BIOLOGY OF MARINE ORGANISMS

How to Write a Literature Review Paper

The purpose of a literature review paper is to examine the literature on a relatively small and coherent topic, and to organize the information into a clear statement about the general direction that research in that area is going. One of the most important steps is to define a suitable topic: neither too broad nor too narrow. For example, a topic such as "intertidal ecology" is far too broad. On the other hand, a topic such as "competition between Mytilus edulis and Balanus balanoides for space in the rocky intertidal of Cape Ann" is too narrow. A more appropriate subject might be the general field of competition in the intertidal. Other appropriate topics might include: Navigation in sea turtles, or Sonar in marine mammals.

Once you have decided on a topic, there are several ways to proceed. One is to use your text as a starting point. The references listed in the text will be a good entry into the literature, although none will be very recent. Another way is to use the various subject indexes available. Of these, FIRSTSEARCH, which is a computerized, online abstracting service including BIOSIS, is particularly useful. Using the computerized search will require some judicious choices of keywords. The likelihood that all the articles you will need exist in the FSC library is small. For those that you cannot obtain easily, it is probably sufficient to read only the abstract. If so, please cite the reference as "Abstract read, only." Other nearby options include Wellesley College, Brandeis University, U. Mass. Med. School at Worcester. Your paper should review the relevant literature. At the end of the paper, put all and only those articles you cited into a section called "Literature Cited." Note, this is not a bibliography of everything you read, but a listing of the articles you discussed in your paper. Use the format of this handout, unless you are sure that you can use some other format correctly.

A word about websites and other online sources of information: There are many marine biology related sites on the web that differ greatly in quality. In general, you should avoid using websites as your only source of information. A paper that has only websites for its cited references will not receive a passing grade. The only exception to this is for sites maintained by government agencies such as NOAA, online versions of regular, print journals, or refereed online journals (if you don't know what that means, come and ask me).

Your goal is to outline a subject area. That is, what are the important basic facts in the field, what are the important questions that have been or are being addressed, what are the important tools or research approaches that have been used? Simply presenting summaries of a number of articles is not sufficient. Also, avoid direct quotes; the idea is to summarize or paraphrase the information in your own words. You must still cite the reference that is the source of the information. See below for the appropriate format for literature citations. You must organize the content of these articles into some comprehensive scheme, for which the articles you cite provide the factual basis. The papers will be graded on the clarity of the writing and organization, as well as the content.

The paper counts 50 points (10 pages, typed, double spaced, maximum).

FORMAT FOR LITERATURE CITATIONS

I. How to cite references in the text: The simplest method of citing references is the (Author, date) method. For any statement of fact or idea taken from something you read, give the author's last name and the year of publication in parentheses at the end of sentence. For example: The whales are now known not to be fish (Brown, 1983). Note where the period comes, after the parentheses. Sometimes it sounds better if the author's name is part of the sentence, i.e.: Avise and Lansman (1983) are convinced that the whales want to be fish.

You cite the interviews as "personal communication," and give the date of the interview as well as identify the person in terms of the relevance for the topic. For example: Sewage pollution in the Charles River has caused the extinction of all whales in Massachusetts (J. Blow, sanitation engineer, MWRA, personal communication, 4 July, 2001).

II. How to format the Literature Cited section: At the end of the paper, list alphabetically by author each article or book you cited in the paper. You can use the format given here (preferred in Biology), or the correct MLA format (if you know it). Do not list things that you read but did not cite.

Format:

1. Article from periodical:

Author(s). Year. Title of article. Title of periodical. Volume:pages.

For example:

Kessler, L. G. and J. C. Avise. 1985. A comparative description of selected species of whales suggests that they really are fish. Molecular Biology and Evolution 2:109-126.

2. Book:

Author(s). Year. Title. Publisher, city, state, (nation).

For example:

Maniatis, T., F. E. Fritsch and J. Sambrook. 1982. Everybody knows that whales are not fish.. Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory, Long Island, New York.

3. Article from book with chapters by different authors:

Author(s). Year. Title of article, pages. In: Title of book. Editor(s). Publisher, city, state, (nation).

For example:

Brown, W. M. 1983. Evolution of whales and other fish, p. 62-88. In: Whales are too fish. M. Nei and R. K. Koehn (eds.). Sinauer Associates, Inc., Sunderland, Massachusetts.

4. Web-site:

Author (if no author is listed, use the name of the organization hosting the website). Year (if no year is given, use date unknown). Title. Complete URL. Date visited.

For example:

Cohen, R. A and J. Curtis. 1998. If whales are fish, your mother is a hippopotamus. http://www.nrdc.org/water/conservation/ragsosum.asp. Visited 17 January, 2001.

5. Personal communications do not go into the literature cited section. They are not published.

For other, more confusing types of references, please see me.