This page offers writing and citing assistance for after you've found the articles, books and other information on your topic.
The Writing Center provides one-on-one tutoring, workshops and presentations to strengthen your academic reading, writing, critical thinking and research skills.
Citation managers are online tools that allow you to:
There is a bit of a learning curve with these tools, but they can help you stay organized and save time in the long run.
The Library recommends three free citation managers:
To explore these tools and learn how to use them, check out the Library's Citation Managers Guide.
The majority of the Library's e-resources can generate a single citation for you.
Places to look for the Cite Button or other Citation Tools in E-Resources:
“A review of the literature consists of reading, analyzing, and writing a synthesis of scholarly materials about a specific topic. When the review is of scientific literature, the focus is on the hypotheses, the scientific methods, the strengths and weaknesses of the study, the results, and the authors’ interpretations and conclusions. A review of the scientific literature is fundamental to understanding the accumulated knowledge about the topic being reviewed."
Garrard, J. (2017). Health sciences literature review made easy: The matrix method. Burlington, MA: Jones and Bartlett Learning. p. 4.
This handout from The Writing Center at UNC Chapel Hill, walks through the literature review process; from understanding what a lit review is, to constructing a thesis statement, to thinking about how to organize your review.
This brief, easy-to-read article describes different types of literature reviews.
A literature review is a very practical part of the research process. It's how you build on other research in the field - identify best practices and tools and learn what doesn't work. The resources on the page are here to help you structure you literature review so it's as useful as possible.
Also take a look at any literature reviews you find as you search for articles - in addition to content and further references they'll also provide helpful structural hints.
In addition to the AMA handbook, consider exploring these online AMA resources from around the web.
AMA Format Structure:
Author, A. Title of the review. Cochrane Database Syst Rev. Published Date [Year Abbrv Month Day]; Issue Number:Article Number. doi.
Yeung JP, Kloda LA, McDevitt J, Ben-Shoshan M, Alizadehfar R. Oral immunotherapy for milk allergy. Cochrane Database of Syst Rev. 2012 Nov 14; 11. CD009542. doi: 10.1002/14651858.CD009542.pub2.
"Plagiarism, or presenting other people's words and ideas as if they were one's own, is a fundamental form of deception which undermines the sense of community in an environment where ideas and writing are crucial."
Source: Using Sources at Simmons, Simmons College Writing Center (p. 5)
Paraphrasing is often defined as putting a passage from an author into “your own words.”
Use this advice from the Writing Center to avoid unintentionally plagiarizing when you paraphrase:
Source: Using Sources at Simmons, Simmons College Writing Center (p. 9-10)