What is your opinion of the intellectual purpose and value of review articles?
The intellectual purpose of a review is to being together in one place all the
materials and to focus on what needs to be done.
It is research based on secondary data, not primary data, and to give it real value, it should be followed up (by you or someone else) by collection and analysis of primary data to answer the unresolved questions.
A review article may not only review contributions to a single field, pointing out strengths and weakness of extant literature, but if the editor approves, the reviewer may introduce his own systematically formulated, new position about the field as part of the same article. Once I had to review two new books on the presentation of the human body throughout Hispanic literature, and in so doing introduced my own idea of its presentation therein with evidence and references.
Contrariwise, a review may sadly be just a cobbling together of a few quotes from far too few sources, without any conclusion e.g., about whether to buy the books or introducing "your own new position". Opportunities for construction and contribution may be missed.
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