Thread by @raulpacheco

As someone whose work gets systematically overlooked even in my own research areas (which is absurd if you think about it because one way or another, that paper is going to come my way as a reviewer), I do NOT like the "nobody has written about X before", as per @jeffguhin

I am fine with "I thought this was a cool idea" as a motivation for a study. HOWEVER... if you are going to claim novelty (which you are supposed to do), THEN you need to do a thorough literature review, where you may find "oh wow, X, Y and Z ALSO thought this was a cool idea!"

"NEVERTHELESS, the way I approach this cool idea is W, whereas X, Y and Z approach it as R. Therefore, I think my cool idea using approach W may be a contribution to the literature and here is the evidence/theoretical framework/argument/data to prove it"

On my website, I write

... literally, a metric tonne of blog posts on how to approach the literature review raulpacheco.org/resources/lite…

I do this because doing good LRs is a foundation for advancing our understanding of phenomena. That's why some disciplines *cough* economics *cough* irk me when they...

... fail to recognise that "hey, cool idea using W approach" by economists may have already been done by, let's say, POLITICAL SCIENTISTS. (1)

(1) - Yes, there are political scientists who do this to sociologists, geographers, anthropologists, etc. So, it happens all around.

Doing good research means situating your work within the broader landscape of scholarship (which is why I also get so angry when scholars of the global North, usually in some European country, parachute 3 weeks into a global South country and publish a top-ranked journal article)

If you study Mexico, you need to read Spanish and you need to read and cite Mexican scholars. I mean, this shouldn't be that hard. If I find that what you propose to do in English, a Mexican scholar has already done it in Spanish, you will hear from me in rather clear terms.