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How To Develop A Review Article- The Hidden Agenda

Updated: Aug 18, 2021

Hi guys,


Greetings!!


Nowadays, publication becomes more trending among the researchers, scholars, students and doctorates. For a PhD research scholar, it is mandate to publish a minimum of two articles related to their research field. It is going to be quite interesting and very useful if a scholar starts his/her research by developing a review article. The reason behind this is that when we develop a review article, we normally start gathering more reference papers related to the field which one have taken. Hence, by doing this, we obviously start to get a very detailed knowledge about research area. Now you have a question? At what stage a review article can be developed? It’s quite simple, a review article can be developed at any stage of your research work or even it can be developed once you have finalized your interesting research area.


Developing a review article is about more than snatching on an interesting topic and assembling the relevant related references. It is a good chance for you to contribute to the development of your field by making a synthesis of the best resources available and to likely discover new research areas in the future. A good review article can end up by becoming an ultimate guide on a research topic, forming the backbone of reading lists and emerging as a reference in innumerable books and articles universally.


What is a review article?

A review article is also called as review of literature or literature review. It is a survey of an earlier published research on a topic. It should give an overview of current thinking on the theme

The main theme or objective of a literature review or a review article is to provide a serious or critical estimation of the data available from existing studies. Review articles can find out potential research areas to discover next, and occasionally they will draw new conclusions from the existing data.


Purpose of a review article:

  • Provide a complete groundwork on a research topic

  • Explain the current state of information

  • Identify research gaps in existing studies for possible future research

  • Highlight the key research methodologies and techniques


Types of review article:

Based on the methodological approach, the review article are divided as follows:

  • Narrative or Traditional review.

  • Scoping Reviews.

  • Systematic Review

  • Cochrane Review.

  • Scientific Review

  • Evidence Review

Types of Review Article

Do you know??

There are some journals which only publish research articles and some publish only review articles. Hence, make sure to check the aims and scope of the journal as well as ensure whether it is a right place for your article to get published.


Key things to be considered when writing a review article:


1. Checking journal’s aims and scope

Ensure that you have read the aims and scope for the journal which you are submitting to and follow them carefully. As there enormous journals existing, in which some accept review article and some don’t, so, its significant to crosscheck this before you start writing the article.


2. Defining your scope to the article

The second important thing is to define the scope of your review article and the research question that you need to answer, and ensure your article is contributing some new idea to the research field. The scope which you are defining should not be too large or small, however it be manageable. making sure your article donates something new to the field.

The scope of your review should not be too large or small but somehow manageable and it also more essential to focus on recent advances if the research field is well recognized.


3. Finding sources to estimate

When finding sources to estimate, it is recommended to use multiple search engines/databases so that you will not miss any important ones.


4. Writing title, abstract and keywords of the article

The foremost three important things in a review article development are to formulate an clear, precise, accurate, informative, effective and compelling title, keywords and abstract. Hence, it is a must that you need spend a lot of your time in writing this section. If this process works out well, you’re going to get maximum visibility from the readers to your research.


5. Introduction of the topic

Give a good start by outlining the topic and further provide some background of the topic by giving a simple explanation as why a review of the topic is essential. Then, collect more information related to your research to inform about your introduction and make it broad enough to reach out to a large audience of non-specialists. This will help to exploit its extensive importance and impact.


Do not make the introduction appear too lengthy instead you can divide the review into sections which allows key points to be recognized more easily.


6. Comprise critical discussion

In this section, make sure that you give a critical discussion of the topic but, not a expressive summary of the topic. If there is inconsistent research in your domain of focus, you need to include an element of discussion and present both sides of the argument. To resolve the conflict between the contradictory studies you can also use your review paper.


7. Conclusion and Future scope of the research work

You should provide a clear impression as what all things are well understood and what things remains still mystery to be solved. You can also provide a good suggestion for the future research on the topic as part of your conclusion section.


8.Make a checklist for the review article before submitting to a journal:

Before submitting your review article to any journal, keep it as a mandate to check whether the below mentioned things has been accomplished.

  • Have you checked the journal’s aims and scope?

  • Have you written a expressive title and abstract using the keywords?

  • Did you start with an outline of the topic?

  • Have you presented a serious discussion?

  • Have you included future recommendations for the research in your conclusion?

  • Have you done a final proof-read check?


Hope everyone now got a clear understanding about the importance of review article and how to check which journal will accept it. If you have any queries always feel free to give your comments and we will revert as soon as possible.





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