Did your conclusion tie back in with the initial ideas you proposed? Analysis and interpretation -- discussing the findings and conclusions of pertinent literature. Conducting Research Literature Reviews: From the Internet to Paper. What can you say about the locations where the film was shot? Narrow the Topic The narrower your topic, the easier it will be to limit the number of sources you need to read in order to obtain a good survey of relevant resources. The conclusions should reflect upon the aims - whether they were achieved or not - and, just like the aims, should not be surprising. Different papers serve different purposes. Conclusions Because the conclusions section often gets left for last it is often the weakest part of a student review paper. Is the film connected to any earlier works done by the same director? If you are watching the motion picture for history class, make note of over-dramatization.
I found that once I had made a table, the narrative of that particular research topic almost wrote itself. Your review has to be objective and biased. Instead, a young scientist may learn how to review a paper under the guidance of his or her mentor, through journal clubs, or simply through trial and error. Try to respond to invitations promptly - it will prevent delays. This intellectual nugget might be the application or invention of a particular technique, a proof of correctness where one previously did not exist , or an attempt to put the solution into a broader intellectual context.
Post it on your blog, share it in a movie discussion forum, put it up on Facebook, or email it to your friends and family. In the end, I finished by the deadline well, plus one two-week extension the editor agreed to grant me and was very happy with the product and with all I had learned about caspase substrates, about the scientific literature and about the review-writing process. Avoid bias: Absolutely do not review a manuscript if you have a strong feeling positive or negative about any of the authors. Concluding thoughts As you can see, reviewing can be a very difficult task, but you definitely will improve with practice! Not if you don't want to. If there are gaps or inconsistencies in the story, they should address these and suggest ways future research might confirm the findings or take the research forward. How to Review a Scientific Paper How to Review a Scientific Paper by Purpose of this document This document is intentionally brief. Consider how the setting of the film influenced its other elements.
Basically, I am looking to see if the research question is well motivated; if the data are sound; if the analyses are technically correct; and, most importantly, if the findings support the claims made in the paper. Review not just what scholars are saying, but how are they saying it. Write about the score of the film. Special effects should be as believeable as the technology available during the era the film was made allowed, unless of course the effects are comedically bad which may be a characteristic of the genre. Are there any theoretical problems, practical difficulties, implementation complexities, overlooked influences of evolving technology, and so on? An example: when you're watching a movie, you can look at the acting, the special effects, the camera work, or the story, among other things.
Narrowing the scope of the article to conform to these boundaries was perhaps the biggest challenge of this process. The focus and perspective of your review and the kind of hypothesis or thesis argument you make will be determined by what kind of review you are writing. Do you believe that some particular actor was the right fit for the role? How you react—and how you adapt your research or follow through on it after the acceptance or rejection —is far more important to long-term success. If possible, avoid watching the movies that you would surely hate. Thus, your readers will have a sense of familiarity examining the body of the article, which opens their reading appetite.
For example, if you're going to say a movie is excellent, you should be able to say that it's because of more than just the main actor being convincing- try to include details like the soundtrack, cinematography, and plot as well! Read on for another quiz question. Before submitting a review, I ask myself whether I would be comfortable if my identity as a reviewer was known to the authors. It need not be fully complete research - it may be an interim paper. If there are any aspects of the manuscript that I am not familiar with, I try to read up on those topics or consult other colleagues. And remember that under no circumstances should you even think of doing this in order to slow a lab down so that your project can be published first. If you cannot answer those questions by the time you are through, you have not truly read the paper.
The literature review often times covers only the theoretical part of your work, it is the research methods that will help you build up your own notions. It will also help you determine if the argument is strong or not. My reviews usually start out with a short summary and a highlight of the strengths of the manuscript before briefly listing the weaknesses that I believe should be addressed. Editors will make sure that the text is at a high standard before publication. All thoughts and comments on it should only go to the editor.
Keep in mind that you have every right to ask the authors do a different experiment, or to modify the way they carry out an existing one. Some final considerations By this point, you will probably have read the entirety of the paper several times. Getting started Our topic was caspase substrates, a diverse group of proteins essential for programmed cell death and thus important to our understanding of how to kill cancer cells. Does the theoretical argument make sense? Do you expect the technique to be more or less useful in the future? Elsevier journals use different submission systems so there is no one generic login link. Of course, the research similarities may be so great that they render the work unoriginal and you have no choice but to recommend rejection. Peer review is at the heart of the scientific method.
First, is it well written? Read on for another quiz question. I would have to assess the limits imposed by the journal 30 pages, six months as well as my own limits and the necessity to balance the writing project with lab work that was essential to finishing my Ph. To be honest, I was excited to have this opportunity to examine the literature in depth and to create something useful out of it. So first and foremost, ask your instructor if you should conduct your own research or just evaluate other literature in order to build up a synthesis of your findings. Recapitulate important features of a research study, but then synthesize it by rephrasing the study's significance and relating it to your own work. If visual effects were used were the plates well-chosen and were the composited effects part of a seamless experience? If there is a major flaw or concern, I try to be honest and back it up with evidence. Provide examples when commenting dialogues, locations, plot, everything.
Knowing this in advance helps save time later. Others are closer to historical studies. A literature review may consist of simply a summary of key sources, but in the social sciences, a literature review usually has an organizational pattern and combines both summary and synthesis, often within specific conceptual categories. An example Losing Joe's Place by Gordon Korman book review by Mr. Movie and documentary reviews give you a unique opportunity to improve your writing skills by combining school assignment with someone you really like. Once your opinion is clear, provide examples from the movie that prove your point, like specific scenes, dialogue, songs, or camera shots.