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Carry out search of relevant literature and provide a critical review of the
material.
Provide an understanding of the topic area - problem domain/technology - in
terms of established theory and practice.
Demonstrate that you can apply the knowledge that you have been exposed to.
Reuse tried and tested ideas, methods and techniques.
Understand and set bounds for the problem that you are tackling.
Identify relevant concepts, methods, techniques and technologies.
Identify examples of good practice in software engineering.
Identify new approaches/technologies.
Link other peoples work with your own.
You will see evidence of a literature review in most academic books and journal
articles, in the form of quotations, footnotes, references and citations. The literature
review also has the advantage of preventing you from expending a lot of effort on
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reinventing the wheel. That is, from redoing something that someone else has
already done satisfactorily and published their findings on (this is not to say that you
should not redo some things under appropriate circumstances.) You might spend days
or weeks thinking up the idea, and further days or weeks refining it. You might try to
implement it or emulate the idea using software, which might take further days or
weeks. You might have to struggle through numerous attempts in order to eliminate
errors in your thinking or in the resulting implementation or emulation. If this is not
the primary purpose of your project, you will have spent a long time struggling to
solve a low-level, ancillary problem. And someone else has already solved it but you
wouldnt know it because youve been working in isolation.
The literature on a topic is a fundamental support to an international community of
researchers, scholars and practitioners, helping each other by revealing what they have
discovered. The literature on a topic is also the place where peer review takes place.
A researcher publishes his or her findings, and others test their validity (if the paper is
a scientific one) or offer criticism or support. So when you do a literature review, you
will want to discover not only the one article, but also those which discuss the validity
of the solution it offers. Only in that way will you arrive at a truly informed view of
the work that has been done in your topic and in related topics.
So, you can see that the literature is not simply for the purposes of making facts
available to a wide audience, as are, say, instruction manuals and data sheets. The
literature that you discover in your review not only gives you the bare facts, but also
helps to set the context to the problem area you are working in. It gives you the kind
of information that will ultimately allow you to take an informed and critical
viewpoint about the work you yourself do and the work in related areas that others do.
This is an important part of your project and one that you must address fully in your
project report if you wish to be awarded a good overall project mark.
The value of the literature review to your overall project mark
The literature review will have an impact on the overall assessment of your project.
Examiners will reward students for making a clear, coherent summary and assessment
of the work itself. They are interested in what you have learned from undertaking the
project as well as what has been achieved. Students will be given credit for insightful
critiques of their own work. A good literature review will help you to demonstrate
your grasp of existing concepts, where your work fits, and what you have achieved
and provide a sound basis for the evaluation of your own work. Examiners will look
at the references that you have cited and at the bibliography that you have given. You
should endeavour to ensure that your list of bibliographic references is not too short,
and that your references are not out of date or irrelevant..
It is important to ensure that the literature review is directed
towards the specific topic area and the themes of the project, and is
not just a general textbook review of a wide field.
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computer journal, such as IEEE Computer. Later you will find yourself progressing to
more specialist journals like the Communications of the ACM or the Journal of
Object-Oriented Programming.
Publications that may provide appropriate literature and references include (the list is
by no means exhaustive):
Textbooks
basic principles, facts, and theories with examples
Journals
contain most recent material
can contain papers with content that would not normally warrant a
complete book
give an overview of the current state of a subject
Reports
Conference literature
Official publications
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There are also different techniques that should be used when reading for research
purposes:
Skimming
rapid reading to gain a general impression of the material
no need to read every word
dip into chapters that appear interesting or useful
Reflective
read carefully to allow time to analyse and reflect
understand underlying concepts presented
compare with other works
Scanning
Skipping through quickly, looking for something
check index for specific item
For the majority of projects for the BSc (Hons) Computing concerned mainly with
building applications, the literature review can be carried out early in the project, and
reading can be done prior to the calendar start of the project unit. There will obviously
be some reading must be carried out before the project can be completely planned, but
additional reading can be carried out in parallel with other project activities. Its not
always possible for instance, to acquire all of the books and articles that you have
identified as required reading, at the time that you need them. You should therefore be
careful that the reading does not exceed the proportionate amount of time that you
should allot it within your overall project plan.
Writing the literature review
The role and scope of a literature review will depend to some extent on the type of
project undertaken. A pure research project will clearly demand an extensive literature
review that supports the research carried out. A project that results in a dissertation,
perhaps in the fields of information systems or multimedia for example, will require a
significant amount of investigative work, looking at the work of others and even
identifying research methods and strategies that can be usefully applied to the project.
A development project, as explained above, will usually require reading in both the
problem domain (e.g. hotel management) and in the technology domain (e.g. Internet
technologies). In all cases however, you are required to show, through your literature
review, that you have an understanding of your field of study, and through that
understanding have laid the foundation for your project.
A literature review should provide a coherent argument that leads to the description of
a proposed study (Rudestam and Newton 1992, cited by Dawson 2000). Dawson goes
on to point out that this is achieved with reference to past and current literature in the
field(s) of study and will involve a discussion of current omissions and any biases that
you have identified (Saunders et al. 1997). When constructing a literature review
therefore, you should:
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A critical review should show that the writer has studied existing work in the field
with insight (Haywood and Wragg 1982). In attempting to clearly define what a
literature review is, it is useful to say what it is not. Both Bell (1991) and Dawson
(2000) are agreed that a literature review is not:
Quote extensively.
Give opinions unsupported by the literature.
Fail to link the literature review to your project.
References
It should be evident from the discussion so far, that references play a key part in any
literature review. Blaxter et al. (1996) provide some useful hints on the use and abuse
of references. Use references to:
Appear to be trying to impress your readers with the scope of your reading.
End up by littering your writing with names and quotations.
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Are actually replacing the need for you to express your own thoughts.
Literature search
If you have never done a literature search before, it is essential that you plan this
activity, otherwise you may find yourself running round in ever-decreasing circles and
achieving nothing at all. Before you embark upon a literature search, you should try to
identify the following:
The scope of the search topic i.e. what topics that might be encountered in a
general search, can be discounted as being not relevant to your particular project?
The vocabulary used in discussions relating to your project area: you will already
have noted down some keywords in your project proposal, but a more complete
list should now be compiled remember to distinguish between terminologies and
spellings used in different countries such as America and Britain.
The types of published materials that need to be included in the search to give a
complete (or as complete as the project requires) body of literature on the subject.
For an undergraduate computing project, you will rarely be expected to provide the
results of a complete literature search, but rather, you will need to show that you have
selected reading appropriate to your project area that gives sufficient breadth and
depth for your particular project. Its important to realise that your literature search
will provide you with material that requires your critical evaluation. It is not sufficient
just to read the material! You should also be aware that this process is iterative. You
will not usually be able to get all your reading material in one visit to a library,
critically appraise it and then sit down and write your literature review. Furthermore,
once you have started reading, you may discover further reading material. Although
you will need to bring your literature searching to a close at some point early in the
project, you may still be acquiring material at later stages, and therefore may need to
add to your literature review throughout the project.
Carrying out a literature search
The following activities will help you in carrying out your literature search.
1. Browse the librarys catalogue. This does not necessarily mean walking along the
aisles and scanning the titles of books on the shelves. Books that contain
references to the subjects specified in your keywords may not be grouped together
on a single shelf. Most libraries now have computerised catalogues that can be
searched using author name, book title, and other keywords.
2. Look at book bibliographies. These will yield, as with the librarys catalogue,
mostly books, reports and conference proceedings.
3. Look at abstracting and indexing journals. These will point you to journal
articles, reports, conference proceedings, patents and sometimes standards.
Determine which journals and which journal articles are likely to be of most help.
See them at the library and take notes, or send for copies where necessary. Note down
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the classification numbers for each information source located. This will provide a
map of where in the library you may find material relevant to your project.
Try to avoid accumulating vast amounts of photocopied material.
You will doubtless not read it all, and even if you do, it will need
careful indexing and even cross-referencing. If you can find it in the
library, sit in the library and make notes from it and include
references to particular pages or passages of text.
You could go on to look at what is available under other services (ask your librarian
about these). These will give you the latest titles, which have not yet had time to filter
through to abstracting and indexing journals. They are however, more difficult to use
because they are less well organised and structured and often dont cover as broad a
range of journals as the abstracting and indexing journals do. When you have done
some literature searching and been able to identify researchers and institutions as
described below, you can contact institutions and people. The Aslib Directory of
Information Services in the United Kingdom can be very helpful in pointing you to
specialist collections in libraries, if one exists in your topic area.
You should not contact individuals until you are certain that your enquiry is not
low-level, the information is not available from any other source, and you feel
certain you are not likely to be a nuisance.
Know what kind of literature you are looking for before you start. Below are listed
various source types [Gash, 1989], together with some information about them and
where they are likely to be of value to you.
Books.
These tend to be the first resort of students and a good book will give you leads
for further searching. It is useful to distinguish sub-categories of books and know
what sorts of things you are likely to find.
(a) Reference books: computing has now been around long enough to have its
own collection of reference works, mostly dictionaries of terms and directories
of one sort or another. It is worth starting by looking up major terms in your
project topic to get a detailed definition. This also helps because, in your
dissertation, you will need to define your terms carefully. This way you can
arrive at a commonly agreed meaning for terms.
(b) Textbooks: a good textbook (or two) constitutes an excellent starting point.
Remember that the information in the book will be at least two years older
than the publication date. Textbooks should help you refine your search and
give you necessary background information. See below. (You will need to be
aware that not all textbooks are good textbooks, and that what is a good
textbook for one person may be very hard going for another.
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(c) Treatises: These are thorough and even exhaustive treatments of a subject
usually a rather narrow subject. You may want to look into these at a later
stage of your search when you will have refined your ideas. There are
probably not many on computing subjects.
(d) Monographs. These are works on very specialised topics. They have not the
same breadth and exhaustive nature as a treatise and are written by specialists
for specialists (which is why they usually cost a great deal to buy).
Items which will inform you about the state of the art. These consist of :
(a) Journal articles, especially important in technical and scientific subjects. They
are recent and often include reports which are too short or ephemeral for
publication in book form. Collectively they give an overview of state of the
art.
(b) Reports. These generally emanate from organisations and are not always
found in libraries, though libraries often have bibliographies, which give
information about reports that are available.
(c) Conference literature. These can be quite good in providing a snapshot of a
topic as discussed at a particular conference and can give you an idea of who
is currently researching what. The quality varies a lot, both in terms of the
material published and how it is presented.
(d) Theses. If you have access to a university library, it is likely to contain copies
of theses written as part of PhD studies. Some also contain MSc and MA
dissertations. The topic is likely to be quite narrow. A thesis is likely to yield
a good reference list if its topic is similar to yours, but there are no guarantees.
A thesis also describes original research, but it is difficult or impossible to
tract down any follow-on from it. Look into these only if there does not seem
to be much available for (a), (b) and (c).
(e) Patents. You are unlikely to need to examine patents for any work you do at
undergraduate or Masters level. However, patents do reveal full technical
details that perhaps cant be obtained anywhere else.
(f) Standards. Depending on the area you choose for your project, this type of
material may or may not be important to you.
(g) Official publications. These are difficult even for librarians to classify and
deal with. Unless you specifically need details such as information about
legislation, dont bother with these.
Even if a library does not contain what you need, librarians generally are friendly and
excellent sources to consult on where to begin! As more and more libraries possess
the means for electronic information searches, you may find that you come away with
quite a bit.
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It may very well be the case that the results of a literature search are overwhelming in
the quantity of material identified. In many cases, students have set about their
literature search enthusiastically, only to be defeated when it came to reading and
cross-referencing the material gathered! It is therefore imperative that you consider
ways and means by which the material can be controlled.
Rather than discard material before it has even been seen, you should attempt to
decide firstly, which references should be obtained, and secondly, once the material
has been collected, decide whether it is extremely relevant, of minor importance, or
not in fact relevant to the topic. In doing this, a priority for reading can be made. It is
helpful if the material is first scanned fairly quickly in order to decide its importance,
before attempting to read it properly. Asking yourself questions about the material
may help you to decide upon its relevance and degree of importance to your literature
review (Dawson 2000):
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note of quotations at the time that you read them. A particularly perceptive
observation by an author may often illustrate a point that you wish to make, and add
an extra dimension to your argument (Bell 1991). The following activities may be
helpful:
use index cards (available from W.H. Smiths for example) or software for
indexing quotes
highlight, underline or make notes on copies of articles etc.
make notes that explain the contribution of what you have read: ideas etc
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Finding books
Books on computing and information systems are mainly to be found in the sections
003 006 of the library's classification scheme (Dewy Decimal). Other related topics
can be found at the following class marks:
Business studies
Computer Science
Decision making and information management
Electronics and communications engineering
Mathematics
Report writing
Society and computers
Society and information technology
658
005
658.403
621.38
510
808.066
303.4834
301.4833
To search for subjects in more detail, either use the subject search facility of OPAC to
find the class number of the subject and then do a classmark search, to see what
specific titles the library holds, and their precise location. Alternatively do a keyword
search on OPAC.
Tracing information and sources
1. Browse
a) contents pages for relevant titles
b) annual indexes if you know date
2. Use Abstracts/Indexes - give systematic access to a wide range of journals so you
do not need to know any details beforehand. Computer held information includes
Computer Select and Inspec both held on CD-ROM.
3. BIDS Indexes
a) INSIDE INFORMATION (1993-) 10000 most requested journals (some
computing ones) updated daily
b) COMPENDEX (1984-) Engineering and Technology - updated weekly
4. INTERNET
a) Library home page: URLs (Web site addresses) indexed by
subject/pathway - compiled by library staff
b) Browse the Internet yourself - NB do not spend too long - maybe start with
net search, yahoo," "lycos," or "infoseek search engines.
c) Access mailing lists and newsgroups.
5. Professional organisations such as the British Computer Society (BCS), the
Institute for the Management of Information Systems (IMIS), the Project
Management Institute, Association of Computing Machinery (ACM) and so on.
Some organisations such as the BCS have special interest groups (SIGS) which
can be contacted for help and information.
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Summary
For most projects, it is essential to review the existing literature as it forms the
academic context of the project. This allows you to discuss the theories and concepts
that you used, as well as those you have rejected. This review of the literature allows
the reader to see where your work fits and also the extent of your own work. The
literature survey is composed of two main components: a literature search and a
literature review. The literature search represents the mechanics of looking for,
sorting, managing and digesting research material. The literature review represents
your written understanding, critical evaluation, conceptualisation and presentation of
the material you have obtained (Dawson 2000).
Projects that are mainly concerned with building software applications and databases
for example, require a literature review that is directed towards the specific area of
development concerned and to the relevant theories, concepts and practices of
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building software products. The results of the literature review form an important part
of the project report, and are usually given critical appraisal by examiners.
Bibliography
Bell, J. (1993) Doing Your Research Project, 2nd Edition, Open University Press,
Buckingham.
Dawson, C.W. The Essence of Computing Projects: A Students Guide, Prentice-Hall,
Harlow.
Gash, S. (1989) Effective Literature Searching for Students, Gower, Aldershot.
Haywood, P. and Wragg, E. C. (1982) Evaluating the Literature, Rediguide 2,
University of Nottingham School of Education, Nottingham.
Rudestam, K.E. and Newton, R.R. (1992) Surviving Your Dissertation, Sage, London.
Saunders, M., Lewis, P. and Thornhill, A. (1997) Research Methods for Business
Students, Pitman, London.
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