in this video you will learn how to do a
literature review for a PhD so let's get
started hello and welcome to my channel
my name is Tahir here and if this is your
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Tuesday and Friday there could be many
reasons for doing a literature review
but in this video we will be focusing on
doing this for a PhD degree so what is
literature in our context literature is
any scholarly writing such as a journal
paper a conference paper or any relevant
thesis which relates to your field of
research now what is literature review
in literature review you identify the
relevant literature in a particular
field of research and then you evaluate
that literature with an intention to
find gaps and these gaps will be filled
by your research why you do a literature
review I have talked about the
importance of literature review in few
other videos and I will put a link in
this video which you can watch but in a
nutshell we do literature review to
demonstrate that we know this field of
research and that our contribution is
original literature review is a very
important process of any research
project and people have talked about
this a lot but in my opinion all this
process boils down to these seven steps
I don't want this video to be too long
but I will quickly give you few tips
about these seven steps so the first
step is find key word find relevant
keywords when you start your PhD most of
the time you do not know the area very
well you have a little bit of idea what
you are going to do but there are a lot
of keywords relevant to your field of
research which you might not know and
the literature will you will be trying
to find out will heavily depend on the
keywords for which you are searching so
therefore you should have a stock of
keywords to search for the papers there
are many tools available some tools are
not intended for scientific
they are marketing tools but I have
tested these tools and these tools work
very well for scientific purpose as well
so these tools are SEM rush H refs all
these tools are for marketing people for
advertising people but because they deal
with the keywords so they can provide
you some keywords some broader keywords
they will not give you the specific
scientific terminology which you have to
figure out by yourself or by talking to
your supervisor but for some students
even the broader keywords are also
helpful so you can use any of these
tools so these are commercial tools you
don't have to pay money don't buy these
tools because you will not be doing this
a lot this is just an initial step and
your supervisor can also help you but I
don't want to do is I have installed a
free Chrome extension that is called
keywords everywhere and whenever I
search in Google that Chrome extension
gives me certain associated rl8 related
keywords so this is just a start now the
second step is finding literature and
the researchers here I have pulled the
researchers as well and I will talk
about how to find the literature but I
will not talk about how to find the top
researcher in your field because I have
discussed this in another video I will
put a link here you can watch that video
for AM around nine minute and 25 seconds
after that you can watch that video and
where I explain how to find the top
researcher in your field and now we
talked about how to find the appropriate
literature now what most student do is
they start typing certain keywords in
Google Scholar are in the library
databases such as I typically explore
are ProQuest whatever literature comes
they just collected no the problem here
is that the little amount of literature
you will get from these the amount of
articles journal papers conference paper
which you will get by doing just the
keyword search will be too much you
don't have time to read all those
thousands of paper so the solution is
that you must
use advanced search features there are
certain advanced search operators in
every searchable database including
Google I will show you an article on the
screen you can read this article but
Joshua Hardwick this guy explains what
are some of the advanced search features
in Google which you can use if you are
searching in Google Scholar for example
and I will show you two examples I
Triple E explore database and ProQuest
database so let's have a look at I
Triple E explore database I Triple E
Explorer has other search options and if
you click on this little arrow you have
command search and in command search you
will have many fields and also many
operators available for advanced search
you also have complex command search
example which you can read to understand
how to make a complex advanced search
query in ProQuest database we have these
three operators you also have source
type document type and language options
so this type of Adamas search is
available in every database so make use
of this advanced search know you know
how to use the advanced operator but
here is the launcher the launcher is
that most scientists and researchers
they do not use the relevant keywords
the true keywords and now although there
are some organizations north which are
trying to and force that researchers and
scientists must use some so-called
approved keywords but even then
scientists do not do that they don't use
the true relevant keywords in their
papers and it is sometimes hard to find
the relevant paper and you should always
keep this in mind that there might be a
very important paper still hidden from
you now the third step is qualify
literature for reading you cannot read
all those which you have found in the
search results even if you use the
advanced search operators so how do you
qualify that you should read this
literature you should read this
conference journal paper or thesis so
there are few things you can do
number one you read the title and add
the most only the abstract which will
take you maybe two three minutes you
read these two and you omit
we'll feel whether this is relevant or
not this is one thing the second thing
you will do is you will look at the
impact factor of the paper if this is a
journal paper with a high impact factor
it's just a conference paper whether
it's by a renowned researcher from some
unknown student for example so these are
few things so you have to determine
whether you should keep this or not so
now you will make three different
categories number one not relevant
immediately remove that from your list
number two relevant number three may be
relevant or not relevant you are not
sure but you think it might be relevant
these are the three categories so two of
these categories relevant and might be
relevant you will bring to the next step
and the next step is put it on a time
line now why this is important to put
this papers on a time line this is very
important in order to build a story
which we will discuss in next steps you
are not doing this literature review as
an isolated thing you are not doing this
just to show what the other people have
done no you have to find you are doing
this to critically analyze this paper to
see what are the issues what the
discussions are going how this research
is progressing so all these kind of
things and therefore you are putting
this on a timeline so that you can
understand what was the starting point
of this kind of research then what
happened then what happened and how the
things are progressing so these are the
articles from 1990 to 95 95 to 2000 or
2000 to 2005 so all these so how far you
should go this depends on your topic
your field of research but don't go too
far and when to make this timeline there
should be more papers towards the latest
period and less paper as you go towards
the older years so this you should keep
in mind that the latest research is more
important for you but if there are
high-impact papers which have been cited
by many researchers you must include
those papers even if they are older so
this is how you create a
nine of your papers no the next step is
break it down break it down what break
it down your field of research and put
all your papers into those sections or
those chapters are those subtopics so
the best way to do that is by look at
some of the recent textbooks and in
those textbooks you will find some
hierarchical charts of your field of
research so that is your breakdown of
your field of research you break down
your field of research into different
areas then all your papers which you
have put on the timeline you will put in
these sections are in these chapters how
many break down as many headings as
possible as many subheadings as possible
why because when you build a story out
of it it will help you there okay these
are the areas in my field of research
and these are the important papers in
these areas so this is how you break
down now the next step is build a story
no this is the most important step all
what you are doing is for this step not
the next step because the next step the
step number seven finding gap is the
nature outcome of all of these efforts
if you had the intention if you have
done all these their first properly then
you will automatically find the gaps all
the way you will automatically find the
gaps you are not doing literature review
to just write down bits and pieces from
other people's work into one chapter of
your thesis no this will not give you
any credit you are doing the literature
review to build a story so the research
started in my area in year 1990 for
example these were the researchers this
is what the date these were the issues
these were the problems these were the
controversies then some other
researchers came into the picture they
did this they also addressed this
problem they demonstrated some
experiments but they couldn't find this
thing which I am trying to address and
this story seems very easy but actually
this is not the only way you can build
this story is by rigorous X
we're reading there is no other method
no shortcut for this you cannot read an
abstract of someone else's you can build
your own story no you have to
extensively read all these papers which
you have selected in your timeline and
here what I do is what I suggest is and
I will show you on the screen a mind map
kind of thing you can make this in any
software there is a free software
available called free mind I had made
this own free mind so on this screen you
can see that these are some of the
critical papers which you will put from
your timeline to this mind map why I
call it mind map because these are those
papers which should always stay in your
mind be so familiar with these papers
because these papers will build your
story
you put these selected papers which are
part of your story from your timeline
into this diagram into this mind map
then you can assign our relevancy score
that this is highly relevant this is the
impact factor of these papers so now
this is the story which you will be
writing on a separate chapter and I
would suggest that your literature
review should be a separate chapter it
is not a compulsion it is not a
requirement but it is a good practice I
support this practice so whenever you
read those papers which you have
selected for your story for your mind
map you must read those papers then make
notes in English or in your own language
wherever you are comfortable with make
notes highlight those parts which are
important so that when you are building
a story for your chapter of thesis you
should be you should feel very
comfortable and now if you have done all
this then automatically you will find
certain gaps and then you have to link
those gaps with your research and how
you are addressing those gaps so if you
do this this will prove that your work
is original nobody else has done and you
should be awarded a PhD degree so there
could be many questions about around
these topics so if you have any
questions please put in the
comment section below and I will
definitely answer those questions I hope
that you like this video if so please
give it a thumbs up thanks for watching
and see you next time
you
