The Lit Review Mistake That Gets Proposals Rejected

Hi everyone, I'm Dr. Courtney Watson, and today we are going to talk about how to read literature without drowning in it. So from the outside, reading and processing the amount of literature that's needed to write a dissertation and to support a dissertation, it really looks impossible. But of course it's not, and there are ways to give yourself a break and take some shortcuts and work on everything in manageable pieces. And this afternoon we're going to talk about how. So the first thing that you want to do is get organized and make a plan. Try to establish a goal for each writing session. Define the time that you have to dedicate to it and the scope of what you wanna cover over the course of the writing session. The way that I like to do that is to think about what I need to accomplish in a particular day or for a section that I'm working on and just tell myself, okay, today I am looking at X. So today's project is X. And do this with consistency. And those writing sessions, those days really start to add up. And before you know it, you really have some momentum momentum. So make sure with these sessions that you hold yourself accountable. So after each research section, take our session, take a set amount of time, maybe half an hour or so, write up your notes about what you accomplished. For each piece of research that you look at, I recommend treating it like an entry into an annotated bibliography. So think about what you found and how you might use it. Give yourself a summary of the particular source. And with— once you have that summary, also think about how you might use it in your dissertation and be really specific here. Think about what section you might use it in in your dissertation. And this is a way just to measure your own productivity and to see, you know, what you accomplish each day because the dissertation can feel immense. There's so many different parts to it, but if you break it up and you're looking at it day by day, that can be really, really helpful and it can be motivating as well. So be methodical. Don't indiscriminately pull a whole bunch of articles and think that you'll have the time and space and wherewithal to make sense of them later. This is how we end up with dozens of different tabs on our screen, or if you're printing out articles, this is how you end up with just snowdrifts of paper everywhere. So kind of keep that in mind. And this is something that, you know, eventually it does work even if you have the snowdrifts of paper, but you can save yourself a lot of time and trouble and you can Just work smarter instead of harder, and you'll spend less time on it in the long run. So don't just scan the title and press print or add it to your folder. This will just leave you feeling overwhelmed and unequal to the task in front of you, which you certainly are not. One of the things you want to do pretty early on, although you can do this at any stage in the project, you can be well into the dissertation and decide you want to apply these principles, decide how to organize the files. One great way to do it is chronologically. Have an idea of what the timeline looks like for your topic. I often recommend to my students and my clients as well that they physically draw out the timeline of the history of their topic, like when, when did the research first get started on this, when, like, what were some of the major pivotal moments within, like, within the topic, uh, what are, what are turning points, what are discoveries. You should have a rough understanding of all of that as you become an expert on your topic. Chronologically is a great way to go. Think about it in terms of, well, like, this was discovered and then this happened and then this was a complication and then and then and then. Just so you are familiar with the story of your topic and you can tell the story and you know where your own research or your own study that you're going to be proposing or that you've already embarked upon, where it fits within that narrative. That can be really helpful. You can also think about it thematically. What are the major themes that are related to your topic? What are the keywords that you're using? Every article, whether it's 8 pages or it's an 800-page monograph book, every article distills down to 5 or 6 keywords that the author or the publisher has decided on of just where it fits best, what the best descriptors are, and how to find it. Your own work, when people are looking it up, you know, 5 or 10 years from now, what are the keywords that they're gonna be using just to, to do a quick search distill that down. So think about like what are some of the major themes, what are the keywords, and be really strict with your search parameters, especially at first. Think about within your program what rules and guidance you've been given. That should definitely be one of the very early things that informs your search. For instance, you might have a rule in your program, your department, something, you know, given to you by your chair that they don't want to see any sources that are more than 5 years old, or the majority of your sources need to be under 5 years old. I have even seen it in programs where, especially if there's a lot of source material in a particular area, they're really only interested in seeing what's been published in the last 2 or 3 years. So know what the rules are for that. You don't want to waste your time pulling a lot of great research and reading research that's, you know, 8 or 10 years old, just because the, the moving wall in academia is a real thing. By the time that a study gets published, has made it through the peer review process, that information is already old. Sometimes it's about a couple years old. So you do want to be really mindful about how old the research you're using is, with the exception of like seminal studies, cornerstones, foundational studies. But again, those, those still shouldn't comprise more than a small percentage of your overall source material. So it's fine to pull older articles for your own knowledge and to bolster your background, but just be careful about falling down that particular rabbit hole. Stick with peer-reviewed materials. This is something that sounds obvious, but again, the lure of the, the rabbit hole, especially if it's something that you're interested in, can be really powerful, and you don't want to spend like all your time on, on Wikipedia or websites or something that you're not going to be able to use in the body of your dissertation. So just be really mindful about the, the sources that make the cut. Because, I mean, taking the time to read an article, that's an investment of your time. If something is 30 or 40 pages long, you're looking at, you know, an hour or two of your time to read and analyze that. So you have a limited number of 30 to 40 or hour-long blocks available to you over the course of your, your research time. So just be careful how you spend them. And don't sink your time into a bunch of resources that you won't ultimately be able to use. I also advise students, as, as a way to make the process of reading the literature and not being overwhelmed by it, I advise students and clients to avoid distractions, to do everything that they can to avoid distractions. And this means being aware of all the bright shiny objects, like lots of things that can be really, really interesting, but you don't want to go off on a side quest with your, with your review of the literature. So anything that looks really interesting but is perhaps only tangentially related to your topic, I recommend putting that away, setting it aside, and having a file specifically for those bright shiny objects. I call it the not-yet file. If you're looking at, you know, if you're thinking about your career as a scholar, your most important work is the work that's gonna happen after your dissertation, but you have to get through the dissertation first. So if something looks like it might be interesting, or maybe it's interesting for down the road, on the road and you want to read it right now, resist the urge to read it right now. Put it away in a file and then you'll have it to come back to later on when you've got more time and you've got some space to think about it. So plan for those distractions. Go ahead and designate your not-yet file and then use it. Use it liberally. Anything that is interesting but you don't have time for right now, make sure it goes in that file. And also work with the mentality that you're at the beginning of your scholarship on this topic and once you finish this project and establish yourself as an expert in your field, you'll have ample time to dive back into that and plan, you know, the next few years of your scholarship and what you want to focus on. But for right now, focus on the current project, the dissertation that's right in front of you, and view those rabbit holes with a lot of suspicion as things that just steal your time and attention that is really, really needed for your dissertation right now. So don't fall for it. If you see something interesting, instead of going off on that side quest, just put it in a folder and move on. That brings us to how to quickly review a source. There's analysis of a source that you can do that will tell you a whole lot about it before you commit to reading the whole thing, and I recommend doing that. I recommend, you know, getting really good at scanning things and thinking about, okay, will this— like, making some, some quick judgment calls of will this be able to serve me, can I use this, how can I use this. So limit the scope of what you're looking at for each research session. I like to set mine at about 90 minutes, 4 times a week. Every scholar is different, but think about what time you have allotted, like, during that specific session. Like, how much do you— how much time do you have available to you, and how do you want to spend it? Limit the scope of what you're looking at, and even to the point of saying to yourself, okay, today I am looking at keyword X or keywords x and y, or x, y, and z, and everything that comes up under that, under that confluence of terms. And just know that in the time that you have available, you might only get through, you know, 5 or 10 titles, and only a few of them will end up being usable. And that's okay, that's completely to be expected. So how do you effectively scan an article or a book? The first thing that you want to start with is with the title and keywords. Are these in the right neighborhood of your specific topic? If they're not, you want to think really carefully about if you want to move forward. And again, this is just one piece of criteria for making that, that judgment, but look at that first. Look at the publication date. You're looking at the publication date for two reasons. First, is it recent enough to use? Is it within that 5-year mark or within that 2- to 3-year mark? Check that first. Again, for best practices, you don't really want to have anything in there that's over 5 years old anyway. But then also use the publication date to place the research within the timeline that you've developed about the history of your topic. So think about where does the research fit, and there's a couple things to think about, a couple considerations to have when you're thinking about whether or not a piece of research fits with the references that you're going to be using. So one, does it represent a discovery or something that significantly moved the needle in your field or in the discipline that you're studying or within the topic that you're studying? Was it written in response to a discovery or a significant publication? So are you looking at primary research, secondary research, tertiary research? What was the significance of this, of this publication? That's something that you want to do when you're, when you're placing it. Something else to do is of course to read the abstract. Is the abstract in line with your study or the problem you're thinking about? Is it as in line as the title in the keywords suggested. Sometimes a title will sound absolutely perfect and then you read the abstract and suddenly it sounds a lot less perfect. It sounds a lot less like something that you want to dedicate an hour or two to reading. So keep that in mind as well. And also, as you're reading the abstract, is there anything in it that gives you pause? And that pause can look a couple of different ways. It can look like, oh, that's really interesting, or, oh, I've read that before, I don't think, I don't think I need that. Also make note of the author or authors and their institutional affiliations. And there's A few things to think about with this: have you seen these names before? This is really important because you'll start to see the names of the same scholars over and over again, and that tells you who is doing a lot of research in this area. So if you see a name or a group of names, an et al. reference that's used more than twice, definitely make a note that you need to follow up on that and maybe even look at that scholar's entire body of work to see what are they working on now, is the article you're reading now their most recent work, or is it older? So look at that and just know that it's really important that you know who the major scholars are in your topical area, because typically there's not that many people who are going to be working on your particular topic. There's only, there's only so many scholars to go around. So understand, you know, the story of, um, the trajectory of their research and their timeline studying this topic. Understand what that looks like and what the moves are that they've made, and that can give you some insight into your topic as well, whether you're looking at the, like, you know, whether you're looking at the timeliness of your research, whether you're still refining the gap in the literature that you're studying, anything like that. So with the major scholars in the field, once you know their names and the characteristics of their research, that can help you situate different studies and their significance within your own timeline. So within the timeline that you're developing, say things to yourself like, okay, well, Smith studies this. And that research group built on the work of Rodriguez et al., which preceded this study and that study, just to give yourself a sense of like the, the ecosystem and the landscape in which you're working. Like you want to know what built on what and who built on what. Like that's, that's important information to have as far as figuring out the timeline. So, and then your topic, instead of feeling like this huge universe that's impossible to navigate, it'll start to feel more like a neighborhood, which is a lot more manageable because you can clearly see how one study or one piece of research, one idea, one concept built on the next, built on the next, built on the next. And it becomes a lot easier to read the research then and to kind of parse it pretty quickly to determine what's going to be significant to your project and, you know, what can, what can stay on the cutting room floor. A significant moment is when things start to feel redundant. You're reading something that starts to feel redundant, or a description or an abstract, and you recognize the work and the questions and the impulses, and it just feels like, oh, I've been down this street before, I know where this goes, or this is a dead end. And then you can, you know, shunt that article to the side and move on to the next one. This will also help you define the limits and boundaries of the gap that you're studying, and you can maybe refine your questions or build your questions if you haven't, if you have haven't done that yet, that will inform the shape that those take. So once you start knowing the names, you know, the frequent flyers in your field, you can also sometimes reach out. Like if there is a burning question that isn't answered in a particular article and you can't seem to find the answer to it, you can often reach out to the person who wrote that article. Their institutional affiliation should be listed, and many scholars are very, very flattered to get those emails. And they will probably be happy to talk to you. I know that I get 2 or 3 of them a semester, and it just, it always makes my day so that someone's out there reading my work. So kind of keep that in mind, like things aren't published and then the scholars are just wheeled away till their next publication. Like they are actively working in their field, and sometimes starting those conversations can be incredibly beneficial to you, and you'll find out something that you really end up using to inform the structure of your study. Make note of the funding sources. Find out who's getting grants for what, what is being funded. If something— like if the funding for something wasn't immediately discernible, if it looked like a well-funded study, then maybe ask some questions about that, and that'll determine whether or not it's something that ends up in your, in your final reference list or not. And then speaking of references, definitely as you're scanning an article before you even get into the body of the article, skip down to the references. That's another really significant place to look before you commit to reading the article itself. So for the same reason that you want to note the authors, pay attention to the references because more often than not you'll start to see the same names over and over again. So once you see the same person or group of scholars more than once, go ahead and pull their whole publication record for the topic and see exactly what they've written on the topic. If it's a lot, add them to your timeline and also make a note of their specific contributions, and then find out what their current work looks like if their current work is not the one that initially led, led you to them. Because a lot of people tend to not write one article about their topic, they tend to write several, and that often leads to a book. So you also don't want to make the mistake of citing something older by someone without acknowledging their most recent work because it might have evolved, it might have changed. You know, a million different things can happen. So, and you do want to demonstrate that you're current and you, you know what's going on in the current landscape of your field or in the current landscape of the discussion about your topic. So if all of these things check out, then you can proceed to read the article. And again, if you don't have the time to commit to reading, you know, 20 to 40 pages, you also can employ scanning an article to see if it's something that, you know, you're gonna want to pull quotes from, you're gonna want to have more than a, like, gist-level understanding of the material. So certainly look at the premise of the article, look at the background. The background becomes less and less important though with the more articles you read because the background for a lot of them will be very similar. So you can kind of skim the background. What you really want to get to, you want to know the methods, you want to know the results, If there's any other like mitigating factors that, that stand out, you definitely want to note those as well. So really, I mean, pay attention to the things that, that get the bold headings, like, well, okay, what were the limitations of this study? What were the delimitations of this study? What were the results of this study? So pay, pay special attention to those parts, pay special attention to the conclusion. But there's a lot in the, in the background, in the earlier parts of the article that you can usually just kind of skate through. And again, if it looks like it's going to be something that's incredibly promising, then yes, you will set those articles aside as things that you need to read, like you really need to read cover to cover. But for most of the articles and most of the work you come across, you don't want to commit to reading the whole thing right away because you just don't have time to do that. So a lot of things you can get by with a scan just to determine that it's it's not a fit for your project and your references, or it's not as related as you thought it would be. And then that'll help, you know, clear a path and give you the time to read that handful of articles that you really do— you really do need to know every single part of them and the mechanisms and how they work. So keep that in mind. And again, once you get some practice with doing that, scanning an article for like the green lights and the red flags is something that can happen with with a pretty good amount of speed. You can typically do a decent scan of an article in like 5 or 10 minutes and then decide if you want to dedicate the time to reading the whole thing. Some, some other considerations to help you decide if you're going to move forward with reading an article without diving into the whole thing: take a look at the sample size. Is it, you know, too big to be related to what you're talking about? Is it Is it too small, or is it just about right? Look at the demographics that were studied in the article. So things like, like race, gender, region, socioeconomic status, education level— these will be things that will tell you if this is a study that is reasonable to cite in the context of your own study that you're proposing, or if it's something that's just too far afield, that's too far removed from what you're going to be doing, to be useful. Is it qualitative or quantitative? And this can be something too that you can use to further establish the gap in the literature and defend that there is a gap in the literature. If you notice that there has been, you know, a handful of studies done on your topic, but they're all quantitative and there's no qualitative work there, or there's never been a mixed methods study, that would be something too that you would want to pay attention to and to be able to call out. And that's a note too that you would just make to yourself in your annotations. And say, hey, this is, you know, this is a quantitative study, but it would be really, really cool to, you know, take a premise that's similar to this and look at it in a qualitative way or develop a qualitative study around it and do maybe like a small group focus. So think about that. Think about the theory that's used, the conceptual framework that's used. Often in, in research, you'll— if you have a group of studies, you'll see many of them or several of them will use either the same conceptual framework or the same theory or similar theories. So certainly make a note of that and just look at it and think about it in the context of what critical lens is being used for this study and to evaluate the data that this study produced, and how does that relate to what you're thinking about for your study. And then we get to like making sense of it all. I like to advise students and clients to use a three-pronged approach for this. So where does the study fit in your timeline in terms of chronology and maybe significance? So establishing that is the first prong. The second is with the annotations. Make sure that for everything that you read, glance at, look at, whether you're reading it deeply or just skimming it, make sure that you create a reference for it and you create an annotation for it. This doesn't seem like something that's necessary when you're looking at 3, 4, 5, even 10 sources, But wow, does it help when you have over 100, because you will reach a point sooner rather than later where you start mixing up your sources and you're not necessarily confident that you know what the individual contributions are of each source that you, that you have. So just make these notes for yourself. They don't necessarily need to see the light of day. They might not end up in your final dissertation, but they are useful. So after you read or scan or skim an article, right then, as soon as it's fresh in your mind. Write a paragraph or two that summarizes the study, identifies the significance of the study, and just make a note where you tell yourself how you might use it. Like, this is a seminal study, this was foundational to the field, or this was qualitative and that was interesting about it, or this theory could work for me, or I could do— I could modify this theory into a conceptual framework. And so this organization will help you out a whole lot later as you're thinking about not just what to cite but why you want to cite it, where where it might be useful. If you work with an outline— like, I always work with an outline— you can even, like, take that reference that you have and say, like, okay, I know that I want to use this in the second section of the literature review. It's going to go in this section in this paragraph. So you don't even have to write anything at that point because you have your annotation, you know what the source says, and you have an idea for how you're going to use it. And that'll cut down on time later. That'll save you a whole lot of time later, and it'll help generate some momentum as when you get to the point where you're, where you're writing and when you're in the thick of the writing process, because you don't have to like read the article again or scan the article again and say like, oh yeah, I remember how I'm going to use this, because you already have those notes in front of you. Mapping it can also help. I work with a lot of people who are very visual for their writing. They're, they're very visual in their thinking, and this can be a literal map that you develop. This can be something that you actually like write out and connect the dots on, because again, while it may vast at first, things start to look and feel pretty manageable pretty quickly once you can place particular scholars and studies, and once you can place their significance and know why they're significant or why they matter. So creating this mind map shows how particular scholars and studies are connected to each other, who built on whom, what were the significant turning points, what were the significant discoveries, when did things change, when did the, the conversation shift. All of those things are things that you can track. And then also just remember that this is a conversation. All scholarship is ultimately a conversation. It's a conversation that's been happening for a long time, but it's a conversation in the way that you can look at your research as something that will add to the existing discourse for your topic. And you want to think about it in the context of like, what will your study contribute to that narrative? Why is your study, you know, the logical next step for research in this field? And then also think about what are some of the pieces of the puzzle that you still need to gather in order to proceed. Think about what is the next chapter of this story, like what has changed, what has changed recently, what is different because you are here now and you're bringing your expertise to the topic and you're looking at the topic in a different way. So think about all of those things. Some tools that can also really help, you know, help you navigate the literature without drowning in it, some tools that will help are just make sure that you have physical and electronic copies of everything. Like if you print everything out, make sure that you have it stored on a hard drive somewhere. If you have it stored in like your, your Google Docs or anything like that, make sure that you have a secondary backup for it because there is nothing worse than knowing that you have a source for something and then not being able to put your hands on it when you need to. And then finally, marshal the resources that you have available to you. Think about your— at your university, think about your research librarians, You know, there's something you might have a question about, something, or be looking for a source, and you might be like, this is gonna take me hours. Well, there is someone out there who, you know, their entire job is research and helping people find research and put their hands on the research that they need. So make sure as early in the process as possible that you find out who your research librarians are, because because typically they are just a chat away on the library website. They are happy to help. They are very, very skilled and, you know, very able to help you, and they can typically find things that are eluding you, and they can do it a lot faster than you can. So just keep all of these things in mind. If you have any questions, please go ahead and just post them on the community board, and I will be happy to pop in and answer them. Happy writing!