Criteria for writing an academically convincing background to the study.
Tips for writing an academically convincing background to the study.
First step: Read the existing literature and make a mini-review of what is already known? However, this might be complicated when there are thousands of publications that deal with the same topic? So how to select the relevant publications that might represent in an unbiased way the topic of the study?
The review section should be a condensed but - vitally - also VERY CLEAR AND INFORMATIVE overview of the field of study. While the overview obviously represents a condensed history of the narrow subject of current study, a very important addition is the *critical* review of that piece of literature that you will build on in the sections that make up the main bulk of the story of the paper. Essentially, you place the work that you will write about in the sections to follow in a proper framework - you place your work as well as others in the history leading up to your new contribution, and you can then easily compare and contrast what has been done with what the new paper offers.
It's really not more complicated than that, seen as a logical step. But writing a very good review of a field is complicated, and many journals are less keen to allow for a long review section. Hence, these days you tend quite often to find that the review section lumps together many papers into a simple phrase like "see references [34-67]". In some cases I am sure it is not due to the laziness of the researchers, but the fact that journals want many but short papers. If this is how the scientific publishing world looks today then I am sad, as science - and the history of science - should be allowed to be explained well. There may otherwise be a risk that research is repeated, or possibly misunderstood; the latter is especially dangerous in areas of medicine.
Dear colleague
Depending on your study purpose, you should select appropriate criteria by which to judge its success. Use any criteria your instructor has given you in lecture or on
your assignment sheet. Otherwise, here are some criteria to consider. For example, if an author says his or her purpose is to argue for a particular solution to a public problem, then the review should judge whether the author has defined the problem, identified causes, planned points of attack, provided necessary background information, and offered specific solutions. A review should also indicate the
author’s professional expertise.
Regards
The gap in literature need to be understood after a through literature review.Once that is done without bias writing a strong academically strong background is easy.
Thank you esteemed colleagues for academically enriching responses to my question. To tell you the truth I am no longer the same older one. I am now richer academically to the extent that my research students (certificate to PhD levels) will be able to reap maximum benefits from my guidance.
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