dissertations, conference proceedings, correspondence
Review articles, systematic reviews, meta-analysis, practice guidelines, monographs on a specific subject
Textbooks, encyclopedias, handbooks, newspapers
These examples and descriptions of publication types will give you an idea of how to use various works and why you would want to write a particular kind of paper.
Scholarly (aka empirical) article -- example
Empirical studies use data derived from observation or experiment. Original research papers (also called primary research articles) that describe empirical studies and their results are published in academic journals. Articles that report empirical research contain different sections which relate to the steps of the scientific method.
Abstract - The abstract provides a very brief summary of the research.
Introduction - The introduction sets the research in a context, which provides a review of related research and develops the hypotheses for the research.
Method - The method section describes how the research was conducted.
Results - The results section describes the outcomes of the study.
Discussion - The discussion section contains the interpretations and implications of the study.
References - A references section lists the articles, books, and other material cited in the report.
Review article -- example
A review article summarizes a particular field of study and places the recent research in context. It provides an overview and is an excellent introduction to a subject area. The references used in a review article are helpful as they lead to more in-depth research.
Many databases have limits or filters to search for review articles. You can also search by keywords like review article, survey, overview, summary, etc.
Conference proceedings, abstracts and reports -- example
Conference proceedings, abstracts and reports are not usually peer-reviewed. A conference article is similar to a scholarly article insofar as it is academic. Conference articles are published much more quickly than scholarly articles. You can find conference papers in many of the same places as scholarly articles.
To identify an article based on empirical research, look for the following characteristics:
The article is published in a peer-reviewed journal .
The article includes charts, graphs, or statistical analysis .
The article is substantial in size , likely to be more than 5 pages long.
The article contains the following parts (the exact terms may vary): abstract, introduction, method, results, discussion, references .
A literature review involves both the literature searching and the writing. The purpose of the literature search is to:
List above from Conducting A Literature Search , Information Research Methods and Systems, Penn State University Libraries
A literature review provides an evaluative review and documentation of what has been published by scholars and researchers on a given topic. In reviewing the published literature, the aim is to explain what ideas and knowledge have been gained and shared to date (i.e., hypotheses tested, scientific methods used, results and conclusions), the weakness and strengths of these previous works, and to identify remaining research questions: A literature review provides the context for your research, making clear why your topic deserves further investigation.
*Boolean logic provides three ways search terms/phrases can be combined, using the following three operators: AND, OR, and NOT.
The type of information you want to find and the practices of your discipline(s) drive the types of sources you seek and where you search. For most research you will use multiple source types such as: annotated bibliographies; articles from journals, magazines, and newspapers; books; blogs; conference papers; data sets; dissertations; organization, company, or government reports; reference materials; systematic reviews; archival materials; and more. It can be helpful to develop a comprehensive approach to review different sources and where you will search for each. Below is an example approach.
Additional information gathering strategies:
Research guides, research in education.
General literature review guides.
Libraries & Cultural Resources
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Methodology
Research methods are specific procedures for collecting and analyzing data. Developing your research methods is an integral part of your research design . When planning your methods, there are two key decisions you will make.
First, decide how you will collect data . Your methods depend on what type of data you need to answer your research question :
Second, decide how you will analyze the data .
Methods for collecting data, examples of data collection methods, methods for analyzing data, examples of data analysis methods, other interesting articles, frequently asked questions about research methods.
Data is the information that you collect for the purposes of answering your research question . The type of data you need depends on the aims of your research.
Your choice of qualitative or quantitative data collection depends on the type of knowledge you want to develop.
For questions about ideas, experiences and meanings, or to study something that can’t be described numerically, collect qualitative data .
If you want to develop a more mechanistic understanding of a topic, or your research involves hypothesis testing , collect quantitative data .
Qualitative | to broader populations. . | |
---|---|---|
Quantitative | . |
You can also take a mixed methods approach , where you use both qualitative and quantitative research methods.
Primary research is any original data that you collect yourself for the purposes of answering your research question (e.g. through surveys , observations and experiments ). Secondary research is data that has already been collected by other researchers (e.g. in a government census or previous scientific studies).
If you are exploring a novel research question, you’ll probably need to collect primary data . But if you want to synthesize existing knowledge, analyze historical trends, or identify patterns on a large scale, secondary data might be a better choice.
Primary | . | methods. |
---|---|---|
Secondary |
In descriptive research , you collect data about your study subject without intervening. The validity of your research will depend on your sampling method .
In experimental research , you systematically intervene in a process and measure the outcome. The validity of your research will depend on your experimental design .
To conduct an experiment, you need to be able to vary your independent variable , precisely measure your dependent variable, and control for confounding variables . If it’s practically and ethically possible, this method is the best choice for answering questions about cause and effect.
Descriptive | . . | |
---|---|---|
Experimental |
Research method | Primary or secondary? | Qualitative or quantitative? | When to use |
---|---|---|---|
Primary | Quantitative | To test cause-and-effect relationships. | |
Primary | Quantitative | To understand general characteristics of a population. | |
Interview/focus group | Primary | Qualitative | To gain more in-depth understanding of a topic. |
Observation | Primary | Either | To understand how something occurs in its natural setting. |
Secondary | Either | To situate your research in an existing body of work, or to evaluate trends within a research topic. | |
Either | Either | To gain an in-depth understanding of a specific group or context, or when you don’t have the resources for a large study. |
Your data analysis methods will depend on the type of data you collect and how you prepare it for analysis.
Data can often be analyzed both quantitatively and qualitatively. For example, survey responses could be analyzed qualitatively by studying the meanings of responses or quantitatively by studying the frequencies of responses.
Qualitative analysis is used to understand words, ideas, and experiences. You can use it to interpret data that was collected:
Qualitative analysis tends to be quite flexible and relies on the researcher’s judgement, so you have to reflect carefully on your choices and assumptions and be careful to avoid research bias .
Quantitative analysis uses numbers and statistics to understand frequencies, averages and correlations (in descriptive studies) or cause-and-effect relationships (in experiments).
You can use quantitative analysis to interpret data that was collected either:
Because the data is collected and analyzed in a statistically valid way, the results of quantitative analysis can be easily standardized and shared among researchers.
Research method | Qualitative or quantitative? | When to use |
---|---|---|
Quantitative | To analyze data collected in a statistically valid manner (e.g. from experiments, surveys, and observations). | |
Meta-analysis | Quantitative | To statistically analyze the results of a large collection of studies. Can only be applied to studies that collected data in a statistically valid manner. |
Qualitative | To analyze data collected from interviews, , or textual sources. To understand general themes in the data and how they are communicated. | |
Either | To analyze large volumes of textual or visual data collected from surveys, literature reviews, or other sources. Can be quantitative (i.e. frequencies of words) or qualitative (i.e. meanings of words). |
If you want to know more about statistics , methodology , or research bias , make sure to check out some of our other articles with explanations and examples.
Research bias
Quantitative research deals with numbers and statistics, while qualitative research deals with words and meanings.
Quantitative methods allow you to systematically measure variables and test hypotheses . Qualitative methods allow you to explore concepts and experiences in more detail.
In mixed methods research , you use both qualitative and quantitative data collection and analysis methods to answer your research question .
A sample is a subset of individuals from a larger population . Sampling means selecting the group that you will actually collect data from in your research. For example, if you are researching the opinions of students in your university, you could survey a sample of 100 students.
In statistics, sampling allows you to test a hypothesis about the characteristics of a population.
The research methods you use depend on the type of data you need to answer your research question .
Methodology refers to the overarching strategy and rationale of your research project . It involves studying the methods used in your field and the theories or principles behind them, in order to develop an approach that matches your objectives.
Methods are the specific tools and procedures you use to collect and analyze data (for example, experiments, surveys , and statistical tests ).
In shorter scientific papers, where the aim is to report the findings of a specific study, you might simply describe what you did in a methods section .
In a longer or more complex research project, such as a thesis or dissertation , you will probably include a methodology section , where you explain your approach to answering the research questions and cite relevant sources to support your choice of methods.
Other students also liked, writing strong research questions | criteria & examples.
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Grey Literature is not academic/scholarly piece of writing. It includes government documents, foundation reports, white papers, working papers, issue briefs, organizational (versus academic) research, and other kinds of policy reports. It can be challenging to distinguish grey literature from academic sources, and often enough scholars are authors of this grey literature, blurring the lines all the more. An important distinction between grey literature and academic publications are that the latter are peer reviewed by scholars with expertise in the field.
Searching for Grey Literature:
[customize by adding or subtracting from this list to include sources relative to your Critical Writing topic]
Some social science databases will index this material and it may appear in government or organizational websites or through other means rather than formal publication. The creators of these documents may be teams or individuals, and the authors are not always listed.
Unlike academic articles, grey literature doesn't necessarily go through a vetting or peer review process. As such, when using this material, you will want to have an understanding of the organizational body sponsoring the work. Who funds them? What is their mission? Are they a lobbying or political group? What kinds of information do they publish? Do other organizations cite them? Who and for what reasons? Google Scholar is a great way to find out who is citing a particular publication.
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Title: mapping technical safety research at ai companies: a literature review and incentives analysis.
Abstract: As artificial intelligence (AI) systems become more advanced, concerns about large-scale risks from misuse or accidents have grown. This report analyzes the technical research into safe AI development being conducted by three leading AI companies: Anthropic, Google DeepMind, and OpenAI. We define safe AI development as developing AI systems that are unlikely to pose large-scale misuse or accident risks. This encompasses a range of technical approaches aimed at ensuring AI systems behave as intended and do not cause unintended harm, even as they are made more capable and autonomous. We analyzed all papers published by the three companies from January 2022 to July 2024 that were relevant to safe AI development, and categorized the 61 included papers into eight safety approaches. Additionally, we noted three categories representing nascent approaches explored by academia and civil society, but not currently represented in any papers by the three companies. Our analysis reveals where corporate attention is concentrated and where potential gaps lie. Some AI research may stay unpublished for good reasons, such as to not inform adversaries about security techniques they would need to overcome to misuse AI systems. Therefore, we also considered the incentives that AI companies have to research each approach. In particular, we considered reputational effects, regulatory burdens, and whether the approaches could make AI systems more useful. We identified three categories where there are currently no or few papers and where we do not expect AI companies to become more incentivized to pursue this research in the future. These are multi-agent safety, model organisms of misalignment, and safety by design. Our findings provide an indication that these approaches may be slow to progress without funding or efforts from government, civil society, philanthropists, or academia.
Subjects: | Computers and Society (cs.CY) |
Cite as: | [cs.CY] |
(or [cs.CY] for this version) | |
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Borders, Migration and Liminality in Children’s Literature
The 27th Biennial International Research Society for Children’s Literature (IRSCL) Congress will take place on 21-25 June 2025 at the University of Salamanca (Spain), convened by Izaskun Elorza (LINDES Research Group, University of Salamanca) and Carmen Santamaría-García (University of Alcalá).
The theme for the 27th biennial IRSCL Congress addresses borderlands, migration, and liminality in children’s literature. Borders may serve as geographical boundaries, imposing limitations on interaction with the environment or as political barriers that limit free movement and can result in harsh or traumatic experiences. Yet, borderlands can become wonderlands, as rich spaces of liminality where limits are negotiable and identities become blurred, transient, and recycled.
Borderlands and liminality appear in children’s literature in a variety of ways, such as thresholds between different languages, genres, crossover narratives, transitional periods from childhood to adulthood, or the blurring frontiers between the human and the more-than-human.
Borders can set limits to freedom of movement for territorial and political reasons. We must acknowledge a wide multiplicity of borders, such as geographical, legal, linguistic, economic, or cultural, with new types of emerging borders arising with life changes and challenges. The triggers for human migration can be multifaceted, ranging from escaping conflict to searching for new opportunities. In the Anthropocene, economic growth forces human displacement and challenges ecosystems, leading to the need for continuous adaptation by both human beings and other species.
The congress theme aims to stimulate discussion about these topics. We invite papers that engage in discussion on the representation, production and/or reception of migration, borders, and liminality in different genres (fairy tales, fantasy, novels, poetry, biographies, fiction) and formats (picturebooks, graphic novels, digital narratives, films, books) found in children’s literature. We encourage approaches including, but not limited to, ecocriticism, posthumanism, materiality, aesthetics, multimodality, discourse analysis, critical content analysis, equity, diversity, and social justice. Possible topics include, but are not limited to, these listed below:
— Decolonial, Postcolonial and Anti-Colonial approaches
— Borders of childhood and coming-of-age narratives
— Human and more-than-human migratory journeys
— Oneiric, ephemeral, and transient spaces
— Impacts of the Anthropocene, Capitalocene, Chthulucene
— Shapeshifting, transgressions, and crossing thresholds
— Forced displacement and forced return
— Emigration, diasporas, and belonging
— Borders between languages and dialects, including translanguaging
— Human, cyborg, and hybrids
— Gender identities
— Third space and other liminal dimensions
— Networks as agents of change and transformation
RELEVANT DATES:
– 15 th May to 15th September extended date 30th september 2024: Submission period for individual proposals, thematic panels and special events
– December 2024: Communication of acceptance/rejection of proposals
CONGRESS LANGUAGES:
The contributions to the congress can be in English or in Spanish .
INFORMATION UPDATES:
Follow us in the congress website and social media for up-to-date information!
Website: https://irscl2025salamanca.usal.es/
Social media: @irscl2025_usal
Contact: [email protected]
We look forward to seeing you all in Salamanca 2025!!
Co-conveners: Izaskun Elorza (University of Salamanca) and Carmen Santamaría-García (University of Alcalá)
Update: September 12, 2024
Thursday, February 23: The Clark Library is closed today.
Group activity document for today's class
Search UP Library Search for: [author name] biography
Example: Jane Austen biography
Two tips for searching the Times Digital Archive:
Use the Publication date limiter (beneath the search boxes) to limit your search by date:
On the search results screen, change Sort by from Oldest to Relevance to bring the best articles (that mention your words most frequently and/or in the title of the article) to the top of the results:
IMAGES
VIDEO
COMMENTS
Examples of literature reviews. Step 1 - Search for relevant literature. Step 2 - Evaluate and select sources. Step 3 - Identify themes, debates, and gaps. Step 4 - Outline your literature review's structure. Step 5 - Write your literature review.
As mentioned previously, there are a number of existing guidelines for literature reviews. Depending on the methodology needed to achieve the purpose of the review, all types can be helpful and appropriate to reach a specific goal (for examples, please see Table 1).These approaches can be qualitative, quantitative, or have a mixed design depending on the phase of the review.
A literature review is meant to analyze the scholarly literature, make connections across writings and identify strengths, weaknesses, trends, and missing conversations. A literature review should address different aspects of a topic as it relates to your research question. A literature review goes beyond a description or summary of the ...
A sophisticated literature review (LR) can result in a robust dissertation/thesis by scrutinizing the main problem examined by the academic study; anticipating research hypotheses, methods and results; and maintaining the interest of the audience in how the dissertation/thesis will provide solutions for the current gaps in a particular field.
A literature review is a critical analysis and synthesis of existing research on a particular topic. It provides an overview of the current state of knowledge, identifies gaps, and highlights key findings in the literature. 1 The purpose of a literature review is to situate your own research within the context of existing scholarship, demonstrating your understanding of the topic and showing ...
Literature Review is a comprehensive survey of the works published in a particular field of study or line of research, usually over a specific period of time, in the form of an in-depth, critical bibliographic essay or annotated list in which attention is drawn to the most significant works. Also, we can define a literature review as the ...
What kinds of literature reviews are written? Narrative review: The purpose of this type of review is to describe the current state of the research on a specific topic/research and to offer a critical analysis of the literature reviewed. Studies are grouped by research/theoretical categories, and themes and trends, strengths and weakness, and gaps are identified.
A literature review is an integrated analysis-- not just a summary-- of scholarly writings and other relevant evidence related directly to your research question.That is, it represents a synthesis of the evidence that provides background information on your topic and shows a association between the evidence and your research question.
The best proposals are timely and clearly explain why readers should pay attention to the proposed topic. It is not enough for a review to be a summary of the latest growth in the literature: the ...
This book looks at literature review in the process of research design, and how to develop a research practice that will build skills in reading and writing about research literature--skills that remain valuable in both academic and professional careers. Literature review is approached as a process of engaging with the discourse of scholarly ...
A literature or narrative review is a comprehensive review and analysis of the published literature on a specific topic or research question. The literature that is reviewed contains: books, articles, academic articles, conference proceedings, association papers, and dissertations. It contains the most pertinent studies and points to important ...
Writing a Literature Review. A literature review is a document or section of a document that collects key sources on a topic and discusses those sources in conversation with each other (also called synthesis). The lit review is an important genre in many disciplines, not just literature (i.e., the study of works of literature such as novels and ...
Google Scholar provides a simple way to broadly search for scholarly literature. Search across a wide variety of disciplines and sources: articles, theses, books, abstracts and court opinions.
1. Narrative Literature Review. A narrative literature review, also known as a traditional literature review, involves analyzing and summarizing existing literature without adhering to a structured methodology. It typically provides a descriptive overview of key concepts, theories, and relevant findings of the research topic.
A literature review may consist of simply a summary of key sources, but in the social sciences, a literature review usually has an organizational pattern and combines both summary and synthesis, often within specific conceptual categories.A summary is a recap of the important information of the source, but a synthesis is a re-organization, or a reshuffling, of that information in a way that ...
Writing a literature review requires a range of skills to gather, sort, evaluate and summarise peer-reviewed published data into a relevant and informative unbiased narrative. Digital access to research papers, academic texts, review articles, reference databases and public data sets are all sources of information that are available to enrich ...
Selecting the right quality of literature is the key to successful research literature review. The quality can be estimated by what is known as "The Evidence Pyramid.". The level of evidence of references obtained from the aforementioned search tools are depicted in Figure 9. Systematic reviews obtained from Cochrane library constitute ...
Types of Literature Review are as follows: Narrative literature review: This type of review involves a comprehensive summary and critical analysis of the available literature on a particular topic or research question. It is often used as an introductory section of a research paper. Systematic literature review: This is a rigorous and ...
The research literature in psychology is enormous—including millions of scholarly articles and books dating to the beginning of the field—and it continues to grow. Although its boundaries are somewhat fuzzy, the research literature definitely does not include self-help and other pop psychology books, dictionary and encyclopedia entries ...
Literature reviews establish the foundation of academic inquires. However, in the planning field, we lack rigorous systematic reviews. In this article, through a systematic search on the methodology of literature review, we categorize a typology of literature reviews, discuss steps in conducting a systematic literature review, and provide suggestions on how to enhance rigor in literature ...
Note: These are sample literature reviews from a class that were given to us by an instructor when APA 6th edition was still in effect. These were excellent papers from her class, but it does not mean they are perfect or contain no errors.
Tertiary Literature. Tertiary literature consists of a distillation and collection of primary and secondary sources such as textbooks, encyclopedia articles, and guidebooks or handbooks. The purpose of tertiary literature is to provide an overview of key research findings and an introduction to principles and practices within the discipline.
List above from Conducting A Literature Search, Information Research Methods and Systems, Penn State University Libraries. A literature review provides an evaluative review and documentation of what has been published by scholars and researchers on a given topic. In reviewing the published literature, the aim is to explain what ideas and ...
A literature review is exploring research that has been done directly on the topic you have chosen. Conducting a literature review will give you the big picture of what is already known about your topic and allow you to see where there may be gaps in the knowledge. << Previous: Where to Start;
Research methods are specific procedures for collecting and analyzing data. Developing your research methods is an integral part of your research design. When planning your methods, there are two key decisions you will make. First, decide how you will collect data. Your methods depend on what type of data you need to answer your research question:
The interest in Data Envelopment Analysis (DEA) has grown since its first put forward in 1978. In response to the overwhelming interest, systematic literature reviews, as well as bibliometric studies, have been performed in describing the state-of-the-art and offering quantitative outlines with regard to the high-impact papers on global applications of DEA and the higher education system (DEA-HE).
Grey Literature is not academic/scholarly piece of writing. It includes government documents, foundation reports, white papers, working papers, issue briefs, organizational (versus academic) research, and other kinds of policy reports. It can be challenging to distinguish grey literature from academic sources, and often enough scholars are ...
As artificial intelligence (AI) systems become more advanced, concerns about large-scale risks from misuse or accidents have grown. This report analyzes the technical research into safe AI development being conducted by three leading AI companies: Anthropic, Google DeepMind, and OpenAI. We define safe AI development as developing AI systems that are unlikely to pose large-scale misuse or ...
Borders, Migration and Liminality in Children's Literature The 27th Biennial International Research Society for Children's Literature (IRSCL) Congress will take place on 21-25 June 2025 at the University of Salamanca (Spain), convened by Izaskun Elorza (LINDES Research Group, University of Salamanca) and Carmen Santamaría-García (University of Alcalá).
Literature Research Resources; Class Activity. Group activity document for today's class. Word Study. Oxford English Dictionary This link opens in a new window. Word meanings and origins. Rhetorical Analysis. The Forest of Rhetoric. A guide to the terms of classical and Renaissance rhetoric.