Universities increasingly expect students to publish during a PhD candidature because it benefits the candidate, supervisor, institution, and wider community. Here, we describe a method successfully used by early-career researchers including PhD candidates to undertake and publish literature reviews – a challenge for researchers new to a field. Our method allows researchers new to a field to systematically analyse existing academic literature to produce a structured quantitative summary of the field. This method is a more straightforward and systematic approach than the traditional ‘narrative method’ common to many student theses. When published, this type of review can also complement existing narrative reviews produced by experts in a field by quantitatively assessing the literature, including identifying research gaps. The method can also be used as the initial step for further analysis, including identifying suitable datasets for meta-analysis. Students report that the method is enabling and rewarding.

Item Type:	Refereed Article
Keywords:	doctoral education, PhD students, publication output, research student, thesis
Research Division:	Human Society
Research Group:	Human geography
Research Field:	Human geography not elsewhere classified
Objective Division:	Expanding Knowledge
Objective Group:	Expanding knowledge
Objective Field:	Expanding knowledge in education
UTAS Author:	Byrne, JA (Professor Jason Byrne)
ID Code:	125112
Year Published:	2014
Web of Science® Times Cited:	520
Deposited By:	Geography and Spatial Science
Deposited On:	2018-03-28
Last Modified:	2018-04-10
Downloads:	0