Andre Kyme, BME University of Sydney. V1.

3 2022

Tips and Principles for Your Honours/Capstone Thesis Literature Review

The literature review is an important component of any research project that you will undertake at Honours,
Masters or PhD level. The aim of this brief guide is to explain the purpose of the literature review and to describe
some simple but effective ways to (i) approach your reading, (ii) manage your literature, and (iii) write the review.

1. Orienting yourself in the topic area

Often when you start a new project much of the subject matter will be quite unfamiliar – e.g. the particular
terminology/nomenclature, the major classifications of the area, the variety of applications, what's been done
before, and the state-of-the-art. Journal papers are typically very focused, so they generally won’t provide you
with a clear description of the ‘big picture’ aspects that you need to orient yourself at the start of the project. As
a result, it will be easy to get lost in details if you start with journal papers. Therefore, try to start with something
a bit broader to orient yourself to the topic and key concepts. Some resources that are helpful at this stage include:
Text books – Text books usually cover principles and applications in a more general way than a journal paper, and
also break a subject area down into categories. The downside of text books is that they are usually a little (or a
lot) out of date. This may not be a problem if you just want to gain a basic understanding of concepts. But it is
worth keeping in mind, especially in fields where methods and technologies are changing rapidly.
Review papers – Review papers are journal articles but their purpose is to consolidate the literature on a particular
topic. In other words, someone has already done the hard work of pulling together a lot of research on the topic.
Good review papers will helpfully group/classify the literature, summarise the history and the state-of-the-art,
critique current methods, and suggest avenues for future research. The more recent the review the better it will
be at describing the state-of-the-art.
Journal papers (“Intro” section) – The “Introduction” sections of journal papers can be quite useful to get a handle
on a topic and to gain an understanding of important principles. These sections are usually quite brief though, so
don’t expect a comprehensive coverage.
Other online resources – There are likely to be many useful resources online which provide relevant background
to your subject area – e.g. introduction/primer articles, knowledge-base articles on company websites, Wikipedia
entries, PhD and Masters theses, and so on. Of course, as with any source, it’s important to consider the reliability
and potential biases of any online sources you refer to. For more information on assessing the reliability of sources,
see the “Searching for and evaluating information” resource on the Thesis Canvas site.

2. Reading with purpose

When you read journal papers, it is important to read with purpose. This means that you don't have to read every
word but instead read for the things you are looking for. (Early on, it may be useful to read the entire paper until
you start to feel comfortable with the topic, but once you are acquainted with the topic, reading with purpose is
more efficient.) For example, suppose your thesis project was about the use of robotics in magnetic resonance
imaging. Your purpose in reading might be to specifically find answers to the following questions:
• "What are the different actuation methods used in MRI robotics?"
• "What are the pros and cons of each actuation method?"
• "What is the potential accuracy of each actuation method?"
• "How suitable is the method for my application?"
Reading with purpose means reading specifically to find answers to these questions. Starting with the right
questions will help you to read papers efficiently.

3. Digital note-taking
Make notes on the digital version of the sources you read (e.g. using Acrobat’s PDF highlighter and mark-up tools),
not a paper copy. If you print everything out on paper and make notes by hand, it will take much longer to
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 Andre Kyme, BME University of Sydney. V1.3 2022
consolidate all your information later. At the top of each digital paper you read, make a very brief summary of the
aim and findings of the paper. This is useful for quick reference later – e.g. it can remind you to read this paper in
more detail down the track, or that a particular paper is not relevant to your project.

4. Managing your literature in an organised spreadsheet

A very simple but powerful way to organise all of the information from the papers you’ve read is to use a
spreadsheet. Along the top you put column headings that are relevant to your project. Each row then corresponds
to one paper. Some column headings are essential – for example, the author surname, year of publication and
journal name. The other column headings will depend on your particular project and aims. As an example, consider
the MRI robotics project again. Here, we might choose headings like "actuation method", "load", "speed",
"accuracy", “actuator materials”, "MR compatible?", "limitations", "scalability", “example applications”, and so
on. For each paper (i.e. each row of the spreadsheet) we would then put an entry for each of the headings. Some
principles to follow when using this method:
• Try to limit the number of categories (columns) to what is most relevant for your project. Having 50
columns, for example, is not useful in condensing and focusing the information on your project aims.
Remember that your columns don’t need to cover every aspect of every paper, they just need to cover
what is most relevant for your project aims.
• It's likely that you won't think of all the relevant headings at the very start, but as you read more papers
and get more familiar with your project aims you may decide it’s a good idea to add other headings (or
remove earlier headings). You can then go back and update the columns for each of your papers.
• Try to keep the entries in each column brief because this makes it easier to scan the sheet and also easy
to sort. Often just “yes/no” or one descriptive word will suffice as the entry.
• The entries in each column should be consistent so that you can sort them easily in the spreadsheet later.
For example, if for one paper you describe the actuation method as “pneumatic” and for another paper
as “air driven”, this is not very helpful. Instead, make them both “pneumatic” (or “air driven”) so that you
can sort based on this property later.
• It’s quite helpful to include a column or two which allow you to write brief descriptions, just in case you
want to capture something about an article that is not covered by your main headings. Examples include
“Executive summary” (where you write a very concise summary of the article) or “Limitations” (where you
briefly list the specific limitations of a given approach).
There are some great benefits to organising your papers in spreadsheet format like this:
(i) It summarises all the key information in one sheet;
(ii) You can start to spot patterns in the spreadsheet (e.g. the emphases of previous research as well as
the gaps);
(iii) It allows you to sort papers very easily, which makes writing about and citing the literature quite
straightforward. For example, suppose in our hypothetical MRI robotics project we wanted to write
something like this:
“A wide range of actuation approaches have been used for robotic devices inside MRI scanners. These include
actuators that are not strictly MRI-compatible [citations] and those that have no negative influence on the signal-
to-noise of the acquired image [citations]. Most evidence suggests that pneumatic actuators have the least impact
on MRI images [citations]. Of the pneumatic actuation examples reported, most approaches use plastics [citations],
but other non-magnetic materials such as brass [citations], copper [citations] and titanium [citations] have also
been used. The focus of this work is on 3D-printed plastic pneumatic actuators, and to date there has been very
limited work on this topic [citations].”
To fill in the bits where you see [citations], all you would need to do is go to your spreadsheet and sort it based on
the relevant criteria. For example, to find some relevant citations for the part highlighted in red, sort the
spreadsheet according to “MR compatible” + “pneumatic” + “brass”. You could also sort by "year" to make sure
you include the most recent research in your representative examples.
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 Andre Kyme, BME University of Sydney. V1.3 2022

5. You don’t need to mention every paper

Often the literature on a topic is much too extensive for you to mention every paper you find. When you make a
statement or claim in your literature review that requires support (e.g. “magnetic actuators present a dangerous
projectile hazard in MRI”), it is sufficient to choose one relevant reference to cite, or a selection of representative
references. Unless you are writing a systematic review, you do not need to summarise every paper you have
found. Your literature review will typically read much better if you consolidate the papers. For example, you would
say something like: "Since the seminal work of X in 2007, considerable advances have been reported using
pneumatic stepper actuation in MRI (e.g. [10, 12, 17-19]). The main application of these advances have been in X
[19,20], Y [27,30] and Z [35, 38-40]." Notice how papers have been grouped together and cited in bunches because
they all relate to a similar topic. This demonstrates that you've been able to consolidate the literature rather than
just talk about individual papers in isolation.
Of course, some papers will be so relevant to your project that they deserve individual mention and treatment.
But, it should be very clear why you are focusing on specific papers by making explicit reference to the aims of
your project.

5. The literature review is not just a summary but also an argument – so it ought to function as a critique
Although the literature review does function to summarise aspects of a field, don’t think of it as merely a summary.
The main purpose of your literature review is to justify the research you are doing. In other words, it is used to
demonstrate the ‘gap’ that your research is filling. This means that your literature review should critically assess
the literature, not just summarise it. So, instead of writing: "A did this, B did this and C did this", you could write
"A developed a new method to do X, however it is not applicable in situations i, ii and iii because of ... To overcome
these limitations, B did ... which enabled the first demonstration of X". Notice how the parts highlighted in red
provide a critical assessment of the previous work. The purpose is to highlights gaps and ultimately show how your
research aims to fill the gaps. The rest of your thesis then goes on to describe how.

6. Write to a detailed outline/structure

The last tip is to always make sure you have a clear and detailed structure of your literature review before you
start writing. If you write without a clear structure, it will very likely take you much longer – or, it will simply end
up being like a dog’s breakfast! When formulating your structure, you ought to consider the following:
• Start by working out what are the key areas you should cover in your literature review
• Start general (the over-arching background and motivation) but make sure you very quickly get specific to
your project. Using our previous example, suppose the purpose of your MRI-compatible robot is ultimately
to resect brain tumours in patients with cancer. Your literature review would start with a very brief section
on the clinical problem of brain cancer, and the advantages of robotics in neurosurgery. But it should then
very quickly move onto aspects like actuation methods for MRI robotics, MRI-compatibility, other
applications of robotics in MRI, and so on. You would not, for example, spend half your literature review
talking about cancer, how it is a major health problem and all the different types of cancer and cancer
treatments – this would be far too general and irrelevant to your specific project.
• Once you’ve decided on the main topic areas you want to cover, for each topic area make a list of bullet
points that will form that topic sentences of each paragraph under to that area.
• In your bullet points you can even list some of the representative papers (from your spreadsheet) that
you will use to support particular paragraphs.
• Send your outline to your supervisor for feedback; then, once you agree on the structure, start filling in
the paragraphs!