Assessment – 1

Type: Submission
Marks: 10
Time duration for submission: 03 weeks
Content: Students are required to download any 5 papers from
3 different Open access journals of their field in Scopus Q1/Q2.
The following activities are to be completed.
1. Go through the selected articles’ ‘Scope for future research
section’ and identify any 5 topics for research.
2. Recommend an appropriate research type for each topic
and come up with a problem statement for each selected
topic.
The Critical
Literature Review
ROLE OF LITERATURE REVIEW

In general, a literature review ensures that:

1. The research effort is positioned relative to existing knowledge and builds on this
knowledge.
2. You can look at a problem from a specific angle; it shapes your thinking and sparks
useful insights on the topic of your research.
3. You do not run the risk of “reinventing the wheel”, that is, wasting effort on trying to
rediscover something that is already known.
In general, a literature review ensures that:

1. You are able to introduce relevant terminology and to define key terms used in your writing.
This is important because the same term may have different meanings, depending on the
context in which it is used. Definitions will also help you to give structure to your essay, article
or report .
2. You obtain useful insights of the research methods that others have used to provide an answer
to similar research questions.
3. The research effort can be contextualized in a wider academic debate. In other words, it allows
you to relate your findings to the findings of others.
 HOW TO APPROACH THE
LITERATURE REVIEW

Data sources
Textbooks
The quality of a literature review depends on a cautious selection and Textbooks are a useful source of theory in a specific
reading of books, academic and professional journals, reports, theses, area. An advantage of textbooks is that they can
conference proceedings, unpublished manuscripts, and the like. Academic cover a broad range of topics. What’s more,
books and journals are, in general, the most useful sources of information. textbooks can cover a topic much more thoroughly
However, other sources such as professional journals, reports, and even than articles can. Hence, textbooks offer a good

newspapers may also be valuable because they can provide you with starting point from which to find more detailed

specific, real world information about markets, industries, or companies. sources such as journal articles, theses, and
unpublished manuscripts. A downside of textbooks
Therefore, as a rule, you will need to use a combination of information
is that they tend to be less up to date than journals.
resources. The precise combination of resources depends on the nature and
the objectives of your research project.
HOW TO APPROACH THE LITERATURE REVIEW
Journals
1. Articles in academic journals have generally been peer‐reviewed: this means that the articles have been subject
to the scrutiny of experts in the same field before being accepted for publication.
a) Review articles (that may or may not contain a meta‐analysis: a type of data analysis in which the results
of several studies are combined and analyzed as if they were the results of one large study) summarize
previous research findings to inform the reader of the state of existing research. Review articles are very
useful because they provide an overview of all the important research in a specific area.
Meta-analysis is a quantitative, formal, epidemiological study design used to systematically assess the results of previous
research to derive conclusions about that body of research.
b) Research articles are reports of empirical research/ Qualitative research, describing one or a few related
studies. The conceptual background section of a research article provides a compact overview of relevant
literature. Research articles also provide a detailed description of the purpose of the study, the method(s)
used, and the results of the study.
HOW TO APPROACH THE
LITERATURE
Professional journals , Theses REVIEW
Professional journals
Articles in professional journals are a valuable source of recent developments in the field and of
facts and figures. What’s more, they may provide you with a feel for the practical relevance of a
problem.
IETE Journal of Research published by the Institution of Electronics and Telecommunication
Engineers (IETE), IEEE, American Machinist, Petroleum news, Flight international etc.

Theses
PhD theses often contain an exhaustive review of the literature in a specific area. Most PhD
theses include several empirical chapters. These chapters often have the same structure and
characteristics as academic journal articles.
Note that not every empirical chapter of a thesis is eventually published in an academic journal.
 Conference proceedings, Unpublished manuscripts

•Conference proceedings
Conference proceedings can be useful in providing the latest research, or research that has not
(yet) been published. Conference proceedings are very up to date, and for this reason this
information source is quite valuable if you are working in a relatively new area or domain.
Not every manuscript presented at a conference is eventually published in an academic journal;
hence you must critically assess the quality of this information source.
•Unpublished manuscripts
The APA defines an unpublished manuscript as any information source that is not “officially”
released by an individual, publishing house, or other company. Examples of unpublished
manuscripts may include papers accepted for publication but still “in press,” data from an
unpublished study, letters, manuscripts in preparation, and personal communications (including e‐
mails). Unpublished manuscripts are often very up to date.
HOW TO APPROACH THE
LITERATURE
Reports, Newspapers REVIEW
•Reports
Government departments and corporations commission to carry out a large amount of
research. Their published findings provide a useful source of specific market, industry, or
company information.
•Newspapers
Newspapers provide up‐to‐date business information. They are a useful source of specific
market, industry, or company information. Note that opinions in newspapers are not always
unbiased.
Evaluating the literature – Impact factor
•“Is the journal peer‐reviewed; that is, do all articles have to undergo a review process before they are published?” and

“What is the impact factor of the journal?” The impact factor of a journal can be viewed as the average number of citations in

a year given to those papers in the journal that were published during a given period (usually the two preceding years).

Because important articles are cited more often than articles that are not important, the impact factor of a journal is

frequently used as a proxy for the importance of that journal to its field.

•In sum, some criteria for assessing the value of articles or books are:

a) the relevance of the issues that are addressed in the article or book,

b) the importance of a book or article in terms of citations,

c) the year of publication of the article or book,

d) and the overall quality of the article or book.

•All the articles considered relevant to your study can be listed as references, using the appropriate referencing format, which

is discussed in the appendix to this chapter.

Evaluating the literature
1. Is the main research question or problem statement presented in a clear and analytical way?
2. Is the relevance of the research question made transparent?
3. Does this study build directly upon previous research?
4. Will the study make a contribution to the field?
5. Is there a theory that guides the research?
6. Is the theory described relevant and is it explained in an understandable, structured, and convincing manner?
7. Are the methods used in the study explained in a clear manner (description of methods)?
8. Is the choice of certain methods motivated in a convincing way (justification of methods)?
9. Is the sample appropriate?
10. Are the research design and/or the questionnaire appropriate for this study?
11. Are the measures of the variables valid and reliable?
12. Has the author used the appropriate quantitative and/or qualitative techniques?
13. Do the conclusions result from the findings of the study?
14. Do the conclusions give a clear answer to the main research question?
15. Has the author considered the limitations of the study?
16. Has the author presented the limitations in the article?
Documenting the literature review
Evaluating the literature - Homework
•Do the project assigned below, following the step‐by‐step process outlined:

Compile a bibliography on any one of the following topics, or any other topic of interest to you,
from
a business perspective: (a) service quality; (b) product development; (c) information systems; (e)
manufacturing technology
From this bibliography, select five to seven references that include books, academic journals, and
professional journals.
Based on these five to seven references, write a literature review using different forms of citation.