Literature Review and Technical Reading

• New and Existing Knowledge

• Analysis and Synthesis of Prior Art
• Bibliographic Databases
• Web of Science
• Google and Google Scholar
• Effective Search: The Way Forward Introduction to
Technical Reading Conceptualizing Research
• Critical and Creative Reading,
• Taking Notes While Reading, Reading Mathematics
and Algorithms, Reading a Datasheet
 Literature Review and Technical Reading
Literature Review
Why
• Improve your Understanding Build Your Expertise in a specific Field Demonstrate
Knowledge Update the reader on the state of the art

• The primary goal of literature review is to know the use of

content/ideas/approaches in the literature to correctly identify the problem that is
vaguely known beforehand

• It also helps the researcher understand clearly that the research to be undertaken
would contribute something new and innovative.

• The quality of such review can be determined by evaluating if it includes

appropriate breadth and depth of the area under study, clarity, rigor, consistency,
effective analysis
• Resource screening list
• Literature Survey List
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Research Methodology & IPR
Literature Review and Technical Reading
Literature Review and Technical Reading
• Sources
• Quality Of Source : Language domain and
Geographic Domain, Scientific Domain
• Sources Resource screening list
• Literature Survey List
• Literature Review analysis
• Write the literature Review analysis
Literature Review and Technical Reading

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Research Methodology & IPR
Literature Review and Technical Reading

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Research Methodology & IPR
 New and Existing Knowledge
• The new knowledge can have vastly different
interpretations depending on what the researcher’s
background, and one’s perception of that new
knowledge can change from indifference to
excitement, depending on what else one knows
• The existing knowledge is needed to make the case
that there is a problem and that it is important. One
can infer that the knowledge that is sought to be
produced does not yet exist by describing what other
knowledge already exists and by pointing out that
this part is missing so that what we have is original.
 New and Existing Knowledge
• To do this, one again needs the existing
knowledge: the context, the significance, the
originality, and the tools.
• one finds this knowledge by reading and surveying
the literature in the field that was established long
ago and also about the more recent knowledge
which is in fact always changing
• good literature survey is the first expectation of a
supervisor from the research student, and when
done well can create a good impression that the
state of art in the chosen field is well understood.
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Research Methodology & IPR
 New and Existing Knowledge
• A comprehensive literature survey should
include methods to analyze and synthesize
quality archived work, provide a firm
foundation to a topic of interest and the
choice of suitable research methodologies,
and demonstrate that the proposed work
would make a novel contribution to the
overall field of research.
Analysis and Synthesis of Prior Art
 Bibliographic Databases
• “Bibliographic databases” refer to “abstracting
and indexing services” useful for collecting
citation-related information
• A researcher should be able to quickly identify
the databases that are of use in the idea or
problem that one wishes to explore.
• popular bibliographic databases :Web of
Science & Google and Google Scholar
 Web of Science
• Web of Science includes multiple databases,
as well as specialized tools
• It is a good search tool for scholarly materials
requiring institutional license and allows the
researcher to search in a particular topic of
interest, which can be made by selection in
fields that are available in drop down menu
such as title, topic, author, address, etc. The
tool also allows sorting by number of citations
 Google and Google Scholar
• Google is a great place to start one’s search when one
is starting out on a topic. It can be helpful in finding
freely available information, such as reports from
governments, organizations, companies, and so on.
• limitations:
1 It’s a “black box” of information It searches everything
on the Internet, with no quality control—one does
not know where results are coming from.
2 There are limited search functionality and refinement
options.
 Google and Google Scholar
• Google Scholar limits one’s search to scholarly
Literature
limitations:
• Some of the results are not actually scholarly. An
article may look scholarly at first glance, but is not a
good source upon further inspection.
• 2. It is not comprehensive. Some publishers do not
make their content available to Google Scholar.
• 3. There is limited search functionality and refinement
options.
Effective Search: The Way Forward
• A scholarly publication is one wherein the published outcome is
authored by researchers in a specific field of skill
• Such work cites all source contents used and is generally peer
reviewed for accuracy and validity before publication.
• A researcher should use all search tools for comprehensive search. No
one place or one source exists that will provide all the information one
needs; one will likely need to look in all the places that would be
described in this chapter and in others not mentioned.
• Not all information is available online. Some information is only
available in print.
• studies on a topic of interest to the researcher have not occurred. In
such a case, the researcher should look for similar studies that would
be applicable to the specific topic
Effective Search: The Way Forward
Searching is an iterative process:
• Experiment with different keywords and
operators;
• Evaluate and assess results, use filters;
• Modify the search as needed;
• When relevant articles are found, look at their
citations and references.
A detailed comparison and contrast of the findings
is also required to be done.
Effective Search: The Way Forward
• It is very important to not lose sight of the purpose
of an extensive search or literature survey
• It is not as if literature survey ends and then
research begins, for new literature keeps appearing,
and as one’s understanding of the problem grows,
one finds new connections and related/evolving
problems which may need more search.
• It is mandatory for a Ph.D. scholar to write a synopsis
of the topic and submit it to the doctoral committee
for approval.
Introduction to Technical Reading
• It is not the same as reading a newspaper. It
may require rereading the paper multiple
times and one might expect to spend many
hours reading the paper.
• Amount of time to be spent will get
ascertained after an initial skimming through
the paper to decide whether it is worth
careful reading. There
 Conceptualizing Research
• The characteristics of a research objective are
that it must have new knowledge at the center,
and that it must be accepted by the community of
other researchers and recognized as significant.
• Besides being original and significant, a good
research problem should also be solvable or
achievable.
• Coming up with a good research objective,
conceptualizing the research that meets all of
these requirements is a tough thing to do.
 Conceptualizing Research
• literature so as to bring together the three
parts:
(i) significant problem
(ii) the knowledge that will address it, and
(iii) a possible way to make that new knowledge.
 Critical and Creative Reading
• Reading a research paper is a critical process. The reader
should not be under the assumption that reported results or
arguments are correct.
• asking appropriate questions is in fact a good thing. Have the
authors attempted to solve the right problem? Are there
simpler solutions that have not been considered? What are
the limitations of the solution and are there any missing
links? Are the assumptions that were made reasonable? Is
there a logical flow to the paper or is there a flaw in the
reasoning?
• Critical reading is relatively easy. It is relatively easier to
critically read to find the mistakes than to read it so as to find
the good ideas in the paper.
 Taking Notes While Reading
• A researcher reads to write and writes well only if the
reading skills are good.
• The bridge between reading and actually writing a
paper is the act of taking notes during and shortly after
the process of reading.
• There is a well-known saying that the faintest
writing is better than the best memory
• On completing a thorough reading, a good technical
reading should end with a summary of the paper in a
few sentences describing the contributions.
 Reading Mathematics and Algorithms
• Mathematics is often the foundation of new
advances, for evolution and development of
engineering research and practice.
• An engineering researcher generally cannot
avoid mathematical derivations or proofs as
part of research work.
• Researcher is confident about the paper in
hand, and thinks that the algorithm will work,
there is a fair chance that it will not work at all.
 Reading a Datasheet
• mechanical and civil engineers would need to read
drawings related to mechanical parts and buildings.
Researchers in the field of electronics need to read
datasheets.
• Datasheets are instruction manuals for electronic
components
• The first page of the datasheet usually summarizes
a part’s function and features, basic specifications,
and usually provides a functional block diagram
with the internal functions of the part.
 Reading a Datasheet
• Some parts also provide graphs showing
performance versus various criteria (supply
voltage, temperature, etc.),
• safe region for reliable operation
• for truth tables which describe what sort of
inputs provide what types of outputs
• timing diagrams which lay out how and at what
speed data is sent and received from the part.

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Research Methodology & IPR