Conducting Literature Review

1. Conducting Literature Review By M R Selamat

2. By this session you should be able to: • Distinguish plagiarism from contribution. • Find literature associated with your topic. • Quote literature from within your thesis. • List reference material at end of thesis. • Realize severe consequences of plagiarism.

3. What is Plagiarism • Using someone’s script without quoting. • Using someone’s script as if your own. • Cutting and pasting internet materials. • Using someone’s result without permission • Using someone’s figure or table without quoting

4. Finding/Reviewing Literature Literature review: - • is account of work by others. • forms a chapter in your thesis. • convey what knowledge has been established. • tell strengths/weaknesses of current knowledge. • describe objective, problem, issue, or arguments • is not list of material available • Is not a set of summaries

5. A Good Literature Review is: • Focused and narrow. • Concise and economically. • Logical and progressing smoothly from one idea to the next. • Developed and leave no story half told. • Integrative and telling how the ideas are related. • Discerning and telling how some studies different than others. • Current and dwell on work being done .ss

6. Literature review lets you gain and demonstrate skills in two areas: • information seeking • critical appraisal

7. A literature review must be: • Organized around and related directly to thesis • A summary of what is and is not known • A report of controversy in the literature • A set of questions that need further research

8. Ask yourself questions: • How good was my information seeking? Has my search been wide enough? • Has it been narrow enough? Is the number of sources appropriate for the length of my paper? • Have I critically analyzed the literature? • Instead of just listing and summarizing items, do I assess them, discussing strengths and weaknesses? • Have I cited and discussed studies contrary to my perspective? • Will the reader find my literature review relevant, appropriate, and useful?

9. Ask yourself questions like these about each text book or article you include: • Has the author formulated a problem/issue? • Is it clearly defined? Is its significance (scope, severity, relevance) clearly established? • Could the problem have been approached more effectively from another perspective? • What is the author's research orientation (e.g., interpretive, critical science, combination)?

10. Ask yourself questions like these about each book or article you include: • Is the author psychological, developmental, or feminist? • Has the author evaluated the literature relevant to the problem/issue? • Does the author include literature he or she does not agree with? • How accurate and valid are the measurements? • Are the conclusions validly based upon the data and analysis?

11. Ask yourself questions like these about each book or article you include: • Does the author use appeals, emotion, one-sided examples, rhetorically-charged language, or good reasoning and sound argument? • Does the book or article contribute to your understanding of the problem. • How does the book or article relate to the story you are developing? • In short – ask yourself a lot of questions!

12. So what is a literature review? • A literature review is a piece of discursive prose, not a list describing or summarizing one piece of literature after another. Organize the literature review into sections that present themes or identify trends, including relevant theory. You are not trying to list all the material published, but to synthesize and evaluate it according to the guiding concept of your thesis or research question.

13. So what is a literature review? • A literature review is not rewriting of the literature but critical review of content of the literature. • A literature review is an introduction to your own intellectual romance by quoting others as you see them. • A literature review is about how you see the world – how a literate man/woman like yourself is seeing the world.

14. Now you can start writing • DECIDE ON A TOPIC • NARROW YOUR TOPIC •  CREATE AN INTRODUCTION FOR YOUR LITERATURE REVIEW •  ORGANIZE THE BODY OF YOUR PAPER • Scan each article to get an overview of each one. • Group the articles by categories. • Read each article carefully, taking notes on each one. • WRITE THE BODY OF YOUR PAPER  • Make the structure and organization of your write-up explicit. • Integrate the studies you summarize in your paper. • At the end of each section wrap up studies in a paragraph that tells the reader how the studies relate and address your topic. • Make sure you take note of key terms and definitions. • Identify landmark studies in your write-up • Identify major trends across the studies you are reading. • WRAP THE PAPER UP • Present your conclusions. • Present implications. • Present suggestions for future research.  

15. Quoting reference into your writing • Quoting: (Author, Year) • Quoting: Author (Year) • Quoting: (Author1 and Author2, Year) • Quoting: Author1 and Author2 (Year) • Quoting: (Author1 et al., Year) • Quoting: Author1 et al. (Year) • Quoting: (Author, Year1, Year2, Year3, Year4) • Quoting: (Author1, Year1 and Author2, Year2) • Quoting: (Author1, Year1; Author2, Year2; and Author3, Year3)

16. Quoting reference into your writing • Ground motion was first incorporated into slope stability analyses to study the effects from earthquakes (Sarma 1973). This paper will not go much into the matters on pseudo-static and permanent displacement concepts as discussed by Newmark (1965), Chang et al. (1983), Lin and Whitman (1986), Kobayashi et al. (1990), Yegian et al. (1991), Leshchinsky and San (1994), and Kramer and Smith (1997). Instead, it will refer to works by Sarma (1973, 1975, 1979), Sarma and Bhave (1974), Kjartannsson (1979), Hoek (1987), Dowding and Gilbert (1988), Kavetski et al. (1990), Ashford and Sitar (2002), and the authors own earlier publications (Selamat 1999, Selamat and Chitombo 2003), on how ground accelerations were computed into forces that were used in the pseudo-static or permanent displacement ideas.

17. Quoting reference into your writing • This discussion highlights the relevance of Sarma’s method on the emerging interest in the country in some areas of earthquake engineering (Adnan et al., 2005). This discussion will refer to works by Sarma (1973, 1975, 1979), Sarma and Bhave (1974), Kjartannsson (1979), Hoek (1987), Dowding and Gilbert (1988), Kavetski et al. (1990), Ashford and Sitar (2002), and the authors own earlier publications (Selamat 1999, Selamat and Chitombo 2003), on how ground accelerations were computed into forces that were used in the pseudo-static or permanent displacement ideas.

18. Quoting “actual script” into your writing • Dowding (1996) writes “….too little experience from ….earthquake engineering has spilled into ….blasting vibrations”.

19. Quoting “actual script” into your writing • The trend as indicated in Fig. 10 is currently happening. Fig. 10 – Growth in Waste Recycling Activity. (After Aziz, 2004)

20. Listing your reference • Author (Year). “Title of Paper/Article”. Name of Journal/Bulletin. Vol. No. pp. • Author1, Author2, Author3, Author4 (Year). “Title of Paper/Article”. Name of Journal. Vol. No. pp. • Author (Year). “Title of Book”. Publisher. Place. pp. • Author (Year). “Title of Paper/Article”. Name of Proceeding of Conference. Place. pp. • Author (Year). “Title of Paper/Article”. Name of Report. Name of Organization. Place. pp. • Http://www1.eng.usm.my/awam/servis

21. Listing your reference • Adnan A., Abas M. R., and Hendriawan (2005) “Earthquake Induced Energy: Sources and Hazard Analysis For Structural Earthquake Resistant Design in Peninsular Malaysia” The Ingenieur, Board of Engineers, Malaysia, Vol. 26, pp. 21-25

22. What is Plagiarism • Rewriting someone’s script not quoting source. • Rewriting someone’s script as if it is your own. • Cutting and Pasting internet materials. • Publishing someone’s result without permission • Reproducing someone else’s figure or table without quoting source (as after Author, year)

23. By now you should be able to: • Distinguish plagiarism from contribution. • Find literature associated with your topic. • Quote literature from within your thesis. • List reference material at end of thesis. • Realize severe consequences of plagiarism.

24. Thank You