Literature Review

What is it?An account of what has been written about

your chosen subject by acknowledged experts in the field

It will eventually form part of your final submitted report (April) but will first feed into your poster to be presented on Wednesday 11th December

It will probably be about 3,000 – 5,000 words long + references (but will be heavily abridged in the poster)

Tackling it early will pay off later!

What does it look like?It consists of two parts:

1. The main body which is a discourse. Read papers and theses to get the style. (In particular, look at ‘survey’ papers)

2. The list of references, written using the IEEE method

What is it for?It demonstrates your skills:

The ability to seek out relevant informationThe ability to critically analyse work that may

sometimes be conflictingThe ability to summarise your findingsThe ability to write all this down in a readable

form

It shows that you have a good understanding of current work in your chosen subject area

It serves as an introduction to the rest of your work and puts it into context

Where do I get the information? Remember, the information should come

from acknowledged experts so good sources are:

Peer reviewed journals – particularly ACM and IEEE

Books that are referenced a lotPeer-reviewed Conference proceedingsRFCsPhD theses

Where do I get the information from? Careful…….There may be good information here but be

careful:

Commercial whitepapers Commercial websitesPublications from trade organizationsConferences and journals that are not peer-

reviewed…….why not?

(Remember to be a CAT!)

Where do I get the information?Be Very Careful!You will not usually reference these but they may

sometimes give you a link to good information:

Magazine articlesWikipedias – (use as a starting point to find valid

refs.)Personal websites

Check how old the information is. All books and journals and conference proceedings more than about 3 years old are probably only useful as historical background.

How do I Access the SourcesGlyndwr library (Athens, etc.)Other librariesInternet

Search enginesGoogle scholarCiteSeerDBLP