The Literature Review Process (Part III)
The Deep Dive
In this third and final part, I’ll describe how to perform detailed reviews on selected papers.
Rank-order and Recompile
At this point, you should have completed your second-level review and have a draft document with all the answers to the seven questions.
Of the papers you saw, which ones:
Were the most interesting to you?
Suggested interesting follow-on problems (directly or indirectly)?
Were the most well-written?
Arguably, the last item is not strictly necessary, but certainly helpful. Now:
Based on the assessment above, down-select five (5) papers. I’ll call these your top papers.
Move your top papers to the beginning of your document, and recompile to re-order the reference list and citation numbers.
Third-level Review
The last step is a very close read of your top papers.
What I’ll recommend next will be difficult, and you will want to avoid it. You must fight the inertia, because this task is super important.
For each of your top papers do the following:
Print out a physical copy of the paper. A physical copy.
Sit down, in a room with no distractions, and turn off all devices. Forget the outside world; it will be there later.
Read every single word of the paper. That means every single word, even if you don’t understand it. For any word or phrase you don’t understand, underline it—do not go search for it—just underline it.
For anything you underlined in the paper, now go find out the definition.
Read every single word of the paper a second time.
You’re accomplishing two things in this exercise. The first, of course, is carefully reading the papers. The second is building the capacity for reading highly information-dense material. PhD-level technical research requires an extremely high reading level, and this is how you build it.
When you start out, the words may seem like gobbledygook. “What is this even saying?” You haven’t built your interpreter circuits yet. They have to be burned-in.
Next, you will become sleepy. Your untuned interpreter is perplexed and using a lot of energy. You can’t “see” the interesting aspects of the paper yet.
What you do next is everything! Will you go to sleep? Will you avoid reading it?
For those destined to go all the way in this program: here’s a secret you know, but may have forgotten. If you get tired when you read the papers, go to the edge of sleep. Put one foot inside it. Then get up, walk around, come back and do it again. Repeat that sequence until you’ve read the entire paper; finishing it is the critical part.
The edge of sleep is magical. And it’s porous. Use it.
Final Comments
When you’ve completed your third-level review, we’ll talk through framing primary and secondary research problems. Congratulations if you did your literature correctly. That will allow precise definition of research problems, which is half of the solution.