Literature review made easy with new software

To many, writing is difficult. Researchers lament that running experiment in labs is easy but reporting is hard. Hence, Teoh Sian Hoon created an Integrative Literature Review Software to assist academics and students to write the literature reviews of their research

Though important, reviewing an article or synthesizing a model is not as tangible and clear-cut as a research design. Thus many encounter difficulties in writing a comprehensive literature review and synthesizing a conceptual framework. Unlike a literature review, a research design has a concrete outline of the method of data collection and data analysis.

Although most university students attend courses on how to write research papers during their studies, writing a good literature review still poses major challenge to most research students, according to Teoh. It is for this reason that she created the software.

Teoh’s survey on university students’ description and understanding of literature reviews revealed that the supervisors of postgraduates need to accept literature reviews as a problem area for students. She noted there is a need to develop strategies and tools to help the students have a clear picture on writing.

The software Teoh has designed helps writers to keep their reading systematic and organised. The template allows them to record the literature of different articles and identify embedded concepts, therefore helping students analyze and synthesize the literature. In addition, the software assists writers in recording their related summaries of articles, and ways of identifying embedded concepts, analysing and synthesing the reading are also included.

Apart from helping the writers, the software may lighten a lecturer’s task in guiding the students in their research work.