site is large (Domenico etal. 1990, Fetter 1993).
  The main problem with the removal of a
  contaminant source is that it does not resolve
  the problem but simply transfers it to another
  location and/or time.

Evaluating - claim
Describing- Listing characteristics
Explaining effect/outcome
Gap/problem
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• The vibrating beam technique is used to place
  thin curtains into shallow aquifers. This
  containment method is often referred to as a
  slurry wall but is more closely related to a
  grout curtain. The beam is vibrated into the soil
  to the required depth and as it is withdrawn, a
  slurry is injected under pressure ( Knox et al.
  1985). This technique is clearly limited to
  homogenous unconsolidated soils.

Describing
Comparing
Explaining
Evaluating
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• The process of ploymerisation basically forms
  a long chain molecule from short chain molecules
  (Moeller et al. 1989). The obvious benefit of
  polymerization is that by increasing the size of
  the molecule, it becomes less soluble and also
  less able to be carried in the ground water.
  However, the reaction process means that it will
  only be effective for organic monomers. As with
  all in-situ chemical technologies, the chemicals
  added to the aquifer may react to form toxic
  substances (Knox et al 1985). As for
  precipitation reactions, the permeability around
  injection wells decreases and thus they will need
  to be closely spaced.

Describing
Evaluating
Explaining
Evaluating
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• Many of the chemicals outlined in the
  precipitation section ( 3.3.1) can only be used
  for a small range of chemicals and thus a
  combination or even a series of walls may be
  needed to treat a ground water plume. Starr and
  Cherry (1994) suggest that it may be possible to
  have a number of permeable treatment in series
  with different treatment mechanisms using a
  funnel and gate configuration.

Evaluating (problem and effect)
Gap possibility
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Beginning a literature review...

• Introduction
• introduce the topic and its importance/value,
• present the purpose or function of the chapter,
• give an explanation/outline of the chapter.
• 1 to 2 paragraphs

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Ending a literature review

• A conclusion gives a summary of key points that
  you have decided are true. These points are based
  on the facts, evidence, reasoning, and opinions
  that you presented and discussed in the body of
  the review.
• Conclusions are briefly justified
• Summarise key questions /aspects that are worth
  investigating further.
• Summarise key methods, or approaches that show
  potential.
• It should be clear from the conclusion what will
  be your research scope and direction.
• 1 to 2 paragraphs
• Think about
• What are your conclusions?- make a list and
  discuss with a colleague and your supervisor.
• Check that each conclusion relates to your
  problem statement and your research/project aim/s
  (Day 6 slides)

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Final Words...

• The background section should include a
  review of previous work that has been done on the
  topic and its current status as a research and
  conceptual problem. The literature review should
  organized previous work into sensible categories,
  not just provide a listing of potentially
  relevant papers. The review need not be
  exhaustive. Whatever is included should be
  pertinent, correct, and demonstrative of your
  knowledge of the field. Overly long literature
  reviews are often an indication that the writer
  does not really understand the problem with which
  he is dealing. (Thompson nd)

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Finding your voiceAvoiding plagiarism
GSOE9400 2009Day 5 Part 2

• Presented by Pam Mort and Dr Andrew Dempster

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• Barriers
• Im not an expert so I cannot comment
• I feel uncomfortable being critical of
  published work
• I dont want to be disrespectful
• I dont know how to say my opinion appropriately
• Advice
• Ensure that your notes from the literature
  include the categories in the annotated
  bibliography task
• (reference, rating, keywords, aim, finding,, -,
  contribution, relevance)
• In your review
• Critique and critical in an academic context DO
  NOT mean to find fault with something- it should
  be a fair, unbiased and accurate evaluation ( ,
  - , ?, !)
• Show the breadth and depth of your review
• Show your understanding and insights
• Use language appropriately
• Do not plagiarise

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Extent and depth of the review

• Used a variety of sources?
• Research Technical papers
• Conference proceedings
• Theses
• Field trips/site visits
• Personal contacts
• Synthesised into a logical discussion?
• Question Who are the leaders in your topic area
  in terms of research, technology, opinions?

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Understanding and Insights

• Comparing, contrasting evaluating
• Theories
• Results
• Explanations
• Indicating gaps
• Open problems
• New possibilities
• Task Looking at the above points, briefly
  explain to a partner what you have discovered
  about your topic area - in terms of problems,
  gaps and possible ways to find solutions.

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Appropriate language

• Report accurately what authors did, felt,
  believed
• A few research groups have paid attention to the
  miscibility issues between liquid crystalline
  copoly and polycarbonate 5-7.
• DiBennettos group 10 had tried adding and
  obtained some improvements
• Bairds group 11,12 studied binary blends of
  PEI and Vectra A900 and found they are
  immiscible.
• Whereas some authors 7-9 failed to detect any
  multimolecular association, others 10-12 found
  well-defined micelles.
• Sometimes the impersonal it as the subject
  is used with the passive form of the reporting
  verb to present research. These usually have a
  structure like
• It is believed/known/. or It has been
  found
• It is well known that in these cases, the block
  copolymer may associate in solution to form
  1-4.

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Adjectives
The research is.. unusual useful simple ambitious
preliminary elegant limited significant tradition
al important modest small scale careful explorator
y innovative flawed unsatisfactory
competent remarkable impressive interesting compl
ex

• Adjectives describe a persons or a things
  qualities and characteristics.
• In the context of discussing research in your
  field, rate the connotation of the adjectives as
• positive, negative , neutral or depends

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• To show that the review is accurate, thorough and
  fair, writers may use a number of adjectives.
• Wilsons (1995) preliminary investigation did
  reveal one potentially significant relationship
  between

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Modality

• In some cases we cannot make comments about
  research, methods, results or recommendations
  that are 100 certain. Instead writers can use
  model verbs, adverbs and adjectives that express
  degrees of certainty, possibility, and
  probability.
• Another possible mechanism for circumventing
  the entropy penalty would be through the
  formation of a branched structure(Jones 2004).
• Modality can also be expressed in the type of
  verb you select. For example, saying something is
  essential or required expresses certainty and
  obligation.

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Negative - Positive

• Contrary to the statement in Horn et al. 85
  regarding the very little maintenance or
  updating of the knowledge (p.11), Compton et al
  88 graphically details the problems encountered
  in the knowledge maintenance of Garvan ES1. In
  particular, Compton and Jansen 88 claim that
  knowledge maintenance proceeds at the rate of
  approximately one rule per half day. Compton et
  al. 88 describes the problems associated with
  maintaining Garvan ES1, and is one of the few
  papers available in the literature today
  discussing the maintenance issue.

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Positive negative - positive

• Mach ABB 86 later popularised the microkernal
  concept, and formed the base of a significant
  body of operating system research. However,
  microkernals gained the reputation of being slow,
  inflexible and not at all micro. This
  reputation was later shown to be ill deserved by
  the L4 microkernal Lie95b, HHL 97

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Neutral negative - positive

• The Huggins-Flory theory predicts that the
  solubility can be achieved only by the effect of
  combinational entropy. The theory was amended by
  Flory 21 to incorporate the excluded volume
  effect and that X12 is both entropic and
  enthalpic in nature. However the theory still
  could not predict an LCST and polymer/polymer
  miscibility. Subsequent work by Utracki 23 on
  the Maron theory of volume changes on mixing 23
  resulted in the addition of volume coefficients
  to allow for an LCST predicting method.

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Identifying the writers voice
These tasks are recommended for independent study

• Read a literature review in a thesis or a journal
  article
• Locate words and phrases that are used to
  introduce the source
• Locate words or phrases that indicate the
  writers stance or opinion towards the source
  (eg tentative, certain, positive, negative,
  neutral)
• What words or phrases does the writer use to
  concede a point or to make a stronger point?
  (Hint look at the use and placement of while,
  although, however, nevertheless, contrary to etc)
• Where does the writer summarise /paraphrase the
  ideas in the literature and how much detail do
  they provide?
• Is strong-author focus or weak-author focus used?
  Do you think it changes the tone of the writing?
• (Questions adapted from Bruce 2001)

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Why review past theses?

• Part of the literature
• More detail than journal papers
• Give ideas and inspiration for your literature
  review
• Provide models ( -) for your own writing
• Location?
• Check your school and UNSW library thesis
  collection seek supervisor recommendation
• Online via Library home page gt resourcesgt UNSW
  digital theses
• More guidelines- Learning Centre - Honours Thesis
  Writing for Engineering and Science
  http//www.lc.unsw.edu.au/thesis/index.html

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Plagiarism

• Plagiarism is a serious offence at university and
  in professional fields.
• Plagiarism means to take another persons idea,
  design, images, words, text etc and present it as
  your own.
• Most plagiarism is unintentional and is usually a
  sign of poor note making and poor summarising and
  paraphrasing skills.
• Plagiarism can be reduced by taking accurate
  notes, having good summarising and paraphrasing
  skills, and by following referencing conventions.

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What is Plagiarism?

• Downloading an assignment from the web and
  submitting as your own work
• Buying/borrowing/stealing an assignment
  submitting as your own work
• Copying sections of text from another source and
  submitting it as your own work
• Paraphrasing/summarising ideas from another
  source and submitting it as your own work
• Repeated use of long quotations in an assignment

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If you plagiarise

• Your work will be returned to you for corrections
  and resubmission
• Repeated plagiarism may result in
• Your name being placed on the UNSW plagiarism
  register
• Your work being failed
• You losing your candidature

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A few more words about plagiarism...

• Dont do it!
• Ask yourself, How do I know this ?
• If you answer, I read about it in that paper on
  ...., then reference!
• Q. Which referencing style do I use?-
• A. Choose a leading journal in your field-
  download their guide to authors.
• Reference all types of information e.g. text,
  images, figures, tables, ideas...

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To avoid Plagiarising

• Record all bibliographic details at the reading
  note-making stage
• Take accurate and clear notes
• Try to put info. in your own words as much as
  possible and always reference the source
• Think about what the information means and how
  you can use it in your report..notes to self
• Use sources to support your points/opinions
• Refer to a style guide and be consistent

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Conclusion

• Plagiarism can be reduced by taking accurate
  and useful notes, having good summarising and
  paraphrasing skills, and by following referencing
  conventions.
• Notice how writers in your field present and
  comment on the literature try to adopt similar
  expressions and tone.
• Questions?