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Thread on literature reviews, mind mapping strategies, finding "the gap in the literature" and writing paragraphs in your literature review, after having reviewed all those 300 papers and 50 books. I am currently writing a revision of a paper on governing plastics. But...
As my PhD students are nearing completion, I want them to be able to really clearly spell out where the gap in the literature is for each of their papers, and where their contribution resides. I've discussed this here raulpacheco.org/2018/06/develo… (gap filling) and here ...
... (what does doing a PhD entail) raulpacheco.org/2018/11/what-i… and here (what you should have done in preparation to finish and defend your dissertation) raulpacheco.org/2018/01/prepar… so this thread is to help them (AND ME!) clarify in their heads (our) how to frame their contribution.
In this post, I showed how I approach a new field of scholarship raulpacheco.org/2018/01/mappin… so this thread zeroes in on the "finding where my research fits" narrowing component though I also discuss the "mapping of who is saying what where and about what" question.
I explained how I can't answer the question "how many sources are enough", but buried in the links, I also mentioned the importance of not reinventing the wheel. SOMEBODY out there, at some point in their lives, already did this kind of literature review. raulpacheco.org/2017/06/how-ma…
Well, enter Geography Compass, Progress in Human Geography, Wiley Interdisciplinary Reviews, Annual Review of Political Science, etc. There are journals that offer those reviews. Also, reviews within a traditional journal (search for “research agenda”) 
So, as a chemical engineer turned MBA/economist turned human geographer and political scientist, I know that plastics have been studied at the very least by engineering, chemistry, geography, political scientists (see Nielsen et al 2019) and now medical anthropoogists....
I will confess that I'm somewhat skeptical of anthropology NOT having paid attention to plastics (one can say that "certainly *not enough* attention"). But I'm definitely respectful of the research Pathak and Richter 2019 have done, so I look for the paragraph where they...
... situate their paper within the broader debates. I really really like how Pathan and Richter spell out what has been done in the literature they reviewed and what gap they’re filling as well as where further gaps remain to be filled.
I always tell my students to look for the "HOWEVER" turn of phrase when searching for the contribution of a paper/book/chapter. "This has been done in this field, HOWEVER this remains to be discussed". In the first paragraph of Pathak and Nichter 2019 (note my purple scribbles)
Mapped here, on the left hand side, you can see where Pathak and Nichter say anthropology has done some work on plastics (I’m weirded out by the conflation with discard studies and anthropology of waste, but whatever). Questions of Value, Pollution and Disposal are key to them.
The right hand side of my mind map is my actual mapping. As an engineer who reads up on the literature, I know that there are at least three areas where STEM has been examined plastics (and even I am missing health effects, which would be a new branch of the mind map/tree).
One key point that I ask my students to consider MAKING CLEAR CONNECTIONS ACROSS is a contribution, and an important one. I may have written a paper on the negative effects of plastics disposal on a particular Mexican community, but connecting it to the larger debates is key too.
So (note my scribbles in pink and green), my interpretation of P&N’s positioning is “yes, there are emerging MedAnthro studies on toxics and human lives but nobody has made the connection with plastics directly as of yet”. This IS a contribution. Mapping from “toxics” to plastic.
If I were in anthro (I’m not) and I were challenging P&N 2019 (I’m not either), I probably would go to their citation list, do citation tracing forward and backwards and see if (a) they missed anything and/or (b) I find a new gap in the literature they didn’t mention.
Given that I’m doing neither, and grateful for their research, when I cite them I’ll say “In a systematic review of medical anthropology scholarship, Pathak and Nichter suggest the existence of the following main strands of the literature X, Y, Z. Gaps remaining include W, R”
So how do we move from reading 300 papers to writing the literature review section? My own process involves two steps. The first one is systematizing my readings using the Conceptual Synthesis Excel Dump. Then I map out the major debates. I write those down as topic sentences.
In this draft memorandum, I’ve mapped out what I’m going to be writing regarding other disciplines’ engagement with the literature. My notes of Pathak and Nichter can be found in the third paragraph. I just wrote a bit on anthro of plastics, I haven’t even scratched the surface!
Because I'm assiduous like that, I want to write a paragraph on how anthropology has engaged plastics, another one on sociology, another one on political science (thank you Nielsen et al for your WIRES E&E 2019 review!) and possibly sociology. THIS is exactly why it's hard...
... to do a thorough literature review. Because there's so much published and it's quite likely you'll end up missing some stuff. But pointing out how our work is positioned in the discipline and across disciplines is fundamental. This thread has helped me clarify MY own thinking
Links a) the Conceptual Synthesis Excel Dump (CSED) raulpacheco.org/2016/06/synthe… b) the importance of doing thorough citation tracing until reaching conceptual saturation, and of mind-mapping the results raulpacheco.org/2016/06/how-to…
And this is also one important aspect of academic writing and research in general: because we want to be thorough, systematic, study phenomena in proper depth, and contribute to the debates, WE SPEND AN INORDINATE AMOUNT OF TIME WORKING. Because reading each piece takes time.
Because digesting the literature and understanding it and mapping the connections across concepts and ideas, TAKES TIME. Because collecting data (archival, field-based) takes time. Because setting up an experiment TAKES TIME. I hate the devaluation of academic work, because...
... almost nobody understands how much time, energy and effort, monetary and non-monetary resources are invested in making sure that we produce relevant research. We are not machines. We are human beings who exert our brains trying to come up with answers to important questions.
After the previous two tweets' digression from the main topic, I realized I forgot links to two posts on topic sentences. As I mentioned, in my draft of the literature review section, I used each main research theme as a "prompt" to write. "What has been done in anthro, geo, soc"
Personally, I'm a fan of topic sentences. They make my reading easier, thus saving time, raulpacheco.org/2019/07/readin… and they also help me structure my own writing and thinking raulpacheco.org/2018/10/writin… for those of us who struggle with writing (I certainly do) the method of using...
... topic sentences to start a paragraph usually helps me break free from "writer's block". My thinking is "just answer this one question, just focus on this one topic sentence" raulpacheco.org/2017/12/a-diff… I don't have to finish 1,000 words. Just finish one paragraph at a time.
(this is also why I encourage my students to think and consider writing their paper outlines either by answering questions or by writing topic sentences) raulpacheco.org/2018/03/two-me… (and with this, </end thread> because I have to finish the damn paper I'm revising!
NEW BLOG POST - On reading up a lot, mind mapping the literature, "finding the gap" and writing paragraphs in your literature review raulpacheco.org/2019/08/on-rea… - my Twitter thread, in handy blog post form.
