How to write and publish a scientific paper - Barbara Gastel, Robert A. Day 2022
Types of reviews
How to write a review paper
Doing other writing for publication
Before actually writing a review, you also need to determine the requirements of the journal to which you plan to submit it. Some journals demand critical evaluation of the literature, whereas others are more concerned with bibliographic completeness. There are also matters of organization, style, and emphasis that you should consider before you proceed anyfurther.
By and large, the old-line review journals prefer (and some demand) authoritative and critical evaluations of the published literature on a subject. Many of the “book” series (Annual Review of, Recent Advances in, Yearbook of, etc.), however, publish reviews designed to compile and annotate, but not necessarily evaluate, the papers published on a particular subject during a defined time period. Some active areas of research are reviewed yearly. Both of these types of review papers serve a purpose, but the different purposes need to be recognized.
At one time, review papers tended to present historical analyses. In fact, the reviews were often organized chronologically. Although this type of review is now less common, one should not deduce that the history of science has become less important. There is still a place for history.
Today, however, most review media prefer either “state of the art” reviews or reviews that provide a new understanding of a rapidly moving field. Mainly, the recent literature on the subject is catalogued or evaluated. If you are reviewing a subject that has not previously been reviewed or one in which misunderstandings or polemics have developed, a bit more coverage of the historical foundations would be appropriate. If the subject has been effectively reviewed before, the starting point for your review might well be the date of the previous review (not the publication date, but the date up to which the literature was reviewed). And, of course, your review should begin by citing the previous review.
Another type of review paper, known as a systematic review article, has become common in some fields. A systematic review addresses “a clearly formulated question using systematic and explicit methods to identify, select, and critically appraise relevant research, and to collect and analyse data from the studies that are included in the review” (epoc.cochrane.org/sites/epoc.cochrane.org/files /public/uploads/SURE-Guides-v2.1/Collectedfiles/source/glossary.html). Commonly, systematic review articles follow a variant of the IMRAD format; for example, they include a methods section specifying such items as databases searched, search terms used, dates and languages included, and criteria for including and excluding studies. Academic librarians, some of whom specialize in literature searching for systematic reviews, can be well worth consulting when preparing such a review. Written sources of guidance for preparing systematic review articles include the Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Reviews and Meta-Analyses (PRISMA) statement (Page et al. 2021).