Literature reviews as a means of communicating progress in research

Literature reviews serve two basic functions: they provide information to non-specialists on work that has been done and they signal to specialists where the gaps are in knowledge of a particular topic. They are standard academic practice in many disciplines[1] and the conventions surrounding them are widely understood by academics but may not be so obvious to those outside academia. This article provides some comments on literature reviews and offers thoughts on the role they play in the development of academic disciplines for both early career and established researchers and, particularly in the CREATe context, for informing industry and policy makers of a body of work that has been published in a specific field and evaluating that work.

The motive for writing this piece was the critical discussion of large-scale literature reviews at recent CREATe events which prompted questions, particularly from industry audiences: how useful are they and for whom? There has been the sense that literature reviews are somehow lacking, for example, they do not produce ‘answers’ to problems experienced by the industries. There is much to say about this: academic journals do not (or have not) publish(ed) articles on the topic as there is neither academic interest nor expertise or it may just not be in anyone’s career interests - journals can only publish articles that are submitted. Moreover, some topics may not be amenable to academic research because access to data is lacking or there are other information problems. These issues are discussed in this paper.

[1] For example, the non-profit Annual Reviews publishes reviews in 50 branches of physical and social science. ‘The mission of Annual Reviews is to provide systematic, periodic examinations of scholarly advances in a number of fields of science through critical authoritative reviews. The comprehensive critical review not only summarizes a topic but also roots out errors of fact or concept and provokes discussion that will lead to new research activity. The critical review is an essential part of the scientific method’. Quoted from http://www.annualreviews.org/page/about/our-mission-and-our-founder accessed 03-06-14.