I have been training my Ph.D. students for several years doing the literature review within a broader seminar on Research Design. The key is to have prior to any other step an original, solid research question. Thereafter, the literature is a selection of the materials pertinent for the research problem avoiding general, encyclopedic sources. The pleasure of the process is discovering some books and papers that we didn't suspect that existed. It helps to master several languages since the idea that science only exists in English is as poor as illiterate.

In my experience it depends a bit on whether you are looking to do a more structured review such as a scoping review or systematic review, or whether you are interested in a less structured narrative style review. With structured reviews there is a need for tracking the search process and documenting search results carefully. I have found social work students to be less familiar with this process and they need quite a bit of guidance and prior reading as well as watching video tutorials/presentations. They might also need to learn how to use software for tracking such as Ryyan.

For the search process itself I also find they are typically less familiar with more detailed search strategies and search algorithms. You might need to point them to papers and information sites that provide examples of advanced search algorithms. I also find they tend to be less familiar with using subject category terms, the use of a search thesaurus and MESH terms etc. All of this takes some time on your part to guide them and quite a lot of time on their part to become familiar with all this. It slows the process down, but they do learn a lot from the experience.

Thanks for those answer. It gives me plenty to think about how i will set the student up to do the search. Many thanks for you detailed and considered responses.

Personally I have worked well with students in doing literature reviews on different topics when using semi-automatic tools for text mining as well. Personally I believe that, beyond the final result, it is still useful for students to learn how to use these tools

What is your definition of a literature review? Is it the process of searching for and identifying literature that will provide significant information for your research project? Or, is it a project to review a set of already identified documents to glean information relevant to a research project? Or, is it both? I think you need to ask yourself if you are expecting to get citations for documents and/or a clear precis of the author's ideas that are useful for your research, or if you will be satisfied with scanty citations that are of little use, but the process helps the student to develop skills to search data bases. In my experience students, especially undergraduates (even those with high grades) have little to no idea of how to mine data bases for relevant literature on even non-complex topics. They do not understand how data bases work or how to choose data bases to search. They look only for the first topic phrase they think is applicable and stop when nothing is found. They don't know how to sleuth for variant phrasings, synonyms, word orders or how to use Boelian logic to construct search terms. They don't consider, for example, that a search for information on shields used by Beja tribes in Sudan, might be found in an article on tribal warfare in Sudan or even an article on British military encounters with armies of the Mahdi - or even how to turn these phrases into search terms. Or, perhaps even to search for the documentation on Beja shields held in museum collections. I apologize for being so pessimistic. But students I have today are much less prepared to be literature reviewers of whatever kind than students I had 25 years ago before the proliferation of literature indexing and data bases.

Hi Christian Spreafico and Barbara J Michael

Thanks you both for your considered responses. Just on the type of literature review, I have narrowed down to be a scoping/mapping review...probably scoping. I will use inclusion and exclusion criteria and tables with the aim of writing an article for use in my thesis. I have given the student preliminary reading and have spoken with my academic supervisor about how to plan and lay it out for the student in a clear way. All the responses on here have also been of much use and helpful. I hope the student enjoys the process and we can join in writing an article by the end. Thanks again.

To make an inclusive comment about the value of literature reviews is difficult. The variety of backgrounds of the students, research projects and teachers is too large. But I'll ignore that. To me there's an inherent value in learning how to do a search and learning to question the results. Its the best way I know to expose students to a basic idea; figure out what the question is.

I also try to offer to my students that a search is a form of historical evidence that our ideas evolve. That they should question & compare the present thinking with our past ideas. I'm thrilled if they wonder how we could have been so backward in our assumptions.