Seeing the wood for the trees!

Now that the deadline for the literature review is rapidly approaching I can definitely say that a literature review seems like something that could be a neverending story! In comparison to the research I did in my undergraduate days things have changed a lot. Back then we had Janet rather than the internet and journal articles were things you physically read from paper journals filed in dusty folders or found on tiny microfiche slides. In this sense the internet seems to me to be a blessing and a curse: having almost instant access to thousands of articles, papers and conference proceedings from all over the world is an amazing opportunity for any researcher. On the other hand, having almost instant access to thousands of articles, papers and conference proceedings from all over the world is an amazing challenge for any researcher. How do you decide what is relevant? How do you know if the findings are important? How do you cope with seemingly thousands of sources all on the topic you want to explore?

Trying to answer these questions reminds me of the quote by then US Secretary of Defense, Donald Rumsfeld:

"[T]here are known knowns; there are things we know that we know.
There are known unknowns; that is to say there are things that, we now know we don't know.
But there are also unknown unknowns – there are things we do not know we don't know."

In searching for literature I think the results can be broken down into four distinct types, similar to those of Mr Rumsfeld:

Categories of literature

The first type of articles, those which are unavailable and irrelevant are no problem. They can simply be ignored. Articles which are available but turn out to be irrelevant are more of a problem. Often one has to begin reading to discover if they are perhaps relevant which is time-consuming and sometimes frustrating. A lack of a clear abstract often means you have to spend longer reading before it is clear what the actual core of the research or project is.  Articles which are available and relevant are a dream come true. Sometimes it is still necessary to read further before it is clear that an article is useful but at least when we find out that it is relevant we have something to show for the effort. The main problem with this category of article is simply that there are so many of them! The final category of article, unavailable but relevant, is perhaps the most frustrating. Certain journals only make articles available to association members or in exchange for paying a fee. Although many of these articles can be accessed through the Napier library or my own institutions databases it is hard to know if the money is worth spending without having seen the content.

As I said in a previous post, it seems like the literature review really does influence your research aims and that in actual fact it is impossible or at least extremely unwise to set your research goals too definitely before you get to grips with the literature. Having now spent several weeks exploring research on mobile learning I can confirm this is definitely the case. There are literally thousands of articles available on mobile learning, even when one restricts the search to just articles published in 2012. For that reason I felt myself forced to reduce my literature review to mobile learning using a specific technology, SMS. I will write more on my search strategies and search results in my next post.

Neil

Sources.

Rusmfeld quote: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/There_are_known_knowns [accessed 30/11/2012]