1. What is a literature review?

Literature review is an academic paper made by sorting out, analyzing and refining a large number of documents of a certain discipline, specialty or subject, and it is a highly concentrated literature product. According to the different contents involved, the review can be divided into two types: comprehensive review and special review. The so-called comprehensive review is aimed at a subject or major, and the special review is aimed at a topic. Students' graduation thesis is mainly a special summary.

Literature review reflects the historical position, latest progress, academic viewpoints and suggestions of an important subject in a branch or field, and often reflects the new trends, trends, levels, principles and technologies of related issues. Literature review is to analyze and describe the work and progress of predecessors in a certain research field, and it is necessary to review the trends and frontier issues of related research at home and abroad in detail to provide reference. Generally speaking, the author does not express personal opinions and suggestions, nor does he make any comments, but reflects the facts objectively and generally.

Second, the characteristics of literature review

1. comprehensive

The summary should be "criss-crossed", which should not only take the development of a topic as a vertical line, but also reflect the progress of the current topic; It is also necessary to make horizontal comparisons from units, provinces, the whole country and foreign countries. Only in this way, the article will occupy a large number of materials, and after comprehensive analysis, induction and sorting, digestion and identification, the materials will be more concise, clearer, more hierarchical and more logical, so as to grasp the development law and predict the development trend of this topic.

2. Comments:

It refers to a more specialized, comprehensive, in-depth and systematic discussion of a certain aspect of the problem, a comprehensive analysis and evaluation of the summarized content, reflecting the author's views and opinions, and forming a whole with the summarized content. Generally speaking, the summary should have the author's point of view, otherwise it is not a summary, but a manual or lecture.

1) progressiveness: the summary is not to write the history of discipline development, but to collect the latest information, obtain the latest content, and convey the latest information and scientific research trends to readers in time.

2) The abstract should not be a list of materials, but a summary, comment and evaluation of materials read and collected in person. And draw important conclusions from the literature provided. A good summary should be a good article with both opinions and facts, bones and flesh. Because the review is a three-time document, unlike the original paper (one document), the cited materials can also include the author's own experimental results, unpublished or upcoming new achievements.

3) The contents and forms of the review are flexible and diverse, and there are no strict regulations, and the length varies from hundreds of thousands of words to millions of words of monographs and hundreds or even thousands of references; As small as 1000 words, there are several references. Most published medical journals are 3,000-4,000 words, with15-20 citations, generally no more than 20 articles, and foreign language references should not be less than 1/3.

Third, the content requirements of the review

1) The topic should be new: that is, the summarized topic must be not published in this journal recently. If a review article is consistent with the published review article "Crash", that is, the title and content are basically the same, it is impossible to publish it in the same journal. Reasoning should be clear: reasoning must have sufficient information and be based on facts everywhere. Never make up data and diagnosis in a whimsical way, and write your own speculation into a conclusion.

2) The level should be clear: This requires the author to have a clear thinking when writing, and to have a unified thinking about what to write first, what to write later, to what extent, and how to respond before and after.

3) Beautiful language: Scientific articles take science as their life, but the language is meaningless and obscure, which will inevitably hinder the exchange of scientific and technological knowledge. Therefore, in actual writing, we should constantly strengthen the training of Chinese rhetoric and expression.

4) The literature should be new: since most of the current reviews are "status reviews", 70% of the cited literature should be within 3 years. References are arranged at the end of the abstract in citation order, and the serial number is placed in the upper right corner of the argument (citation content). The cited documents must be accurate for readers' reference.

Proofreading: After the summary is written, it should be reviewed by relevant experts and further revised and improved from both professional and written aspects. This step is necessary because the author often pays attention to one side and ignores the other. Some conclusions are often absurd and cannot properly reflect the "true face" of a research topic. These problems can often be solved by proofreading.

Fourthly, the format and writing of summary.

Generally, it includes title, author, abstract, key words, text and references. The body part consists of preface, body and summary.

1) Foreword: 200 ~ 300 words, ask questions, including the purpose, significance and function of writing, outline the history, data source, current situation and development trend of the problem, relevant concepts and definitions, choose the purpose and motivation of this topic, and its application value and practical significance. If it is a controversial topic, point out the focus of the debate.

2) Subject: It mainly includes arguments and arguments. By asking questions, analyzing problems and solving problems, the author compares the similarities and differences of various viewpoints and their theoretical basis, thus embodying the author's views. In order to make the question clear and thorough, it can be divided into several subheadings. This part should include historical development, current situation analysis and trend prediction.

A. Historical development: the presentation of this topic and the development of each historical stage should be briefly explained in chronological order, reflecting the research level of each stage.

B current situation analysis: introduce the current research situation of this topic at home and abroad and the opinions of various schools, including the author's own opinions. To sort out and analyze the summarized and classified scientific facts and materials. Introduce creative and promising theories or assumptions in detail, and lead to arguments; For controversial issues, we should introduce and compare various viewpoints or theories, point out the focus of the problem and possible development trends, and put forward our own views. Outdated, outdated or rejected views can be simplified. Only ask questions familiar to ordinary readers.

C trend prediction: definitely summarize the research level, existing problems and different viewpoints of the topic in vertical and horizontal comparison, and put forward forward forward forward-looking opinions. This part of the content should be written objectively and accurately, not only pointing out the direction, but also suggesting shortcuts to point out the direction for those who are interested in climbing new heights and paving the way with ladders.

The main parts have no fixed format, some are introduced in chronological order according to the development history of the problem, and some are expounded according to the current situation of the problem. No matter which way is adopted, we should compare various theories and arguments and make clear the historical background, present situation and development direction of related problems.

The main part can be written in the following ways:

A. Writing "vertically" is "an overview of historical development". It mainly focuses on a topic, and describes its historical evolution, present situation and trend prediction vertically according to the time sequence or the development level of the topic itself, thus outlining the context and development track of a topic. Vertical writing should grasp a clear context, that is, briefly describe the development trend of a topic at various stages, what problems have been solved, what achievements have been made, what problems still exist, and what is the future development trend. These contents should be clearly explained at the development level, and the text description should be closely linked. When writing a summary, don't list facts in chronological order in isolation. Write it as "memorabilia" or "chronological style". Vertical writing should also highlight the word "Chuang". Some special topics have a long time span and many scientific research achievements. When describing, we should grasp the creative and breakthrough achievements, introduce them in detail, and simplify the general and repetitive materials. This not only highlights the key points, but also makes the details appropriate. Vertical writing is suitable for dynamic summary. This review clearly describes the development trend of this subject.

B. writing "horizontal" horizontally means "international and domestic overview". It is to describe and compare all aspects of a specific topic at home and abroad, such as various viewpoints, opinions, methods and achievements. Through horizontal comparison, we can not only distinguish the advantages and disadvantages of various viewpoints, opinions, methods and achievements, but also see the international level, domestic level and our own level, so as to find the gap. Horizontal writing is suitable for summarizing achievements. This review specifically introduces the new achievements of a certain aspect or project, such as new theories, new ideas, new inventions, new methods, new technologies and new progress. Because it is "new" and has a short time span, it has attracted the attention of international and domestic counterparts. They have been engaged in this research and published many papers. If it can be sorted out in time and summarized and reported to peers, it can play a role of reference, enlightenment and guidance.

C. combination of vertical and horizontal in the same review, both vertical and horizontal writing methods are used. For example, write the historical background vertically and the present situation horizontally. Through the description of "vertical" and "horizontal", we can comprehensively synthesize the literature, comprehensively and systematically understand a certain subject and its development direction, make more reliable trend prediction, choose a breakthrough or provide reference for new research work. Whether it is vertical, horizontal or vertical and horizontal combination, the following points are required: first, collect information comprehensively and systematically and reflect it objectively and fairly; Second, we must analyze thoroughly and synthesize properly; Third, there must be a clear hierarchy and clear organization; Fourth, the language should be concise and the details should be appropriate.

D. Summary: mainly summarize the main contents of the theme part, focus on comments, put forward conclusions, and it is best to put forward your own views and put forward opinions for and against.

E. references: there should be enough references when writing a summary, which is the basis for writing a summary. In addition to showing respect for the work of the cited person and showing the basis of the cited materials, it is more important for readers to provide clues to find relevant documents when discussing some issues in depth. This comprehensive paper illustrates this problem by comparing various viewpoints. If readers are interested in further research, they can refer to the original text according to the references. Therefore, it must be taken seriously.

Fourth, the writing steps

1) The topic selection plays an important role in the summary writing.

A. The topic selection first requires novel content, and only novel content can extract topics with magnet attraction.

B) We should also choose topics that have made real progress in recent years and are suitable for China's national conditions, such as comprehensive evaluation of a new foreign technology, and explore its practicability in China; Another example is to summarize the formation and application of a certain method and popularize it. There are usually several kinds of topics: one is closely related to the author's major, and the author has practical work experience and full voice; One is a topic that has little to do with the author's major, but the author has mastered certain materials and is willing to explore; The other is the research results of medical science information workers.

C. not too big. A topic that is too big must have a lot of content to enrich it. Too much content will inevitably find a large number of documents, which will not only increase the difficulty of reading and sorting out, but also make one thing impossible to start or lose sight of one thing; Moreover, all-encompassing manuscripts are difficult to go deep and often become vague and general. Practice has proved that the summary of small topics is penetrating and easy to go deep, especially for beginners, it is more appropriate to write summaries and small topics, starting from a small scale and gradually writing large-scale topics after accumulating experience. In addition, the topic must be commensurate with the content, appropriate, can not make a mountain out of a molehill or make a fuss, but also irrelevant. A good topic can be seen at a glance, and you can know the outline of the content by looking at the topic.

2) After the topic of literature review is determined, it is necessary to review and accumulate relevant literature.

A. For beginners, searching documents often doesn't know where to start. Generally, authoritative reference books, such as monographs, textbooks and academic papers, can be collected first. The teaching materials are comprehensive, and the opinions put forward are recognized by most people; Monographs focus on the development status, related problems and prospects of a specific topic; Academic papers can reflect the progress and achievements in a certain period, which is helpful for the author to grasp the contemporary research trends in this field. Secondly, look for periodicals and documents, which are vast and scattered, but often contain important recent progress materials, which can make review more advanced and instructive.

B.there are two ways to find literature. One is to find the journals with relatively complete contents in the near future (or from near to far) according to the topics you choose, and then collect the original materials according to the references behind the documents. In this way, the "snowball" literature retrieval method can collect a large number of documents you need. This is a relatively simple and easy way to consult the literature, and many beginners' summary authors start like this. Another time-saving and labor-saving scientific method is to consult the literature by looking up reference books. The commonly used retrieval reference books are abstracts and index periodicals, which are the golden keys to consult domestic and foreign documents. If you master this golden key, you can find the documents you need quickly. In addition, in the usual work and study, accumulate at any time and make reading summaries or notes in case of emergency, which can play the role of picking up the missing.

C. Read through the found documents first, and then read them in categories. Sometimes you can collect and read at the same time, and then follow up the collection and reading according to the clues found in reading. It is an important step to write a summary, and it is also a process of chewing, digesting and absorbing. In reading, we should analyze the main basis of the article, understand the main arguments of the article, and record the main contents of each article by card classification, including technical methods, important data, main results, discussion points, etc., so as to prepare for writing.

D. Processing: The finished materials must be processed, which is an essential preparation process for writing a summary. According to the requirements of the review theme, classify the abstract cards or notes written, make them serialized and organized, and strive to make the arguments clear and well-founded, with clear levels and strict logic. Classify according to the data outline, and then make scientific analysis. Finally, combined with your own practical experience, write your own views and experiences, so that objective data will be integrated into subjective data.

E. writing a written document: before writing a written document, you should draw up an outline and decide what to write first, what to write later, what to focus on, where to incorporate your own views, and what to omit or skip. The key points should be appropriately divided into several subheadings. When you plan to write an outline, you can be a little more detailed first, and then revise it as you deliberate. Think more, and you will gain more.

F. once the outline is drawn up, you can write it down. According to the preliminary framework of the article, it is expounded one by one. In writing, we should pay attention to thorough reasoning, both arguments and arguments. When writing, we must grasp the key points, pay attention to reflecting the author's views and tendencies, but also briefly list the opposite views. For some reasoning or assumptions, we should consider the acceptance level of medical experts, put forward our own views or discuss them as problems, and then explain the existing problems and prospects. After the first draft is formed, it is revised and processed repeatedly according to the conventional revision method.

When writing a summary, you should deeply understand the connotation of references, be loyal to the original, let the facts speak for themselves, and have your own opinions. Literature is the basis of review, and consulting literature is the key step in writing review. The collection of documents should pay attention to timeliness and must be new in the last year or two. Generally, the information four or five years ago should not contain too much. The content of the summary should not be comprehensive, but should be a browsing summary. The more concentrated, clear and specific the content of the review, the better. References must be the original text that has been read directly, and cannot be quoted according to the abstracts of some articles, let alone indirectly (referring to reading the literature quoted in an article and copying it without finding the original text), so as to avoid misunderstanding or misinterpretation of the literature, resulting in errors in views and methods.

Verb (abbreviation of verb) Selection and editing of abstract papers

1) Abstract The paper is the synthesis of many research results, covering a lot of information, so that readers can get more information without spending too much time. Many famous journals at home and abroad have abstract columns, which give a lot of space and cite a lot of literature. The academic level and writing requirements of papers are relatively high, and only senior authors can write abstract papers that meet the requirements. It requires the author to have accurate judgment ability on the summarized data, strong analysis and comprehensive ability, a certain depth and breadth of mastery of professional knowledge, personal research experience and understanding, and a strong ability to control words. This paper can systematically reflect the research survey and development trend of a subject or topic at home and abroad, help readers understand the latest research hotspots, new ideas and new methods, and play a guiding role in inspiring readers' research ideas. In addition, the bridge function of the summary paper is also remarkable.

2) The review procedure of review papers follows the general review rules, but when selecting a review, it still has its particularity and regularity.

A. choice in balanced comparison. The data of the review paper comes from literature, and multiple authors can contribute to the editorial department on the same issue within a period of time. Therefore, the editorial department must weigh, compare and analyze similar manuscripts to decide whether to accept or reject them. For example, "stem cell research" is the current research hotspot. We received three articles at the same time. After analysis and comparison, we think they are comments from different sides and have their own characteristics, so we decided to publish them in the same journal. For another example, the research on "telomerase" has been a hot topic in recent years. This magazine has received many similar articles in succession, most of which are repetitive. As a result, 1 article submitted earlier was selected, and the latecomers had to reject it on the grounds that "similar articles already exist, please submit them to another journal".

B. select among the manuscripts that meet the overall review requirements. A summary paper that meets the overall evaluation requirements should be: a systematic and in-depth writing of a certain problem, reflecting the current research level of the subject, innovative in content and fluent in words. These manuscripts are graded and optimized according to their guiding significance and reference value for current research.

2) According to the opinions of the reviewers of the journals edited in recent years, combined with my work practice, I summarized the overall evaluation of the manuscripts.

A. Evaluation of hired manuscripts: it is a hot topic in international research, which has good guidance and reference significance; Is an important topic in this field, rich in content and worth publishing; The lack of domestic research has promoted this work; Introduce the design ideas and current trends, which will inspire readers. Summarizing the present situation, readers will learn from it; The content is novel and important, which can arouse the interest and concern of relevant readers; The topic selection is very good, which has a great encouraging effect on going to the world based on the domestic situation; At present, it is still in its infancy, which is beneficial for readers to understand its general situation; Good content, new literary style, clear hierarchy and fluent language; It is of great theoretical and practical significance, focused and properly analyzed; The review is comprehensive and in-depth, reflecting the current research situation; It is a cutting-edge progressive material with great academic reference value; The content is progressive and the author's own works are worth introducing; This problem is innovative and controversial, and this paper provides some ideas.

B. evaluation of rejection: the coverage is too narrow, and there are not many interested readers; The experimental basis is insufficient, and most of them are speculations; The content is scattered, the focus is not prominent, and there is no systematic concept after reading it; List documents that have not been analyzed and discussed; The topic is very big, but the specific content is not much; There have been many reports in China, with no obvious characteristics; The viewpoint is wrong, the principle is wrong and the persuasion is weak; The content is superficial and not deep enough, which fails to reflect significant progress; The language expression and structure are poor, and it is very difficult to modify; The credibility of data sources is poor and the weight is insufficient; The literature is not fully digested, the thinking is unclear and inconsistent; The title lacks novelty, the content is outdated and the text is lengthy; The materials are scattered, the content is thin, and the reasoning is unreasonable; I'm not familiar with the summarized field, and what I wrote is irrelevant. When editing and summarizing the manuscripts, the author found that all the manuscripts that meet the employment conditions can not be published without exception. Of course, the editorial department is very cautious about rejecting manuscripts. In general, the returned manuscript is the manuscript to be published.

Seven, summarize the common problems of manuscript and review.

There are many problems in the manuscript of the summary paper, which should be handled carefully when editing.

1) Literal translation and plagiarism according to the existing summary.

In doing so, plagiarism is inevitable, because "summarizing a thesis" is different from "translating". When writing a review paper, you can draw lessons from the reviews published by others to inspire your own thinking, but you must not copy them. In other words, we must combine our own work experience, write characteristics different from other articles, and have our own emphasis. To do this, we should first update the literature, supplement the latest published literature related to our own concerns, and then put forward it again according to our own concerns, rearrange the full text, comprehensively analyze and put forward our own opinions. For example, this magazine received a summary draft with more than 30 documents, but the text was less than 4000 words. In the first trial, it was found that its title was translated directly from one of the documents, and it was further found that its content basically came from this document. However, because the topic selection is a hot topic in current research, it is decided to let the author consult the literature again to make up for the research progress in recent years, and then submit the manuscript after rewriting and re-editing.

2) The voluminous articles are just the accumulation of data.

Some contributions exceed 1000 words, but the content is neither focused nor in-depth, the level is unclear, the concept is vague, and even wrong. The main reason is that the author is not familiar with the review topic, has little experience, can't grasp the theme well, and is only the accumulation of information. Remind the author when rejecting the manuscript. It is best to choose a topic that you are familiar with, even if it is a relatively small topic, as long as it is written systematically and deeply within the scope of the topic, such an article is also a good summary.

3) There are too many listed files and improper references.

Generally, it is required that the documents recorded in the review paper should be the original texts read by the author himself, but not all the documents read should be listed, and the most important and recent documents should be selected.

4) Write the summary into a lecture.

The similarity between the lecture and the summary is the comprehensiveness, novelty and progress of the article. It is generally believed that the review is written by professionals to the same major and related professionals, and it needs a systematic and in-depth method; Lectures are written by professionals for "big peers" in related and unrelated majors, and generally do not need much depth. As can be seen from the contributions, the most striking feature of writing a summary into a lecture is that the article contains a lot of basic knowledge, and even the charts in the textbook have been moved, so the article is lengthy and not deep enough. For this kind of manuscripts, we should vigorously cut down the familiar contents of professionals, work hard in depth, further dig and refine the scientific research information in the original documents, and analyze and summarize them from the height of theory and mechanism to make them meet the requirements of summarizing the papers. With China's scientific and technological work in line with international standards, scientific research papers are gradually invested in international journals. Accordingly, comprehensive scientific papers aimed at comprehensively reporting the new progress of science and technology at home and abroad and promoting the development of science and technology at home will be strengthened in China. Therefore, sci-tech periodicals will increase the proportion of comprehensive articles.

Writing and format of literature review

Literature review is an academic paper written by collecting a large amount of information on a certain topic and making comprehensive analysis. It is a scientific document. Literature review reflects the latest progress, academic viewpoints and suggestions of an important subject in a branch or field. It can often reflect the new trends, new trends, new levels, new principles and new technologies of related issues.

Asking students to learn to write summaries has at least the following advantages:

Through the process of collecting documents, we can be further familiar with the retrieval methods of scientific documents and the accumulation methods of materials; In the process of searching, we also expanded our knowledge;

(2) Searching for literature and writing literature review is the first step of selecting topics and conducting scientific research, so learning the writing of literature review is also a process of laying the foundation for future scientific research activities;

(3) By summarizing the writing process, the ability of induction, analysis and synthesis can be improved, which is conducive to the improvement of independent work ability and scientific research ability;

④ Literature review covers a wide range, which can be large or small, difficult or easy. The summary of graduation project should be written in combination with the nature of the project.

Literature review is similar to "reading report", "literature review" and "research progress", all of which are summarized from a special research paper or report. However, literature review is different from "reading report" and "literature review". It simply summarizes the first-class literature objectively, and does not only pay attention to the scientific process like "research progress". Its characteristic is "synthesis", which requires comprehensive analysis, induction and arrangement of literature materials to make the materials more concise, clear and logical; "Narration" refers to a more professional, comprehensive, in-depth and systematic discussion of the comprehensively sorted literature. In a word, literature review is a scientific paper in which the author comments on the historical background, predecessors' work, controversial focus, research status and development prospect of a certain issue.

Writing a literature review generally goes through the following stages: selecting a topic, collecting and reading literature, drawing up an outline (including induction, collation and analysis) and writing.

I. Selecting topics and collecting reading literature

Literature review is usually written for some needs, such as selecting topics for academic conferences, engaging in a certain scientific research, and accumulating literature for a certain aspect. Therefore, the author is generally clear about the topic of literature review, not as difficult as the topic of scientific research. Literature review has a wide range of topics, from large to small, from a field and a discipline to an algorithm, a method and a theory, which can be determined according to your own needs.

After selecting the topic, we should collect the related documents around the topic. Relevant methods of document collection, such as reading monographs, yearbook, browsing, snowballing and retrieval, are not described here. The more complete the document collection, the better, so the most commonly used method is retrieval. After collecting the references related to the topic, it is necessary to read, summarize and sort out these references. It is very important to choose a representative, scientific and reliable research document from these documents. In a sense, the quality of reading and selecting documents directly affects the level of literature review. Therefore, when reading literature, you should write "reading notes", "reading experience" and "document extract card" Having one's own language to record the inspiration, experience and ideas gained in the reading process and extract the essence of the literature will not only provide useful information for writing a summary, but also help to train one's expression ability and reading level, especially organizing the literature into a document excerpt card, which is extremely beneficial for writing a summary.

Second, the format and writing

The format of literature review is different from that of general research papers. This is because research papers focus on research methods and results, especially positive results, while literature review requires readers to introduce detailed information, trends, progress, prospects and comments in the above aspects. Therefore, the format of literature review is relatively diverse, but generally speaking, it includes the following four parts: preface, theme, summary and references. When writing a literature review, you can write an outline according to these four parts, and then write according to the outline.

1. The preface mainly explains the purpose of writing, introduces related concepts and definitions, outlines the scope, and briefly explains the current situation or controversial focus of relevant topics, so that readers can have a preliminary outline of the issues to be described in the full text.

2. The theme part, that is, the main body of comments, is written in various ways and has no fixed format. It can be summarized in chronological order and compared from different angles according to different problems. No matter which format is adopted, the collected documents should be summarized, sorted, analyzed and compared, and the historical background, present situation and development direction of related topics and comments on these issues should be made clear. In the theme part, we should pay special attention to representative, scientific and creative references and comments.

3. The summary part is similar to the summary of the research paper. It briefly summarizes the theme of the full text, and authors who have studied the summarized theme had better put forward their own opinions.

4. Although references are placed at the end of the article, they are an important part of literature review. Because it not only shows the respect for the author of the cited literature and the basis of the cited literature, but also provides clues for readers to discuss related issues in depth. So take it seriously. The arrangement of references should be clear, easy to find and accurate.

Third, matters needing attention

Due to the characteristics of literature review, its writing is different from "reading notes" and "reading reports", and it is also different from general scientific research papers. Therefore, when writing literature review, we should pay attention to the following questions:

Literature should be collected as completely as possible. Mastering a large number of comprehensive documents is the premise of writing a good summary, otherwise it is impossible to write a lot of summaries by collecting a little information casually, and even the articles written will not be a summary at all.

3. Pay attention to the representativeness, reliability and scientificity of the cited documents. There may be similar views in the collected documents, and the reliability and scientificity of some documents are not the same, so we should pay attention to choosing representative, reliable and scientific documents when quoting documents.

3. Cite documents faithfully. Because the literature review has the author's own comments and analysis, it is necessary to distinguish the author's point of view from the content of the literature when writing, and not to tamper with the content of the literature.

4. References cannot be omitted. Some scientific research papers can omit references, but the literature review must not be omitted, and it should be the literature cited in the paper, which can reflect the whole theme and the author can read it directly.

In short, a good literature review should have complete literature, comments and analysis, and accurately reflect the theme.