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Mastering the Literature Review - Uncovering Insights and Shaping Your Research: Writing & Citing the Review

This guide was created for the Mastering the Literature Review - Uncovering Insights and Shaping Your Research workshop on October 22, 2024.

Writing the Literature Review

Your main objectives when writing your literature review are:

  • To add new knowledge to the current understanding of your chosen topic
  • Document your thesis' argument and conclusions for other scholars to review and verify

Literature Search Planning & Tracking Tools

Use a Citation Manager

Zotero (pronounced "zoh-TAIR-oh") is an application that collects, manages, and cites research sources. It's easy to use, works with your web browser to download sources, provides limited cloud storage for your citations (currently 300 MG), and best of all is free.

Zotero just released a new version, Zotero 7 in August!  Find out more about new features in Zotero 7 here. If you already have Zotero 6, just download the new version to install, and sync your libraries.

Here are some of the things Zotero does:

This image shows the new Zotero 7 logo.

 

  • Transfers citations and article .pdf files to your account
  • Organizes your stored citations and .pdfs
  • Annotates and add images to your citations
  • Allows you to share citations with other people
  • Generates bibliographies from a list
  • Integrates into your word processor so you can create in-line citations and bibliographies while you write your paper

Zotero 101

This is a very basic demonstration of the capabilities of Zotero and how it can be used in literature reviews to assist you with your organization and synthesis. Some suggested ways to work with Zotero:

  • Use the .pdf annotation feature in Zotero to highlight quotes and themes
  • Use the tagging feature in Zotero to assign themes to articles
  • Organize articles by themes or reading status using Zotero folders
  • Use AI tools like Perplexity or Research Rabbit (if your professor allows it) in combination with Zotero to uncover common themes or find other related research articles.

Remember the 3 rules to avoid plagiarism and use AI ethically if you use AI tools! (Kiczkowiak, 2024)

  • Check to see if your school or professor allows it; some institutions (and journals) ban the use of AI to assist your research completely!
  • AI content can contain false information and made-up citations; check for accuracy using lateral reading.
  • NEVER COPY and PASTE AI-generated TEXT AS IS. That's plagiarism. 

Are there Alternatives to Zotero?

Setting up Your Research Workflow

In addition to some of the text-based research trackers and logs we've provided, some researchers combine free or highly used online tools available to them to create research workflows to streamline their literature review processes. The video below is an an example of a researcher demonstrating her methods on Youtube using a citation management software and MS Office tools to assist with her literature review tasks.