Search across guide titles, topics, keywords, and content throughout the Researcher's Field Guide.
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An institutional repository is a digital service used by a university or other organization to collect, preserve, and provide access to scholarly outputs created by its community. It may contain an accessible manuscript of a paper even when the publisher's version is behind a paywall.
Read Guide →A paper uploaded to ResearchGate or Academia.edu is not automatically reliable or unreliable simply because of where you found it. Verify the paper's identity, publication status, manuscript version, provenance, and current scholarly record before relying on the uploaded file.
Read Guide →Finding a citation does not mean the full paper is available in the database where you found it. Verify the reference, search systematically across publisher, repository, and library routes, and do not treat an abstract or another author's description as a substitute for reading the original.
Read Guide →Reading an abstract can establish that a paper exists and provide a concise account of its purpose and reported findings, but it rarely gives enough information to evaluate the study fully. Whether you should cite it depends on the claim you are making and whether the abstract actually supports that claim.
Read Guide →If you know a study only because another paper describes or cites it, you have not consulted the original study. Find and read the original whenever reasonably possible; if you cannot, make the secondary route visible rather than citing the original as though you read it yourself.
Read Guide →Secondary citation makes it explicit that you learned about an original source through another work rather than consulting the original yourself. It can be appropriate when the original genuinely cannot be obtained, but it should usually remain a fallback rather than a shortcut around reading accessible sources.
Read Guide →A language barrier does not automatically make an important research source unusable. Translation tools can help you determine relevance and sometimes understand substantial portions of a paper, but important methodological, numerical, or interpretive claims may require verification by a fluent reader or reliable human translation.
Read Guide →A paper belongs in your literature review because it helps answer the review question and meets the criteria appropriate to your review, not simply because it appeared in your search. Learn how to make inclusion decisions consistently and transparently.
Read Guide →Relevance and methodological quality answer different questions in a literature review. A study may be highly relevant yet methodologically weak, and whether that weakness warrants exclusion depends on the review design and criteria established in advance.
Read Guide →Title and abstract screening is not about deciding whether a paper is good or reading it in full. Your task is to identify clearly ineligible records while retaining anything that could reasonably meet your review criteria.
Read Guide →You do not need the full text of every record your search retrieves. Retrieve it when a paper remains potentially eligible or when the title and abstract do not provide enough information for a defensible decision.
Read Guide →Inclusion and exclusion criteria should be applied consistently, but consistency does not require mechanical interpretation. Learn how to distinguish justified judgment from making exceptions for studies you happen to prefer.
Read Guide →Inclusion criteria can sometimes be changed after screening begins, but not simply because the studies you found are inconvenient. Any amendment should remain faithful to the review question, avoid being driven by study findings, and be documented transparently.
Read Guide →Finding an influential or highly relevant-looking study outside your eligibility criteria creates a difficult choice. Its importance may justify discussing it, but not automatically including it in the evidence being synthesized.
Read Guide →A study should not usually be excluded merely because it is old. A publication-date restriction is most defensible when time itself has a meaningful relationship to the review question, evidence, technology, policy, or context.
Read Guide →A study should not be excluded merely because it comes from another country or a somewhat different population. The relevant question is whether those differences matter enough to the review question to affect eligibility or how the evidence should be interpreted.
Read Guide →One study can produce several papers, and those papers should not automatically be counted as separate studies. Learn how to link related reports, combine their information, and prevent the same participants or data from influencing your review more than once.
Read Guide →Duplicate publications can make one study appear to be several independent pieces of evidence. If reviewers fail to recognize the overlap, the same participants and findings may be counted repeatedly and distort the review.
Read Guide →Two reviewers are often used to reduce errors and individual judgment in study selection, but the requirement depends on the review methodology and screening stage. Learn when independent duplicate screening is expected and what “two reviewers” actually means.
Read Guide →A PRISMA flow diagram is designed to show how records identified through a systematic search moved through screening, retrieval, eligibility assessment, and final inclusion. It is appropriate for systematic reviews and many structured evidence syntheses, but not automatically for every literature review.
Read Guide →You rarely need to read every research paper from the first word to the last. Learn a practical multi-pass method for deciding what deserves attention, extracting the important evidence, and knowing when a paper requires a deeper read.
Read Guide →You rarely need to read every research paper from the first word to the last. The depth and order of your reading should depend on why you opened the paper and what you need to learn from it.
Read Guide →Start by orienting yourself to what the paper studies and whether it is relevant to your purpose. The title and abstract are usually useful first stops, but what you read next should depend on what you need from the paper.
Read Guide →There is no single best section to start with in every research paper. The abstract is useful for orientation, but your next move should depend on whether you need context, methodological detail, evidence, or interpretation.
Read Guide →Not every paper you find deserves the same amount of attention. Screen its relevance first, then consider whether the evidence, methods, and role it may play in your research justify a deeper reading.
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