Background reading
Literature review
References & bibliography
Overview
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Why review the literature?
How do your background reading
Writing your literature review
Bibliographic references and citation
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Why review the literature?
• Find out more about your topic
• Show how your work fits into the context of what
other people have done
– Absolute originality not expected (for MSc) but some
degree of novelty required
• Show that you understand how your work fits
into the context of what other people have done
• Clarify which parts of your work are original, and
which are based on other people’s work
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“What other people have done”
• General background to the topic
• Remember thesis~antithesis~synthesis?
– Your review may include some discussion of
conflicting opinions
– Critical analysis is important: say where you
stand on any debatable issues
• You may (also) want to chart the
development of the topic: historical
perspective
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How to do your background reading
• Identify useful sources
– Your supervisor should help
• But see next slide
– But so should your reading
• Follow up references in what you are reading
• But not slavishly: be selective
• Often-cited sources are a must-read, and should be cited
You should try to “recognise names that reappear. They are often
the leading people in the field. [... W]hen an examiner looks at a
literature review they will expect to see certain names, leading
names, and if they are not there you are not going to get the marks
or approval.” (Tony Ward, CQU webpage)
• At some point you will find that what you’re reading is
covering the same ground
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Identifying useful sources
• Supervisor may make suggestions
– Though possibly not for general introductions suitable for your
background
– May be able to “vet” what you have found
• Nowadays everyone starts with a web search
– But web-based sources can be very variable
– Learn how to recognize reliable sources
• Preferably, it will be an online version of a published paper
• (How would you know?)
• Otherwise check the URL, which may indicate its source (a
university or an official organization
• You may find an existing review of your topic
– Use this as a guide, but not necessarily as a model
– And only if it passes the “reliability” test
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Identifying useful sources
• Be realistic about how much you can read
• Look at the date
– How relevant is that old stuff?
• Do a lot of other articles refer to it?
– Why does everyone refer to it?
• Because it expresses the fundamental theory behind this
approach
• Because it has historical significance: it got everyone thinking
in a new way, but it’s now pretty much outdated
• Beware of self-references
– You may just get the same thing over again
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Identifying useful sources
• Always prefer refereed, published articles
– Journal articles rather than books
• Books OK for general background
• Prefer textbooks or introductory books
• Book-length theses (monographs): try to find a
shorter article with the same author/title
– Avoid web pages which are not signed
(author/s names) and dated
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Identifying the source of a web page
• PDF or RTF more likely to be a genuine article
• Look on the web page itself for its source
• Otherwise, search the web using
– The title of the page
– The author names
• Go to the author’s home page and search under
their Publications list
• In any case you will need this info for your
bibliography
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How to read
For each source, ask yourself
• Has the author formulated a problem/issue?
• Is it clearly defined?
– Is its significance clearly established?
• What is the author's research orientation?
• What is the author's a priori theoretical framework?
• What is the relationship between the theoretical and
research perspectives?
• Has the author evaluated the literature relevant to the
problem/issue?
– Does the author include literature taking positions she or he
does not agree with?
• ... cont.
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How to read
• In a research study, how good are the basic components of the
study design?
– How accurate and valid are the measurements?
– Is the analysis of the data accurate and relevant to the research
question?
– Are the conclusions validly based upon the data and analysis?
• In material written for a popular readership,
– Does the author use appeals to emotion, one-sided examples, or rhetoricallycharged language and tone?
– Is there an objective basis to the reasoning, or is the author merely "proving"
what he or she already believes?
• How does the author structure the argument?
– Can you "deconstruct" the flow of the argument to see whether or where it
breaks down logically (e.g., in establishing cause-effect relationships)?
• How does the article contribute to our understanding of the problem
under study, and in what ways is it useful in practice?
• What are the strengths and limitations?
• How does the article relate to the your specific topic?
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Writing your literature review
The review should ...
• be organized around and related directly
to your topic
• synthesize results into a summary of
what is and is not known
• identify areas of controversy in the
literature
• formulate questions that need further
research
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Your review should ...
• be more than a simple summary of what
you have read
• be organized around themes
• offer both summary and synthesis
“A summary is a recap of the important information of the source, but a
synthesis is a re-organization, or a reshuffling, of that information. It might
give a new interpretation of old material or combine new with old
interpretations. Or it might trace the intellectual progression of the field,
including major debates. And depending on the situation, the literature review
may evaluate the sources and [take a stand] on the most pertinent or
relevant.”
(UNC web page, n.d.; emphases added)
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How to organize your review
• Chronological?
– Go through your sources in the order they were
published
– Usually makes it difficult to show connectivity, and to
bring out antithesis and synthesis
• Thematic
– Better to have a structure which considers different
themes, and juxtaposes the different viewpoints
– There may still be a chronological element to this of
course
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Choosing what to cite
In your review (and in general), citations indicate the
source of some fact/idea
– To support its veracity
• Especially if it is quantitative
• Or surprising/controversial
– To identify it with some personality/school of thought
– To show that you are in touch with the literature
– To allow the reader to check that’s what was said (and
the context)
• So giving an accurate reference is important
– To show that you are not claiming it to be your original
idea
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Bibliographic references and
citation: Quotation vs citation
• Use direct quotes sparingly. If it’s >4 lines you
probably should be summarizing what they said
• If it’s <4 words, is it necessary to quote?
• Yes if it’s a technical term or an unusual turn of phrase, and
you want to give its original source
• No if it’s really the only way to say something ordinary
• Quoting (and citing sources) is not (necessarily)
a defence against a charge of plagiarism
• “Plagiarism” is use of sources without citation, i.e. passing it
off as your own work
• But if you don’t contribute anything original, this is almost as
bad as plagiraism
Type, don’t swipe
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Conventions in quoting
• “Quote marks surround the entire
quotation.”
• But “Sometimes” you have to “split the
quotation up”.
• Use square brackets to indicate
– Extra words
– Summarized words
– Explanation or correction
• Use dots to indicate omitted words
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Conventions in quoting
In the example above, the
writers refer to several
other sources when
making their point.
A literature review in this
sense is just like any
other academic research
piper. Your interpretation
of the available sources
must be backed up with
evidence to show that
what you are saying is
valid.
“In the example [about
Moby Dick] above, the
writers refer to several
other sources when
making their point.
A literature review in this
sense is just like any other
academic research
p[a]per. Your interpretation
of the available sources
must [show] evidence [...]
that what you are saying is
valid.”
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Conventions in quoting
• [sic]
– Yes that’s really what they said (e.g. a
misspelling or bad grammar that you don’t
want to correct, or some other error)
• emphasis (or emphases) added or original
(at end)
• Give the source in the conventional
manner (see next slide(s)) and ...
• ALWAYS give the page number
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Conventions in citing
• There are a number of citation conventions
which you will come across
– Footnotes
– Numbered references in text, bibliography in citation
order [Vancouver style]
– Numbered references in text, bibliography in
alphabetical order
– Name (date) style [Harvard style]
• This is the system preferred in the School of Informatics
• Full details in Appendix 5 of Masters Dissertation Project
handbook
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Footnotes and numbered references
• Less disruptive to the text flow
• But involve more housekeeping
– Refs must be renumbered if you add a new
one
– But bibliographic software can do this for you
• Note use of ibid. and idem. [= ‘the same’]
• And op. cit. [= previously cited work]
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Citing in the text
• Refer to the work by its author’s family name
and the date of publication
• In the normal text flow:
– Smith (1997) claims ...
• In parentheses:
– It has been claimed (Smith, 1997) that ...
• Multiple authors:
– Smith and Jones (2001); (Smith and Jones, 2001)
– Smith et al. (1999); (Smith et al., 1999)
– Note italics and punctuation
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Citing in the text
• Multiple citations:
– (Smith, 1997; Jones ,1999)
– Usually given in chronological (because more logical) or
alphabetical (because easier to look up) order
• Multiple citations by the same author (or two authors with
same surname)
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(Smith, 1997, 1998)
If the same year, use a,b,c,...
(Smith, 1997a,b) or (Smith, 1997a, 1997b)
Note possibility of Smith et al. (1997a,b) even though “et al.”
refers to different co-authors!
– Beware of wrongly “copying” this notation from a secondary
source
• When quoting (as opposed to citing), give the page
number
– Smith (1997, p.48) or Smith (1997:48)
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Bibliography
• Remember the golden rule: give as much
information as is necessary for the reader to find
the source
– ALL the authors’ names (as they appear on the publication)
– The date
– The full name of the journal or conference, as it appears on the
publication
– Place of publication, or where the conference took place
– Volume number and page numbers (of the whole article, not just
the page you quote)
• List ONLY the sources you have cited or quoted
in the text
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Bibliography
• Even with Harvard system, exact layout differs
from publication to publication
• Important thing is CONSISTENCY
• Bibliographic software should help
• List references in alphabetical order of first
author’s family name
– In case of multiple authors, give authors in the order
they appear in the source; sort references in order of
second author’s name
– In case of multiple references by the same author,
arrange in chronological order
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Bibliography
• Books
– Give full title in italics, place and name of publisher,
e.g.:
Dennis, A., Wixom, B.H. and Teagarden, D. (2002) Systems
Analysis and Design: An Object-Oriented Approach with
UML, New York: Wiley.
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BE CONSISTENT in capitalization and punctuation
Give first-named place of publication
How do you find out the publication details?
If edited collection, add “(ed.)” or “(eds)” after author
names
– Give edition number if not 1st
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Bibliography
• Journal articles
– Give full title of article (optionally in quotes), full name
of journal in italics, volume and page numbers.
– No need to give place and name of publisher
– Some bibliographies use a set of standard
abbreviations in journal names
– BE CONSISTENT in capitalization and punctuation
– van Quekelberghe, P.R., Jakob, T., Hoffmann, D., Wetter, T. and
Finkeissen, E. (2005) ‘Minimalist knowledge representation of
primary care diseases in the medrapid.info knowledge base’,
Informatics in Primary Care 13, pp. 239-48.
– If article is also available on the web, add “available
at” and give the URL and last date of access
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Bibliography
• Article in edited collection
– Give full title of article (optionally in quotes), then full
details of the book (as in previous slide), then page
numbers.
– Zue, V. (1997) ‘Transmission and storage’, in Cole, R.A., Mariani, J.,
Uszkoreit, H., Varile, G.B., Zaenen, A., Zue, V. and Zampolli, A. (eds)
Survey of the State of the Art in Human Language Technology,
Cambridge: CUP/Giardini, pp. 645-76.
– If you are citing several articles form the same book,
give the book as a separate entry, and refer as
follows:
– Zue, V. (1997) ‘Transmission and storage’, in Cole et al. (1997), pp. 64576.
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Bibliography
• Paper in conference proceedings
– Give full title of article (optionally in quotes), full name of
conference in italics, place and page numbers.
– Some proceedings appear as edited collections (notably in
Springer’s LNCS series): treat them as such if you like
– BE CONSISTENT in capitalization and punctuation
– Newell, A.F.(1990) ‘Speech technology: Cross fertilization
between research for the disabled and the non-disabled’, in
Proceedings of the First ISAAC Research Symposium in
Augmentative and Alternative Communication, Stockholm, no
page numbers .
– If article is also available on the web, add “available at” and give
the URL and last date of access
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• Web page
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Think twice: is the best source you can give?
Does it appear elsewhere as a “proper” publication?
Remember, it may disappear or change tomorrow
OK, if you must: give author (if any; if not how are you
going to refer to it? Institution is OK), date (or “n.d.”),
title and URL, plus date last accessed.
– UNC (n.d.) ‘Literature reviews’, The Writing Center, University of North
Carolina at Chapel Hill, http://www.unc.edu/depts/wcweb/handouts/
literature_review.html, last accessed 7.3.07.
– Don’t hyphenate the URL
• For other reference types see Handbook
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Final tips
• Keep complete and accurate records of everything you
read
– “Where did I get that quote from?”
• Learn how to do references as soon as you can and use
this style for everything you write
• Some sources don’t give full references, so you’ll have to
look up the details
• Be accurate with spelling (especially of proper names
watch out for accented characters)
• Be consistent with your formatting
• Learn how to use a bibliographic referencing package
and use it to maintain your reference list
• Keep a back-up somewhere safe, and update it regularly
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Useful sources
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http://www.utoronto.ca/writing/litrev.html
http://www.unc.edu/depts/wcweb/handouts/literature_review.html
http://www.library.cqu.edu.au/tutorials/litreviewpages/
http://library.ucsc.edu/ref/howto/literaturereview.html
http://www.kcl.ac.uk/iss/ir/refs/
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http://www.history.unimelb.edu.au/resources/style_guide/footnotes.html
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