How to Write a Good Review for Research Paper
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Literature reviews are important resources for scientists. They provide historical context for a field while offer opinions on its future trajectory. Creating them tin can provide inspiration for 1'south own research, as well every bit some exercise in writing. Just few scientists are trained in how to write a review — or in what constitutes an excellent one. Even picking the appropriate software to use can exist an involved decision (come across 'Tools and techniques'). And so Nature asked editors and working scientists with well-cited reviews for their tips.
WENTING ZHAO: Be focused and avert jargon
Banana professor of chemical and biomedical technology, Nanyang Technological University, Singapore.
When I was a research student, review writing improved my understanding of the history of my field. I also learnt near unmet challenges in the field that triggered ideas.
For instance, while writing my first review1 equally a PhD student, I was frustrated by how poorly we understood how cells actively sense, interact with and adapt to nanoparticles used in drug delivery. This experience motivated me to report how the surface backdrop of nanoparticles can be modified to enhance biological sensing. When I transitioned to my postdoctoral research, this question led me to discover the function of prison cell-membrane curvature, which led to publications and my current research focus. I wouldn't take started in this area without writing that review.
A common trouble for students writing their first reviews is being overly aggressive. When I wrote mine, I imagined producing a comprehensive summary of every unmarried blazon of nanomaterial used in biological applications. Information technology concluded up becoming a colossal slice of work, with too many papers discussed and without a clear way to categorize them. We published the work in the end, but decided to limit the word strictly to nanoparticles for biological sensing, rather than covering how dissimilar nanomaterials are used in biology.
My advice to students is to accept that a review is different a textbook: it should offer a more focused discussion, and information technology's OK to skip some topics so that y'all do not distract your readers. Students should too consider editorial deadlines, especially for invited reviews: make sure that the review'south scope is not so extensive that it delays the writing.
A good review should also avoid jargon and explain the basic concepts for someone who is new to the field. Although I trained every bit an engineer, I'grand interested in biology, and my research is nigh developing nanomaterials to manipulate proteins at the cell membrane and how this can affect ageing and cancer. Equally an 'outsider', the reviews that I find virtually useful for these biological topics are those that speak to me in accessible scientific language.
Bozhi Tian likes to get a diversity of perspectives into a review. Credit: Aleksander Prominski
BOZHI TIAN: Have a process and develop your fashion
Associate professor of chemistry, University of Chicago, Illinois.
In my lab, we start by request: what is the purpose of this review? My reasons for writing ane can include the take chances to contribute insights to the scientific customs and place opportunities for my research. I also see review writing as a way to train early-career researchers in soft skills such as project direction and leadership. This is especially truthful for lead authors, because they volition larn to work with their co-authors to integrate the various sections into a piece with smooth transitions and no overlaps.
Afterwards nosotros have identified the need and purpose of a review article, I will form a squad from the researchers in my lab. I try to include students with dissimilar areas of expertise, because information technology is useful to get a variety of perspectives. For example, in the review 'An atlas of nano-enabled neural interfaces'two, we had authors with backgrounds in biophysics, neuroengineering, neurobiology and materials sciences focusing on dissimilar sections of the review.
Subsequently this, I will discuss an outline with my team. We go through multiple iterations to brand sure that we have scanned the literature sufficiently and do not repeat discussions that accept appeared in other reviews. It is also important that the outline is not decided by me solitary: students often have fresh ideas that they can bring to the table. Once this is done, we proceed with the writing.
I ofttimes remind my students to imagine themselves as 'artists of science' and encourage them to develop how they write and nowadays information. Adding more words isn't always the best style: for instance, I enjoy using tables to summarize inquiry progress and suggest future research trajectories. I've also considered including curt videos in our review papers to highlight key aspects of the work. I recollect this tin increase readership and accessibility because these videos can be hands shared on social-media platforms.
ANKITA ANIRBAN: Timeliness and figures brand a huge difference
Editor, Nature Reviews Physics.
I of my roles every bit a journal editor is to evaluate proposals for reviews. The best proposals are timely and clearly explain why readers should pay attention to the proposed topic.
It is non enough for a review to be a summary of the latest growth in the literature: the virtually interesting reviews instead provide a give-and-take about disagreements in the field.
Scientists often eye the story of their main research papers effectually their figures — but when information technology comes to reviews, figures frequently take a secondary office. In my stance, review figures are more than of import than most people recall. I of my favourite review-fashion manufacturesiii presents a plot bringing together data from multiple inquiry papers (many of which direct contradict each other). This is then used to identify broad trends and advise underlying mechanisms that could explain all of the dissimilar conclusions.
An of import role of a review article is to innovate researchers to a field. For this, schematic figures can be useful to illustrate the scientific discipline being discussed, in much the aforementioned mode as the outset slide of a talk should. That is why, at Nature Reviews, nosotros have in-house illustrators to assist authors. However, simplicity is primal, and even without support from professional illustrators, researchers can nonetheless make utilise of many free cartoon tools to enhance the value of their review figures.
Yoojin Choi recommends that researchers be open to critiques when writing reviews. Credit: Yoojin Choi
YOOJIN CHOI: Stay updated and be open to suggestions
Research banana professor, Korea Avant-garde Institute of Science and Technology, Daejeon.
I started writing the review 'Biosynthesis of inorganic nanomaterials using microbial cells and bacteriophages'4 as a PhD student in 2018. It took me i year to write the first draft because I was working on the review aslope my PhD inquiry and mostly on my ain, with support from my adviser. It took a farther year to complete the processes of peer review, revision and publication. During this time, many new papers and even competing reviews were published. To provide the most up-to-engagement and original review, I had to stay beside of the literature. In my case, I fabricated employ of Google Scholar, which I gear up to send me daily updates of relevant literature based on key words.
Through my review-writing procedure, I also learnt to be more open to critiques to raise the value and increment the readership of my work. Initially, my review was focused only on using microbial cells such as leaner to produce nanomaterials, which was the subject of my PhD research. Leaner such as these are known as biofactories: that is, organisms that produce biological material which can exist modified to produce useful materials, such as magnetic nanoparticles for drug-delivery purposes.
However, when the start peer-review study came dorsum, all iii reviewers suggested expanding the review to cover another blazon of biofactory: bacteriophages. These are essentially viruses that infect leaner, and they can also produce nanomaterials.
The feedback eventually led me to include a give-and-take of the differences between the various biofactories (bacteriophages, leaner, fungi and microalgae) and their advantages and disadvantages. This turned out to be a peachy addition considering information technology made the review more comprehensive.
Writing the review too led me to an thought near using nanomaterial-modified microorganisms to produce chemicals, which I'm withal researching now.
PAULA MARTIN-GONZALEZ: Make good use of applied science
PhD student, University of Cambridge, UK.
But before the coronavirus lockdown, my PhD adviser and I decided to write a literature review discussing the integration of medical imaging with genomics to improve ovarian cancer direction.
Every bit I was researching the review, I noticed a trend in which some papers were consistently existence cited by many other papers in the field. Information technology was clear to me that those papers must be important, but as a new member of the field of integrated cancer biology, it was difficult to immediately find and read all of these 'seminal papers'.
That was when I decided to lawmaking a small application to make my literature research more efficient. Using my code, users can enter a query, such every bit 'ovarian cancer, computer tomography, radiomics', and the application searches for all relevant literature archived in databases such as PubMed that feature these primal words.
The code then identifies the relevant papers and creates a citation graph of all the references cited in the results of the search. The software highlights papers that have many citation relationships with other papers in the search, and could therefore exist called seminal papers.
My code has substantially improved how I organize papers and has informed me of key publications and discoveries in my research field: something that would have taken more than fourth dimension and experience in the field otherwise. Subsequently I shared my lawmaking on GitHub, I received feedback that it can be daunting for researchers who are not used to coding. Consequently, I am hoping to build a more user-friendly interface in a class of a web page, akin to PubMed or Google Scholar, where users can simply input their queries to generate citation graphs.
Interviews have been edited for length and clarity.
Source: https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-020-03422-x
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