New resource for teaching students how to find, read, and use the literature

The UK Higher Education Academy just published our second report in the series How to Succeed at University in GEES Disciplines: Enhancing Student’s Information Literacy Skills. (GEES is Geography, Earth and Environmental Sciences.) I wrote this with coauthor Rich Waller at Keele University. Contents include finding and assessing scientific literature, critical reading, citing sources and […]

How the Purpose of the Literature Review Affects How You Write It

Which is harder? Assembling the literature review for your dissertation or assembling the literature review for your journal article? Have you ever struggled with trying to assemble a literature review section? For your dissertation, you might be overwhelmed by the large number of papers in your discipline that you feel that you need to address. […]

Automation of literature reviews

A recently published paper in Scientometrics raises the specter of an automated tool that would search through existing citations and “facilitate novices to perform tasks that are usually carried out by trained professionals.” The tool was then used for students to create literature reviews and these were submitted to conferences. The tool was so successful, […]