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Research Toolkit

A quick start guide to conducting, writing, publishing, and presenting your research.

Meaning of "Literature Review"

The term "literature review" is frequently used to describe things that are actually different. E.g., the literature review section of a paper on a specific study is very different than a systematic review of a given topic.

Literature Review as Part Literature Review as Whole​
  • a body of evidence that explains the reasoning behind your article and research​
  • background information describing the problem and support for your proposed solution​
  • offering contradictory articles and gaps in the literature ​
  • offer background and context to your research
  • a description of work published in a field or on a topic​
  • overview of what’s been done and by whom​
  • summarize and analyze existing literature​
  • cover background, research, and findings of studies​
  • provide context and relate to the field​

The following Scholarly Snippets webinar elaborates further on this concept, as well as literature reviews in medicine and a brief overview of common types of literature reviews.

Problem-Gap-Hook Method

The problem-gap-hook method is a useful way to articulate the problem, identify a gap in the research, and create a hook for the audience.1,2

Watch the entire video for some additional tips to facilitate your writing process.

Review Your Grammar

Use Grammarly Premium to check your grammar before asking someone to review your manuscript, poster, and/or presentation. Follow the instructions in the guide linked below to create your Grammarly Premium account.

Sections of a Research Article

Many research articles utilize this format, as outlined in Designing Science Presentations:

  • Abstract: A complete summary of the paper.
  • Introduction: The beginning of a paper that transitions from a general background to a specific research question or goal.
  • Materials and Methods: A brief but detailed description of the tools and methods you used to perform experiments and analyze results.
  • Results: A presentation of all of your experiments and data, represented both as text and in tables, graphs, diagrams, and photographs.
  • Discussion: An opportunity to discuss your interpretation of your results and explore your findings within the context of the larger scientific record.
  • References: Your citations.
  • Supplemental Materials: Additional figures, videos, and sometimes elaboration of methods and computational analyses that will appear online only.

Additional information on a research paper and the different sections: 

Authorship

The International Committee of Medical Journal Editors (ICMJE) recommends that authorship be based on all of the following criteria:

  1. Substantial contributions to the conception or design of the work; or the acquisition, analysis, or interpretation of data for the work; AND
  2. Drafting the work or revising it critically for important intellectual content; AND
  3. Final approval of the version to be published; AND
  4. Agreement to be accountable for all aspects of the work in ensuring that questions related to the accuracy or integrity of any part of the work are appropriately investigated and resolved.

Those who do not meet all four criteria should be identified in the acknowledgments section.

Each author should also be able to describe their contributions (see other tab).

CRediT (Contributor Roles Taxonomy) can be used to represent common author contributions. Here is an example from an article in PLOS One (contribution types are explained below):

Screenshot from PLOS One article showing author contributions

Consider using this website and spreadsheet to help with author order and contributions:

Contributor Role

Role Definition
Conceptualization Ideas; formulation or evolution of overarching research goals and aims.
Data Curation Management activities to annotate (produce metadata), scrub data and maintain research data (including software code, where it is necessary for interpreting the data itself) for initial use and later reuse.
Formal Analysis Application of statistical, mathematical, computational, or other formal techniques to analyze or synthesize study data.
Funding Acquisition Acquisition of the financial support for the project leading to this publication.
Investigation Conducting a research and investigation process, specifically performing the experiments, or data/evidence collection.
Methodology Development or design of methodology; creation of models.
Project Administration Management and coordination responsibility for the research activity planning and execution.
Resources Provision of study materials, reagents, materials, patients, laboratory samples, animals, instrumentation, computing resources, or other analysis tools.
Software Programming, software development; designing computer programs; implementation of the computer code and supporting algorithms; testing of existing code components.
Supervision Oversight and leadership responsibility for the research activity planning and execution, including mentorship external to the core team.
Validation Verification, whether as a part of the activity or separate, of the overall replication/reproducibility of results/experiments and other research outputs.
Visualization Preparation, creation and/or presentation of the published work, specifically visualization/data presentation.
Writing – Original Draft Preparation Creation and/or presentation of the published work, specifically writing the initial draft (including substantive translation).
Writing – Review & Editing Preparation, creation and/or presentation of the published work by those from the original research group, specifically critical review, commentary or revision – including pre- or post-publication stages.

Cite as You Write

Take clear, accurate notes about where you find specific ideas. One tool that can help with this is Sciwheel, which enables you to annotate documents. Another useful tool is an evidence analysis log (see below) that can provide a quick overview and comparison of the different sources you reviewed.

AMA Quick Reference Sheet

When you are ready to paraphrase, carefully consider the words you choose. This is important for both avoiding plagiarism and accurately reflecting the authors' work. The below video briefly covers suggestions for conveying what an author did, said, or their opinion. It also demonstrates the evidence analysis log.

Each citation style has rules for formatting in-text citations, which are needed whenever you refer to information found in another source.

See our AMA 11 Citation Guide for information on how to format in-text citations.

The CHSU Health Sciences Library provides every faculty, staff, and student with a Sciwheel Premium account. Use Sciwheel to import articles and other resources as you locate them. Then annotate the documents and insert citations as you write.

How to Prepare Tables, Graphs, and Figures

Use a table to facilitate finding single values of information from much larger datasets.

The maximum average monthly high temperatures for Fresno, CA are January, 57 F; February, 63 F; March, 69 F; April, 76 F; May, 85 F; June, 93 F; July, 98 F; August, 98 F; September, 91 F; October, 80 F; November, 66 F; December, 57 F. The minimum average low temperatures are January, 40 F; February, 43 F; March, 47 F; April, 51 F; May, 57 F; June, 63 F; July, 68 F; August, 66 F; September, 62 F; October, 54 F; November, 45 F; December, 50 F.

Month High Temp (F) Low Temp (F)
January 57 40
February 63 43
March 69 47
April 76 51
May 85 57
June 93 63
July 98 68
August 98 66
September 91 62
October 80 54
November 66 45
December 57 50

Graphs communicate patterns or trends within a specific dataset and relationships among multiple categories of data.

Source: Carter M. Designing Science Presentations: A Visual Guide to Figures, Papers, Slides, Posters, and More. 2nd ed. Elsevier; 2021.

Diagrams present information in visual form, conveying concepts more quickly and clearly than words alone.

Can you imagine trying to comprehend the Krebs Cycle in text alone?

Krebs Cycle

Source: Andrew R Gross. Wikimedia Commons: CC-BY-SA. No changes were made.

Reusing Content From Another Publication

While there are some situations where text recycling is an acceptable practice, it may not be so in other situations. Authors are urged to adhere to the spirit of ethical writing and avoid reusing their own previously published text, unless it is done in a manner that alerts readers about the reuse or one that is consistent with standard scholarly conventions (e.g., by using of quotations and proper paraphrasing).

This guideline is from the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services' Office of Research Integrity.

The following article also briefly discusses the concept of self-plagiarism.