Module-2

Literature Review and Technical Reading: New and Existing Knowledge,

Analysis and Synthesis of Prior Art, Bibliographic Databases, Web of Science,
Google and Google Scholar, Effective Search: The Way Forward Introduction to
Technical Reading Conceptualizing Research, Critical and Creative Reading,
Taking Notes While Reading, Reading Mathematics and Algorithms, Reading a
Datasheet.
Attributions and Citations: Giving Credit Wherever Due, Citations: Functions
and Attributes, Impact of Title and Keywords on Citations, Knowledge Flow
through Citation, Citing Datasets, Styles for Citations, Acknowledgments and
Attributions, What Should Be Acknowledged, Acknowledgments in, Books
Dissertations, Dedication or Acknowledgments.
Why literature review?
 Primary goal of literature review is to correctly identify the
problem
 Advocate a specific approach adapted to understanding the
problem,
 Helps the researcher contribute something new and
innovative outcomes
 Review will give appropriate breadth and depth of the area
under study, clarity, rigor, consistency, effective analysis
New and Existing Knowledge
New Knowledge

 New knowledge means information that is added to or modified from

existing scientific theory or facts that is accepted among a group of
researchers.
 New Knowledge comprises vastly different interpretations depending on
what the researcher’s background,
 One’s perception of that new knowledge can change from indifference to
excitement (or vice versa), depending on what else one knows
 Allows us to think more deeply about issues from many different
perspectives, and it sharpens skills like reasoning and problem-solving.
Existing Knowledge
 The existing knowledge is needed to make the case that there is a problem and
that it is important.
 Existing knowledge describes what other knowledge already exists and points the
part of knowledge which is missing so that what we have is original.
 Existing knowledge can be one gained by reading and surveying the literature in
the field of research interest.
 To gain existing knowledge, text books and research papers are important sources
 Textbooks contain the older established knowledge and the research papers the
newer work.
 Textbook is written as a teaching instrument where author normally starts from
the basics followed by entire concepts that one needs to be able to understand
that topic.
 Existing knowledge can be better by reading literature reviews which give up-to-
date state-of-the-are knowledge about the topic concerned.
 A good literature review would not draw hasty conclusions and look into the
individual references to determine the underlying
causes/assumptions/mechanisms in each of them so as to synthesize the
available information in a much more meaningful way.
 Explains the inconsistencies or shortcomings in the published work, identify
inconclusive or contradictory results, and provide a compulsive reason to do
further work in the field.
 Good literature survey enumerates:
o Major topics or subtopics or concepts relevant to the subject under
consideration.
o Place the citation of the relevant source (article/patent/website/data,
etc.) in the correct category of the concept/topic/subtopic

 A comprehensive literature survey should

o Methodically analyze and synthesize quality archived work,
o Provide a firm foundation to a topic of interest
o Choice of suitable research methodologies,
o Demonstrate that the proposed work would make a novel contribution to
the field
Analysis and Synthesis of Prior Art Bibliographic Databases
After collecting the sources, like book, reviews and research
articles, A researcher should analyze the relevant information by
undertaking the following steps:
(i) Understanding the hypothesis,
(ii) Understanding the models and the experimental conditions
used,
(iii) Making connections,
(iv) Comparing and contrasting the various information, and
(v) Finding out the strong points and the loopholes.
It is always good to be suspicious of the claims made in the sources
that have been thoroughly reviewed, especially in the case of tall
claims
Here are a few criteria that could help the researcher in the
evaluation of the information under study
• Authority: What are the author’s credentials and affiliation? Who
publishes the information?
• Accuracy: Based on what one already knows about the topic or
from reading other sources, does the information seem credible?
Does the author cite other sources in a reference list or
bibliography, to support the information presented?
• Scope: Is the source at an appropriate comprehension or research
level?
Bibliographic Databases

 Bibliographic databases” refer to “abstracting and indexing services” useful

for collecting citation-related information and possibly abstracts of research
articles from scholarly literature and making them available through search.
 Performing simultaneous searches through such large databases may allow
researchers to overtly rely on any one database and be limited by the
intrinsic shortcoming of any one of them for quality research.
 A researcher should be able to quickly identify the databases that are of use
in the idea or problem that one wishes to explore.
 There are few of the popular bibliographic databases most sought after by
engineering researchers, but do not attempt to provide exhaustive details.
Web of Science
 The Web of Science (WoS; previously known as Web of Knowledge) is a paid-
access platform that provides (typically via the internet) access to multiple
databases that provide reference and citation data from academic
journals, conference proceedings, and other documents in various academic
disciplines.
 unifying research tool which enables the user to acquire, analyze, and
disseminate database information in a timely manner
 Web of Science currently contains 79 million records in the core collection and
171 million records on the platform
 It is a good search tool for scholarly materials requiring institutional license and
allows the researcher to search in a particular topic of interest, which can be
made by selection in fields that are available in drop down menu such as title,
topic, author, address, etc.
Google
 Google is a great place to start one’s search when one is
starting out on a topic.
 It can be helpful in finding freely available information, such as
reports from governments, organizations, companies, and so
on. However, there are limitations:
(i) It’s a “black box” of information. It searches everything on the
Internet, with no quality control—one does not know where
results are coming from.
(ii) There are limited search functionality and refinement options.
Google Scholar
 Google Scholar limits one’s search to scholarly literature. However, there are
limitations:
 Some of the results are not actually scholarly. An article may look scholarly at
first glance, but is not a good source upon further inspection.
 It is not comprehensive. Some publishers do not make their content available
to Google Scholar.
 There is limited search functionality and refinement options.
 There are search operators that can be used to help narrow down the results.
 OR—Broadens search by capturing synonyms or variant spellings of a concept.
 Brackets/Parentheses ( )—Gather OR’d synonyms of a concept together, while
combining them with another concept.
 Quotation marks “ ”—Narrow the search by finding words together as a
phrase, instead of separately.
 Site—limits the search to results from a specific domain or website.
 Filetype—limits the search to results with a specific file extension
Effective Search: The Way Forward
 Typically more complex and advanced than those found in general
magazines.
 While most of the engineering researchers need to refer articles that appear
in scholarly journals, books or other peer-reviewed sources, there is also a
substantially useful content in more popular publications.
 These are informal in approach and aim to reach a large number of readers
including both the experts in the filed and also amateurs, but the content
focuses on news and trends in the field.
 Research outcomes are not typically first disseminated here but are usually
meant for general reading.
 No one place or one source exists that will provide all the information one
needs; one will likely need to look in all the places that would be described
in this chapter and in others not mentioned.
Searching is an iterative process:
 Experiment with different keywords and operators;
 Evaluate and assess results, use filters;
 Modify the search as needed; and
 When relevant articles are found, look at their citations and references.
 After the search is complete, the researcher needs to engage in critical and
thorough reading, making observation of the salient points in those sources,
and summarize the findings.
 A detailed comparison and contrast of the findings is also required to be
done. This entire process may be needed to be done multiple times.
 The conclusion of the entire process of literature survey includes a summary
of the relevant and important work done, and also the identification of the
missing links and the challenges in the open problems in the area under
study.
Introduction to Technical Reading
1. Where to read ? Refereed journals and books published by reputed
2. How to Start? Title and keywords… If does not sufficiently seem to be interesting;
stop reading and look for something else to read.
3. Read the abstract to get an overview of the paper in minimum time.
4. If the abstract is interesting, Go straight to the conclusions to find if the paper is
relevant to the intended purpose,
5. Then observe the figures, tables, and the captions therein, which has enough idea
to know what was done in the paper.
6. Than read Introduction section to know the background information
7. Next sections to read is the Results and Discussion which is the heart of the paper.
8. One should really read further sections like the Experimental Setup/Modeling, etc.,
only if one is really interested and wishes to understand exactly what was done to
better understand the meaning of the data and its interpretation.
Conceptualizing Research
 The characteristics of a research objective is it must have new knowledge
and that must be accepted by the by researchers as significant.
 Besides being original and significant, a good research problem should also
be solvable or achievable.
 Means method and the tools that could be used to obtain that new
knowledge should be known.
 Tools and methods to solve the problem normally comes from the existing
recorded literature and knowledge in the field.
 One needs to be continually reading the literature so as to bring together
the three parts to conceptualize research:
o Significant problem,
o The knowledge that will address it, and
o A possible way to make that new knowledge.
 A research project that is of a smaller scope, then
conceptualizing is too tough to do.
 Typically the supervisor who may already be an expert and an
active researcher in that field, and may advise on what a good
research objective might be.
 Established researcher in any field should be able to immediately
point to the landmark literature that one should read first.
 Otherwise one would need to spend a lot of time reading the
literature to discover.
Critical and Creative Reading

 Reading a research paper is a critical process. Not be under the

assumption that results or arguments are correct.
 Being suspicious and asking appropriate questions is in fact a good thing.
Some aspects to be considered are
1. Have the authors attempted to solve the right problem?
2. Are there simpler solutions that have not been considered?
3. What are the limitations (both stated and ignored) of the solution and
are there any missing links?
4. Are the assumptions that were made reasonable?
5. Is there a logical flow to the paper or is there a flaw in the reasoning?
These need to be ascertained apart from the relevance and the importance
of the work, by careful reading.
 Use of judgmental approach and boldness to make judgments
is needed while reading.
 Flexibility to discard previous erroneous judgments is also
critical.
 Also whether the data presented in the paper is right data to
substantiate the argument that was made in the paper and
whether the data was gathered and interpreted in a correct
manner.
 Critical reading is relatively easy. Read to find the mistakes
than to find the good ideas in the paper. Anyone who has been
a regular reviewer of journal articles would agree to such a
statement.
 Reading creatively is harder:
o Requires a positive approach in search.
o The idea is to actively look for other applications, interesting
generalizations, or extended work which the authors might
have missed?
o Modifications may throw up important practical challenges?
o One might be able to interpret properly if one would like to
start researching an extended part of this work, and what
should be the immediate next aspect to focus upon.
 Taking Notes While Reading
 A researcher reads to write and writes well only if the reading skills are good.
 The bridge between reading and actually writing a paper is the act of taking
notes during and shortly after the process of reading.
 Many researchers take notes on the margins of their copies of papers or even
digitally on an article aggregator tool.
 Highlight definitions, explanations, and concepts to use later
 To know criticisms so that as to avoid being forgotten later on.
 Reread the same content after a long time.
 Helps in comparative perspective with respect to existing works in that specific
area
 Also, to know if there are new ideas, or if existing ideas were implemented
through experiments or in a new application, or if different existing ideas were
brought together under a novel framework.
Reading Mathematics

 Mathematics is often the foundation of new advances,

 It helps in evolution and development of engineering research and practice.
 An engineering researcher cannot avoid mathematical derivations or proofs
as part of research work
Reading Algorithms
 By meticulous reading algorithms, one can develop sound understanding
about the problem that the authors have attempted to solve.
 Implementation of an complicated algorithm in programming languages
such as C, C++ or Java is prone to errors.
 Even if the researcher is confident about the paper in hand, there is a fair
chance that it may not work at all.
 This can be by coding it quickly to check if it actually works.
 Reading data sheet
 Datasheets are instruction manuals for electronic components, which details what a
component one may use it.
 Datasheets enable a researcher to design a circuit or debug any given circuit with that
component.
 The first page of the datasheet consists basic specifications, and provides a functional
block diagram.
 The physical location of a part‘s pins can be correctly plugged into the circuit.
 Some parts also provide graphs show performance versus various criteria
 The truth tables present in data sheet describe what sort of inputs will give what sort of
outputs.
 Also at what speed data is sent and received from the part.
 Datasheets usually end with accurate dimensions of the packages a part is available in
which is useful for printed circuit board (PCB) layout.
 It is recommended to carefully read that part‘s of datasheet that may potentially save
many hours later on.
ATTRIBUTES AND CITATION

Referencing is the listing of the full publication details of a

published work that is cited so as to give background information
to the readers.

Acknowledgment in research publications indicates

contributions to scientific work.

However, acknowledgment, attributions, and citations differ in

the manner of their application.
CITATIONS: FUNCTIONS AND ATTRIBUTES
 Citations (references) credit others for their work, while allowing the readers to trace
the source of publication if needed.
 Any portion of someone else‘s work or ideas in papers, patents, or presentations must
be used in any new document only by clearly citing the source.
 This applies to texts, images, sounds, etc. and failure to do may be considered
plagiarism
 Bibliography of previously published patents or papers is placed in the new works of a
researcher, a connection is established between the new and previous work.
 Citations provides due credit to the researchers.
 Journal papers, conference proceeding, books, theses, newspaper articles, websites, or
other online resources and personal communication can be used as citations.
 Citations should be given at the end of a sentence or the end of a paragraph.
 LaTeX, a document preparation system often used by engineering researchers to
automatically format documents
Cases where references do not fulfill the actual goal :
Spurious citations: When citation is not required or an appropriate one is not
found, if the author nevertheless goes ahead with including one anyways, it
would be considered as a spurious citation
Biased citations: When authors cite the work of their friends or colleagues
despite there being no significant connection between the two works, or when
they do not cite work of genuine significance because they do not wish to give
credit
Self-citations: There is nothing wrong in citing one‘s prior work if the citation is
really relevant. Self-citation of prior papers is natural because the latest paper is
often a part of a larger research project which is ongoing
Coercive citations: Despite shortcomings, impact factors remain a primary
method of quantification of research. One side effect is that it creates an
incentive for editors to indulge in coercion to add citations to the editor‘s journal
IMPACT OF TITLES AND KEYWORDS ON CITATION

The citation depends on various factors including significance and availability of

the journal, publication types, research area, and importance of the published
research work.
 Factors like length of the title, type of the title, keywords impact the citation
count.
 It is the main indication of the research area or subject and is used by
researcher as a source of information during literature survey. Title plays
important role in marketing and makes research papers traceable.
 Some titles are informative but do not capture attention of readers, some
titles are attractive but not informative or related to the readers‘ research
area.
 The download count and citation of a research paper might be influenced by
title.
There are three different aspects which provide a particular behavior to the title:
 Types of the title,
 Length of the title, and
 Presence of specific markers
 Longer titles mainly include the study methodology and/or results in more
detail, and so attract more attention and citations
 review articles and original articles usually receive more citations
 Search engines, journal, digital libraries, and indexing services use keywords
KNOWLEDGE FLOW THROUGH CITATION

Knowledge flows through

verbal communications,
books, documents, video,
audio, and images, which
plays a powerful role in
research community in
promoting the formulation
of new knowledge.

If paper A is cited by paper

B, then knowledge flows
through citation networks
across
Institutions
The complex interdisciplinary nature of research
encourages scholars to cooperate with each
other to grab more advantages through
collaboration, thereby improving quality of the
research
CITING DATASETS
 The nature of engineering research relies heavily on data to justify claims and
provide experimental evidences
 So data citations must fetch proper credit to the creator of the dataset as citations
of other objects like research articles.
 Data citations should have provisions to give credit and legal attribution to all
contributors
 A researcher should obtain necessary permission for using data from a particular
source.
 Citations related to datasets should include enough information so that a reader
could find the same dataset again in the future, even if the link provided no longer
works.
STYLES FOR CITATION
Citation styles differ primarily in the order, and syntax of information about
references, depending on difference in priorities attributed to concision,
readability, dates, authors, and publications.

ASCE style (American Society of Civil Engineers)

IEEE style (Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers
ACKNOWLEDGMENT AND ATTRIBUTION
 Acknowledgment section is a place to provide a brief appreciation for an organization
or funding body to the present work.
 If no particular guideline is available for the intended publication, then it can be
introduced at the end of the text or as a footnote.
 Acknowledgment is a common practice to recognize persons or agencies for being
responsible in some form or other for completion of a publishable research outcome.
 Acknowledgment displays a relationship among people, agencies, institutions, and
research.
 In some case, certain individuals may help in the research work but may not deserve to
be included as authors. As a sign of gratitude, such contributions should be
acknowledged.
 In engineering research, acknowledgments are meant for participating technicians,
students, funding agency, grant number, institution, or anyone who provide scientific
inputs, shared unpublished results, provided equipment, or participated in discussions.
 Many technical journals explicitly discourage authors to thank the reviewers in their
article submissions. This could be construed as favoritism or an attempt to
encourage reviewers to accept their manuscript for reasons other than scientific
merit.

 By acknowledging all help received in one‘s research work, the author(s)

demonstrate integrity as a researcher, which in turn encourages continued
collaboration from those who helped out in different ways.
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS IN BOOKS / DISSERTATION

 Acknowledgments is usually included at the beginning of a thesis/

dissertation immediately following the table of contents.
 Acknowledgments are longer than the one or two sentence statements in
journal papers or articles in conference proceedings.
 Acknowledgments enable researcher to thank all those who have
contributed in completion of the research work.
 The following are often acknowledged in these types of acknowledgments:
main supervisor, second supervisor, peers in the lab, other academic staff in
the department, technical or support staff in the department, colleagues
from other departments, other institutions, or organizations, former
students, family, and friends
DEDICATION OR ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

 Dedication is almost never used in a journal paper, an article in

conference proceedings, or a patent, and it is used exclusively in larger
documents like books, thesis, or dissertations
 While acknowledgments are reserved for those who helped out with
the book in some way or another (editing, moral support, etc), a
dedication is to whomever the author would like it to be dedicated to,
whether it is the author‘s mother, the best friend, the pet dog, or
Almighty God.