Volume 12 | Issue 1 | Jan-Mar 2017 | Page 1 | Ashok Shyam
Authers: Ashok Shyam [1]
[1] Sancheti Institute for Orthopaedics and Rehabilitation, Pune, India
[2] Indian Orthopaedic Research Group, Thane, India.
Address for correspondence
Dr. Ashok Shyam
Sancheti Institute for Orthopaedics and Rehabilitation, Pune, Maharashtra- India
Email-drashokshyam@gmail.com
Abstract
Literature review forms an important part of every manuscript. It is the primary requirement before beginning a project and forms the basis of synopsis / introduction where the justification for the project is done. It also forms the important part of material and methods in terms of selecting appropriate outcome measures and scores. Discussion is essentially comparison of the results of the study with literature and discuss in context. With literature review forming essential part of all the part of the manuscript and research project, there is till lack of awareness about literature review among many authors.
We get many manuscripts where the literature review is inadequate or very selective. Many a time review consists of many old articles and very few recent articles are reviewed. At times lot of irrelevant articles are reviewed and added to the paper. I believe most of this is not intentional but due to lack of knowledge of how to conduct literature review. I regularly conduct these workshops regarding literature review and here I will outline some important websites and resources to conduct literature review. PubMed is the most important resource for literature review and has been simplified by the search builder plugin. We simply need to put in the keywords in the search builder page on PubMed and get results that we need. The entire list of keywords and Boolean operators that are used can be mentioned in the manuscript and this will help a reader conduct and verify the review. The second important resource is google search. The basic search in google too should begin with keywords and should focus on finding one article that is most relevant to your study. Once this template article is found, we can go to citing articles and related article list form the link and review articles in google scholar. The third resource is Cochrane library. The Cochrane library web portal also has a search builder but this is very basic. Also a search on Cochrane library gives references to level one evidence only that is systematic reviews and meta-analysis and randomised trials. All above three resources are free and there is no cost to do a literature review. These can be adjusted to give only last one year of fie year articles and will help in including most recent reviews to the manuscript.
I would request all authors of Journal of Trauma and Orthopaedic surgery to please do a thorough literature review and find relevant article to be included in introduction and discussion. Please do a literature review of last five years article and if possible make a table comparing last 5 year article with your article. This will help the reader grasp the context very fast.
A good literature review helps a lot in getting the article accepted and request your all to learn and conduct literature reviews and include the in your manuscripts.
Dr Ashok Shyam
Editor – JTOS
| How to Cite this article: Shyam A. Resources for Literature Review. Journal of Orthopaedics and Trauma Surgery. Jan – March 2017;12(1):1. |