Tasks:
Conduct and write up the literature review section of your research proposal or thesis of the
research topic you have selected.
1. Conduct a broad scan of the selected research topic.
a. Record a research journal
i. Keep a two-week (at least) research journal (from the day you have your
lecture and lab in Week 3 until the submission due day, including all the
actions from broad scan, focused review and comprehensive critique).
ii. The research journal should record your idea, feeling, and action related to
your thesis, such as the date, the task, the action and any comment you
have. (Example as below)
b. Develop a filing system
i. List all the sources you used to collect the literature, including the libraries
(VU library), digital databases, search engine (i.e. Google Scholar).
ii. List all the keywords you have used to collect the literature from each
source in above list.
iii. Record the number of the literature returned, and the number of the
literature finally collected. (Example as below)
Source Keywords Used No. Returned
Literature
No. Collected Literature
VU Library “Network Security”
“Wireless Network Security”
“Sensor Network Security”
c. Get full bibliographic information
i. Create a file to record all the bibliographic information of the literature that
you have collected and stored in your filing system.
ii. You are free to choose any reference tool or file format to record the
bibliographic, including MS Word, MS Excel, EndNote, Reference Manager,
LaTex or ASCII in HTML (.txt)
2. Conduct a Focused review
a. Evaluate your literature collection
i. Check the title, the author(s), the source, the document type, the published
date, and read the abstract to carefully select the most relevant literature.
ii. Based on the evaluation results, you need to consider whether you will
collect more literature or you need to discard some of them to narrow down
your research problem. A recommended number is around 50 to 100. You
also need to seek the suggestion from your instructor and/or supervisor.
b. Update your filing system. You need to update the table created for broad scan.
(Hint: There must be some changes in the filing systems from broad scan and
focused review.)
c. Update your bibliographic file. (Hint: The change of your bibliographic file must
match with the updated filing system.)
d. Download the full text of the literature kept after your evaluation.
3. Conduct a comprehensive critique
a. Select two most relevant papers from your literature collection and undertake a
careful reading to evaluate them according to following aspects if relevant (refer to
Week4’s lecture slides for detailed questions, page 20-23):
i. Research problem
ii. Literature review
iii. Subjects
iv. Instrumentation
v. Data collection, presentation, and analysis
vi. Summary and discussion
vii. Research type
viii. Overall evaluation
(Hint: You can use the above aspects as the subtitles for your evaluation statement.
It is recommended to write your opinions in
paragraph
rather than only briefly list in
bullets. You are expected to put your own understanding of the research work done
in the literature.)
4. Provide a final outline of your literature review chapter. You are expected to provide a table
of content of the literature review chapter, listing chapter title, subtitles, and
subsubtitles
if
applied. No page number is required but a clear structure needs to be shown.
5. Write an introduction section that you will have in the literature review chapter. You can
follow the sample provided in Week4’s lecture slides, from page 50-51.)