How to Search for Review Articles on Google Scholar
4 Ways to find review papers, systematic reviews, meta-assay, and other rich sources of references — 2D Search templates, Connected Papers & more.
Starting your research in a totally new area and unsure where to get-go? Wouldn't information technology be nice if someone had washed the work for you already, surveying the inquiry landscape of papers of importance and interest in the area y'all are interested in and even commenting and evaluating on the results?
Sounds like a pipage dream? Not really. Find one of the post-obit types of research and things becomes tons easier every bit they bring together citation rich resources on a specific surface area as assessed by an expert in the area. Say the concept yous are studying is "Servant leadership". What type of items would help you speedily gain an understanding of the literature written on that concept?
- Review articles (sometimes known as survey manufactures, they are more narrative reviews and have less formal inclusion critera) due east.m. Servant leadership: A review and synthesis
- Systematic reviews (similar to review manufactures but tend to exist more than methodical in setting out how studies are plant, screened and selected) e.g. A systematic literature review of retainer leadership theory in organizational contexts
- Meta-assay (Systematic reviews + pooling together results/data from multiple studies for additional analysis) e.m. Do ethical, authentic, and retainer leadership explain variance higher up and across transformational leadership? A meta-analysis
- Phd and Masters Theses (Theses tend to have very comprehensive reviews) — Some examples
- Bibliographies (References lists often annotated with comments on a sure topic) — eastward.thousand. The Hine Bibliography of Resources on Servant Leadership
But these citation rich items don't exactly grow on trees. So how can yous notice them?
Here are the automatic methods I know of (in order of most known to lesser known methods). There are besides diverse more transmission means like hand searching periodical titles (some fields will have particular outlets that publish such content e.g. Annual Reviews of … ), briefing proceedings that aren't covered hither of course.
- Keyword Search in Google Scholar
- Search within a database with a suitable Subject or Publication type
- Structured search template in 2D search (NEW!)
- Commendation mapping tools like Connected Papers, CoCites. (NEW!)
In my examples below I am going to employ "Creativity" as a sample topic.
The accuracy (or rather precision and recall) of these different techniques to place reviews etc differ depending on the technique used. Simple minded boolean string matching is likely to take higher recall (less false negatives) but lower precision (more simulated positives), while with car learning techniques which are increasingly used , depending on how the training is conducted it may lead to college precision (less simulated positives) at the cost of lower recall (more than false negatives) if trained that manner. Lastly of class at that place is simple man curation or hybrid man+ML may get the best of both worlds, only human input is expensive and is unclear how much this is used today.
1. Keyword search in Google Scholar
Edit : Jan 2022 — Google Scholar now has a "review articles" filter.
You can however use the keyword based method beneath, I personally find the keyword search based methods tends to give more precise results than Google Scholar's new filter.
In that location isn't much to say nearly this. To detect a systematic review, only go to Google Scholar and enter your keyword <topic keyword> systematic review.
This mostly works because nearly reviews and systematic reviews take those words in the title, and Google Scholar generally prioritizes matches with titles. e.g. "Determinants of organizational creativity: a literature review"
Still you tin effort a more refined search like intitle:review <topic keyword> to encounter if information technology gives you better results. e.thousand. intitle:review inventiveness.
Or even combine terms with boolean like this.
creativity intitle:review OR intitle:meta-assay OR intitle:"a survey"
Sidenote: Interestingly, Communist china's Baidu Xueshu (百度学术) / Baidu Academic or their answer to Google Scholar, does have a automated function to try to find review papers via their analysis function
It also tries to observe "classic papers" (seminal papers), contempo works and theses. I'm nevertheless trying information technology out, while Baidu Academic seems to have a smaller index than Google Scholar, it does seem to be in the aforementioned ballpark as Microsoft Academic, Lens.org and acts as a big spider web scale cross disciplinary database that should exist sufficient for most needs. And yep, it covers the usual international journals.
2. Search within a database with a suitable document type or subject blazon filter
Of course the limits of using keyword searching in Google Scholar is that you are going to become a lot of irrelevant results past the get-go few results even with the refined search syntax above.
A database which has a filter for reviews, meta-analysis etc would take the guess work out of it wouldn't it? Indeed some databases do have such a filter, typically as a publication type filter.
Some of these databases include
- Web of Science — use the "Review Article" filter
- Scopus — utilize the "Document blazon — Review" filter
- Semantic Scholar — use the "Publication Blazon — Review or Meta Analysis"
- Pubmed — utilize the "Article blazon — Review, Systematic Review or Meta-analysis"
- Psycinfo — use the "Methodology — Literature review, systematic review, meta analysis, metasynthesis"
- ProQuest Research Library — use "Document Type: Literature review"
TIP : In fact, almost all the methods below do not give 100% accuracy because the 'reviews' are oftentimes identified using complicated search filter patterns ( 'Hedges' in Pubmed spea k) or Automobile learning ( Microsoft Bookish , Semantic Scholar ) using methods akin to #3 and to to some extent #4 below.
Take PubMed, where at that place is a filter for "Reviews", "Systematic reviews" and "Meta-analysis".
Unfortunately not many databases accept such a filter, most are on the life sciences side (eastward.g. Psycinfo via methodology facet).
Once more while this is useful, a cross-disciplinary database that has such controlled terms would be useful.
Of the Cross-disciplinary databases Scopus and Web of Science practise indeed accept filters for this. For case, you tin use the Certificate type "Review" for Scopus and Web of Science.
Note : When looking at filters with the characterization "review", one must be careful to test if this means review papers or things like "book reviews"
However both databases are not only pay to access just as well have selective coverage.
Another big cantankerous disciplinary index that has a review filter is Semantic Scholar, though it shares a lot of the aforementioned underlying data with the next entry beneath via a data partnership.
Sometimes, a database might non have a outright filter for such items but a somewhat hidden style to do such searches is bachelor if they back up controlled vocabulary and the controlled terms includes a subject for reviews or bibliographies.
This ways someone has helpfully classified these items and all you lot demand to do is to search with these subjects.
TIP : In some vocabularies, a controlled term for say "Systematic reviews" might exist use for articles/content written on the theory and practise of doing systematic reviews, rather than for labelling the item as a systematic review (i.east. as a publication type), while others may include both. Y'all can cheque by running the search and looking at what appears.
Ane instance is ERIC the education database, and in their thesaurus yous can meet Literature Reviews, combine that with your topic and yous tin exercise a search for literature reviews!
Is in that location one with as broad a coverage every bit possible (competitive with Google Scholar) AND some style to filter this way?
And indeed one exists — Microsoft Academic (which sadly will exist sunset 31 Dec 2021).
Equally noted in this article, Microsoft Bookish is one of the largest sources of academic content out at that place and they use NLP and Motorcar learning to auto-classify over 200 million pieces of content into subjects including "Systematic review", "Review article", "Meta-analysis" and "Bibliography"
And so do searches similar
- Creativity Systematic Review
- Inventiveness Review Article
- Creativity Meta-assay
- Creativity Bibliography
A slightly more than advanced technique would be to combine them all together with Boolean merely as Microsoft academic doesn't support Boolean, you lot tin exercise this in Lens.org which has Microsoft Academic information and does back up Boolean. Even so, I recommend you look at the adjacent method showtime before trying it out.
3. Structured search template in 2Dsearch
Every bit noted to a higher place, the PubMed filter for reviews is really a complicated search design to attempt to identify reviews.
Tin can we do the equalvant for a Cross disciplinary database like Microsoft Bookish or Lens.org?
Indeed we can. Using both methods employed in #1 and #2 we can create a complicated Boolean search in Lens.org that maximizes the recall of the search (so we tin get as many right items) while too keeping the precision of the search loftier (so we can avoid wrong results).
Why Lens.org? It is one of the largest open up sources of academic records out there (>200 million as of 2020), including information from Crossref, Pubmed, PMC, JISC Cadre, Microsoft Academic and more AND different other large search indexes has a very powerful Boolean and search function that allows you to craft a powerful search strategy to maximise recall and precision. For case the search template is powerful plenty to include a section to search within specific journal like Almanac reviews or Cochrane Database of Systematic Reviews
Due to the complexity of the search, I employ the use of 2Dsearch to create a search template for your ease of utilise.
I particular the method in — Finding reviews on any topic using Lens.org and 2d search — a new efficient method. You lot should really read it, but the cliff notes is every bit follows.
- Go to the saved 2d search template here (no sign in required)
- Roll to the bottom and locate the block in the search strategy that is on "creativity" and alter the terms to your topic (eastward.g. "Retainer Leadership")
3. Generate the search results in Lens.org
iv. Relish!
That'due south it.
4. Commendation mapping tools similar Connected Papers, CoCites.
I've been tracking the rise of tools that are designed to assistance literature review by mapping the literature. However while tools similar Citation Gecko and CoCites are useful and take the potential to identify review or seminal papers, they generally do not outright try to identify them.
The only exception to this is the new Connected Papers tools. I've done a long review here but in this slice I volition focus on the relevant portions.
Continued Papers, allows you to put in 1 newspaper and it volition generate a map of similar papers using a similarity function based on a combination of co-citations & bibliometric couplings.
For instance take this 2008 paper of mine — Improving Wikipedia Accuracy: Is edit historic period the answer? and throw information technology into Connected Papers to see what it generates.
The twist here is that you can apply the papers found in this generated network to endeavour to identify not but seminal works by clicking on "Prior works" button only also endeavor to "observe surveys of the field or recent relevant works which were inspired by many papers in the graph" by clicking on the Derivative works.
While this method doesn't always work, it works a lot more than than I expected and you become the added bonus of finding similar pages as well equally seminal papers on top of review papers!
Methods compared roughly
At this point yous may be bewildered by the methods available and wondering which to use. There is no one sized fit all answer, it depends on how comprehensive yous want the search to exist and how long yous desire to exercise the search.
In full general, the fastest and quickest way would exist to use keyword searching in Google Scholar, it won't be the nearly complete, but information technology tends to requite you good results on the first page. If yous are in a subject field where at that place is a dominant database like PsycInfo, then y'all should definitely use that besides.
If for some reason you simply want to find such items in a restricted set of "high impact" journals, you lot can use the filter functionality in Web of Science and Scopus, though there is no reason I see why you might practice that.
Semantic Scholar's review publication blazon seems to requite me more mixed results, and while Baidu Bookish analysis function tin can help surface some relevant Communist china paper missed by other methods, I find similar Semantic Scholar information technology tin can exist a bit striking or miss in classifying review papers.
The saved 2D search template here is something I recommend and use when I want to be comprehensive, information technology tends to give me the best balance between precision and call back and works well in my feel for near disciplines.
Connected Papers isn't peculiarly geared for this purpose , though it'due south other functionality like mapping out related papers and seminal papers is helpful.
If you want to do a comprehensive overview for a thesis say, I would try all of these methods! Some might notice additional relevant items missed by others.
Conclusion
I hope the techniques shown hither are of utilise to you. Once you have found all these review papers, systematic reviews, meta-assay, bibliographies what do you do adjacent? Stay tuned for my next post!
Source: https://medium.com/a-academic-librarians-thoughts-on-open-access/4-ways-to-find-review-papers-systematic-reviews-meta-analysis-and-other-rich-sources-of-82898aebb6e7#:~:text=To%20find%20a%20systematic%20review,systematic%20review.&text=Still%20you%20can%20try%20a,it%20gives%20you%20better%20results.
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