Bioluminescence in Hawaii
Basic Literature Review Format
I. Introduction
What was I studying?
Why was this topic important to investigate?
What did we know about this topic before I did this study?
How will this study lead to new ways of understanding or opportunity to pursue action?
Place relevant works in the context of their contribution to understanding the case study being investigated. Describe the relationship each work has to the others under consideration that informs the reader why this case is applicable. Identify new ways to interpret prior research using the case study..
Resolve conflicts amongst seemingly contradictory previous studies.
Expose any gaps that exist in the literature that the case study could help to fill. Point the way in fulfilling a need for additional research.
Discussion
Reiterate the research problem. What were your major findings?
Explain the meaning of the findings and why they are important.
Acknowledge the study’s limitations
Place your case study in context of similar studies. How is this helpful for understanding this particular problem?
Suggest areas for further research
Citations / References
Whenever you mention information that is not common knowledge or was not obtained
personally (through experiments or observations), you must include a reference to indicate the
source of that information. Failure to cite the work of others not only does not give proper credit
to the researchers, but is considered plagiarism.
Use in text citations
In text citation examples:
Exposing the leaf surfaces of shaded understory plants to sunlight without giving them a sufficient period for acclimation can result in a reduced rate of photosynthesis (Levitt 1980).
In a little-known Russian paper on the effects of day length on seedling growth in Eucalyptus, Shaposhnikov (1935) suggested that the long-day responses of two species and the short-day responses of two others were linked to the geographical ranges of each of the species in Australia.
Literature Cited
List references at the end of your paper
Alphabetical order by author
6 scholarly or primary research articles
Can include other sources in addition to your 6
Process for investigative research paper
Reviewing literature – Begin your Background Research
a. Review papers can be helpful because they often suggest unanswered questions
b. Search a variety of electronic databases for relevant articles – not all databases cover the same journals.
c. Read papers to get a sense of the state of knowledge concerning your topic. What questions do you have about the content of the papers?
Narrowing the focus of the research
a. Evaluate background papers – are some more closely related than others? Were any especially interesting? Does some information seem to be missing?
b. Try mapping out the topic to show the relationships between your questions, the background paper topics, and your broad topic.
Identifying significant questions
a. Now start asking questions to generate some more focused questions. What do you know about your topic? What do you want to know? Look at your map of the topic/background research – are some subtopics clustered together? Why are there links? What might affect those links? How? Why? For more information on Bioluminescence in Hawaii see this: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bioluminescence
