Literature Review Best Ways to Look at Data
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Literature reviews are important resources for scientists. They provide historical context for a field while offer opinions on its future trajectory. Creating them can provide inspiration for one'due south own research, besides as some do in writing. But few scientists are trained in how to write a review — or in what constitutes an fantabulous ane. Fifty-fifty picking the appropriate software to employ can be an involved conclusion (see 'Tools and techniques'). So Nature asked editors and working scientists with well-cited reviews for their tips.
WENTING ZHAO: Be focused and avoid jargon
Assistant professor of chemical and biomedical engineering science, Nanyang Technological University, Singapore.
When I was a inquiry student, review writing improved my agreement of the history of my field. I also learnt about unmet challenges in the field that triggered ideas.
For instance, while writing my first review1 as a PhD pupil, I was frustrated past how poorly we understood how cells actively sense, interact with and adapt to nanoparticles used in drug delivery. This experience motivated me to study how the surface backdrop of nanoparticles tin be modified to raise biological sensing. When I transitioned to my postdoctoral research, this question led me to discover the office of cell-membrane curvature, which led to publications and my electric current research focus. I wouldn't accept started in this surface area without writing that review.
A common problem for students writing their first reviews is beingness overly ambitious. When I wrote mine, I imagined producing a comprehensive summary of every single blazon of nanomaterial used in biological applications. It ended up becoming a colossal slice of work, with too many papers discussed and without a clear style to categorize them. We published the work in the cease, but decided to limit the discussion strictly to nanoparticles for biological sensing, rather than covering how unlike nanomaterials are used in biology.
My communication to students is to accept that a review is unlike a textbook: it should offer a more focused discussion, and it'due south OK to skip some topics so that you exercise non distract your readers. Students should also consider editorial deadlines, peculiarly for invited reviews: brand sure that the review's scope is not so extensive that it delays the writing.
A good review should likewise avoid jargon and explain the bones concepts for someone who is new to the field. Although I trained as an engineer, I'm interested in biology, and my research is about developing nanomaterials to manipulate proteins at the cell membrane and how this can affect ageing and cancer. As an 'outsider', the reviews that I find about useful for these biological topics are those that speak to me in attainable scientific language.
Bozhi Tian likes to get a diverseness of perspectives into a review. Credit: Aleksander Prominski
BOZHI TIAN: Have a process and develop your style
Associate professor of chemistry, Academy of Chicago, Illinois.
In my lab, nosotros start by asking: what is the purpose of this review? My reasons for writing ane tin include the chance to contribute insights to the scientific customs and place opportunities for my research. I also see review writing equally a mode to train early-career researchers in soft skills such every bit project management and leadership. This is especially true for pb authors, because they volition learn to work with their co-authors to integrate the various sections into a piece with smoothen transitions and no overlaps.
After we accept identified the need and purpose of a review commodity, I will form a squad from the researchers in my lab. I try to include students with unlike areas of expertise, considering it is useful to get a variety of perspectives. For case, in the review 'An atlas of nano-enabled neural interfaces'two, we had authors with backgrounds in biophysics, neuroengineering, neurobiology and materials sciences focusing on dissimilar sections of the review.
Afterward this, I volition discuss an outline with my squad. We become through multiple iterations to make sure that we have scanned the literature sufficiently and practise not repeat discussions that take appeared in other reviews. It is also important that the outline is not decided past me alone: students often have fresh ideas that they can bring to the table. Once this is done, we proceed with the writing.
I often remind my students to imagine themselves as 'artists of science' and encourage them to develop how they write and present information. Calculation more words isn't e'er the best way: for case, I savour using tables to summarize research progress and suggest future research trajectories. I've too considered including short videos in our review papers to highlight key aspects of the work. I think this tin can increase readership and accessibility because these videos can be easily shared on social-media platforms.
ANKITA ANIRBAN: Timeliness and figures make a huge difference
Editor, Nature Reviews Physics.
Ane of my roles as a periodical editor is to evaluate proposals for reviews. The all-time proposals are timely and clearly explain why readers should pay attention to the proposed topic.
It is non enough for a review to be a summary of the latest growth in the literature: the most interesting reviews instead provide a word nearly disagreements in the field.
Scientists often centre the story of their chief enquiry papers around their figures — merely when it comes to reviews, figures frequently have a secondary part. In my opinion, review figures are more than important than almost people retrieve. 1 of my favourite review-manner articlesthree presents a plot bringing together data from multiple research papers (many of which directly contradict each other). This is then used to identify wide trends and suggest underlying mechanisms that could explain all of the different conclusions.
An important part of a review commodity is to introduce researchers to a field. For this, schematic figures tin can be useful to illustrate the science being discussed, in much the same mode as the first slide of a talk should. That is why, at Nature Reviews, we take in-house illustrators to assistance authors. Yet, simplicity is primal, and fifty-fifty without support from professional illustrators, researchers can still make use of many free drawing tools to heighten the value of their review figures.
Yoojin Choi recommends that researchers be open up to critiques when writing reviews. Credit: Yoojin Choi
YOOJIN CHOI: Stay updated and exist open to suggestions
Inquiry assistant professor, Korea Avant-garde Institute of Scientific discipline and Technology, Daejeon.
I started writing the review 'Biosynthesis of inorganic nanomaterials using microbial cells and bacteriophages'4 equally a PhD student in 2018. It took me one year to write the offset typhoon because I was working on the review aslope my PhD research and by and large on my own, with back up from my adviser. It took a farther year to complete the processes of peer review, revision and publication. During this time, many new papers and even competing reviews were published. To provide the most upwards-to-engagement and original review, I had to stay beside of the literature. In my instance, I fabricated employ of Google Scholar, which I set to send me daily updates of relevant literature based on key words.
Through my review-writing process, I also learnt to be more open up to critiques to heighten the value and increase the readership of my work. Initially, my review was focused only on using microbial cells such as leaner to produce nanomaterials, which was the subject of my PhD research. Bacteria such as these are known as biofactories: that is, organisms that produce biological material which can be modified to produce useful materials, such equally magnetic nanoparticles for drug-delivery purposes.
Nonetheless, when the first peer-review report came back, all iii reviewers suggested expanding the review to cover some other type of biofactory: bacteriophages. These are essentially viruses that infect leaner, and they can also produce nanomaterials.
The feedback eventually led me to include a discussion of the differences betwixt the various biofactories (bacteriophages, leaner, fungi and microalgae) and their advantages and disadvantages. This turned out to be a cracking add-on considering it made the review more than comprehensive.
Writing the review also led me to an idea about using nanomaterial-modified microorganisms to produce chemicals, which I'thousand nonetheless researching now.
PAULA MARTIN-GONZALEZ: Make proficient use of engineering
PhD student, University of Cambridge, Great britain.
Only before the coronavirus lockdown, my PhD adviser and I decided to write a literature review discussing the integration of medical imaging with genomics to ameliorate ovarian cancer management.
As I was researching the review, I noticed a tendency in which some papers were consistently being cited by many other papers in the field. It was clear to me that those papers must be important, only as a new member of the field of integrated cancer biology, it was difficult to immediately find and read all of these 'seminal papers'.
That was when I decided to lawmaking a small awarding to make my literature research more efficient. Using my code, users can enter a query, such as 'ovarian cancer, reckoner tomography, radiomics', and the application searches for all relevant literature archived in databases such as PubMed that characteristic these cardinal words.
The code then identifies the relevant papers and creates a citation graph of all the references cited in the results of the search. The software highlights papers that accept many commendation relationships with other papers in the search, and could therefore be called seminal papers.
My code has substantially improved how I organize papers and has informed me of key publications and discoveries in my inquiry field: something that would have taken more time and experience in the field otherwise. After I shared my lawmaking on GitHub, I received feedback that information technology can be daunting for researchers who are not used to coding. Consequently, I am hoping to build a more user-friendly interface in a class of a web page, akin to PubMed or Google Scholar, where users can simply input their queries to generate citation graphs.
Interviews have been edited for length and clarity.
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Source: https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-020-03422-x
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