How to undertake a literature review

如何进行文献综述

I have been asked a few times for a blog post on how to conduct a proper literature review. This is hard to do sometimes because a lot of people have different methods to do their reviews of the literature (see examples here, here, here and here). I tweeted a few of the steps I undertake, but I figured the easiest way to do this was to actually write a full blog post with the protocol I follow. I usually teach my students (graduate and undergraduate) and my research assistants how to do each one of the steps, so I will be walking you through my own process, rather than any generally accepted version of a method for reviewing the literature. You can apply much of the research process (citation tracing, concept saturation, finding anchor authors and creating subheadings that are based on questions to be answered) to the process of creating an annotated bibliography.

我曾被问过几次关于如何进行适当的文学评论的博客文章。这有时很难做到，因为很多人有不同的方法来做他们的文学评论（见例子在这里，这里，这里和这里）。我在推特上发布了我采取的一些步骤，但我想最简单的方法就是用我遵循的协议写一篇完整的博客文章。我通常教我的学生（研究生和本科生）和我的研究助理如何做每一个步骤，所以我会走你通过我自己的过程，而不是任何普遍接受的版本的方法审查文献。您可以应用大部分研究过程（引文追踪，概念饱和，寻找锚作者和创建基于要回答的问题的子标题）到创建注释书目的过程。

Right now I am doing a review of the literature on online activism for environmental protection purposes. This isn’t a topic that is entirely new to me, because I do know some of the work and a few of the authors who have studied this particular issue, or at least online activism. Among these I can count Dr. Melissa K. Merry (University of Louisville), Dr. Dave Karpf (George Washington University), Dr. Deen Freelon (American University) and Dr. Meredith Clark (University of North Texas). Melissa’s work is specifically on how environmental advocacy organizations have used Twitter, so citations to her work, and the papers she cites are the backbone of the literature review. Deen, Dave and Meredith have researched online activism, so their publications should be part of the contextual components.
现在，我正在做一个关于网上环保行动的文献回顾。这对我来说并不是一个完全陌生的话题，因为我确实知道一些作品和一些研究过这个特定问题的作者，或者至少是在线激进主义者。在这些人中，我可以数梅丽莎博士。梅里（路易斯维尔大学）、戴夫·卡普夫博士（乔治华盛顿大学）、迪恩·弗里隆博士（美国大学）和梅雷迪思·克拉克博士（北德克萨斯大学）。Melissa的工作是专门研究环保组织如何使用Twitter的，因此对她的工作的引用，以及她引用的论文是文献综述的核心。Deen、Dave和Meredith研究过在线激进主义，所以他们的出版物应该是上下文组件的一部分。

An element of undertaking a literature review that almost nobody tells you about is the serendipitous nature of finding a specific author. For example, while I have tweeted quite a lot, and I knew of the work of Dave Karpf on online activism because I followed him on Twitter, I didn’t know about the work of Melissa until she became my discussant at this year’s Midwest Political Science Association conference and I Googled her work, which is COMPLETELY relevant to what I am studying right now. I knew of Deen and Meredith’s work and their study of #BlackLivesMatter because I had followed it on Twitter. But it took me a citation tracing process based on Dave’s 2010 piece to find Heather Hodges and Galen Stocking’s article on Twitter activism against the Keystone XL Pipeline, which is VERY much specific to what I am researching now. So much of what I come across is actually rather serendipitous. Heather and Galen’s paper then became also part of the list of the anchor authors.
几乎没人告诉你的文献综述的一个要素是找到一个特定作者的偶然性。例如，虽然我在Twitter上发了很多微博，我知道Dave Karpf在网络激进主义方面的工作，因为我在Twitter上关注了他，但我不知道Melissa的工作，直到她成为我在今年中西部政治科学协会会议上的讨论者，我在google上搜索了她的工作，这和我现在所学的完全相关。我知道迪恩和梅雷迪思的工作以及他们对《黑生活》的研究，因为我在推特上关注过。但我花了一个引用追踪过程，基于戴夫2010年的文章，找到了希瑟·霍奇斯和盖伦·斯托克在推特上反对Keystone XL Pipeline的激进主义的文章，这非常具体到我现在正在研究的东西。我遇到的很多事情其实都是偶然的。希瑟和盖伦的论文随后也成为主播作者名单的一部分。

Identify the main topic and the anchor authors

确定主要主题和主播作者

The first stage of undertaking a literature review is identifying the main topic for the review, and a few key authors, what I called in the previous paragraph, the anchor authors. For example, for this review I’m doing on online environmental activism I identified three articles by Melissa, one by Dave, as my foundation ones.
进行文献综述的第一阶段是确定综述的主要主题，以及一些关键作者，我在上一段中称之为主笔作者。例如，对于这篇评论，我做的在线环境激进主义，我确定了三篇文章由梅利莎，一个由戴夫，作为我的基础。

Undertake a citation tracing process to check who is citing whom and whether you’ve reached conceptual saturation

进行引文追踪过程，检查谁引用了谁，以及你是否达到了概念饱和

As I mentioned in the prevous paragraph, from reading and summarizing Melissa and Dave’s articles, I found other authors who have done relevant and similar work, like Heather Hodges and Galen Stocking. I used citation tracing both in the case of Melissa and in that of Dave, and that’s how I converged on the Hodges and Stocking article (both Melissa and Dave were cited in their piece).
正如我在上一段提到的，通过阅读和总结梅丽莎和戴夫的文章，我找到了其他做过相关和类似工作的作者，比如希瑟·霍奇斯和盖伦·斯托克。我在梅丽莎和戴夫的案例中都使用了引文追踪法，这就是我在霍奇斯和斯托克的文章（梅丽莎和戴夫都在他们的文章中被引用）中的方法。

Read, summarise, synthesise, WRITE

阅读、总结、综合、写作

Once I found more relevant articles, I started reading and summarizing them, and creating my Conceptual Synthesis Excel Dump. As I have mentioned before, while I create one for each research project I undertake, I don’t believe the Conceptual Synthesis Excel Dump should be submitted as part of a project report, but it IS an important component. That is, your Excel dump should exist, and it should encompass all the literature you have reviewed, but it’s not a product that a funding agency might be interested in publishing or even posting online.
一旦我找到了更多相关的文章，我就开始阅读和总结它们，并创建我的概念综合Excel Dump。正如我之前提到的，虽然我为每个研究项目创建了一个，但我不认为概念综合Excel转储应该作为项目报告的一部分提交，但它是一个重要的组成部分。也就是说，您的Excel转储应该存在，并且它应该包含您审阅过的所有文献，但它不是一个基金机构可能有兴趣在网上发布甚至发布的产品。

Generate the main themes for your Conceptual Synthesis Excel Dump and headings for your literature review, based on specific topics you’re researching

根据你正在研究的特定主题，为你的概念综合生成主题，并为你的文献综述生成标题

The Conceptual Synthesis Excel Dump will help you create headings for your literature review, provide you with accurate quotations for your paper, and give you a snapshot, bird’s-eye view of where your paper is situated and the gaps in the literature, but it is NOT an actual scholarly output. Annotated bibliographies, banks of synthetic notes and literature reviews are actual research products.
概念综合Excel转储将帮助您为您的文献综述创建标题，为您的论文提供准确的引用，并给您一个快照，鸟瞰您的论文所处的位置和文献中的差距，但它不是一个实际的学术成果。注释书目、综合注释库和文献综述是实际的研究产品

Repeat the process until reaching conceptual saturation

重复这个过程直到达到概念饱和。

Depending on how in-depth I want to go, I write rhetorical precis or synthetic summaries of each article, and then dump them into my Conceptual Synthesis Excel Dump for that specific topic. I may also want to create an annotated bibliography. But sometimes I am so busy that I simply go from the Conceptual Synthesis Excel Dump to writing the literature review.
根据我想做的深入程度，我会为每一篇文章写一些修辞性的摘要或综合性的总结，然后把它们放到我的概念综合Excel中，专门针对这个特定的主题。我可能还想创建一个注释书目。但有时我太忙了，我只是从概念综合到写文献综述。

Most people I know write first an annotated bibliography and THEN, based on the results of their annotations, start writing their literature review. Since I am usually reviewing a body of works for a specific paper I am writing, I rarely have the time to write an annotated bibliography. However, something I may do is ask my research assistants to write an annotated bibliography on a broader topic and, based on that one, choose specific citations I may want to use for the literature review section of the paper I am writing.
我认识的大多数人都是先写一个有注释的书目，然后根据注释的结果，开始写他们的文献综述。由于我通常都是在为我正在写的一篇论文复习一系列的作品，所以我很少有时间去写一个有注释的参考书目。然而，我可能要做的是让我的研究助理写一个关于更广泛主题的注释书目，并在此基础上，选择我想在我正在写的论文的文献综述部分使用的具体引文。

Write the literature review as though you were answering questions about each subheading

写一篇文献综述，就好像你在回答每个副标题的问题一样

I usually break down the literature review, if it is a research product in and of itself (like the one we generated for the UC MEXUS CONACYT project) in headings and summarize how each one of the papers, book chapters and books I reviewed relates to each other within the literature, within each heading. So for example, if I were doing this literature review as a product itself, I probably would use a list of topics and headings like this:
如果文献综述本身是一种研究成果（比如我们为UC MEXUS CONACYT项目生成的研究成果），我通常会将其分为几个标题，并总结我所回顾的每一篇论文、每一本书的每一章和每一本书在各个标题中是如何相互关联的。举个例子，如果我把这篇文献回顾作为一个产品本身，我可能会使用一个主题和标题列表，比如：

Introduction.
The role of activism in policy change.
Activist strategies’ repertoire: online and offline.
Experiences of online activists’ in influencing domestic policy change.
Environmental activists’ repertoires: online and offline.
How do environmental activists use online strategies to influence policy change.
Gaps in the literature.
Conclusions.
-导言。
-激进主义在政策变革中的作用。
-维权策略的剧目：在线和离线。
-网络活动家影响国内政策变化的经验。
-环保活动家的剧目：在线和离线。
-环保人士如何利用网络策略影响政策变化。
-文献中的空白。
-结论。

Some authors, like Dr. Eduardo Araral, publish their literature reviews as scholarly pieces in international journals. This coauthored piece on Water Governance 2.0 is a really solid literature review with a critical component that provides additional insight than just summarizing the works published so far on the topic.
一些作者，如爱德华多·阿拉尔博士，在国际期刊上发表学术评论。这篇关于水治理2.0的合著文章是一篇非常可靠的文献综述，其中有一个关键的部分，它提供了更多的见解，而不仅仅是总结迄今为止发表的关于这个主题的著作。

This paper by Benson et al is another good literature review published as a journal article (on water governance and integrated water resources management)
Benson等人的这篇论文是另一篇很好的文献综述，作为期刊文章发表（关于水治理和水资源综合管理）

These pieces (by Miranda et al 2011 and by Batchelor) on water governance are not published as journal articles, but remain solid literature reviews.
这些关于水治理的文章（Miranda等人2011年和Batchelor）没有作为期刊文章发表，但仍然是可靠的文献综述。

This literature review by the Pacific Institute on voluntary standards in environmental regulation is also quite solid.
太平洋研究所关于环境监管中自愿性标准的文献综述也相当可靠。

Overall, the exercise of undertaking a literature review is an important and necessary one for students both at the undergraduate and at the graduate level, and that’s why it is fundamental that we teach our students how to do them properly. Hopefully my post will answer some questions on how to conduct literature reviews!
总的来说，对本科生和研究生来说，进行文献综述是一项重要而必要的工作，这就是为什么我们要教会学生如何正确地进行文献综述的根本原因。希望我的帖子能回答一些关于如何进行文献综述的问题！