How to write and publish a scientific paper - Barbara Gastel, Robert A. Day 2022
Characteristics of a review paper
How to write a review paper
Doing other writing for publication
Review articles constitute a form of original research, albeit done in the library rather than in the laboratory or at the bedside.
—Bruce P. Squires
Characteristics of a review paper
A review paper (also known as a review article) is not an original publication in the usual sense, though it can be valuable scholarship. On rare occasions, a review may contain new data (from the author’s own laboratory) that have not yet appeared in a primary journal. However, the purpose of a review paper is to review previously published literature and to put it into perspective.
A review paper tends to be long, often ranging between 10 and 50 published pages. (Some journals, however, now print short “mini-reviews.”) The subject usually is fairly general compared with that of research papers, and the literature review is, of course, the principal product. However, the really good review papers are much more than just annotated bibliographies. They offer critical evaluation of the published literature and often provide important original conclusions based on that literature.
The organization of a review paper usually differs from that of a research paper. The IMRAD (introduction, materials and methods, results, and discussion) arrangement traditionally has not been used for the review paper. However, some review papers are prepared more or less in the IMRAD format; for example, they may contain a methods section describing how the literature review was done. In particular, systematic review articles, which methodically identify and integrate literature on a focused question, commonly follow the IMRAD format or a variant thereof. Indeed, multiple varieties of review articles, each with certain conventions, have now arisen. A review article on the types of review articles (Grant and Booth 2009) analyzes 14 such types.
If you have previously written research papers and are now about to write your first conventional review paper (sometimes known as a narrative review), it might help you conceptually if you visualize the review paper as a research paper, as follows: Greatly expand the introduction; delete the materials and methods (unless original data are being presented or you will say how you identified and chose the literature to include); delete the results; and expand the discussion.
Actually, you may have already written the equivalent of many review papers. In format, a review paper is not very different from a well-organized term paper or the literature review section of a thesis.
As in a research paper, however, it is the organization of the review paper that is important. The writing will almost take care of itself once you get the thing organized.