Writing literature surveys and reviews

The literature survey or review is a specialized form of essay which summarizes and reviews the evidence and concepts concerning a particular area of research. 

A literature review should not be a recitation of facts. The best reviews are those which analyse information rather than simply describe it. 

You may have no choice in the topic to be covered, but if you do, carry out your selection as a three-stage process  

Identify a broad subject area that interests you. 

Find and read relevant literature in that area. Try to gain a broad impression of the field from books and general review articles. Discuss your ideas with your supervisor. 

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The evaluation of CIE consists of 2-A reviews that are conducted by the course instructor. The basic criteria for evaluation include an ability to understand the problem and carry out the literature survey, and ability to work as a team member. It also includes quality of work, documentation, report writing and presentation skills. The example rubrics followed for Pulse and Digital Circuits are as follows ... 

Keeping in line with the objective of this short article, it is useful to analyse the components of the "push" exerted by catalytic science to innovation in selective oxidation. Ideas and concepts have progressively evolved since the time when the oxidation of olefins and butane oxidation to MAA developed industrially. It is useful to examine critically the potential of these ideas and concepts if we wish to discover new catalysts or improve substantially those mentioned in the literature (such as those of Table 2). We summarize here comments made previously [2,9]. It should be remarked incidentally that, according to a literature survey made at the time of writing this paper, only 5 review papers on selective oxidation have been written since 1993. Except a specific one dealing with bismuth molybdate catalysts, we dte all of them in this article. 

Although many previous reviews (5-12) and literature compilations (13-16) have dealt with sulfur stereochemistry, we decided to write a new report on chiral sulfur compounds to provide a survey of the topic with emphasis on the most recent findings. This chapter consists of four major parts treating syntheses of chiral sulfur compounds, methods for determination of their absolute configuration and optical purity, the dynamic stereochemistry of organosulfur compounds, and the use of chiral sulfur compounds in asymmetric synthesis. 

Organometallic chemistry is currently reviewed element by element in at least three independent publications. The first in-depth review appeared as a single volume in 1965 entitled Annual Survey of Organometallic Chemistry (Bl). This covered the literature of the previous year. After three annual issues the publication became multi-authored and was incorporated into Organometallic Chemistry Reviews as Series B (as distinct from Series A, subject reviews). In January 1973, the surveys became part of the Journal of Organometallic Chemistry. At the time of writing, coverage is complete for all elements to the end of 1973, except Si (1970) Be, Ca, Sr, Ba, Si, Pb (1971) Si (1972) and Li, Na, K, Ge, Pb, As, Sb, Bi (1973). 

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