Good Topics to Write a Biology Literature Review on
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Literature reviews are of import resources for scientists. They provide historical context for a field while offering opinions on its future trajectory. Creating them can provide inspiration for one's own research, as well as some practice in writing. Simply few scientists are trained in how to write a review — or in what constitutes an splendid ane. Even picking the appropriate software to utilize can be an involved decision (come across 'Tools and techniques'). And so Nature asked editors and working scientists with well-cited reviews for their tips.
WENTING ZHAO: Be focused and avoid jargon
Assistant professor of chemic and biomedical engineering, Nanyang Technological University, Singapore.
When I was a inquiry student, review writing improved my understanding of the history of my field. I as well learnt well-nigh unmet challenges in the field that triggered ideas.
For example, while writing my get-go review1 as a PhD educatee, I was frustrated by how poorly we understood how cells actively sense, interact with and adapt to nanoparticles used in drug delivery. This experience motivated me to study how the surface backdrop of nanoparticles tin can be modified to raise biological sensing. When I transitioned to my postdoctoral enquiry, this question led me to observe the office of jail cell-membrane curvature, which led to publications and my current research focus. I wouldn't take started in this expanse without writing that review.
A common problem for students writing their first reviews is being overly ambitious. When I wrote mine, I imagined producing a comprehensive summary of every unmarried type of nanomaterial used in biological applications. It ended upwardly condign a jumbo piece of piece of work, with too many papers discussed and without a articulate way to categorize them. We published the work in the cease, but decided to limit the discussion strictly to nanoparticles for biological sensing, rather than covering how different nanomaterials are used in biology.
My communication to students is to take that a review is unlike a textbook: it should offering a more focused word, and it'southward OK to skip some topics and so that you do not distract your readers. Students should besides consider editorial deadlines, especially for invited reviews: brand sure that the review'southward scope is not so all-encompassing that information technology delays the writing.
A good review should likewise avoid jargon and explicate the basic concepts for someone who is new to the field. Although I trained equally an engineer, I'k interested in biological science, and my research is about developing nanomaterials to manipulate proteins at the cell membrane and how this can affect ageing and cancer. Equally an 'outsider', the reviews that I detect most useful for these biological topics are those that speak to me in accessible scientific language.
Bozhi Tian likes to get a variety of perspectives into a review. Credit: Aleksander Prominski
BOZHI TIAN: Have a process and develop your mode
Associate professor of chemistry, University of Chicago, Illinois.
In my lab, we commencement by asking: what is the purpose of this review? My reasons for writing one can include the take chances to contribute insights to the scientific community and identify opportunities for my inquiry. I also come across review writing every bit a style to train early-career researchers in soft skills such equally projection management and leadership. This is especially truthful for lead authors, considering they volition learn to work with their co-authors to integrate the various sections into a piece with smooth transitions and no overlaps.
After nosotros have identified the need and purpose of a review article, I volition class a team from the researchers in my lab. I effort to include students with different areas of expertise, because it is useful to become a diversity of perspectives. For case, in the review 'An atlas of nano-enabled neural interfaces'2, we had authors with backgrounds in biophysics, neuroengineering, neurobiology and materials sciences focusing on unlike sections of the review.
After this, I volition discuss an outline with my team. We go through multiple iterations to make certain that nosotros have scanned the literature sufficiently and do non repeat discussions that accept appeared in other reviews. It is besides important that the outline is non decided by me lone: students often accept fresh ideas that they tin can bring to the table. Once this is done, we proceed with the writing.
I often remind my students to imagine themselves as 'artists of science' and encourage them to develop how they write and present information. Adding more words isn't always the all-time way: for example, I relish using tables to summarize research progress and suggest future inquiry trajectories. I've also considered including short videos in our review papers to highlight primal aspects of the work. I think this can increment readership and accessibility because these videos can be easily shared on social-media platforms.
ANKITA ANIRBAN: Timeliness and figures make a huge difference
Editor, Nature Reviews Physics.
I of my roles as a journal editor is to evaluate proposals for reviews. The all-time proposals are timely and clearly explain why readers should pay attending to the proposed topic.
It is not enough for a review to be a summary of the latest growth in the literature: the most interesting reviews instead provide a discussion about disagreements in the field.
Scientists often center the story of their primary enquiry papers around their figures — only when it comes to reviews, figures often take a secondary role. In my opinion, review figures are more than of import than well-nigh people think. One of my favourite review-style manufacturesthree presents a plot bringing together data from multiple research papers (many of which directly contradict each other). This is and then used to identify wide trends and suggest underlying mechanisms that could explain all of the different conclusions.
An important role of a review article is to introduce researchers to a field. For this, schematic figures tin be useful to illustrate the scientific discipline being discussed, in much the aforementioned style as the first slide of a talk should. That is why, at Nature Reviews, we have in-firm illustrators to help authors. However, simplicity is cardinal, and even without support from professional illustrators, researchers can still make use of many free drawing tools to enhance the value of their review figures.
Yoojin Choi recommends that researchers exist open to critiques when writing reviews. Credit: Yoojin Choi
YOOJIN CHOI: Stay updated and exist open to suggestions
Inquiry banana professor, Korea Advanced Institute of Scientific discipline and Technology, Daejeon.
I started writing the review 'Biosynthesis of inorganic nanomaterials using microbial cells and bacteriophages'4 as a PhD student in 2018. It took me one twelvemonth to write the first draft because I was working on the review alongside my PhD research and generally on my own, with support from my adviser. Information technology took a further year to complete the processes of peer review, revision and publication. During this time, many new papers and even competing reviews were published. To provide the most up-to-date and original review, I had to stay abreast of the literature. In my case, I made use of Google Scholar, which I set up to send me daily updates of relevant literature based on key words.
Through my review-writing process, I likewise learnt to be more open to critiques to raise the value and increment the readership of my work. Initially, my review was focused simply on using microbial cells such as bacteria to produce nanomaterials, which was the subject of my PhD inquiry. Bacteria such as these are known as biofactories: that is, organisms that produce biological cloth which tin be modified to produce useful materials, such every bit magnetic nanoparticles for drug-delivery purposes.
Withal, when the first peer-review report came dorsum, all three reviewers suggested expanding the review to comprehend another type of biofactory: bacteriophages. These are substantially viruses that infect bacteria, and they tin also produce nanomaterials.
The feedback eventually led me to include a discussion of the differences between the diverse biofactories (bacteriophages, bacteria, fungi and microalgae) and their advantages and disadvantages. This turned out to be a great addition because information technology made the review more than comprehensive.
Writing the review besides led me to an idea about using nanomaterial-modified microorganisms to produce chemicals, which I'm still researching at present.
PAULA MARTIN-GONZALEZ: Brand expert apply of technology
PhD student, University of Cambridge, UK.
Only before the coronavirus lockdown, my PhD adviser and I decided to write a literature review discussing the integration of medical imaging with genomics to improve ovarian cancer direction.
Equally I was researching the review, I noticed a trend in which some papers were consistently being cited by many other papers in the field. It was clear to me that those papers must be of import, but as a new member of the field of integrated cancer biology, it was difficult to immediately find and read all of these 'seminal papers'.
That was when I decided to lawmaking a minor awarding to make my literature inquiry more than efficient. Using my code, users tin enter a query, such as 'ovarian cancer, computer tomography, radiomics', and the application searches for all relevant literature archived in databases such as PubMed that feature these key words.
The code then identifies the relevant papers and creates a commendation graph of all the references cited in the results of the search. The software highlights papers that have many citation relationships with other papers in the search, and could therefore be called seminal papers.
My code has substantially improved how I organize papers and has informed me of key publications and discoveries in my research field: something that would accept taken more time and feel in the field otherwise. After I shared my code on GitHub, I received feedback that it can be daunting for researchers who are not used to coding. Consequently, I am hoping to build a more convenient interface in a grade of a web page, akin to PubMed or Google Scholar, where users tin can simply input their queries to generate citation graphs.
Interviews take been edited for length and clarity.
Source: https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-020-03422-x
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