VCSEwiki:Literature review

For writing is necessary to find some very reliable resources - your text should be based on critical and responsible thinking and dialogue with what has been already said.

Where to find the resources

Other sources to your chosen theme should be prefarably scientific articles. Where you can find your external resources:

• for the beginning you can look at Wikipedia or do simple Google search - you will get texts of very different quality. You can use them for basic orientation only - please do not consider them as a resource for your research and do not cite them!
• for your academic writing you may prefer Google Scholar to find reliable resources
  • This is not the only possibility, you can use any other search engine, see the List of academic databases and search engines!
  • Every library has its own information retrieval system (Charles University students can use "Central Search Tool"
  • Your university library offers some of the resources online, e.g. from ISI Web of Knowledge or JSTOR or some other scientific database. Here you can find reviewed journals.

Managemenet of citations

• There is Zotero software available for management of your citations (helps you save the citation in required format)
  • But you can select your own - there are many other available softwares, see the List of reference management software!

Quality assessment

...of your resources would be very important at the certain stage. Sites about techniques of quality assessment (and not how to use them):

• Use Internet Detective online..You can try several quizzes to prove that your skills in evaluating sources have been already developed.
• Evaluating Online Sources: A Tutorial by Roger Munger

Technique of writing literature review

What we mean by the "literature review"? In this context, it is not just the list of references; but it is not also the thourough analysis of available resources. It is something in between - it brings arguments from literature that are focused specifically on your topic and must be reviewed before you start your research. Start with annotated bibliography, your own notes on your readings which you can use when you will be compiling the text in the later stages of the writing process.

Annotated bibliography

Write annotation to every valuable resource you are going to use in your writing.

• Definitions and format of annotated bibliographies
• Types of annotated bibliographies

Summary

• Research and Documenting Sources, see The Online Writing Lab (OWL) at Purdue University