Writing Reviews On Scientific Papers

Aside from evaluating the importance of the topic, reviewershould also check whether the problem is well defined and the adequacy of the literature review.Judgement should be made on how well the literature review is in-line with the topic and objective.On the results, reviewers should check that the results address the problems and objectives discussed.

Particularly, reproducible results are very important otherwise, different authors wouldn’t be able toconduct the same study and come up with the about the same results also for posterior researchersto build on the original work.

Objectivity is paramount. The review should always set aside personal prejudices against the topic/field, methodology or author. If a reviewer is biased, they should refrain from reviewing the paper. A bit of a conundrum here is that while expert opinion is important in peer reviewing, they are inmost cases biased towards methods they prefer. For example, a Bayesian would most likely differfrom a classical/frequentist. McKenzie (1995) elaborately discusses why experts almost never agree.

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In general, McKenzie (1995) suggests use of kind language while writing the review.

McPeek et al.(2009) has one golden rule for reviewing that is “review for others as Methodological review

Here, the reviews discuss foundations/origins of a problem/topic, the different approaches and bestpractices to solving the problems and their individual advantages and disadvantages depending onspecific situations. Research gaps are included in these type of reviews.I appreciate methodological reviews because in order to understand why researchers use certainmethods in specific application areas and not others, such reviews are important.

In scientificjournal publishing, authors are restrained by the number of wording in their manuscript and thushave to keep the documents short and concise, in many cases they do not explain concepts theyconsider well established - which may not always be the case- in some others they skip vital steps toensure their research is not “stolen” by a competing researcher.Unlike peer reviews, methodological reviews are published in scientific journals. A good example ofa methodological review is by Otte (2013) where he discusses several methods for classification andregression model.Literature reviewApart from writing the literature review as an element of a scientific paper, Nakano and Muniz(2018) present three main approaches to writing literature reviews:

Meta Analytic (MA) In a guide on writing meta analytic reviews Rosenthal (1995) give thedefinition as “quantitative summaries of research domains that describe the typical strengthof the effect or phenomenon, it’s variability and statistical significance.” These type of reviewsoffer insight on present opportunities for future research (Nakano and Muniz 2018). Metaanalytic reviews require the aid of a computer software to analyse the large set of papers (seeNakano and Muniz 2018).Critical Analytic (CA) CA aim at analysing and critiquing the concepts presented by existingliterature and in the process give direction on the course of a research field. Usually it is apreliminary step to writing an integrative literature review.

Integrative or systematic literature review (SLR). Torraco (2005) defines the purpose ofintegrative reviews as to create new knowledge about the topic reviewed and he in-turnprovides a guide on writing integrative reviews.The CA and SLR have similarities with the methodological review discussed above. For examplethe CA discuss the evolution of a field from different perspectives. Hence in this section discussionwill mainly be on writing reviews as a section in scientific paper. Literature reviews are importantelement in scientific papers.

They add credibility to the arguments and approaches used in ascientific paper (see Nakano and Muniz 2018). “Stand on the shoulders of giants”, this phrase,originally from Isaac Newton’s letter to Robert Hooke (Newton and Hooke 1675) and as used byGoogle Scholar (see Google 2018) simply drives the point home.Nakano and Muniz (2018) discuss three goals when writing literature review for a scientific papersas well as the characteristics of a good literature review. Good coverage and significance can onlybe achieved when theoretical background as well as gap identification are done well. Synthesis andrhetoric are other characteristics of a good literature outlined by Nakano and Muniz (2018).2In writing literature reviews, clarity is as important as the content. Since literature reviews aremeant for posterity it serves no purpose if they would be incoherent. Meta analytic and critical analytic reviews are not common in my country Kenya. Literature reviewis mainly considered as a section in a scientific paper and not as a stand alone scientific paper.