Searching and Evaluating

the Literature
"If I have seen further,
it is by standing upon
the shoulders of giants"
Sir Isaac Newton
The purpose of the Literature Review
 Placing the research in a context relating to existing
research, theory and practice.
 Ensure that you don’t repeat someone else’s work.
 Provide models for how to conduct your research
effectively.
 Provide core information that will help your study.
 Enable you to locate your proposed study in its context(s).
 Enable you to be critical, reflective and evaluative in your
approach to the enquiry process.
 Avoiding the mistakes made by others.
Finding information
How to assess the quality of sources?
 As a broad rule of thumb, references are (in order of
decreasing quality):

Journal Conference White

Books
papers papers papers

Credible
Internet sources Wikipedia Word of mouth
(e.g. IBM)

 Please note: in this module, it is never acceptable to cite

Wikipedia… never!!
Which information is relevant?
 An overview of the topic or question, including the
definition of key ideas
 Existing related research.
 Formal theories connected to your research
 Same methods – different investigations
 Different evaluations and techniques
Finding Information
 The main sources of information: published literature and
the Web.
 Starting Points
• Textbooks
• General journals or review books/articles.
• Bookshelves of colleagues and academic staff.
• Skimming through new issues of journals.

 ACM &IEEE digital libraries

Finding Information

 Key Topics

 Key Authors

 Key Studies

 Unpublished Studies
Once you’ve found information.
Getting relevant information from your literature sources
 Extracting information
 Different information for different stages in project
 Being adrift in a sea of information! – Organise it
 Take detailed notes
 Take full reference of each article/source
The Literature Review
1. Establish what the topic is and what you need to find out
about it.
2. Find materials relevant to the topic from diverse sources.
3. Evaluate the different materials: which are most significant
and useful?
4. Show that you understand the most significant and useful
materials through analysis and interpretation.
5. Show that you also understand how the different materials
relate to each other, how they agree or disagree, how they
form bodies of opinion.
6. Show that you understand why ideas about a topic might not
remain the same over time.
7. Fully acknowledge the sources
  The literature review
process

(Saunders et. al., 2016)

Being critical
 The literature review must be a critical analysis.
 Assess what is significant to your research and decide to include it
or not.
 Concepts, theories, arguments, empirical research findings might be
unclear, biased or inconsistent with other work and need to be
researched further.
 The aim of a literature review is to show your reader (usually your
tutor and/or assessor) that you have read, understood and evaluated
the main published work on a particular topic or question. It
shouldn’t be a simple description of what others have written: it
needs to show critical reflection and evaluation in prose, i.e. you
don’t just say what you’ve found, but you say why it is important
and how it indicates different views on the topic you are
researching.
A literature review isn’t merely descriptive (e.g. ‘X believed
blah, and Y believes bleurrgh’)

To do its job, a literature review needs to group material

together, organise it, make connections, draw distinctions
(e.g. ‘Although X’s claim that blah is the case was influential
for many years, it has been treated with increasing scepticism
since the late 1990s, when figures such as Y and Z began to
argue that bleurrgh might be more likely, or even bleurrgh-
blah-bleeeeeeek’).
Being Critical – Useful questions.
 Why am I reading this?
 What is the author trying to do in writing this?
 What is the writer saying that is relevant to what I want to
find out?
 How convincing is what the author is saying?
 What use can I make of the reading?
Annotating
Some tips:
 Throw away the highlighter in favour of a pen or pencil.
 Mark up the margins of your text with words: ideas that
occur to you, reminders of how issues in a text may
connect with your research.
 Develop your own symbol system -e.g. asterisk for a key
idea; exclamation mark for the surprising, etc.
 Get in the habit of hearing yourself asking questions
-"what does this mean?" "why is he/she drawing that
conclusion?"
Use of the literature in your
MSc Dissertation
1. Introduction Shows aims, objectives, scope, rationale and design features
of the research. Rationale is supported by references to
previous research that has already identified the broad nature
of the problem.
2. Literature Review Show command of the subject area and understanding of the
problem; justify research topic, methodology and research
design through a coherent critique of what has gone before.
3. Methodology Show appropriateness of techniques used and methodological
approaches employed. Relevant reference from literature are
used to show understanding of such techniques and
methodological implications, and to justify their use over
alternative techniques.
4. Findings and Show command of the subject area and understanding of the
discussion problem; justify and validate the credibility of findings.
Develop convincing arguments for relevance of findings.
Discussion supported by references to other works that have
identified similar results or other interesting issues.

(Gill & Johnson, 2010, p. 31)

Writing your Literature Review
Common mistakes when producing a
Literature Review
 Good literature reviews will vary significantly in style and
content.
 Poor literature reviews tend to have numerous issues
 Main risk: producing an uncritical listing of previous
research.
 Easier to be critical if adopting a thematic approach.
 A literature review generally consists of the following parts:

 Introduction
The introduction should clearly establish the focus and purpose of
the literature review, defining your topic and setting your scope. If
there's anything you aren't planning to include in your analysis,
mention it here.
 Body

The body should contain a summary and critical evaluation of each

source, focusing on the research design and conclusion. You can
structure your body in different ways:
 Chronological: traces the development of your topic over time
Thematic: organizes discussion of your topic around central themes
 Methodological: analyses the different takes various methodological
approaches have had on your topic
 Theoretical: discusses how different theoretical perspectives come
together in support of or against your research
 Conclusion
In your conclusion, you should summarize the key findings
you have taken from the literature and emphasize their
significance to your topic, along with your overarching
conclusions and avenues for future research. Be sure to
clearly restate your topic and scope, so it's clear to your
reader why the literature you reviewed is relevant to your
research.
Source: (McCombes, 2022)
Thematic approach to the Literature
Review

(Saunders et. al., 2016 p. 80)

 Analysing Deep Learning for Cybersecurity Threat
Detection

Cyber Security Threats

Threat Detection

Use of AI in Threats
Detections

Deep Learning for Threats

Detections
Source: (McCombes, 2022)
“How many articles must be included?”

“As many as are needed”!

Citing and referencing
+ Academic Integrity
What is referencing?
 Creating any piece of academic work – draw upon
information in books, journal articles and other sources.
 Referencing - an acknowledgement of sources of
information, ideas, thoughts and data which you have used.
 Accurate referencing is very important because:
 it provides evidence for your arguments,
 it demonstrates that you have read around the subject which you
are writing about,
 it allows the reader of your work to find the original sources you
used,
 it shows that you are not passing off someone else's work as
your own thoughts.
Referencing
 Reference – Every time you quote and paraphrase or summarise
someone's ideas.
 Never copy and paste information into your work without
referencing it. This is plagiarism.
 Use APA referencing style – refer to library web pages for help.
 University Academic Conduct regulations:
https://students.shu.ac.uk/regulations/conduct_discipline/Ac
ademic%20Conduct%20Regulation.pdf
References
 Saunders, M., Lewis, P. & Thornhill A. (2016) Research
methods for business students (7th ed.). Essex: Pearson
Education.
 Gill, J. & Johnson, P. (2010). Research Methods for
Managers (4th ed.). London: Sage Publications.
 McCombes, S. (2022) What is a Literature Review? |
Guide, Template, & Examples. Scribbr. Retrieved 15
January 2024, from https://www.scribbr.co.uk/thesis-
dissertation/literature-review/