Lit reviews are long.
- Reading loads of papers
- Grabbing key insights
- Linking it back to your dissertation
It’s a lot of work.
It’s so easy to put it off to the last minute.
I did that for my dissertation last year. Big mistake.
Here’s why you should do a lit review beforehand.
You can discover what’s already done
This is the most obvious takeaway.
It’s a lot easier to approach your project when you know what’s already out there.
It also saves you time from reinventing the wheel.
You don’t want to spend ages on your project only to find out someone else has already done it.
That wouldn’t be motivating.
You find gaps in existing research
By looking at what’s done already, you can find things that aren’t explored.
There could be a new angle, ready for exploration. Or a new combination of topics.
Finding these gaps is easier when you research what’s out there.
And these gaps can open another realm of research opportunities.
You can avoid costly mistakes
Every project will have mistakes.
They might have been intentional decisions. Or tools that broke the research.
A good researcher documents these mistakes and shares how to avoid them.
By reading the papers, you can find these mistakes and know to avoid them.
This can save you time, and help you to focus on completing your project.
You can reuse existing techniques
What’s the thing they say?
Don’t reinvent the wheel
That’s it.
Every research project has clear strategies and techniques. These strategies helped them to gather the research.
You can plug these techniques into your project.
Saving you time from having to come up with these yourself.
You can also see exactly how these techniques work from the papers that you read.
If the same technique appears in more than 1 or 2 papers, it’s worth exploring further.
You can cite them in your dissertation
Duh.
By completing your lit review, you have a whole section of your dissertation complete.
You have a list of citations you can use as you progress in your project.
It’s a lot easier to write your dissertation when you have citations to start from.
You don’t wanna be stressing to find papers or articles to back up your point as you are writing your diss.
Don’t get me wrong. There will be times when this will happen.
But when it comes down to the meat of your dissertation, it’s best to have your references ready to go.
Closing thoughts
Did this article convince you that lit reviews are cool?
Probably not.
But did this article explain why you should do them first?
I hope so.
This quote hammers the point home.
“A reader lives a thousand lives before he dies, said Jojen. The man who never reads lives only one.” — George R.R. Martin
The insights you gain from reading other people’s work are very valuable.
At the end of the day, the goal of your dissertation is to research something unique.
The best way to know if something is unique is to find what’s out there.
Doing this before you start your dissertation will definitely help you get a high grade.