Making sense of your reading

You probably have been pointed to a few papers to get started, or found them via a Google search. From that you should consider developing a reading and search strategy. The type of strategy that makes sense, will be linked to the type of literature review you are undertaking and the type of writing you are doing.

If you’re not sure where and how to get started with your search, your institution’s librarians can help you develop a search strategy and support you in other ways too.

To get started you might want to use some key words and see what the below websites provide:

If you gets stuck with a paper, because you don’t have access and you need to pay, try the below things to help you get access to the papers or books your need

Install Unpaywall plug-in
Try your institution’s cross-library loan
Ask if your institution’s library might cover costs to access a paywalled paper
Contact the author via Research Gate, LinkedIn or email and ask for a copy

Systematic or scoping review

Systematic reviews are often used in relation to Clinical questions, e.g. about the effectiveness of a treatment or intervention. However you can use the approach for non-clinical questions too. You should have a specific question in mind.

Most systematic and scoping reviews follow framework, and the PICO framework is very common

Population (or patients)
Intervention
Comparison
Outcome

Irrespective of the framework, your review protocol needs to be

Transparent
Robust
Reproducible

To undertake a systematic review you should consider using specialist software to support you. This is in addition to a reference manager

Covidence
Rayyan free-version

General or narrative review

General or narrative reviews are not based on a systematic approach, and can be used for any research question. These reviews are more exploratory and you don’t always know where the literature leads you. Even if you don’t have a systematic approach, you probably want to do some scoping with your research questions in mind, so you don’t get side tracked too easily. You might want to consider

a thematic approach
topical approach

Neither of these approaches, aims to be reproducible and your bias towards topics will play a role. This type of review will show your understanding of the topic and provide context for your work.

For a general or narrative review, your reference manager should be sufficient. However, you can use data analysis software like NVivo to help you with your review.

Scope or skim reading

This relatively fast way of reading or scanning papers is used to decide if a paper is relevant. This is your first filter. Depending on the type of review you are doing, this will be a way to determine if papers fall within or outwith your PICO (or other) framework. For generative reviews, you might have to go through a few iterations of skim reading to sort papers and decide if you want to keep them, just in case.

Key information to help you make a decision tend to be in the

Abstract
Conclusions
Methodology
Methods

So you might focus on these parts first. You want to undertake this filtering withing your reference manager, so you can label and sort your papers as you make decisions. There is no harm to keep papers in case you change your mind later, or have to expand your scoping criteria.

Deep reading

Once you have filtered the papers, you need to spend some time collect the key information and connect the literature. You will find connections between papers, as well as with your research questions. The literature and your notes will enable you to inform or refine your research questions, as well as support your decision making.

Now is a good time to think about your note taking and storing strategy, and how you are going to use your notes to inform your writing. You might want to read my blog post: Getting started with note taking

Depending on the style of review you are undertaking, your note taking and processing might be different. For systematic reviews you will follow your PICO (or similar) framework and then undertake a statistical analysis. For a general view, you will likely focus on themes and your discussion of those themes.