- Research Guides
Literature Review: A Self-Guided Tutorial
Using concept maps.
- Literature Reviews: A Recap
- Peer Review
- Reading the Literature
- Developing Research Questions
- Considering Strong Opinions
- 2. Review discipline styles
- Super Searching
- Finding the Full Text
- Citation Searching This link opens in a new window
- When to stop searching
- Citation Management
- Annotating Articles Tip
- 5. Critically analyze and evaluate
- How to Review the Literature
- Using a Synthesis Matrix
- 7. Write literature review
Concept maps or mind maps visually represent relationships of different concepts. In research, they can help you make connections between ideas. You can use them as you are formulating your research question, as you are reading a complex text, and when you are creating a literature review. See the video and examples below.
How to Create a Concept Map
Credit: Penn State Libraries ( CC-BY ) Run Time: 3:13
- Bubbl.us Free version allows 3 mind maps, image export, and sharing.
- MindMeister Free version allows 3 mind maps, sharing, collaborating, and importing. No image-based exporting.
Mind Map of a Text Example
Credit: Austin Kleon. A map I drew of John Berger’s Ways of Seeing in 2008. Tumblr post. April 14, 2016. http://tumblr.austinkleon.com/post/142802684061#notes
Literature Review Mind Map Example
This example shows the different aspects of the author's literature review with citations to scholars who have written about those aspects.
Credit: Clancy Ratliff, Dissertation: Literature Review. Culturecat: Rhetoric and Feminism [blog]. 2 October 2005. http://culturecat.net/node/955 .
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- Next: 1. Identify the question >>
- Last Updated: Oct 1, 2024 1:31 PM
- URL: https://libguides.williams.edu/literature-review
How To Use Litmaps To Create A Litmap For Literature Review
Performing a comprehensive literature review can be daunting, but with Litmaps, you can supercharge the process.
Litmaps is an innovative tool that helps researchers discover, organise, and visualise academic papers through interactive literature maps.
In this post, I will walk you through using Litmaps to enhance your research productivity and streamline your workflow.
What Is Litmaps And How Does It Work?
Litmaps is an essential tool for researchers, offering an interactive way to map out the scientific literature landscape.
You start by entering a topic or a specific paper into the app. Litmaps then creates a litmap, visually showing how articles are connected through citations.
This helps you see the key moments in the research field and understand the relationships between papers.
Using Litmaps, you can find academic papers that you might not discover through traditional searches. It’s particularly useful for students and PhD candidates who need to accelerate their literature review process.
By visualising the connections, you can stay updated on new research and organise your data effectively.
The seed function is a game-changer. You add a single paper, and Litmaps generates a network of related articles, showing who cited whom.
This makes it easier to find relevant literature and understand how different studies are interconnected. You can:
- tag articles,
- create collections, and even
- share your literature maps with colleagues.
Imagine the productivity boost from not having to manually search for new papers! For those looking to make their research process more efficient and comprehensive, Litmaps is the tool to use.
How To Use Litmaps To Perform Literature Review?
Step 1: get a free account.
To use Litmaps for performing a literature review, start by setting up a free account on their app. Once you’re logged in, the quick search feature becomes your primary tool.
Enter the topic or specific paper you’re interested in, and Litmaps will generate a litmap, a visual representation of the academic literature connected through citations.
Step 2: Find A Key Paper
Begin by finding a key article relevant to your research. If you’re studying the effects of urbanisation on bird migration, you might start with a highly-cited paper like “Bird Migration Advances More Strongly in Urban Environments.”
Enter this into Litmaps’ search bar, and the app will create a litmap with your chosen paper at the centre.
The surrounding nodes represent articles that are either cited by or cite your key paper, helping you see the entire landscape of related research.
Step 3: Expand View To Find Relevant Papers
Use the seed function to expand your view. By adding your key paper, Litmaps will display related articles, showing who cited whom. This helps you discover relevant literature you might otherwise miss.
You may find recent papers published that offers a new perspective on your topic. This feature is especially useful for PhD students or academic researchers who need to cover a vast amount of literature efficiently.
Step 4: Add Articles & Transcripts
As you explore, you can add articles to your collection. Tagging them based on subtopics or themes as you read along will help you stay organised.
You might tag articles under “urbanisation effects” or “bird migration patterns.” This organisation system is crucial for managing large volumes of information and ensures you can easily find and reference articles later.
Step 5: Monitor Papers, Researchers
Monitoring is another powerful feature. Litmaps can run searches weekly and notify you of new articles related to your topic.
This pro option is a time-saver, ensuring you stay updated without having to manually search for new papers. Imagine the productivity boost from having the latest research delivered to you automatically.
Step 6: Visualise Your Work
Visualising connections between articles helps you understand the broader context of your research. You can see which articles are most influential based on how many times they are cited.
This not only helps you identify key papers but also guides you on what to read next. The interactive nature of Litmaps makes this process engaging and intuitive.
Step 7: Share Your Work
Sharing your findings is simple. You can generate a public URL or share via email, making collaboration with colleagues seamless.
This is particularly useful when working on a joint project or when you want feedback from peers.
You can also export data in various formats such as:
This feature should be handy for integrating Litmaps into your writing software or reference manager.
Step 8: Keep Track Of Researches & Stay Organised
Using Litmaps also means you can stay organised throughout your literature review.
All articles you add to your litmap are automatically saved, making it easy to track your progress.
You can access your saved articles by clicking “Articles” at the top right, where you can also export your list. Tags further help in categorising your literature, allowing you to create a structured overview of your research.
Litmaps: Organise Research Papers & Create Litmap
Litmaps is more than just a search tool; it’s a comprehensive guide through the entire literature review process.
By leveraging its features, you can accelerate your research, stay organised, and ensure you’re always up-to-date with the latest developments in your field.
Whether you’re a student or a seasoned researcher, Litmaps is designed to enhance your productivity and deepen your understanding of the scientific literature.
If you are looking for a step-by-step process to conduct literature review , feel free to check out my video guide:
Dr Andrew Stapleton has a Masters and PhD in Chemistry from the UK and Australia. He has many years of research experience and has worked as a Postdoctoral Fellow and Associate at a number of Universities. Although having secured funding for his own research, he left academia to help others with his YouTube channel all about the inner workings of academia and how to make it work for you.
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You are here, structuring your ideas: creating a literature map.
It is important to have a plan of the areas to be discussed, using this to indicated how these will link together. In the overall structure of the literature review, there should be a logical flow of ideas and within each paragraph there should be a clear theme, around which related ideas are explored and developed. A literature map can be useful for this purpose as it enables you to create a visual representation of the themes and how they could relate to one another.
A literature map (Cresswell, 2011) is a two dimensional diagrammatic representation of information where links are made between concepts by drawing arrows (which could be annotated to define the nature of these links). Constructing a literature map helps you to:
- develop your understanding of the key issues and research findings in the literature
- to organise ideas in your mind
- to see more clearly how different research studies relate to one another and to group those with similar findings.
Your map can then be used as a plan for your literature review.
As well has helping you to organise the literature for your review, a literature map can be used to help you analyse the information in a particular journal article, supporting the exploration of strengths and weaknesses of the methodology and the resultant findings and enabling you to explore how key themes and concepts in the article link together.
It is important to represent the different views and any conflicting research findings that exist in the literature (Newby, 2014). There is a danger of selective referencing, only including literature that supports your own beliefs and findings, disregarding alternative views. This should be avoided as it is based on the assumption that your views are the correct ones, and it is possible that you could miss key ideas and findings that could take your research in new and exciting directions.
- research methods
- literature reviews
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