A reference:

Webster, J., & Watson, R. T. (2002). Analyzing the Past to Prepare for the Future: Writing a Literature Review. MIS Quarterly, 26(2), xiii–xxiii.

A good review article not only presents an overview of relevant streams of thought in an area but also adds new insights on developments in the area, indicating what are the open questions.

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Thank you all for your wonderful comments!

Mr. Ahed Alkhatib and Dr. Devang Pandya - I partly agree and partly disagree with your (similar) comments. I do agree that 'Experience is the mother of Wisdom'. Experience leads to a matured way of analysis of various researches involved (in the field) and eventually help in connecting the dots that is essential for a good review. However, it is the knowledge that a researcher possess matters the most.

I would say, the race to get more publications than our peers has preceded the need to produce quality research work and this is one of the main reason for 'diluted review articles'.

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Mr. Frank Baker - Yes indeed! A good review should not only comprise of the whole of the researches involved in an area, but also should focus on the future. On the other hand, do you agree that giving insights on the future developments in an area becomes like a prediction?

Let's take the example of Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis (ALS) - a rare motor neuron disease leading to various complications. Considering the fact that recovery is very poor once a person gets affected by ALS, what could be the future developments in this? Please understand, I am not trying to say that ALS, which causes respiratory impairment, cannot be cured at all, but if there is a review article on that, even experienced researchers can only predict the future developments, unless a complete cure is discovered!

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Mr. Rishikesh Upadhyay - Could you please elaborate on these 3 types?

Actually, the REVIEW articles are a good source for the future research, and they are becoming rare in the current QUICK, research atmosphere. Scientific journals highly regard such articles - and usually would be more than one author!

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Thanks all for your nice comments. A review is always a collection of articles/ publications on a topic using which the author projects his/her views about that topic. I strongly believe that a review article can only show the past and present condition of a topic. If the author decides to write about the future of that topic (sans evidences), it becomes a prediction. However, the author can still speak about the 'future' only in the discussion part or conclusion part.

On the other hand, as pointed out by Ms. Issa, review articles are becoming rare. I strongly believe that lack of collaboration among researchers is the main reason. Then comes the fight for 'who should be the first author'. If these two issues are sorted out, then comes the biggest - TIME MANAGEMENT. Now this makes me to ask one more query:

Is there any word limit to write a review? How long should a default review article should be?

Could anyone please answer?

From my experience, the Journal of business ethics would accept articles upto 25,000 words! which are directed to review papers.

We might as a community of ResearchGate start something together! da

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Thanks Ms. Theodora, I would love to collaborate.

We are discussing about writing a review here and I would love to get more answers. Considering that the review uses many articles the grammar plays a major role in it. Could anyone throw some light on 'grammatical tense'?

Using what tense a review is best written - Present Tense or Past Tense?

To write a review article, you have to have an idea about the review (e.g., is the discussed topic is confused and many articles avialable and are in conflict and the topic is unclear) in this case you have to summarize the articles and conclude the best conclusion out of these articles.

Another way is that you can write a review article to propose a new hypothesis that you worked for it long time with a team and published so many papers in this area as a professional and a hypothesis can be withdrawn from your work and other researchers. Thus, a review is written to summarize a conflict papers or for new proposed hypothesis.

You have to know the field very well to write a good review article: who were the first to study this topic, are there any 'schools of thought' within the field (e.g. using different methods, focusing on why X is important/not important, slow/fast...) and combinations of different schools, have other scholars written review articles on this field before, where the field is developing now and what should be studied in the future... Of course, to write a good article, you have to have a good access to all journals where articles in this field have been published, and, if possible, also to all main books on this topic. You also have to know all main terms/keywords used in your field (in some cases, the phenomenon is the same, but terms/keywords differ, and if you do not know all the terms/keywords, you will miss many papers on this topic). Thus, it is not an easy task, but if you manage to do it well, many scholars will cite your article.

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Mr. Fathi M Sherif - Thanks for your nice comments. I understand the necessity of 'summarizing the articles'. This is where Grammar plays a major role and that's the reason I had asked a query regarding 'usage of tense' in my previous comment.

For example:- If there is a sentence as - 'Diabetes is of two types, Type-1 and Type-2. The Type-2 Diabetes is considered to be more prevalent'. We can summarize this sentence and cut short it as - 'Of the two types of Diabetes, Type-2 is more prevalent (xyz et al)'. The 'is' in the second sentence is an indicative of 'present tense'. Also, if proper credit is given to the original author, without changing the meaning of the sentence, it is permissible to cut short the sentence as per the requirement of your manuscript (ex -word limit, citation style, author instructions in the journal, etc.,).

Coming back to summarizing the sentences, joining the dots is very critical. It is the authors' headache to join the sentences taken from two different articles and make it as a one full meaningful sentence. I hope you agree with this.

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Ms. Tiia Vissak - Thanks for your precise explanation. I do agree with your good self that a researcher needs 'good access to all the necessary articles/ journals'. Certain 'paid articles' are not that easily available. Also, as you have mentioned, having adequate knowledge in the subject/ topic is essential. I don't think experience matters here! Possessing the right knowledge and good writing skills are more necessary than being an experienced.

A reference:

Webster, J., & Watson, R. T. (2002). Analyzing the Past to Prepare for the Future: Writing a Literature Review. MIS Quarterly, 26(2), xiii–xxiii.

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Thank you Mr. Nabeth for the lovely article. Thanks Dr. Pandya & Dr. Iva for your views. I still feel my question is not answered properly. Of course, experience & knowledge counts, but, the quality of the work done matters the most than everything else. Irrespective of whether he/she is a beginner or an expert, if you cannot put the write language/ grammar at the write place, one cannot describe properly what he/she is trying to emphasize through their review.

Simply collecting a few articles and joining them is not a review. One needs to understand the end product of their review first. What exactly they are trying to say to the World?

What tense should be used in a review: Present tense or past tense?

How much of in depth research is required to write a review: Should we describe a brief history of the subject or not?

Example :- HIV-AIDS was first reported in the year 1981...,

Why a review requires a collections of articles on a given topic: Why can't we simply do another research and explain the World instead of doing a Descriptive study?

Even writing a textbook requires collection of few data's, articles etc. What is the difference between writing a review article and writing a book?

Any answers pls...

Writing a Review paper need holistic vision, reviewing all available literature, arranging all compiled matter like a story, many reviewing and updation steps/events , checking and cross-checking and giving a nice conclusion and future perspectives- must also be supported with self-designed table and illustrations/fig./depictions......best is to follow a team approach with co-authors of concerned / related disciplines - so that it gets up tuned and filtered by every author.

A holistic vision along with reviewing of many literatures with in-depth knowledge on the particular topic are very essential to write a review paper. Figures and tables relevant to the topics or sub-topics gives a sense of completeness to the review.

A review article is the result of having work a lot on the subject you are interested in, once you have a clear panorama of the state-of-the-art and the ongoing processes in the field.

Roughly speaking a review article encompasses more (much more!) than 50 papers as references, so much so that they are supposed to be very much updated. In other words, it is a paper on the ongoing theoretical and experimental research and discussions.

It is, indeed, and in-depth paper that allows the reader a robust understanding of the entire situation to-date.

It is not - a big no! - a collection of papers.

Now, provided the extension and depth of a review paper you ought to make up your mind about where to send it. Most journals do not accept review papers - mainly due to the extension - but there are highly prestigious journals (depending on the field) that are exactly the ones you should aim at.

Carlos@ You are right that in order to write a review article one has to be an expert in a given field of investigations. And it also needs a lot of reflection on a precise issue. You elaborated it perfectly. Many thanks.

PS Consider the following: Webster and Watson's editorial in MIS Quarterly provides interesting guidelines for writing a review article, but to follow those guidelines one needs to be knowledgeable about the topic they are writing about. So I very much agree with Janina's idea that the author must be in a position to pinpoint precise issues linked to the topic of interest.

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Excellent debate! Thanks to every one for contributing so much of valuable points! I am sure I am not the only one who gets benefited out of this conversation.

Thanks all

An article review is written for an audience who is knowledgeable in the subject matter instead of a general audience.When writing an article review, you will summarize the main ideas, arguments, positions, and findings, and then critique the article's contributions to the field and overall effectiveness.

A review article in not a review of the article, Himanshu

I got answers for my questions as well. Thanks .

Dr. Shukrya Alwan read the comments please.

Thanks for your interest Hussein A. Abid