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How to Write a Literature Review | Guide, Examples, & Templates

How to Write a Literature Review | Guide, Examples, & Templates

Published on January 2, 2023 by Shona McCombes . Revised on September 11, 2023.

What is a literature review? A literature review is a survey of scholarly sources on a specific topic. It provides an overview of current knowledge, allowing you to identify relevant theories, methods, and gaps in the existing research that you can later apply to your paper, thesis, or dissertation topic .

There are five key steps to writing a literature review:

Search for relevant literature
Evaluate sources
Identify themes, debates, and gaps
Outline the structure
Write your literature review

A good literature review doesn’t just summarize sources—it analyzes, synthesizes , and critically evaluates to give a clear picture of the state of knowledge on the subject.

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What is the purpose of a literature review, examples of literature reviews, step 1 – search for relevant literature, step 2 – evaluate and select sources, step 3 – identify themes, debates, and gaps, step 4 – outline your literature review’s structure, step 5 – write your literature review, free lecture slides, other interesting articles, frequently asked questions, introduction.

Quick Run-through
Step 1 & 2

When you write a thesis , dissertation , or research paper , you will likely have to conduct a literature review to situate your research within existing knowledge. The literature review gives you a chance to:

Demonstrate your familiarity with the topic and its scholarly context
Develop a theoretical framework and methodology for your research
Position your work in relation to other researchers and theorists
Show how your research addresses a gap or contributes to a debate
Evaluate the current state of research and demonstrate your knowledge of the scholarly debates around your topic.

Writing literature reviews is a particularly important skill if you want to apply for graduate school or pursue a career in research. We’ve written a step-by-step guide that you can follow below.

Prevent plagiarism. Run a free check.

Writing literature reviews can be quite challenging! A good starting point could be to look at some examples, depending on what kind of literature review you’d like to write.

Example literature review #1: “Why Do People Migrate? A Review of the Theoretical Literature” ( Theoretical literature review about the development of economic migration theory from the 1950s to today.)
Example literature review #2: “Literature review as a research methodology: An overview and guidelines” ( Methodological literature review about interdisciplinary knowledge acquisition and production.)
Example literature review #3: “The Use of Technology in English Language Learning: A Literature Review” ( Thematic literature review about the effects of technology on language acquisition.)
Example literature review #4: “Learners’ Listening Comprehension Difficulties in English Language Learning: A Literature Review” ( Chronological literature review about how the concept of listening skills has changed over time.)

You can also check out our templates with literature review examples and sample outlines at the links below.

Download Word doc Download Google doc

Before you begin searching for literature, you need a clearly defined topic .

If you are writing the literature review section of a dissertation or research paper, you will search for literature related to your research problem and questions .

Make a list of keywords

Start by creating a list of keywords related to your research question. Include each of the key concepts or variables you’re interested in, and list any synonyms and related terms. You can add to this list as you discover new keywords in the process of your literature search.

Social media, Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, Snapchat, TikTok
Body image, self-perception, self-esteem, mental health
Generation Z, teenagers, adolescents, youth

Search for relevant sources

Use your keywords to begin searching for sources. Some useful databases to search for journals and articles include:

Your university’s library catalogue
Google Scholar
Project Muse (humanities and social sciences)
Medline (life sciences and biomedicine)
EconLit (economics)
Inspec (physics, engineering and computer science)

You can also use boolean operators to help narrow down your search.

Make sure to read the abstract to find out whether an article is relevant to your question. When you find a useful book or article, you can check the bibliography to find other relevant sources.

You likely won’t be able to read absolutely everything that has been written on your topic, so it will be necessary to evaluate which sources are most relevant to your research question.

For each publication, ask yourself:

What question or problem is the author addressing?
What are the key concepts and how are they defined?
What are the key theories, models, and methods?
Does the research use established frameworks or take an innovative approach?
What are the results and conclusions of the study?
How does the publication relate to other literature in the field? Does it confirm, add to, or challenge established knowledge?
What are the strengths and weaknesses of the research?

Make sure the sources you use are credible , and make sure you read any landmark studies and major theories in your field of research.

You can use our template to summarize and evaluate sources you’re thinking about using. Click on either button below to download.

Take notes and cite your sources

As you read, you should also begin the writing process. Take notes that you can later incorporate into the text of your literature review.

It is important to keep track of your sources with citations to avoid plagiarism . It can be helpful to make an annotated bibliography , where you compile full citation information and write a paragraph of summary and analysis for each source. This helps you remember what you read and saves time later in the process.

To begin organizing your literature review’s argument and structure, be sure you understand the connections and relationships between the sources you’ve read. Based on your reading and notes, you can look for:

Trends and patterns (in theory, method or results): do certain approaches become more or less popular over time?
Themes: what questions or concepts recur across the literature?
Debates, conflicts and contradictions: where do sources disagree?
Pivotal publications: are there any influential theories or studies that changed the direction of the field?
Gaps: what is missing from the literature? Are there weaknesses that need to be addressed?

This step will help you work out the structure of your literature review and (if applicable) show how your own research will contribute to existing knowledge.

Most research has focused on young women.
There is an increasing interest in the visual aspects of social media.
But there is still a lack of robust research on highly visual platforms like Instagram and Snapchat—this is a gap that you could address in your own research.

There are various approaches to organizing the body of a literature review. Depending on the length of your literature review, you can combine several of these strategies (for example, your overall structure might be thematic, but each theme is discussed chronologically).

Chronological

The simplest approach is to trace the development of the topic over time. However, if you choose this strategy, be careful to avoid simply listing and summarizing sources in order.

Try to analyze patterns, turning points and key debates that have shaped the direction of the field. Give your interpretation of how and why certain developments occurred.

If you have found some recurring central themes, you can organize your literature review into subsections that address different aspects of the topic.

For example, if you are reviewing literature about inequalities in migrant health outcomes, key themes might include healthcare policy, language barriers, cultural attitudes, legal status, and economic access.

Methodological

If you draw your sources from different disciplines or fields that use a variety of research methods , you might want to compare the results and conclusions that emerge from different approaches. For example:

Look at what results have emerged in qualitative versus quantitative research
Discuss how the topic has been approached by empirical versus theoretical scholarship
Divide the literature into sociological, historical, and cultural sources

Theoretical

A literature review is often the foundation for a theoretical framework . You can use it to discuss various theories, models, and definitions of key concepts.

You might argue for the relevance of a specific theoretical approach, or combine various theoretical concepts to create a framework for your research.

Like any other academic text , your literature review should have an introduction , a main body, and a conclusion . What you include in each depends on the objective of your literature review.

The introduction should clearly establish the focus and purpose of the literature review.

Depending on the length of your literature review, you might want to divide the body into subsections. You can use a subheading for each theme, time period, or methodological approach.

As you write, you can follow these tips:

Summarize and synthesize: give an overview of the main points of each source and combine them into a coherent whole
Analyze and interpret: don’t just paraphrase other researchers — add your own interpretations where possible, discussing the significance of findings in relation to the literature as a whole
Critically evaluate: mention the strengths and weaknesses of your sources
Write in well-structured paragraphs: use transition words and topic sentences to draw connections, comparisons and contrasts

In the conclusion, you should summarize the key findings you have taken from the literature and emphasize their significance.

When you’ve finished writing and revising your literature review, don’t forget to proofread thoroughly before submitting. Not a language expert? Check out Scribbr’s professional proofreading services !

This article has been adapted into lecture slides that you can use to teach your students about writing a literature review.

Scribbr slides are free to use, customize, and distribute for educational purposes.

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If you want to know more about the research process , methodology , research bias , or statistics , make sure to check out some of our other articles with explanations and examples.

Sampling methods
Simple random sampling
Stratified sampling
Cluster sampling
Likert scales
Reproducibility

Statistics

Null hypothesis
Statistical power
Probability distribution
Effect size
Poisson distribution

Research bias

Optimism bias
Cognitive bias
Implicit bias
Hawthorne effect
Anchoring bias
Explicit bias

A literature review is a survey of scholarly sources (such as books, journal articles, and theses) related to a specific topic or research question .

It is often written as part of a thesis, dissertation , or research paper , in order to situate your work in relation to existing knowledge.

There are several reasons to conduct a literature review at the beginning of a research project:

To familiarize yourself with the current state of knowledge on your topic
To ensure that you’re not just repeating what others have already done
To identify gaps in knowledge and unresolved problems that your research can address
To develop your theoretical framework and methodology
To provide an overview of the key findings and debates on the topic

Writing the literature review shows your reader how your work relates to existing research and what new insights it will contribute.

The literature review usually comes near the beginning of your thesis or dissertation . After the introduction , it grounds your research in a scholarly field and leads directly to your theoretical framework or methodology .

A literature review is a survey of credible sources on a topic, often used in dissertations , theses, and research papers . Literature reviews give an overview of knowledge on a subject, helping you identify relevant theories and methods, as well as gaps in existing research. Literature reviews are set up similarly to other academic texts , with an introduction , a main body, and a conclusion .

An annotated bibliography is a list of source references that has a short description (called an annotation ) for each of the sources. It is often assigned as part of the research process for a paper .

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See More Documents Like This

Law: Introduction to Research

Finding a Research Topic
Getting Started
Generate Research Ideas
Brainstorming
Scanning Material
Suitability Analysis
The difference between a topic and a research question

Literature Review

Referencing

When thinking about any risks associated with your research you may realise that it is difficult to predict your research needs and the accompanying risks as you were not sure what information would be required; this is why a literature review is necessary. A thorough literature review will help identify gaps in existing knowledge where research is needed; filling those gaps is one of the prime functions of research. The literature review will indicate what is known about your chosen area of research and show where further contributions from further research can be made.

Undertaking a literature review is probably one of the most difficult stages of the research process but it can be both exciting and fulfilling. This section aims to put the literature review into context and to explain what it does and how to do it.

The literature on a particular legal topic is of fundamental importance to the international community of researchers and scholars working within particular academic disciplines. Academic publishing supports research by enabling researchers to tell the world what they have discovered and allows others researching in the same area to peer review their work; in this way, a combined body of knowledge is established.

During your research, you will use the literature to:

develop your knowledge of your chosen topic and the research process in general terms
ensure that you have an understanding of the current state of academic knowledge within your chosen topic
identify the gaps in knowledge that your research will address
ensure that your research question will not become too broad or narrow.

The Purpose of Literature Review

Understanding existing research is at the core of your study. A good literature review is important because it enables you to understand the existing work in your chosen topic as well as explaining concepts, approaches and ideas relevant to that topic.

The literature review is also essential as it will enable you to identify an appropriate research method. Your research method, and needs, can only be established in the light of a review of existing knowledge.

Your literature review is regarded as secondary research. The research process is an ongoing one, so your literature review is never really finished or entirely up to date as reading and understanding the existing literature is a constant part of being a researcher; professionally it is an obligation.

Different Types of Research

Different types of research
Different sources
Understand research in your chosen area
Explaining relevant concepts and ideas
Contextualizing your results
What to read?
Peer review
Searching the literature
Critically evaluating documents

Your research will draw upon both primary and secondary research. The difference between primary and secondary research is that primary research is new research on a topic that adds to the existing body of knowledge. Secondary research is research into what others have written or said on the topic.

You will also draw upon primary and secondary sources to undertake your research. Primary sources are evidence recorded at the time, such as a photograph, an artifact, a diary, or the text of a statute or court ruling. Primary legal sources are the products of those bodies with the authority to make, interpret and apply the law. Secondary sources are what others have written or said about the primary source, their interpretation, support, or critique of the primary source. Similarly, secondary legal sources are what academics, lawyers, politicians, journalists, and others have said or written about a primary legal source.

Part of the aim of your studies is to make a contribution to the existing body of academic knowledge. Without a literature review there would be a risk that what you are producing is not actually newly researched knowledge; instead it may only be a replication of what is already known. The only way to ensure that your research is new is to find out what others have already done. However, this is not to say that you should never attempt to research some things that have been done before if you feel that you can provide valuable new insights.

You also need to use the literature review to build a body of useful ideas to help you conceptualise your research question and understand the current thinking on the topic. By studying the literature you will become familiar with research methods appropriate to your chosen topic and this will show you how to apply them. Careful consideration should be given to the research methods deployed by existing researchers in the topic, but this should not stifle innovative approaches. Your literature study should also demonstrate the context of your own work, and how it relates, and builds, on the work of others; ‘to make proper acknowledgment of the work of previous authors and to delineate [your] own contributions to the field’ (Sharp et al., 2002, p. 28).

When you have completed your primary research, you will still have the task of demonstrating how your research contributes to the topic in which you have been working. Comparing your results to similar work within the topic will demonstrate how you have moved the discipline forward.

Comparing your results with the gaps that you identified in the early stages of your literature review will allow you to evaluate how well you have addressed them.

A successful literature review will have references from a number of different types of sources; it is not simply a book review. What is much more important than the number of references is that you have a selection of literature that is appropriate for your research; what is appropriate will depend on the type of research you are undertaking. For example, if your topic is in an area of recent legal debate, you will probably find most of the relevant material in journal articles or conference papers. If you are studying policy issues in law-making, you would expect to cite more government reports. In either case, you will need some core references that are recent and relevant. A research project could also contain a number of older citations to provide a historical context or describe established methods. Perhaps a recent newspaper, journal or magazine article could illustrate the contemporary relevance or importance of your research.

You will have to use your own judgment (and the advice of your tutor) to ascertain what the suitable range of literature and references is for your review. This will differ for each topic of research, but you will be able to get a feel for what is appropriate by looking at relevant publications; most publications fall into the following broad categories:

Online legal databases

Online legal research services such as Westlaw , LexisNexis , JSTOR , EBSCOhost , or HeinOnline are a good source of journal articles and as a repository of legislation, case law, law reports, newspaper and magazine articles, public records, and treatises.

Journal articles

These provide more recent discussions than textbooks. Peer-reviewed journals are the gold standard for academic quality. Having at least some journal articles in your literature review is almost always required. Note that the lead time on journal articles is often up to two years, so they may not be sufficiently up to date for fast-moving areas. Look for special issues of journals, as these usually focus on a particular topic and you may find that they are more relevant to your area of research.

Many law schools host journals that contain articles by academics and students; these may also be of interest. Other sources could include online newspapers such as The Conversation which are sourced from academia and designed to highlight current academic research or respond to current events.

Conference literature

Academic conferences are meetings in which groups of academics working in a particular area meet to discuss their work. Delegates usually write one or more papers that are then collected into a volume or special edition of a journal. Conference proceedings can be quite good in providing a snapshot of a topic, as they tend to be quite focused. Looking at the authors of the papers can also give you an idea of who the key names in that area are. The quality varies widely, both in terms of the material published and how it is presented. Most conferences include some professional researchers, some of whom can be contacted, and lots of students. Conference papers are often refereed but usually not to the same level as journal articles.

Having conference papers in your literature review does lend academic credibility, especially in rapidly developing areas, and conference papers generally contain the preliminary work that eventually forms journal articles.

Textbooks are good for identifying established, well-understood concepts and techniques, but are unlikely to have enough up-to-date research to be the main source of literature. Most disciplines, however, have a collection of canonical reference works that you should use to ensure you are implementing standard terms or techniques correctly. Textbooks can also be useful as a starting point for your literature search as you can investigate journal articles or conference papers that have been cited. Footnotes are a rich source of preliminary leads.

Law magazines

These can be useful, particularly for projects related to the role of lawyers. Be aware of the possibility of law firm bias (for example in labour law towards employers, employee rights, or trade unions) or articles that are little more than advertisements. Examples of professional journals include the SA ePublications (Sabinet), De Rebus - SA Attorneys' Journal , etc . Most jurisdictions have some form of a professional journal.

Government and other official reports

There is a wide range of publications, including ‘white papers', official reports, census, and other government-produced statistical data that are potentially useful to the researcher. Be aware of the possibility of political or economic bias or the reflection of a situation that has since changed.

Internal company or organisation reports/Institutional repository

These may be useful in a few situations but should be used sparingly, particularly if they are not readily available to the wider community of researchers. They will also not have been through a process of academic review. Such unpublished or semi-published reports are collectively called ‘grey literature.

Manuals and handbooks

These are of limited relevance, but may be useful to establish current techniques, approaches, and procedures.

Specialist supplements from quality newspapers can provide useful up-to-date information, as can the online versions of the same papers. Some newspapers provide a searchable archive that can provide a more general interest context for your work.

The worldwide web

This is widely used by lawyers today. According to the 2011 American Bar Association Report, 84.4% of attorneys turn to online sources as their first step in legal research (Lenhart, 2012, p. 27). It is an extremely useful source of references, particularly whilst carrying out an initial investigation. Although sites such as Wikipedia can be very helpful for providing a quick overview of particular topics and highlighting other areas of research that may be connected to your own, they should not usually be included in your review as they are of variable quality and are open to very rapid change. Treat the information you find on the internet with appropriate care. Be very careful about the source of information and look carefully at who operates the website.

Personal communications

Personal communications such as (unpublished) letters and conversations are not references. If you use such comments (and of course, you should respect the confidence of anyone you have discussed your work with), you should draw attention to the fact that you are quoting someone and mark it as ‘personal communication’ in the body of the text. Responses you might obtain from, for example, interviews and questionnaires as part of your research should be reported as data obtained through primary research.

It is crucial that most of your literature should come from peer-reviewed materials, such as journal articles. The point of peer reviewing is to increase quality by ensuring that the ideas presented seem well-founded to other experts in the topic. Conference papers are generally peer-reviewed, although the review process is usually less stringent, and so the standing of conference papers is not the same as for journals. Books, magazines, newspapers, and websites (including blogs, wikis, corporate sites, etc.) are not subject to peer review, and you should treat them with appropriate caution. Also, treat each publication on its merits; it is more helpful to use a good conference paper than a poor journal paper. Similarly, it is acceptable to refer to a well-written blog by a knowledgeable and well-known author provided that you supply appropriate context. In all these cases, the important thing is that you interpret the work correctly.

You will have undertaken legal research and developed your research skills as you prepared for earlier assignments. A literature review builds on this. You may, however, be wondering where to start. One technique is to use an iteration of five stages to help you with your early research.

The five stages are: planning, searching, gathering, analysing and comparing.

Following these stages will provide you with a systematic approach to gathering and analysing literature in your chosen topic of study; this will ensure that you take a critical approach to the literature.

To undertake an effective review of the literature on your chosen topic you will need to plan your review carefully. This includes setting aside enough time in which to undertake your review. In planning there are several aspects you need to think about:

What sources of information are most relevant to your chosen research question?
What gaps in knowledge have you identified in your chosen topic and used as a basis for your research question?
What search terms will you use and how will you refine these?
How will you record your sources?
How will you interrogate those sources?
How will you continue to review the literature as you progress with your research in order to keep as up-to-date as possible?
Are you able to easily access all the sources you need?
What arrangements may you need to make to access any hard copy materials?
Will you join one of the legal alert services to keep you abreast of changes in your chosen topic (such as new court judgments)?
What notes of progress will you record in your research diary?

Spending time thinking about all aspects of the literature review, planning your time, and setting yourself targets will help to keep your research on track and will enable you to record your progress and any adjustments you make, along with the reasons for those adjustments.

This section is designed to provide you with some reminders in relation to searching, choosing search terms and some ideas about where to start in undertaking a literature review.

Where to start

The best places to start are likely to be a legal database (or law library) and Google Scholar. Many students and academics now use Google Scholar as one of their ‘go to’ tools for scholarly research. It can be helpful to gain an overview of a topic or to gain a sense of direction, but it is not a substitute for your own research of primary and secondary sources.

Having gained an overview from your initial search through browsing general collections of documents, you will then need to undertake a more detailed search to find specific documents. Identifying relevant scholarly articles and following links in footnotes and bibliographies can be helpful as you continue your search for relevant information.

One of the decisions you will have to make is when to stop working on your literature review and your research, and when to start writing up your dissertation. This will be determined by the material you gather and the time constraints you are working on.

Selecting resources

One starting point may be to locate a small number of key journal papers or articles; for a draft outline proposal for your research, you might have around four to six of these, accumulating more as you develop the research subsequently. Aim for quality, not quantity. Look for relevant and recent publications. Most of your references will typically not be more than four years old, although this does depend on your field of study. You will need quite a few more in due course to cover other aspects of your research such as methods and evaluation, but at this stage, you need only a few recent items.

While reading these documents, aim to identify the key issues that are essential to your research question, ideally around four to six.

Compare and contrast the literature, looking for commonalities, agreements, and disagreements and for problem identification and possible answers. Then write up your analysis of the comparison and any conclusions you might reach. The required outcome will be that you can make an informed decision about how to proceed with your primary research, based on the work carried out by other researchers.

Note that ultimately there are no infallible means of assessing the value of a given reference. Its source may be a useful indication, but you have to use your judgment about its value for your research.

Reviewing your sources

Skim read each document to decide whether a book or paper is worth reading in more depth. To do this you need to make use of the various signposts that are available from the:

notes on a book’s cover can help situate the content
abstract (for a paper), or the preface (for a book)
contents page
introduction
conclusions
references section (sometimes called the ‘bibliography’)

In your record, make a brief note (one or two sentences) of the main points.

Next, skim through the opening page of each chapter, or the first paragraph of each section. This should give you enough information to assess whether you need to read the book or paper in more depth, again make a suitable note against that record.

Reading in more detail: SQ3R

If you have decided to look in more detail at a source document that you have to skim read, you can use the well-known ‘SQ3R’ approach (Skimming, Questioning, Reading, Recalling, and Reviewing).

1. Skimming – skim reading the chapter or part of the paper that relates to your topic, or otherwise interests you.

2. Questioning – develop a few questions that you consider the text might answer for you. You can often use journal, chapter, or section titles to help you formulate relevant questions. For example, when studying a journal article with the title, ‘Me and my body: the relevance of the distinction for the difference between withdrawing life support and euthanasia’, you might ask, ‘How is the distinction between withdrawing life support and euthanasia drawn?’

3. Reading – read through the chapter, section, or paper with your questions in mind. Do not make notes at this stage.

4. Recalling – make notes on what you have read. You should normally develop your own summary or answers to your questions. There will also be short passages that you may want to note fully, perhaps to use as a quotation for when you write up your literature review. Be sure to note carefully the page(s) on which the quotation appears.

5. Reviewing – check through the process, perhaps flicking through the section or article again. It is also worth emphasising that if you maintain your reference list as you go along, not only will you save yourself a lot of work in later stages of the research, but you will also have all the necessary details to hand for writing up with fewer mistakes.

(adapted from Blaxter et al., 1996, p. 114)

There is no doubt that this approach takes considerably more effort than sitting back and studying a text passively. The benefit from the extra work involved in the development of a critical approach, which you must adopt for your research.

Following citations in a paper

When you have found (and read) your first couple of papers, you can then use them to seed your search for other useful literature. In this case, we will use this example:

When we looked at the references list in Suppon, J. F. (2010) ‘Life after death: the need to address the legal status of posthumously conceived children', Family Court Review , vol. 48, no. 1, pp. 228–45, a couple of items, going only by the titles, looked promising:

Doucettperry, Major M. (2008) ‘To Be Continued: A Look at Posthumous Reproduction As It Relates to Today’s Military’, The Army Lawyer , no. 420, pp. 1–22.
Karlin, J. H. (2006) ‘“Daddy, Can you Spare a Dime?”: Intestate Heir Rights of Posthumously Conceived Children’, Temple Law Review , vol. 79, no. 4, pp. 1317–54.

These are simply the papers that we felt looked most appropriate from the references. There is no formula for determining the best paper; you simply need to read a few and try to develop a feel for which seem the most appropriate for your own research project. You should only be citing papers that contribute to your research in a significant way, or that you have included material from; not everything that you read (and discarded) along the way.

Recording your references

We strongly suggest that you establish a recording system at the outset when you begin your research and keep maintaining records in an organised and complete manner as you progress. You need to choose a consistent method of recording your references; this is a personal choice and can be paper-based or electronic. Do not be tempted to have more than one method or repository as this can lead to confusion and unnecessary extra work. There are software tools available that can help you to both organise your references and incorporate them into your written work. Always keep a backup copy of your records.

The following is a suggestion as to how you might record any document that you think you may use.

Open a new record, and record the basic details:

author(s), including initials
date of publication
title of work or article.

Additionally, for books:

place of publication
page numbers of relevant material.

Additionally, for journal papers:

journal name
volume and issue number
page range of the whole article.

‘How many references are needed to make a good literature review?’ There is no straightforward answer to this. In general, an appropriate number of references would be in the range of 15 to 25, with around 20 being typical. However, this is not hard and fast and will depend on the topic and research question chosen.

The crucial thing is to aim for quality and relevance ; there is no credit to be gained from amassing a lengthy list of material, even if it all appears to be relevant. Part of your task is to select a range of references that is appropriate for the length and scope of your research project. It is easier, and more conducive to good research, to handle a smaller number of references specifically chosen to support your argument. Remember also that in general, a student whose research project contained a smaller number of references would generally be expected to demonstrate a deeper and more critical understanding of those references.

A colleague once commented on a student’s work in the following vein: ‘I don’t really need you to tell me what the author thinks since I can read her thoughts myself, but I do want to know what you think about what the author thinks’. Literature reviews are not a description of what has been written by other people in a particular field, they should be a discussion of what you think of what they have written, and how it helps clarify your own thinking.

This is why critical judgement is so important for your literature review. You must exercise critical judgement when determining which sources to read in-depth, and when evaluating the argument they put forward. Finally, critical judgement is important in communicating how those arguments might frame your research. It should not be a narrative of what you have read and the stories those sources tell. It should be sparing in its description of others’ arguments, and expansive in how those arguments have shaped your own thinking.

You need to exercise critical judgement as to which resources are the most useful and worthy of discussion. Having done this, you also need to ensure that your review is analytical rather than descriptive. A critical review extracts elements from the resource that directly relate to the chosen research interest; it debates them, or compares and contrasts them with how other resources have analysed them. A critical examination of the literature should allow you to develop your understanding of your research question. It should guide you to what knowledge you will need to answer your research question, and begin to develop some subsidiary questions. This will break the content down into more manageable and achievable segments of knowledge that you require.

Some elements of a good critical literature review are:

relating different writings to each other, indicating their differences and contradictions, and highlighting what they lack
understanding the values and theories that inform, and colour, reading and writing
viewing research writing as an environment of contested views and positions
placing the material in the context of your own research.

An excellent way to critically analyse a document is to use the PROMPT system. The PROMPT system indicates what factors you should consider when evaluating a document. PROMPT stands for:

Presentation – is the publication easy to read?
Relevance – how will the publication help address your research aim?
Objectivity – what is the balance between evidence and opinion? Does the evidence seem balanced? How was the research funded?
Method – was the research in the publication carried out appropriately?
Provenance – who is the author and how was the document published?
Timeliness – is the publication still relevant, or has it been superseded?

By thinking about each of these factors when you read a publication in-depth, you will be able to provide a deeper, more critical analysis of each publication. A final tip for critical reading is to note down your overall impressions and any questions you still have at the end. Keeping a list of such open questions can help you identify the gaps in the literature by noticing which questions were raised, but not answered, by the publication; this, in turn, will guide your research.

In the planning stage, you thought about the gaps in existing knowledge you had identified, and which you then used as a basis to develop your research question. Through the work, you undertook in the earlier stages of your literature review you have a clear understanding of the existing work within the topic. At this point, a comparison of the results of your literature review, with the gaps you had previously identified, will enable you to reflect, and consider, whether you now have enough knowledge to address those gaps. You can then evaluate whether you need to further refine your literature review.

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Conducting Literature Review in Legal Research

Post author By Dr. Rhea Roy Mammen
Post date April 2, 2023
No Comments on Conducting Literature Review in Legal Research

“Literature review in Legal research” , How is it different from literature review in any other discipline? Well! The principle stays the same (that’s the purpose) but it’s more tedious and require a systematic approach. The voluminous literatures in different forms makes the review tiresome compared to other disciplines. Legal research is not restricted to books, journals alone, but extends to other forms such as case laws, statutes, reports etc. It is for this reason, there are some dedicated texts on conducting literature review that was referred to for this blog.

one of the prominent literature in this regard being “Legal Research: How to Find & Understand the Law” by Stephen Elias and Susan Levinkind: This book is a comprehensive guide to legal research and includes a section on conducting a literature review in legal research. (others I will give in the reference )

Lets get to business!

What is literature review

The cliché start! Well, it makes all sense to set the tone and background here.

literature review is a critical evaluation and analysis of existing literature (books, articles, journals, etc.) on a particular topic or research question. It aims to identify relevant and credible sources, summarize the key findings and arguments, and provide a comprehensive overview of the current state of knowledge in a specific field.

In short it is gathering the existing literatures in the area of research that will help us to understand the topic, identify the gap along with the other purposes given below

Purpose of literature review

Especially in Legal research, Literature review holds a special position. before that , the prime objective/ purpose of literature review are:

a . Identify and summarize the current state of knowledge on a specific legal topic or research question: It provides a foundation for further research by summarizing and analyzing existing legal literature on a topic. This helps researchers to understand the current state of knowledge

b. Tool to identify the research gap : THE ONE! It helps the scholar to identify the grey area in research (the research gap) that the current research will be covering. This provides lead to justification of the research area.

c. Evaluate the quality and credibility of legal sources : It helps researchers to determine the validity and reliability of the sources, and to identify any biases or limitations.

d. Helps to formulate the research question/ hypothesis : Literatures those In support of the research will help to develop the research .

Ultimately Literature review has dual role : The literature that helps to identify the research gap and the other that supports in the research.

In legal research, there are different methods of literatures reviews. It really doesn’t matter, but it’s good to know. The different methods are based on diversity of the source and nature of information. This provides a clarity to conducting literature reviews:

Systematic literature review : This method involves a comprehensive and structured search for literature on a specific legal topic, using a predefined set of inclusion and exclusion criteria. This method is commonly used in legal research because it ensures that all relevant literature is identified and analyzed.
Case law analysis : Case law analysis involves reviewing judicial decisions on a particular legal issue or area of law. This method is useful for identifying legal principles and trends that have developed over time, as well as gaps or inconsistencies in the law.
Statutory analysis: Statutory analysis involves reviewing legislative materials, such as statutes, regulations, and legislative history, on a particular legal issue. This method is useful for understanding the intent of the legislature, as well as the practical application of the law.
Comparative analysis : Comparative analysis involves comparing legal sources from different jurisdictions or legal systems on a particular legal issue. This method is useful for identifying differences and similarities in legal approaches, as well as for understanding the impact of cultural and historical factors on the development of the law.
Thematic analysis: Thematic analysis involves identifying and analyzing common themes or patterns across legal sources on a particular legal issue. This method is useful for understanding the underlying principles and values that guide legal decision-making, as well as for identifying gaps or inconsistencies in the law.

Tools for conducting literature review

We are competing with technology! But that is ok. There are multiple tools that can support the scholars to conduct literature review. This can in fact save time and invest in creativity. Some thing to look at are:

Reference management software: Reference management software, such as EndNote, Mendeley, or Zotero, can help you to organize your sources and create citations and bibliographies. These tools allow you to import and export references from different databases, and to automatically format citations in various styles.
Search engines and databases : There are several search engines and databases that can help you to find relevant literature, such as Google Scholar, PubMed, JSTOR, and LexisNexis. These tools allow you to search for articles, books, and other sources using keywords and other search criteria.
Text mining software: Text mining software, such as NVivo or Atlas.ti, can help you to analyze large amounts of text and to identify themes and patterns in the literature. These tools allow you to code and categorize your sources, and to visualize your findings using various charts and graphs.
Literature review software: There are several software programs designed specifically for literature review, s uch as Covidence, Rayyan, or DistillerSR . These tools can help you to manage and organize your sources, screen and select relevant studies, and analyze the data more efficiently.

Reporting Literature review

Ah ha! Allas the important part – reporting or documenting the literature review. There are different methods that is followed in literature review.

a. Chapter wise review: Some would report the literature based on the chapterisation (especially for PhD and Post Doctoral fellowship)

b. Academic discussion : Especially for articles, proposals, write ups, literature reviews are recorded in the body of the text as academic discourses. Where they provide the reference in the citation and emphasis is on the prominent authors.

c. Thematic : Every research has a key word connected, and it is very common that each can be used as heads for reporting literature review

d. one running text: Some would prefer (rather institutions) would prefer where literatures are discussed as one running text.

Now the question is, how is recorded? Is it simply recording the summary of the literature? NO

The whole idea is to gather the take away from the existing literature and show casing how it is connected to your research and what is the missing area in that literature.

I have used a generic example of literature review for the purpose of understanding. I have used a relatively over discussed topic for the purpose of easy understanding .

Topic: The impact of the Right to Education Act on access to education in India

Identify the research question: How has the Right to Education Act (RTE) impacted access to education in India?
Conduct a search for relevant literature: Search for literature on the topic using search engines and databases. Use keywords such as “Right to Education Act”, “education in India”, “access to education”, and “impact of RTE”.
Screen the literature: Review the titles and abstracts of the articles and select those that are relevant to the research question. Exclude articles that are not related to the topic or that are not written in English.
Analyze the literature: Read the selected articles and identify the key themes and findings. Organize the articles by themes, such as the impact of RTE on enrollment, quality of education, and equity in education.
Evaluate the quality and credibility of the sources: Assess the quality and credibility of the sources by evaluating the methodology, data sources, and author credentials. Use citation analysis to identify highly cited articles and authors.

Synthesize the findings: Summarize the key findings from the literature review and identify any gaps or inconsistencies in the literature. Use the literature review to develop research questions and hypotheses, and to inform policy and practice

Existing literatures:

Muralidharan, K., & Sundararaman, V. (2013). The impact of the Right to Education Act on student outcomes and school inputs: Evidence from a large-scale randomized evaluation. Policy Research Working Paper, 6643. World Bank.
Jha, N., & Gupta, V. (2018). Right to Education in India: An analysis of the impact of RTE Act 2009. Journal of Educational Planning and Administration, 32(1), 5-20.
Nambissan, G. B., & Dash, S. K. (2017). Implementation of the Right to Education Act in India: Challenges and the way forward. Prospects, 47(2), 231-242.
Desai, S., & Vanneman, R. (2016). India’s primary education challenge: The impact of the Right to Education Act. Economic & Political Weekly, 51(7), 51-58.

The Right to Education Act (RTE), passed in 2009, is a landmark legislation aimed at providing free and compulsory education to all children between the ages of 6 and 14 years in India. The implementation of the RTE Act has been a subject of much debate and scrutiny, with concerns raised about its impact on access, quality, and equity in education. In this literature review, we focus on the impact of the RTE Act on access to education in India.

Muralidharan and Sundararaman (2013) conducted a large-scale randomized evaluation of the RTE Act in the Indian state of Andhra Pradesh. The study aimed to assess the impact of the RTE Act on student outcomes and school inputs. The authors found that the RTE Act had a significant positive impact on enrollment in schools, particularly among girls and children from disadvantaged backgrounds. The study also found that the RTE Act had a positive impact on school inputs, such as the availability of toilets and drinking water, which are important factors in ensuring access to education.

The findings of this study are consistent with other studies that have examined the impact of the RTE Act on access to education in India. Jha and Gupta (2018) conducted a study in the state of Bihar and found that the RTE Act had a positive impact on enrollment in primary schools. Nambissan and Dash (2017) examined the implementation of the RTE Act in India and found that while there were challenges in ensuring access to education, the Act had contributed to increased enrollment and retention rates.

However, while the RTE Act has had a positive impact on access to education in India, there are still challenges that need to be addressed. Desai and Vanneman (2016) conducted a study that examined the primary education challenge in India and found that while the RTE Act had led to increased enrollment, there were still issues with the quality of education and the high dropout rates. The study highlighted the need for improvements in teacher training and support, as well as the need for greater investment in infrastructure and resources.

In conclusion, the literature suggests that the RTE Act has had a positive impact on access to education in India, particularly among girls and children from disadvantaged backgrounds. However, there are still challenges that need to be addressed to ensure that all children have access to quality education. The findings of this literature review justify further research to examine the impact of the RTE Act on other aspects of education, such as quality and equity, and to identify strategies to address the challenges in its implementation.

POINTER: For PhD , One of the major literatures are the PhD’s earlier conducted. This goes for LLM dissertation.

SPOILER: NOW THINK , what is the difference between literature survey and Literature review

WORST: I wanted to share the steps for literature review… but I am saving it for the upcoming training! See you then

Oh thank you for reading all the way down, Pretty lengthy uh: Hope it helped

By Dr. Rhea Roy Mammen

Dr. Mammen is founder & Director (Academics) of Jusfocus Academic Consultancy. Dr. Mammen is an international fellow under two prestigious fellowships and has numerous international projects to her credit. Academia & research is her passion that drives her to engage with scholars.

11 Legal Literature

Published: March 2019
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This chapter surveys the development of English legal literature. It begins with the Latin treatises called Glanvill and Bracton , which by the end of the thirteenth century had given way to more accessible practical works in French. The most important of the new writings were the reports of real cases taken in court, the year books. The evolution of law reporting is traced, and there is an assessment of the changes in the Tudor period, particularly Plowden’s innovative Commentaries . The effect of printing is also considered. Access to case-law was at first primarily via abridgments rather than treatises, but Littleton’s student textbook on Tenures marked a new departure in the fifteenth century. Treatises of comparable importance to Littleton were few, but notable among legal authors were St German, Coke (also a major law reporter), Hale, and Blackstone.

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Legal Dissertation: Research and Writing Guide

About this guide, video on choosing a topic, tools on westlaw, lexis and bloomberg, circuit splits, research methodologies, additional methodology resources, conducting a literature review, beginning research, writing style guides, citation guides, ask a librarian.

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About This Page

Choosing a topic can be one of the most challenging aspects of writing an extensive paper. This page has resources to help you find topics and inspiration, before you get started on the in-depth research process.

Related Guides

Citation and Writing Resources

Legal Research Tutorials

Secondary Sources for Legal Research

Methods of Finding Cases

Methods of Finding Statutes

Current Awareness and Alerting Resources

Compiling State Legislative Histories

Locating International and Foreign Law Journals

This guide contains resources to help students researching and writing a legal dissertation or other upper-level writing project. Some of the resources in this guide are directed at researching and writing in general, not specifically on legal topics, but the strategies and tips can still be applied.

The Law Library maintains a number of other guides on related skills and topics that may be of interest:

The Wells Library also maintains guides. A few that may be helpful for managing research can be found here:

Choosing a Topic

This video discusses tips and strategies for choosing a dissertation topic.

Note: this video is not specific to legal dissertation topics, but it may still be of interest as an overview generally.

The Bloomberg/BNA publication United States Law Week can be a helpful resource for tracking down the major legal stories of the day. Log into Bloomberg Law, in the big search box, start typing United States Law Week and the title will appear in the drop down menu beneath the box. This publication provides coverage of top legal news stories, and in-depth "insight" features.

If you have a general idea of the area of law you wish to write about, check out the Practice Centers on Bloomberg. From the homepage, click the Browse link in the top left-hand corner. Then select Practice Centers and look for your area of law. Practice Centers are helpful because they gather cases, statutes, administrative proceedings, news, and more on the selected legal area.

Bloomberg has other news sources available as well. From the homepage, click the Browse link in the top left-hand corner. Then select News and Analysis, then select News or Analysis, and browse the available topics.

If you know what area of law you'd like to write about, you may find the Browse Topics feature in Lexis Advance helpful for narrowing down your topic.

Log into Lexis Advance, click the Browse Topics tab, and select a topic. If you don't see your topic listed, try using the provided search bar to see whether your topic is categorized as a sub-topic within this list.

Once you click on a topic, a box pops up with several options. If you click on Get Topic Document, you'll see results listed in a number of categories, including Cases, Legislation, and more. The News and Legal News categories at the right end of the list may help you identify current developments of interest for your note. Don't forget about the filtering options on the left that will allow you to search within your results, narrow your jurisdiction, and more.

Similar to Lexis Advance, Westlaw Edge has a Topics tab that may be helpful if you know what area of law you'd like to write about.

Log onto Westlaw Edge, and click on the Topics tab. This time, you won't be able to search within this list, so if you're area is not listed, you should either run a regular search from the main search bar at the top or try out some of the topics listed under this tab - once you click on a topic, you can search within its contents.

What is great about the Topics in Westlaw Edge is the Practitioner Insights page you access by clicking on a topic. This is an information portal that allows you quick access to cases, legislation, top news, and more on your selected topic.

In United States federal courts, a circuit split occurs whenever two or more circuit courts of appeals issue conflicting rulings on the same legal question. Circuit splits are ripe for legal analysis and commentary because they present a situation in which federal law is being applied in different ways in different parts of the country, even if the underlying litigants themselves are otherwise similarly situated. The Supreme Court also frequently accepts cases on appeal that involve these types of conflicted rulings from various sister circuits.

To find a circuit split on a topic of interest to you, try searching on Lexis and Westlaw using this method:

in the search box, enter the following: (circuit or court w/s split) AND [insert terms or phrases to narrow the search]

You can also browse for circuit splits on Bloomberg. On the Bloomberg homepage, in the "Law School Success" box, Circuit Splits Charts appear listed under Secondary Sources.

Other sources for circuit splits are American Law Reports (ALR) and American Jurisprudence (AmJur). These publications provide summaries of the law, point out circuit splits, and provide references for further research.

"Blawgs" or law-related blogs are often written by scholars or practitioners in the legal field. Ordinarily covering current events and developments in law, these posts can provide inspiration for note topics. To help you find blawgs on a specific topic, consider perusing the ABA's Blawg Directory or Justia's Blawg Search .

Research Methodology

Types of research methodologies.

There are different types of research methodologies. Methodology refers to the strategy employed in conducting research. The following methodologies are some of the most commonly used in legal and social science research.

Doctrinal legal research methodology, also called "black letter" methodology, focuses on the letter of the law rather than the law in action. Using this method, a researcher composes a descriptive and detailed analysis of legal rules found in primary sources (cases, statutes, or regulations). The purpose of this method is to gather, organize, and describe the law; provide commentary on the sources used; then, identify and describe the underlying theme or system and how each source of law is connected.

Doctrinal methodology is good for areas of law that are largely black letter law, such as contract or property law. Under this approach, the researcher conducts a critical, qualitative analysis of legal materials to support a hypothesis. The researcher must identify specific legal rules, then discuss the legal meaning of the rule, its underlying principles, and decision-making under the rule (whether cases interpreting the rule fit together in a coherent system or not). The researcher must also identify ambiguities and criticisms of the law, and offer solutions. Sources of data in doctrinal research include the rule itself, cases generated under the rule, legislative history where applicable, and commentaries and literature on the rule.

This approach is beneficial by providing a solid structure for crafting a thesis, organizing the paper, and enabling a thorough definition and explanation of the rule. The drawbacks of this approach are that it may be too formalistic, and may lead to oversimplifying the legal doctrine.

Comparative

Comparative legal research methodology involves critical analysis of different bodies of law to examine how the outcome of a legal issue could be different under each set of laws. Comparisons could be made between different jurisdictions, such as comparing analysis of a legal issue under American law and the laws of another country, or researchers may conduct historical comparisons.

When using a comparative approach be sure to define the reasons for choosing this approach, and identify the benefits of comparing laws from different jurisdictions or time periods, such as finding common ground or determining best practices and solutions. The comparative method can be used by a researcher to better understand their home jurisdiction by analyzing how other jurisdictions handle the same issue. This method can also be used as a critical analytical tool to distinguish particular features of a law. The drawback of this method is that it can be difficult to find material from other jurisdictions. Also, researchers should be sure that the comparisons are relevant to the thesis and not just used for description.

This type of research uses data analysis to study legal systems. A detailed guide on empirical methods can be found here . The process of empirical research involves four steps: design the project, collect and code the data, analyze the data, determine best method of presenting the results. The first step, designing the project, is when researchers define their hypothesis and concepts in concrete terms that can be observed. Next, researchers must collect and code the data by determining the possible sources of information and available collection methods, and then putting the data into a format that can be analyzed. When researchers analyze the data, they are comparing the data to their hypothesis. If the overlap between the two is significant, then their hypothesis is confirmed, but if there is little to no overlap, then their hypothesis is incorrect. Analysis involves summarizing the data and drawing inferences. There are two types of statistical inference in empirical research, descriptive and causal. Descriptive inference is close to summary, but the researcher uses the known data from the sample to draw conclusions about the whole population. Causal inference is the difference between two descriptive inferences.

Two main types of empirical legal research are qualitative and quantitative.

Quantitative, or numerical, empirical legal research involves taking information about cases and courts, translating that information into numbers, and then analyzing those numbers with statistical tools.

Qualitative, or non-numerical, empirical legal research involves extracting information from the text of court documents, then interpreting and organizing the text into categories, and using that information to identify patterns.

Drafting The Methodology Section

This is the part of your paper that describes the research methodology, or methodologies if you used more than one. This section will contain a detailed description of how the research was conducted and why it was conducted in that way. First, draft an outline of what you must include in this section and gather the information needed.

Generally, a methodology section will contain the following:

Statement of research objectives
Reasons for the research methodology used
Description and rationale of the data collection tools, sampling techniques, and data sources used, including a description of how the data collection tools were administered
Discussion of the limitations
Discussion of the data analysis tools used

Be sure that you have clearly defined the reasoning behind the chosen methodology and sources.

Legal Reasoning, Research, and Writing for International Graduate Students Nadia E. Nedzel Aspen (2004) A guide to American legal research and the federal system, written for international students. Includes information on the research process, and tips for writing. Located in the Law Library, 3rd Floor: KF 240 .N43 2004.
Methodologies of Legal Research: Which Kind of Method for What Kind of Discipline? Mark van Hoecke Oxford (2013) This book examines different methods of legal research including doctrinal, comparative, and interdisciplinary. Located at Lilly Law Library, Indianapolis, 2nd Floor: K 235 .M476 2013. IU students may request item via IUCAT.
An Introduction to Empirical Legal Research Lee Epstein and Andrew D. Martin Oxford University Press (2014) This book includes information on designing research, collecting and coding data, analyzing data, and drafting the final paper. Located at Lilly Law Library, Indianapolis, 2nd Floor: K 85 .E678 2014. IU students may request item via IUCAT.
Emplirical Legal Studies Blog The ELS blog was created by several law professors, and focuses on using empirical methods in legal research, theory, and scholarship. Search or browse the blog to find entries on methodology, data sources, software, and other tips and techniques.

Literature Review

The literature review provides an examination of existing pieces of research, and serves as a foundation for further research. It allows the researcher to critically evaluate existing scholarship and research practices, and puts the new thesis in context. When conducting a literature review, one should consider the following: who are the leading scholars in the subject area; what has been published on the subject; what factors or subtopics have these scholars identified as important for further examination; what research methods have others used; what were the pros and cons of using those methods; what other theories have been explored.

The literature review should include a description of coverage. The researcher should describe what material was selected and why, and how those selections are relevant to the thesis. Discuss what has been written on the topic and where the thesis fits in the context of existing scholarship. The researcher should evaluate the sources and methodologies used by other researchers, and describe how the thesis different.

The following video gives an overview of conducting a literature review.

Note: this video is not specific to legal literature, however it may be helpful as a general overview.

Not sure where to start? Here are a few suggestions for digging into sources once you have selected a topic.

Research Guides

Research guides are discovery tools, or gateways of information. They pull together lists of sources on a topic. Some guides even offer brief overviews and additional research steps specifically for that topic. Many law libraries offer guides on a variety of subjects. You can locate guides by visiting library websites, such as this Library's site , the Law Library of Congress , or other schools like Georgetown . Some organizations also compile research guides, such as the American Society of International Law . Utilizing a research guide on your topic to generate an introductory source list can save you valuable time.

Secondary Sources

It is often a good idea to begin research with secondary sources. These resources summarize, explain, and analyze the law. They also provide references to primary sources and other secondary sources. This saves you time and effort, and can help you quickly identify major themes under your topic and help you place your thesis in context.

Encyclopedias provide broad coverage of all areas of the law, but do not go in-depth on narrow topics, or discuss differences by jurisdiction, or include all of the pertinent cases. American Jurisprudence ( AmJur ) and Corpus Juris Secundum ( CJS ) have nationwide coverage, while the Indiana Law Encyclopedia focuses on Indiana state law. A number of other states also have their own state-specific encyclopedias.

American Law Reports ( ALR ) are annotations that synopsize various cases on narrow legal topics. Each annotation covers a different topic, and provides a leading or typical case on the topic, plus cases from different jurisdictions that follow different rules, or cases where different facts applying the same rule led to different outcomes. The annotations also refer to other secondary sources.

Legal periodicals include several different types of publications such as law reviews from academic institutions or organizations, bar journals, and commercial journals/newspapers/newsletters. Legal periodicals feature articles that describe the current state of the law and often explore underlying policies. They also critique laws, court decisions, and policies, and often advocate for changes. Articles also discuss emerging issues and notify the profession of new developments. Law reviews can be useful for in-depth coverage on narrow topics, and references to primary and other secondary sources. However, content can become outdated and researchers must be mindful of biases in articles.

Treatises/Hornbooks/Practice Guides are a type of secondary source that provides comprehensive coverage of a legal subject. It could be broad, such as a treatise covering all of contract law, or very narrow such as a treatise focused only on search and seizure cases. These sources are good when you have some general background on the topic, but you need more in-depth coverage of the legal rules and policies. Treatises are generally well organized, and provide you with finding aids (index, table of contents, etc.) and extensive footnotes or endnotes that will lead you to primary sources like cases, statutes, and regulations. They may also include appendices with supporting material like forms. However, treatises may not be updated as frequently as other sources and may not cover your specific issue or jurisdiction.

Citation and Writing Style

Legal Writing in Plain English Bryan A. Garner University of Chicago Press, 2001. Call # KF 250 .G373 2001 Location: Law Library, 3rd Floor Provides lawyers, judges, paralegals, law students, and legal scholars with sound advice and practical tools for improving their written work. The leading guide to clear writing in the field, this book offers valuable insights into the writing process: how to organize ideas, create and refine prose, and improve editing skills. This guide uses real-life writing samples that Garner has gathered through decades of teaching experience. Includes sets of basic, intermediate, and advanced exercises in each section.
The Elements of Legal Style Bryan A. Garner Oxford University Press, 2002. Call # KF 250 .G37 2002 Location: Law Library, 1st Floor, Reference This book explains the full range of what legal writers need to know: mechanics, word choice, structure, and rhetoric, as well as all the special conventions that legal writers should follow in using headings, defined terms, quotations, and many other devices. Garner also provides examples from highly regarded legal writers, including Oliver Wendell Holmes, Clarence Darrow, Frank Easterbrook, and Antonin Scalia.
Grammarly Blog Blog featuring helpful information about quirks of the English language, for example when to use "affect" or "effect" and other tips. Use the search feature to locate an article relevant to your grammar query.
Plain English for Lawyers Richard C. Wydick Carolina Academic Press, 2005. Call # KF 250 .W9 2005 Location: Law Library, 3rd Floor Award-winning book that contains guidance to improve the writing of lawyers and law students and to promote the modern trend toward a clear, plain style of legal writing. Includes exercises at the end of each chapter.
The Chicago Manual of Style University of Chicago Press, 2010. Call # Z 253 .U69 2010 Location: Law Library, 2nd Floor While not addressing legal writing specifically, The Chicago Manual of Style is one of the most widely used and respected style guides in the United States. It focuses on American English and deals with aspects of editorial practice, including grammar and usage, as well as document preparation and formatting.
The Chicago Manual of Style (Online) Bryan A. Garner and William S. Strong The University of Chicago Press, 2017. Online edition: use the link above to view record in IUCAT, then click the Access link (for IU students only).
The Bluebook Compiled by the editors of the Columbia Law Review, the Harvard Law Review, the University of Pennsylvania Law Review, and the Yale Law Journal. Harvard Law Review Association, 2015. Call # KF245 .B58 2015 Location: Law Library, 1st Floor, Circulation Desk The Bluebook: A Uniform System of Citation is a style guide that prescribes the most widely used legal citation system in the United States. The Bluebook is taught and used at a majority of U.S. law schools, law reviews and journals, and used in a majority of U.S. federal courts.
User's Guide to the Bluebook Alan L. Dworsky William S. Hein & Co., Inc., 2015. Call # KF 245 .D853 2015 Location: Law Library, Circulation Desk "This User's Guide is written for practitioners (law students, law clerks, lawyers, legal secretaries and paralegals), and is designed to make the task of mastering citation form as easy and painless as possible. To help alleviate the obstacles faced when using proper citation form, this text is set up as a how-to manual with a step-by-step approach to learning the basic skills of citation and includes the numbers of the relevant Bluebook rules under most chapter subheadings for easy reference when more information is needed"--Provided by the publisher.
Legal Citation in a Nutshell Larry L. Teply West Academic Publishing, 2016. Call # KF 245 .T47 2016 Location: Law Library, 1st Floor, Circulation Desk This book is designed to ease the task of learning legal citation. It initially focuses on conventions that underlie all accepted forms and systems of legal citation. Building on that understanding and an explanation of the “process” of using citations in legal writing, the book then discusses and illustrates the basic rules.
Introduction to Basic Legal Citation (Online) Peter W. Martin Cornell Legal Information Institute, 2017. Free online resource. Includes a thorough review of the relevant rules of appellate practice of federal and state courts. It takes account of the latest edition of The Bluebook, published in 2015, and provides a correlation table between this free online citation guide and the Bluebook.
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Finding a Paper Topic

What are the blogs talking about, what current awareness sources should i know about, what's being discussed in the academic journals, what have other dissertations or papers covered, how do i find a faculty advisor, refining your topic, getting help, how to use this guide.

This guide is aimed at law students, primarily LL.M.s, beginning the process of finding and narrowing a topic for a research paper.

Paper topic ideas may come from your lectures or course readings. Topics might come from your previous studies, work history or life experience. But, sometimes your initial subject idea is too broad, or you are interested in multiple subject areas. This guide will walk you though sources which will help you gain a sense of legal developments (if any) on your subject. It will also list sources that help you begin to find the academic conversation happening on a topic.

By browsing, searching, and reading broadly in these sources, you will hopefully find a topic that is deeply interesting to you. Enough so that you will stay engaged and motivated during the entirety of the writing process.

For HLS LL.M.s, this guide will provide links to sources from the Graduate Program which will help you determine if your topic is sufficiently narrow. It concludes with suggestions about how to identify possible HLS faculty supervisors.

Once you have decided on your topic, it is an appropriate time to request a research consult with a librarian. They can assist you by identifying targeted research sources and search strategies.

Using Blogs for Paper Topics

Blogs can be helpful to see what is "hot" in a particular field of law on a more current basis than traditional scholarly sources such as books or law review articles. You can browse them by topic area or run searches for some of your initial ideas.

Blog/Blawg Directories

Justia's Blawg Search This is one of the largest aggregators of legal blogs. Browse by topic or search and reset the order of results by date to find the newest discussions.
Legal Blogs via Westlaw (HLS only) Westlaw provides searchable access to over 200 law-related blogs. Topics cover almost all areas of US law, international law, and good coverage of Canadian law.
Law Professor Blogs Network This is a collection of approximately 100 blogs authored by law professors.

Specialized News Databases

Legal news sites will alert you to interesting litigation and policy developments. Like browsing blogs, legal news sources can help you identify legal developments that might serve as a good topic.

Lexis Legal News Hub (HLS only) Legal news from multiple publishers including Law360.
Law.com (HLS only) Very current, short news items about legal developments in law and the legal industry.
Bloomberg Law News and Topic Selection Page (HLS Only) This page links to Bloomberg news offerings, and uniquely, coverage of “circuit splits”. A circuit split is when federal appellate courts are reaching different outcomes on the same topic of law. Current circuit splits can make interesting paper topics.

Legal Updates from Law Firms

Law firms often post public entries of interest to potential clients. These marketing materials are usually well crafted and cover new developments. The following sites aggregate this content for collective searching.

vLex Justis current news The home screen offers a combination of news and updates from major law firms from LexBlog, JD Supra, and Mondaq. Use the International News option for coverage of 100 countries.

Google Scholar

Using Google can be a good starting point, but using Google Scholar is a more efficient way to find academic content. Even better, using Harvard Google Scholar will (usually) allow you to link through to content available to you through Harvard Library subscriptions.

Harvard Google Scholar Using Google Scholar with your HarvardKey allows you to make the most of provided links, granting access to full text available through Harvard Library subscriptions.
Google Alerts

Working Papers Repositories

After browsing widely through current awareness services for ideas, hopefully you’re starting to have a few possible topics. Digging into working papers is a good next step in comparing your topic options. Working paper repositories host collections of scholarly articles. They include those not yet published or in final form. The benefit of searching in working paper repositories is to gain a sense of the current academic conversation on a topic.

SSRN (Social Science Research Network) SSRN is one of the most heavily used working paper sites for law professors. It is a public site but using this Harvard-affiliated access through HOLLIS will allow you to set up an individual account and subscribe to email alerts.
Law Commons This open access working paper site is easy to browse by topic, author, and institutional affiliation.
NBER Working Papers The National Bureau of Economic Research hosts working papers related to finance, banking, and law and economics.
EconPapers (RePEc)
OSF Preprints Multidisciplinary repository more global in scope than those listed above.

Law Journal Articles

As you explore possible topics, beyond searching through current sources, it's important to explore the published literature on the topic. This is the stage where you are both refining your topic and beginning your research.

There are many sources to find law journal articles. Below are some of the main collections of legal literature and good starting points. Be aware that these collections are very large. Putting in one or two search terms may result in large result lists, so consider searching with multiple keywords, phrases, etc. For assistance with advanced search techniques, please Ask a Librarian .

Hein Online Law Journal Library (Harvard Key) Provides pdf format for law review articles in 3200 law journals. For most, coverage is from inception. Includes a good collection of non-U.S. journals.
Lexis+ Law Reviews and Journals (HLS Only)
Westlaw Law Reviews & Journals (HLS Only)
LegalTrac Topic Finder (HLS) LegalTrac is an index (descriptions of articles) and has some full text. It is included here for its topic finder tool which allows you to put in some general topics, and then refine the terms to generate a list of linked articles.

Academic Articles, Books and Book Chapters

It is beyond the scope of this guide to cover specialized sources for non-U.S. and International law and legal literature. Neither does this guide cover sources for law-related literature, such as the literature of political science, economics, gender studies, etc. To find academic journal content across disciplines, the best starting point is to use HOLLIS.

HOLLIS Catalog and Articles Beyond finding the books, ebooks, and journals owned by the Harvard Library system, using HOLLIS in its default mode (Catalog & Articles) allows you to find articles from many subscription sources. Before settling on a paper topic, running some searches in HOLLIS is a must.

Dissertations, Theses and Papers

As you refine your topic ideas, it is often helpful to browse the titles of dissertations and papers by SJDs, LLMs, or JD students, either generally, or those which touch on your subject area. This can help you understand how people have framed their research topic in a discrete, specific way. See additional sources for student-authored works in HLS Dissertations, Theses and Third Year Papers .

HLS LL.M. Papers in HOLLIS To refine these search results by topic, faculty advisor, seminar or date, click Add a New Line.
HLS SJD Dissertations
Proquest Dissertations and Theses (Harvard Key) This database includes dissertations and theses from many academic institutions but has not included HLS SJD dissertations or LL.M. papers in recent years.

Tips on Finding a Faculty Advisor

LL.M. written work requires faculty supervision. The following sources will help you identify HLS faculty members by research interests. You can also view HOLLIS records of LL.M. papers to identify the HLS professors who supervised papers in your subject area.

HLS Faculty Directory The directory can be searched by keyword or filtered by area of interest and by categories of appointment. Directory pages usually include courses taught, publications, and research interest area. Note that some professors are here for only part of the year. Faculty supervisors must have a teaching appointment in the semester in which the paper is to be turned in.
HLS Course Catalog This is the best source to determine who is currently teaching in your topic subject area.
HLS Faculty Bibliography This is a collective list of publications of the HLS faculty covering recent years.
HLS Programs of Study Programs of study are course grouping suggestions for students who want to focus their academic and career development within a field of law. Each program lists HLS faculty members associated with that field of law.

Tips for Refining a Topic

As you’ve browsed blogs, news, law reviews and other LL.M. papers, you have hopefully arrived at some topic ideas that are original and will hold your continued interest as you write the paper. It is also important to refine your paper topic to a discrete, narrow idea. Resources to help you make sure your topic is sufficiently narrow are included in the HLS Graduate Program Writing Resources Canvas Site . See especially:

The Six-Point Exercise in the module “Developing Your Proposal and Drafting Your Paper”
Worksheets for Senior Thesis Writers and Others in the module “Recommended Materials on Writing”
Archetypal Legal Scholarship: A Field Guide, 63 J. Legal Educ. 65 (2013) HLS Prof. Minow's article defines the different types of papers in the legal literature. It is helpful to read her framework as you finalize your paper topic.
Academic Legal Writing Law Review Articles, Student Notes, Seminar Papers, and Getting on Law Review UCLA Prof. Eugene Volokh's book is a good resource as you begin a writing project. Specifcally, the section on Choosing a Claim is worth scanning before finalizing your topic.
This publicly available excerpt from a prior edition of Volokh's book contains the chapter on Choosing a Claim. See the section beginning on page 25.

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Encyclopedia of the Philosophy of Law and Social Philosophy pp 1–6 Cite as

Law and Literature: Historical Overview

Carla Faralli 3
Living reference work entry
First Online: 25 December 2021

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I should start out with the premise that the term “literature” in “law and literature” can be used in a narrow sense or a broader one. In a broad sense it includes the humanities at large: law and music, law and cinema, law and art, and so on, even if, strictly speaking, these are all subdisciplines encompassed within the genus “humanities.”

The law and literature movement itself can be said to trace its origins to the work of James Boyd White, professor of law and English at the University of Michigan, and in particular to his 1973 book The Legal Imagination: Studies in the Nature of Legal Thought and Expression (JB White 1973 ), the first in a trilogy that continues with When Words Lose Their Meaning: Constitutions and Reconstitutions of Language, Character, and Community (JB White 1984 ) and Heracles’ Bow: Essays on the Rhetoric and Poetics of the Law (JB White 1985 ).

But what James Boyd White “inaugurates,” as it were, is the most recent phase in the movement, which starts out in the...

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Bok C (1946) I, too, Nicodemus. AA Knopf, New York

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Bruner J (1991) The narrative construction of reality. Crit Inq 18(1):1–21

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Bruner J (2002) Making stories: law, literature, life. Harvard University Press, Cambridge, MA

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Cover R (1983) Nomos and narrative. Foreword to the Supreme Court 1982 Term. Harv Law Rev 97(1):4–68

D’amato A (1936) La letteratura e la vita del diritto. Ubezzi & Dones, Milan

Delgado R (1989) Storytelling for oppositionists and others: a plea for narrative. Mich Law Rev 87(8):2411–2441

Ewick P, Silbey S (1995) Subversive stories and hegemonic tales: toward a sociology of narrative. Law Soc Rev 29(2):197–226

Ewick P, Silbey S (1998) The common place of law: stories from everyday life. University of Chicago Press

Ewick P, Silbey S (2003) Narrating social structure: stories of resistance to legal authority. Am J Sociol 108(6):1328–1372

Fehr H (1923) Das Recht im Bilde. vol 1 of Kunst und Recht. Berne, Francke

Fehr H (1931) Das Recht in der Dichtung. vol 2 of Kunst und Recht. Berne, Francke

Fehr H (1936) Die Dichtung im Recht. vol 3 of Kunst und Recht. Berne, Francke

Frank JN (1947) Words and music: some remarks on statutory interpretation. Columbia Law Rev 47(8):1259–1278

Frank JN (1948) Say it with music. Harv Law Rev 61(6):921–957

Gilligan C (1982) In a different voice. Harvard university Press, Cambridge, MA

Herbage J (1946) Brains trust. Penguin Music Mag 75(1)

Krenek E (1944) The composer and the interpreter. Black Mountain College Bull 3(2) (unnumbered pages)

Mittica P (2015) Cosa accade al di là dell’oceano? Diritto e letteratura in Europa. Anamorphosis: Revista Internacional de Direito e Literatura 1(1):3–36

Pergolesi F (1927) Il diritto nella letteratura. Archivio giuridico “Filippo Serafini” XCVII(1):61–104

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Radbruch G (1938) Psicologia del sentimento giuridico dei popoli. In: Kaufmann A (ed) Gesamtausgabe, band 3, Hassemer W (ed) Rechtsphilosophie III (1990), pp 51–59. CF Müller Juristischer Verlag, Heidelberg

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White JB (1984) When words lose their meaning: constitutions and reconstitutions of language, character, and community. University of Chicago Press

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Faralli, C. (2022). Law and Literature: Historical Overview. In: Sellers, M., Kirste, S. (eds) Encyclopedia of the Philosophy of Law and Social Philosophy. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-007-6730-0_969-1

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The Scholarly Kitchen

What’s Hot and Cooking In Scholarly Publishing

The Latest “Crisis” — Is the Research Literature Overrun with ChatGPT- and LLM-generated Articles?

Artificial Intelligence
Metrics and Analytics
Peer Review
Research Integrity

Elsevier has been under the spotlight this month for publishing a paper that contains a clearly ChatGPT-written portion of its introduction. The first sentence of the paper’s Introduction reads, “Certainly, here is a possible introduction for your topic:…” To date, the article remains unchanged, and unretracted. A second paper , containing the phrase “I’m very sorry, but I don’t have access to real-time information or patient-specific data, as I am an AI language model” was subsequently found , and similarly remains unchanged. This has led to a spate of amateur bibliometricians scanning the literature for similar common AI-generated phrases, with some alarming results . But it’s worth digging a little deeper into these results to get a sense of whether this is indeed a widespread problem, and where such papers have made it through to publication, where the errors are occurring.

1950s style rendering of a robot invasion

Several of the investigations into AI-pollution of the literature that I’ve seen employ Google Scholar for data collection (the link above, and another here ). But when you start looking at the Google Scholar search results, you notice that a lot of what’s listed, at least on the first few pages, are either preprints, items on ResearchGate, book chapters, or often something posted to a website you’ve never heard of with a Russian domain URL. The problem here is that Google Scholar is deliberately a largely non-gated index. It scans the internet for things that look like research papers (does it have an Abstract, does it have References), rather than limiting results to a carefully curated list of reputable publications. Basically, it grabs anything that looks “scholarly”. This is a feature, not a bug, and one of the important values that Google Scholar offers is that it can reach beyond the more limiting inclusion criteria (and often English language and Global North biased) content of indexes like the Web of Science.

But what happens when one does similar searches on a more curated database, one that is indeed limited to what most would consider a more accurate picture of the reputable scholarly literature? Here I’ve chosen Dimensions , an inter-linked research information system provided by Digital Science, as its content inclusion is broader than the Web of Science, but not as unlimited as Google Scholar. With the caveat that all bibliometrics indexes are lagging, and take some time to bring in the most recently published articles (the two Elsevier papers mentioned above are dated as being from March and June of 2024 and so aren’t yet indexed as far as I can tell), my results are perhaps less worrying. All searches below were limited to research articles (no preprints, book chapters, or meeting abstracts) published after November 2022, when ChatGPT was publicly released.

A search for “Certainly, here is” brings up a total of ten articles published over that time period. Of those ten articles, eight are about ChatGPT, so the inclusion of the phrase is likely not suspect. A search for “as of my last knowledge update” gives a total of six articles, again with four of those articles focused on ChatGPT itself. A search for “I don’t have access to real-time data” brings up only three articles, all of which cover ChatGPT or AI. During this same period, Dimensions lists nearly 5.7M research articles and review articles published, putting the error rate for these three phrases to slip through into publications at 0.00007%.

Retraction Watch has a larger list of 77 items (as of this writing), using a more comprehensive set of criteria to spot problematic, likely AI-generated text which includes journal articles from Elsevier, Springer Nature, MDPI, PLOS, Frontiers, Wiley, IEEE, and Sage. Again, this list needs further sorting, as it also includes some five book chapters, eleven preprints, and at least sixteen conference proceedings pieces. Removing these 32 items from the list suggests a failure rate of 0.00056%.

While many would argue that this does not constitute a “crisis”, it is likely that such errors will continue to rise, and frankly, there’s not really any excuse for allowing even a single paper with such an obvious tell to make it through to publication. While this has led many to question the peer review process at the journals where these failures occurred, it’s worth considering other points in the publication workflow where such errors might happen. As Lisa Hinchliffe recently pointed out , it’s possible these sections are being added at the revision stage or even post-acceptance. Peer reviewers and editors looking at a revision may only be looking at the specific sections where they requested changes, and may miss other additions an author has put into the new version of the article. Angela Cochran wrote about how this has been exploited by unscrupulous authors adding in hundreds of citations in order to juice their own metrics. Also possible, the LLM-generated language may have been added at the pageproof stage (whether deliberately or not). Most journals outsource typesetting to third party vendors, and how carefully a journal scrutinizes the final, typeset version of the paper varies widely. As always, time spent by human editorial staff is the most expensive part of the publishing process, so many journals assume their vendors have done their jobs, and don’t go over each paper with a fine toothed comb unless a problem is raised.

Two other important conclusions can be drawn from this uproar. The first is that despite preprints having been around for decades, those both within and adjacent to the research community clearly do not understand their nature and why they’re different from the peer reviewed literature, so more educational effort is needed. It should not be surprising to anyone that there are a lot of rough early drafts of papers or unpublishable manuscripts in SSRN (founded in 1994) or arXiv (launched in 1991). We’ve heard a lot of concern about journalists not being able to recognize that preprints aren’t peer reviewed, but maybe there’s as big a problem much closer to home. The second conclusion is that there seems to be a perception that appearing in Google Scholar search results offers some assurance of credibility or validation. This is absolutely not the case, and perhaps the fault here lies with t he lack of differentiation between the profile service offered by Google Scholar , which is personally curated by individuals and its search results which are far less discriminating.

Going forward, I would hope that at the journals where the small number of papers have slipped through, an audit is underway to better understand where the language was introduced and how it managed to get all the way to publication. Automated checks should be able to weed out common AI language like this, but they likely need to be run at multiple points in the publication process, rather than just on initial submissions. While the systems in place seem to be performing pretty well overall, there’s no room for complacency, and research integrity vigilance will only become more and more demanding.

David Crotty

David Crotty is a Senior Consultant at Clarke & Esposito, a boutique management consulting firm focused on strategic issues related to professional and academic publishing and information services. Previously, David was the Editorial Director, Journals Policy for Oxford University Press. He oversaw journal policy across OUP’s journals program, drove technological innovation, and served as an information officer. David acquired and managed a suite of research society-owned journals with OUP, and before that was the Executive Editor for Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory Press, where he created and edited new science books and journals, along with serving as a journal Editor-in-Chief. He has served on the Board of Directors for the STM Association, the Society for Scholarly Publishing and CHOR, Inc., as well as The AAP-PSP Executive Council. David received his PhD in Genetics from Columbia University and did developmental neuroscience research at Caltech before moving from the bench to publishing.

25 Thoughts on "The Latest “Crisis” — Is the Research Literature Overrun with ChatGPT- and LLM-generated Articles?"

There is a huge difference between an entire article being written by AI, as the title of this post suggests, and having a few paragraphs being written by AI, as the actual evidence in most of this post suggests. I think the most worrisome part of this is that the journal editors are doing such a poor job that they aren’t catching those obvious “certainly…” type phrases, not because of what they imply about authorship, but just because they don’t belong in the final text at all.

I find the debate about using AI and academic integrity is bringing out an inconsistency in our very reasons for opposing “plagiarism”. That is, is the problem that the ideas aren’t yours per se, or that you are “stealing” another person’s ideas? When the “other person” is not a human, suddenly this distinction is in sharp relief. If you aren’t stealing from someone else, is there still a bad thing happening here, or is this just a much more “humanities” version of using R or SPSS to do your quantitative analysis? Usually I find it frustrating when people mix up copyright law with plagiarism, but in this situation I think copyright law has something useful to inform the plagiarism discussion. Copyright law in the US at least is very clear that non-humans (eg monkeys, elephants, and computers) can’t be credited with authorship/creatorship.

By Melissa Belvadi
Mar 20, 2024, 7:59 AM
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“Also possible, the LLM-generated language may have been added at the pageproof stage…”. That seems a bit far fetched. More likely some manuscripts don’t get carefully reviewed. More interesting to me than including LLM text in low quality articles is the sophistication of AI generated cell biology images. They’re getting to the point that sleuths like Elisabeth Bik can’t tell them from the real thing.

By Chris Mebane
Mar 20, 2024, 8:55 AM

The authors of one of the suspect papers have stated that the inclusion of the text was a cut-and-paste error. Why would such an error be “far fetched” during corrections but less so in other parts of the publication process?

By David Crotty
Mar 20, 2024, 9:27 AM

This may be but what’s the excuse for the failure to include the required disclosure statement? Everyone is focusing on the sloppy editing. But, what this signals to me is that there’s probably a bigger crises of non-disclosure, which is a different issue and – given Elsevier doesn’t prohibit the use of generative AI for editorial assistance but does require disclosure – to me is the bigger ethical question. The disclosure should have been made even if their was no copy/paste sloppiness. So, how many authors are using AI and not disclosing – and not tipping their hand by sloppiness?

By Lisa Janicke Hinchliffe
Mar 21, 2024, 10:51 AM

In this case, I believe the authors claimed that they had asked ChatGPT for a summary, but found it lacking and decided not to use it. Then it got “accidentally” pasted into some version of the paper. If accurate and believable, then no disclosure was necessary (as they did not deliberately use an AI).

All that said, you do get to the heart of the issue, and why the fuss over a tiny number of papers found with obvious tells is less important than the bigger picture that many are less sloppy and probably using these tools. While I do think it’s reasonable to require disclosure (if publishing is part of the scientific process, then you should record the tools used as you do in the Materials and Methods section for your experiments), I personally don’t think the use of AI in writing is all that problematic. What I care about is whether the experiments/research were/was done correctly, described accurately, and that the conclusions drawn are supported by the data presented. In the end, I don’t really care who (or what) wrote the story about the research, I’m interested in the research and ensuring it’s valid. We know that ghostwriting is fairly rampant in the medical world, and that industry research companies often have publication planners and writers on staff who put together publications. Is this any different ethically, as long as the author who puts their name on the paper vouches for its contents? Is that what matters (I’m staking my reputation on what’s in this document) rather than who/what chose the actual words and put them in that order?

Of course this is a different matter from fraudulent papers where the research wasn’t actually done, and yes, AI does simplify the process of creating fraudulent work, but that’s a separate issue. It does strike me as interesting that the two papers linked to above had AI text in an Introduction and an Abstract, rather than in the Results or the Conclusion sections of the papers.

Mar 21, 2024, 11:04 AM

I’ve not seen any author statement on either of these examples. I’ve seen one person say they are reporting what one author told him — but that didn’t include that the AI text was found wanting. I did see that the same intermediary say one of the authors says they had emailed Elsevier about this issue post-publication. Everyone decrying how long this is taking to fix and none of the authors just getting the right version out there by posting it up on a preprint server. I mean, for goodness say, it’s not like we need to wait for libraries to tip in a new page of the printed journal. Any way, somehow the authors also turned back page proofs without noticing the inclusion either. So, while I like you am not too concerned about how words get generated in this context (I have a statement in my syllabus this semester that students can use gen AI if they disclosure and explain why they decided it was the best choice), it matters if authors don’t take responsibility for their work and don’t make required disclosures. What other corners are they cutting?

Mar 21, 2024, 11:14 AM

I remember seeing something from the authors on Twitter, will try to dig it out. Regardless, I agree 100%. When you publish a paper, you are building/risking your reputation and your career. From my researcher days, the notion that I wouldn’t have carefully pored over every single character of every single draft of every paper I published escapes me. Those authors will now always be known as the ChatGPT people, I guess better than those permanently known as the gigantic rat genitals people, but still. If you are so sloppy in your writing, why wouldn’t I expect you to be similarly sloppy in your experiments? What did you accidentally “cut and paste” there?

Mar 21, 2024, 11:18 AM

In case anyone else is following this convo in the comments, here’s the thread not from the authors I referenced: https://twitter.com/GuyCurtis10/status/1768786985253319040

Mar 21, 2024, 11:41 AM

This is an interesting discussion; thanks for advancing it. Given the challenges facing scientific and medical publishing, which is a bigger crisis? 1) That overworked, underpaid, stressed, researchers and academics who don’t directly benefit financially from their content are now leveraging AI to speed time to publication, or 2) That the majority of entrenched publishers continue to act as if human friction and delays in getting novel science and groundbreaking medicine to patients and doctors who are trying to improve human suffering, which could be improved significantly with AI, is itself a problem to be dealt with? Full disclosure, I serve as Chief AI Officer of Inizio Medical and am a Founding Board Member of the Society for Artificial Intelligence and Health, but my comment is mine and mine alone.

By Matt Lewis
Mar 20, 2024, 9:52 AM

It is alarming that this slipped through after all the work done to tighten up publishing integrity over the last year or two. It suggests more sophisticated fake/fraudulent AI content is also getting through. More generally, it is another embarrassing, public black eye for scholarly publishing and science.

By Curtis Brundy
Mar 20, 2024, 10:42 AM

It’s clear from this post that the crisis is not about generative AI, which simply reveals the underlying problem. The real issue is the faulty editorial workflow, which Angela Cochran identified as far back as 2017. The human editor should have the last check of the paper. If you allow authors to make changes, then those changes should be monitored by the editor, and a system such as track changes applied to ensure that any changes the author makes, whether or not requested by the editor, are identifiable for checking.

What this reveals is that scholarly publishing still retains a culture of trust, in this case, trust that the author will not make extensive changes at proof stage. It is no longer possible to run scholarly publishing with the assumption that the author will behave responsibly.

By Michael Upshall
Mar 20, 2024, 10:57 AM

I think you’re largely right, but those needs are directly in opposition to the increasing pressure for journals to 1) publish faster, and 2) publish cheaper. As noted in the post, the sorts of human interventions you suggest are the most expensive parts of the process. Would the community accept slower publication and higher APCs/subscription prices in order to ensure this level of scrutiny?

Mar 20, 2024, 11:00 AM

Well, that’s for the scholarly community to decide, but personally, I don’t think there is a choice, to preserve the credibility of academic publishing.

Mar 20, 2024, 11:10 AM

What Automated Checks systems do you recommend be used by journals?

By Deb Whippen
Mar 20, 2024, 11:24 AM

“Automated” is a loaded word here — every check that I know of requires at least some level of human interpretation and intervention.

That said, there are good recommendations coming out of the STM Research Integrity Hub ( https://www.stm-assoc.org/stm-integrity-hub/ ) and tools include plagiarism checkers, image integrity checkers, and paper mill checkers. As far as I know, there are no reliable automated tools for determining whether text or images were AI-generated. But screening for phrases like the ones mentioned above seems a reasonable step.

And as noted, this makes publishing slower and more expensive.

Mar 20, 2024, 11:47 AM

I think that screening for phrases, as you say, could work. A mechanism that detects hallucinated content, including fake references/citations, could also help. But then, AI will also evolve…

By Ron Martinez
Mar 21, 2024, 5:03 PM

As the EIC of a journal, I read every manuscript that is submitted. Lately, I have detected a handful of manuscripts that have the hallmarks of being generated (all or in part) by an LLM. It is fairly obvious (to me) to identify such manuscripts, because the text reads like “word salad”, that is, bland, general sentences that do not seem to converge on a clear meaning and lack specific details. A superficial reading is not good enough in such cases. As pointed out in the post, having actual humans read the manuscripts or proofs is necessary, but expensive.

By Constance Senior
Mar 20, 2024, 2:15 PM

Same here. I had one the other day that was not really in the scope of the journal, had that “word salad” feel you mentioned, and had only 5 total references. (And two of those were fake.)

Mar 21, 2024, 5:01 PM

Interesting, another question is what percent of peer review reports/peer reviewers are using AI, and is incorrect use of AI in this area able to be detected, I heard this is potentially a growing, and yet somewhat hidden problem as well.

By Adrian Stanley
Mar 20, 2024, 4:29 PM

This preprint might be of interest – https://arxiv.org/abs/2403.07183 , “ Monitoring AI-Modified Content at Scale: A Case Study on the Impact of ChatGPT on AI Conference Peer Reviews”, https://doi.org/10.48550/arXiv.2403.07183

By Dugald McGlashan
Mar 21, 2024, 2:53 AM

“time spent by human editorial staff is the most expensive part of the publishing process”

It turns out more and more that the most *expensive* part of the publishing process is editorial and other negligence actively encouraged by those who never tire of finding more “cost-effective” and “streamlined/frictionless” ways to “improve the author experience.” It’s a sure way to steer scholarly publishing towards obsolescence because however happy authors (or their administrators) might be for having their work published, fewer and fewer people will be inclined or able to read this work (and AI reading AI-generated or “enhanced” texts is like an empty house of mirrors).

The cost of not having enough human eyes (i.e., editorial staff and peer reviewers) will be (and already is) exorbitant for both science and the public. High-quality, sustainable science and scholarship is slow and tedious and does not respond to exhortations for speed and efficiency. It’s a non-negotiable feature, not a bug.

Mar 20, 2024, 4:44 PM

The one thing that is absolutely certain is that no copyeditors have been retained for the journals where these articles have slipped through. No proper copyeditor — one who edits for grammar, spelling, clarity, logic, and flow– is going to allow these kinds of things to pass through.

The big platforms do not do proper copyediting; the provide spelling and grammar checking from international outsourcing firms (packagers) and pay them literally one quarter of what I am paid, or they use their production team (layout, not copyeditors) to do the copyedits.

Copyeditors know that the vast majority of the time, we are the first ones to read a manuscript all the way through, after R&R or when there is no peer review. These instances prove that when we aren’t being hired, no one is reading a manuscript from start to finish.

By Rudy Leon
Mar 20, 2024, 6:20 PM

Importantly, the stance of MDPI is relaxed and predictable: https://www.mdpi.com/2072-6651/15/6/399

Also, I notice a certain trend of affiliates of a certain ’boutique’ subtly promoting Dimensions

By Ivan Sterligov
Mar 21, 2024, 2:44 AM

Do you feel that Dimensions is an inappropriate tool to use for these purposes? Which database would have been better?

Mar 21, 2024, 7:14 AM

Thanks David, you brought some level-headedness to the conversation. Your deep dive into the Digital Science data has me feeling much better about this issue being overblown than I would have originally thought. Also, you make a good point about trying to understand why and how these things happen. An author using GPT to help them with language and accidentally inserting a GPT-phrase is very different than AI writing an article for them.

By Avi Staiman
Mar 21, 2024, 9:27 AM

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Title: uni-smart: universal science multimodal analysis and research transformer.

Abstract: In scientific research and its application, scientific literature analysis is crucial as it allows researchers to build on the work of others. However, the fast growth of scientific knowledge has led to a massive increase in scholarly articles, making in-depth literature analysis increasingly challenging and time-consuming. The emergence of Large Language Models (LLMs) has offered a new way to address this challenge. Known for their strong abilities in summarizing texts, LLMs are seen as a potential tool to improve the analysis of scientific literature. However, existing LLMs have their own limits. Scientific literature often includes a wide range of multimodal elements, such as molecular structure, tables, and charts, which are hard for text-focused LLMs to understand and analyze. This issue points to the urgent need for new solutions that can fully understand and analyze multimodal content in scientific literature. To answer this demand, we present Uni-SMART (Universal Science Multimodal Analysis and Research Transformer), an innovative model designed for in-depth understanding of multimodal scientific literature. Through rigorous quantitative evaluation across several domains, Uni-SMART demonstrates superior performance over leading text-focused LLMs. Furthermore, our exploration extends to practical applications, including patent infringement detection and nuanced analysis of charts. These applications not only highlight Uni-SMART's adaptability but also its potential to revolutionize how we interact with scientific literature.

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What to know about SB 4, the Texas immigration law in the courts now

Becky Sullivan

Texas National Guard soldiers are seen guarding the U.S.-Mexico border in Eagle Pass, Texas. John Moore/Getty Images hide caption

Texas National Guard soldiers are seen guarding the U.S.-Mexico border in Eagle Pass, Texas.

A whirlwind of court orders on Tuesday briefly allowed, then blocked again, a controversial new immigration law in Texas that would allow state and local law enforcement to arrest and deport people who are in the state illegally.

The Biden administration has objected to the law, known as Senate Bill 4, saying that the Constitution and legal precedent establish that the federal government has the exclusive power to enforce immigration law.

Texas' illegal entry law will test states' powers on immigration, border enforcement

While a federal court considers the merits of the law, a legal back-and-forth over whether the bill should take effect in the meantime created chaos Tuesday.

For several hours, the U.S. Supreme Court allowed the law to be enforced. But then, close to midnight, a lower court put the law back on hold and scheduled a last-minute hearing on Wednesday morning.

At the hearing, a three-judge panel questioned the Texas solicitor general about details of the law and heard arguments from the U.S. Department of Justice and the ACLU about why it should be struck down.

The law remains on hold while the appeals court deliberates.

Here's what to know:

What is SB 4?

Senate Bill 4 is a Texas law passed late last year that empowers state and local law enforcement agencies to enforce immigration law. Texas Republicans who championed the legislation say it's a response to the Biden administration's border policies, which they have criticized as being too permissive.

"It's important because it helps address what even the president has called a border crisis," said Texas solicitor general Aaron Nielson at Wednesday's hearing.

Texas has spent over $148 million busing migrants to other parts of the country

The bill would allow state and local police officers to arrest people suspected of being in the country illegally, and it would allow judges to order the deportation of migrants to ports of entry along Texas's border with Mexico, regardless of which country the migrant is from.

The bill was originally set to go into effect on March 5. But the U.S. government and the ACLU both filed lawsuits against it, and a district judge issued a preliminary injunction to block the law from enforcement while the case was being heard.

Texas appealed the injunction to the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals. The appeals court turned to the Supreme Court, which ultimately allowed the law to go into effect on Tuesday before the appeals court blocked it. (The Supreme Court did not issue an opinion clarifying whether the majority had supported the merits of the law or if it simply viewed its decision as a procedural one.)

Now, the Wednesday hearing at the Fifth Circuit considered the question of whether to allow the district judge's preliminary injunction to take effect — thereby continuing to block SB 4 from enforcement.

What is the legal challenge to the bill?

The Biden administration has argued that Texas overstepped its constitutional limits in passing SB 4, and they maintain that immigration policy and law enforcement are exclusive functions of the federal government.

Critics of SB 4 have cast the law as Texas' attempt to take over those law enforcement capabilities, a notion that Nielson disputed at Wednesday's hearing. "That's really not true," he told the panel. "What Texas wants to do is to be able to coordinate with the federal government."

Federal attorneys, meanwhile, have repeatedly pointed to a 2012 Supreme Court decision known as Arizona vs. United States , a case about a state law in Arizona that sought to create state-level crimes for immigration offenses and empower local law enforcement to check citizenship status and arrest people suspected of being in the country illegally. In a 5-3 decision, the court sided with the federal government and struck down most of Arizona's law.

Because the Texas law goes further than Arizona, Department of Justice attorney Daniel Tenny argued Wednesday, SB 4's provisions should too be blocked. "This is more at the heart at the area that the court has consistently recognized is reserved for the national government," he said.

What do opponents of the law say?

Groups that advocate for civil rights and immigrants' rights have criticized the law over concerns that it could lead to racial profiling. SB 4 would allow law enforcement officers to question someone's immigration status for any reason.

"We know that this law is going to increase racial profiling. We know that this law is going to strip people of their constitutional rights. We know that this law is also going to lead to the mass criminalization of our communities," said Alan Lizarraga, a spokesperson for the Border Network for Human Rights, speaking to the Texas Newsroom .

Opponents also worry that migrants with legitimate claims to asylum could have their federal cases asylum complicated by the Texas law if they come to face state criminal charges.

Mexico also opposes the law. Its foreign affairs ministry said in a statement Tuesday that the country will not accept migrants who have been deported under the Texas law. And it expressed concern for Mexican nationals living in Texas, who it said could now be subject to "expressions of hate, discrimination and racial profiling."

With the case back at the Fifth Circuit, Mexico said it plans to file a legal brief in opposition to SB 4 that lays out how the law could affect the relationship between the two countries, the statement said.

What do law enforcement officers in Texas say about the law?

Local law enforcement officers say they are prepared to enforce the law. But others have said they have not received clear guidance about how to implement it, or whether they'll have resources needed to carry out arrests in large numbers.

"I think we're going to be very selective about the cases we pick up," said Culberson County Sheriff Oscar Carillo, whose jurisdiction is located along the west Texas border. "Our jail is at capacity as we speak today, and to start incarcerating undocumented people and charging them a misdemeanor crime is a discussion I'll have to have with my county attorney," he told the Texas Newsroom on Tuesday.

Wednesday's appeals court hearing revealed the extent to which details of the law's enforcement have yet to be hammered out. Nielson, the Texas solicitor general, struggled to answer a series of questions from Chief Judge Priscilla Richman about how various scenarios would play out.

For instance, when Richman asked how the law would be applied to a person who entered the U.S. illegally through another border state before moving to Texas, Nielson replied, "I confess, your honor, I don't know."

Additional reporting by NPR's Jasmine Garsd and Julian Aguilar of the Texas Newsroom.

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Shona McCombes

The legal critical literature review

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