mapping of literature review

How to Master at Literature Mapping: 5 Most Recommended Tools to Use

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After putting in a lot of thought, time, and effort, you’ve finally selected a research topic . As the first step towards conducting a successful and impactful research is completed, what follows it is the gruesome process of literature review . Despite the brainstorming, the struggle of understanding how much literature is enough for your research paper or thesis is very much real. Unlike the old days of flipping through pages for hours in a library, literature has come easy to us due to its availability on the internet through Open Access journals and other publishing platforms. This ubiquity has made it even more difficult to cover only significant data! Nevertheless, an ultimate solution to this problem of conglomerating relevant data is literature mapping .

Table of Contents

What is Literature Mapping?

Literature mapping is one of the key strategies when searching literature for your research. Since writing a literature review requires following a systematic method to identify, evaluate, and interpret the work of other researchers, academics, and practitioners from the same research field, creating a literature map proves beneficial. Mapping ideas, arguments, and concepts in a literature is an imperative part of literature review. Additionally, it is stated as an established method for externalizing knowledge and thinking processes. A map of literature is a “graphical plan”, “diagrammatic representation”, or a “geographical metaphor” of the research topic.

Researchers are often overwhelmed by the large amount of information they encounter and have difficulty identifying and organizing information in the context of their research. It is recommended that experts in their fields develop knowledge structures that are richer not only in terms of knowledge, but also in terms of the links between this knowledge. This knowledge linking process is termed as literature mapping .

How Literature Mapping Helps Researchers?

Literature mapping helps researchers in following ways:

• It provides concrete evidence of a student’s understanding and interpretation of the research field to share with both peers and professors.
• Switching to another modality helps researchers form patterns to see what might otherwise be hidden in the research area.
• Furthermore, it helps in identifying gaps in pertinent research.
• Finally, t lets researchers identify potential original areas of study and parameters of their work.

How to Make a Literature Map?

Literature mapping is not only an organizational tool, but also a reflexive tool. Furthermore, it distinguishes between declarative knowledge shown by identifying key concepts, ideas and methods, and procedural knowledge shown through classifying these key concepts and establishing links or relationships between them. The literature review conceptualizes research structures as a “knowledge production domain” that defines a productive and ongoing constructive element. Thus, the approaches emphasize the identity of different scientific institutions from different fields, which can be mapped theoretically, methodologically, or fundamentally.

The two literature mapping approaches are:

• Mapping with key ideas or descriptors: This is developed from keywords in research topics.
• Author mapping: This is also termed as citation matching that identifies key experts in the field and may include the use of citations to interlink them.

Generally, literature maps can be subdivided by categorization processes based on theories, definitions, or chronology, and cross-reference between the two types of mapping. Furthermore, researchers use mind maps as a deductive process, general concept-specific mapping (results in a right triangle), or an inductive process mapping to specific concepts (results in an inverted triangle).

What are Different Literature Mapping Methods?

The different types of literature mapping and representations are as follows:

1. Feature Mapping:

Argument structures developed from summary registration pages.

2. Topic Tree Mapping:

Summary maps showing the development of the topic in sub-themes up to any number of levels.

3. Content Mapping:

Linear structure of organization of content through hierarchical classification.

4. Taxonomic Mapping:

Classification through standardized taxonomies.

5. Concept Mapping:

Linking concepts and processes allows procedural knowledge from declarative information. With a basic principle of cause and effect and problem solving, concept maps can show the relationship between theory and practice.

6. Rhetorical Mapping:

The use of rhetoric communication to discuss, influence, or persuade is particularly important in social policy and political science and can be considered a linking strategy. A number of rhetorical tools have been identified that can be used to present a case, including ethos, metaphor, trope, and irony.

7. Citation Mapping:

Citation mapping or matching is a research process established to specifically establish links between authors by citing their articles. Traditional manual citation indexes have been replaced by automated databases that allow visual mapping methods (e.g. ISI Web of Science). In conclusion, citation matching in a subject area can be effective in determining the frequency of authors and specific articles.

5 Most Useful Literature Mapping Tools

Technology has made the literature mapping process easier now. However, with numerous options available online, it does get difficult for researchers to select one tool that is efficient. These tools are built behind explicit metadata and citations when coupled with some new machine learning techniques. Here are the most recommended literature mapping tools to choose from:

1. Connected Papers

a. Connected Papers is a simple, yet powerful, one-stop visualization tool that uses a single starter article.

b. It is easy to use tool that quickly identifies similar papers with just one “Seed paper” (a relevant paper).

c. Furthermore, it helps to detect seminal papers as well as review papers.

d. It creates a similarity graph not a citation graph and connecting lines (based on the similarity metric).

e. Does not necessarily show direct citation relationships.

f. The identified papers can then be exported into most reference managers like Zotero, EndNote, Mendeley, etc.

2. Inciteful

a. Inciteful is a customizable tool that can be used with multiple starter articles in an iterative process.

b. Results from multiple seed papers can be imported in a batch with a BibTex file.

c. Inciteful produces the following lists of papers by default:

• Similar papers (uses Adamic/Adar index)
• “Most Important Papers in the Graph” (based on PageRank)
• Recent Papers by the Top 100 Authors
• The Most Important Recent Papers

d. It allows filtration of results by keywords.

e. Importantly, seed papers can also be directly added by title or DOI.

a. Litmaps follows an iterative process and creates visualizations for found papers.

b. It allows importing of papers using BibTex format which can be exported from most reference managers like Zotero, EndNote, Mendeley. In addition, it allows paper imports from an ORCID profile.

c. Keywords search method is used to find Litmaps indexed papers.

d. Additionally, it allows setting up email updates of “emergent literature”.

e. Its unique feature that allows overlay of different maps helps to look for overlaps of papers.

f. Lastly, its explore function allows finding related papers to add to the map.

4. Citation-based Sites

a. CoCites is a citation-based method for researching scientific literature.

b. Citation Gecko is a tool for visualizing links between articles.

c. VOSviewer is a software tool for creating and visualizing bibliometric networks. These networks are for example journals, may include researchers or individual publications, which can be generated based on citation, bibliographic matching , co-citation, or co-authorship relationships. VOSviewer also offers text mining functionality that can be used to create and visualize networks of important terms extracted from a scientific literature.

5. Citation Context Tools

a. Scite allow users to see how a publication has been cited by providing the context of the citation and a classification describing whether it provides supporting or contrasting evidence for the cited claim.

b. Semantic Scholar is a freely available, AI-powered research tool for scientific literature.

Have you ever mapped your literature? Did you use any of these tools before? Lastly, what are the strategies and methods you use for literature mapping ? Let us know how this article helped you in creating a hassle-free and comprehensive literature map.

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Literature Mapping in Scientific Research: A Comprehensive Review

Accelerate scientific research with Literature Mapping: a comprehensive tool for knowledge discovery and data-driven insights.

Literature mapping is a process that involves analyzing and visualizing the scientific literature on a particular topic to identify research gaps, improve collaboration, and inform decision-making.

In this article, we list five benefits of literature mapping for scientists and researchers and show you types and tools to save your time and help you find better evidence.

What is Literature Mapping?

Literature mapping is a process that involves analyzing and visualizing the scientific literature on a particular topic. It includes systematically searching, collecting, and reviewing relevant studies, articles, and books published in a specific field or discipline.

The purpose of literature mapping is to provide a comprehensive overview of the current state of knowledge on a topic, identify gaps in the literature, and potential areas for future research. It can be useful for those who seek to conduct a systematic review, develop a research proposal, or explore new research areas.

Benefits of Literature Mapping

Here are five benefits of literature mapping for scientists and researchers:

• Identify research gaps : Literature mapping helps researchers to identify gaps in the existing research and to determine areas that require further investigation.
• Visualize the research landscape : By creating visualizations of the scientific literature, researchers can see the relationships between different research topics.
• Save time : Literature mapping can help researchers save time by providing an overview of the literature on a particular topic, including relevant studies and duplicated work.
• Improve collaboration : Literature mapping can help researchers to collaborate more effectively by providing a shared understanding of the research landscape. This improves communication, and facilitates the workflow between different disciplines.
• Inform decision-making : Literature mapping can help researchers to make assertive decisions. This can be especially useful for policymakers and other decision-makers who need to make decisions based on scientific evidence.

Types of Literature Mapping

Feature mapping.

Feature mapping is a technique used primarily in data analysis and machine learning to identify patterns and relationships between features of a dataset. It involves analyzing the data and plotting the relationships between different features of the dataset on a map or chart.

Some of the main features include:

• Identification of relationships : Feature mapping can help identify the relationships between different features or variables in a dataset. This can allow for better modeling and prediction of outcomes.
• Pattern recognition : By plotting the relationships between features of a dataset, feature mapping can help identify patterns and anomalies that may not be immediately apparent in the raw data.
• Visualization : Feature mapping often involves creating visual representations of the relationships between features of a dataset. This can help make the data easier to understand and interpret.
• Dimension reduction : When dealing with large datasets with many features, feature mapping can help reduce the dimensionality of the data. This can help simplify the data and make it easier to analyze.
• Data clustering : Feature mapping can also help identify groups or clusters of data points that share similar features. This can allow for more targeted analysis and modeling of specific groups within the dataset.
• Feature selection : Feature mapping can aid in the selection of the most important features from a dataset. By identifying the relationships between features, researchers can determine which features are most relevant to the outcomes they are trying to predict.

Topic Tree Mapping

Topic tree mapping is a technique used to visualize and organize the relationships between different topics or themes within a larger subject area. It involves creating a hierarchical structure of topics, with more general topics at the top and more specific subtopics branching out below.

Content Mapping

Content mapping is the process of creating a visual representation or map of the content of a document, website, or other information source. It involves breaking down the content into its constituent parts, organizing it according to a logical structure, and presenting it in a user-friendly and easily accessible way.

Taxonomic Mapping

Taxonomic mapping is the process of assigning different taxonomic categories to specific objects or organisms based on their characteristics, traits, and other distinguishing features. This mapping enables the organization and identification of different species and helps researchers and scientists to conduct various studies and experiments related to their classification, evolution, and diversity.

Concept Mapping

Concept Mapping is a visual representation of the relationships between concepts and ideas in a particular field. It involves identifying key concepts, and organizing them into a hierarchical structure. It can help to identify gaps in knowledge and aid in the development of new theories.

Rhetorical Mapping

Rhetorical mapping is a process used in communication studies and critical discourse analysis to analyze the structure and content of discourse. It involves creating a visual representation or diagram of a text or speech that identifies its various components, such as arguments, claims, evidence, and rhetorical strategies used to persuade the audience. Rhetorical mapping allows researchers to understand how the speaker or writer uses language and persuasion techniques to influence the audience’s beliefs and attitudes.

Citation Mapping

Citation Mapping involves tracing the citation history of a particular article, and identifying the articles that have cited it. This can help to identify the impact of the article on the field, and identify related research.

Tools for Literature Mapping

• Citation Gecko : Citation Gecko is a web-based tool that allows users to quickly and easily search for and download citation data from various academic databases. It streamlines and simplifies the process of finding and organizing citations for research projects.
• Inciteful : Inciteful is a literature-mapping tool that visualizes citation networks and identifies key authors and articles within a particular field of research. It can be used to explore the literature on a specific topic, as well as to identify gaps in current research.
• OpenKnowledge : OpenKnowledge is an online platform for sharing and discovering research papers and other scholarly materials. It enables users to search for and download documents, as well as to connect with other researchers who are working in the same field.
• ConnectedPapers : ConnectedPapers is a search engine that allows users to explore citation networks and discover the most influential papers and authors in a particular field. It uses citation information to uncover relationships between different papers and to suggest potentially relevant articles to read.
• LitMaps : LitMaps is a mapping tool that allows users to explore the relationships between different articles and concepts within a particular field of study. It visualizes the connections between different scholarly articles and helps users to develop a deeper understanding of the underlying themes and concepts within a particular field.
• Local Citation Network : Local Citation Network is a tool for mapping the relationships between different articles and authors within a particular geographic area. It allows users to explore the research in progress in a particular region and to identify potential collaborators and sources of funding.
• CoCites : CoCites is a literature-mapping tool that identifies the most frequently cited articles and authors within a particular field. It allows users to explore the relationships between different papers and to identify key areas of research.
• VOSviewer : VOSviewer is a tool for visualizing citation networks and identifying key authors, papers, and concepts within a particular field of research. It allows users to explore the relationships between different papers and to identify areas of overlap and potential collaboration.
• ResearchRabbit : ResearchRabbit is a web-based research tool that allows users to search for and collect scholarly articles and other research materials. It streamlines the research process by helping users to find relevant articles and to organize and annotate their findings.

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Content tags

• Methodology
• Open access
• Published: 15 March 2023

Mapping reviews, scoping reviews, and evidence and gap maps (EGMs): the same but different— the “Big Picture” review family

• Fiona Campbell   ORCID: orcid.org/0000-0002-4141-8863 1 ,
• Andrea C. Tricco 2 ,
• Zachary Munn 3 ,
• Danielle Pollock 3 ,
• Ashrita Saran 4 ,
• Anthea Sutton 5 ,
• Howard White 6 &
• Hanan Khalil 7  

Systematic Reviews volume  12 , Article number:  45 ( 2023 ) Cite this article

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A Correction to this article was published on 01 April 2023

This article has been updated

Scoping reviews, mapping reviews, and evidence and gap maps are evidence synthesis methodologies that address broad research questions, aiming to describe a bigger picture rather than address a specific question about intervention effectiveness. They are being increasingly used to support a range of purposes including guiding research priorities and decision making. There is however a confusing array of terminology used to describe these different approaches. In this commentary, we aim to describe where there are differences in terminology and where this equates to differences in meaning. We demonstrate the different theoretical routes that underpin these differences. We suggest ways in which the approaches of scoping and mapping reviews may differ in order to guide consistency in reporting and method. We propose that mapping and scoping reviews and evidence and gap maps have similarities that unite them as a group but also have unique differences. Understanding these similarities and differences is important for informing the development of methods used to undertake and report these types of evidence synthesis.

Peer Review reports

Introduction

Evidence synthesis(defined broadly as the rigorous collation, evaluation and analysis of literature, studies, and reports) is increasingly viewed as critical to inform decision making in policy and practice. Over the past three decades, as various methods of evidence synthesis have emerged and evolved, the systems and labels used to categorize different review types have proliferated. A recent catalog of evidence synthesis approaches and terms identified 48 distinct review types [ 1 ]. Moher et al. (2015) [ 2 ], describes them as a “family” of evidence synthesis products that have arisen in response to policymakers and other stakeholders needs for diverse forms of information. This growth reflects the increased value placed on evidence synthesis to inform decision making, and we now see evidence synthesis used to address a broader range of research questions beyond effectiveness, along with tailored approaches (in terms of methods and products) to evidence synthesis as appropriate for different research needs, purposes, situations, and audiences [ 3 ].

Examples of approaches that are increasingly seen in the published literature are scoping reviews, mapping reviews, and evidence and gap maps (EGMs). Scoping reviews, mapping reviews, and EGMs are relatively new approaches that rarely appeared before 2009 [ 4 , 5 ]. Scoping reviews, evidence maps, and evidence and gap maps have been grouped together as “Big Picture” approaches due to their shared purpose and approaches. These Big Picture reviews can be contrasted with systematic reviews (addressing interventions, diagnostic test accuracy, prognosis, etc.) as they have a broader scope as compared to the (normally) narrower scope of classic systematic reviews. There have been consistent yearly increases in the publication of scoping, mapping, and evidence and gap maps [ 6 ]. Despite this, there remains confusion as to their application, meaning, and whether differences exist between them. This commentary aims to clarify these approaches, identify any differences between them, and provide recommendations for reviewers.

Terminology matters

This growing and evolving family of evidence synthesis types presents some challenges [ 7 ].

Firstly, there is the challenge of choosing the correct approach, particularly when terms are used inconsistently in the literature. The selection of an appropriate review approach will ensure the correct methods are employed using the appropriate standards for both its conduct and reporting. Indexing and wider dissemination can be challenging for researchers when there is ambiguity in terms [ 8 , 9 ].

Scoping reviews and mapping reviews—how are they used in the literature

Scoping reviews, mapping reviews, and evidence maps are terms that are not used consistently in the literature, with different terms used to describe similar approaches and review objectives. The same term is also used to describe different approaches and review objectives. Within the published literature, the terms scoping reviews and mapping reviews appear to be used in three different ways. Firstly, the terms “mapping” and “scoping” reviews are used interchangeably, referring to the same type of review methodology [ 5 , 6 , 10 ]. This approach is also one that is used in the PRISMA Extension for Scoping Reviews (PRISMA-ScR) [ 11 ], providing guidance to inform reporting standards [ 12 ]. This may therefore have been influential in increasing the use of the term scoping review over the use of the term mapping review. Examination of published reviews does not reveal differences in method between these approaches (Campbell et al., 2022 publication in press).

Secondly, we see the terms used as complementary to the other. Some definitions tend to use the terms in a way which suggest that mapping is a specific approach to scoping—or vice versa. For example, “scoping reviews can usefully map the evidence in a number of ways” [ 13 ] and “scoping reviews are a way of mapping the key concepts” [ 14 ]. Lukersmith et al. (2016) [ 15 ] and Fernadez-Sotos et al. (2019) [ 16 ] suggest that the term map is a descriptive term used to describe one of the purposes of the scoping review. A mapping review may also scope the literature. It has also been suggested that when the term mapping is included in the description of the method that the review will incorporate a geographical mapping exercise or charting of the data in a tabular or any other visual format that can plot or portray the data.

Finally, we see scoping and mapping used to describe different types of evidence synthesis, and a distinction is made between mapping and scoping reviews [ 1 , 17 ]. These authors suggest that scoping reviews are “preliminary assessment of potential size and scope of available research literature which aims to identify nature and extent of research evidence (usually including ongoing research)”. It also is a term that has emerged within the systematic review field to describe the preliminary work undertaken with information specialists in planning the review, by getting a sense of the size of the literature, to identify key terms and theories and potentially clinical experts [ 18 ]. Within these definitions, mapping reviews are distinguished from a scoping review because the subsequent outcome may involve either further review work or primary research and this outcome is not known beforehand. For the purpose of this paper, we will refer to these as a scoping exercise instead of a formal scoping review methodology. Scoping exercises within this definition would not usually be regarded as a final output in their own right, primarily because of limitations in their rigor mean that they hold the potential for bias.

Gough et al. (2012) [ 19 ] suggest that the term scoping review often describes a more rapid, and so usually non-systematic, approach to describing the nature of the literature on a topic area, sometimes as part of planning for a systematic review compared with a standard systematic review. It is also important to note that there are published rapid scoping reviews where streamlined methods are used, but transparency and rigor are maintained to produce quicker results for decision-making purposes. Examples of these types of rapid scoping reviews include rapid responses to policy questions during the COVID-19 pandemic [ 20 , 21 ].

An alternative view of the difference comes from Bragge et al. (2011) [ 22 ] who suggests that a scoping review is distinguished from mapping by the inclusion of research results in the description of relevant evidence, whereas maps simply describe what is there without collating and summarizing the results of the studies.

So, even where the types of products are seen as different, there is not a consistent approach in this difference. Nevertheless, understanding why they are considered different is important in considering what is lost, in terms of an apt descriptor, if the terms are amalgamated and used interchangeably.

Historical origins

One reason that the terms scoping and mapping have emerged to describe two similar methodological approaches addressing broad types of research questions lies in the academic traditions from which they derive and the epistemological foundations upon which these are built. Scoping reviews and scoping review methodological guidance [ 12 ] tends to cite the framework defined by Arksey and O’Malley (2005) [ 23 ] and later enhancements by Levac et al. (2010) [ 24 ]. These approaches have their roots in sociological sciences. In contrast, the term evidence mapping was first used by Katz et al. (2003) [ 25 ] and has roots in the natural sciences. This was the term adopted by the EPPI Center in an early publication of a mapping review and is the term used by the Center for Environmental Evidence for the environmental sciences. The approach to evidence mapping accompanied by a visual evidence and gap map has been developed by several agencies (see Saran and White, 2018) [ 26 ], most notably by the International Initiative for Impact Evaluation (3ie) [ 27 ] in the field of international development and subsequently adopted and adapted to a wider a range of sectors through the Campbell Collaboration. These include, for example, transport [ 28 ], youth violence, disability (Saran et al. [ 29 ]), employment (Campbell et al. [ 30 ]), and health and elder abuse [ 31 ] (Table 1 ).

Suggested approaches for distinguishing between mapping reviews and mapping reviews with EGMs and scoping reviews

The emergence of two terms (scoping and mapping) to describe approaches that have much in common in terms of their objectives and methods suggests that the terms used will be shaped more by the academic background of the researcher than by inherent differences in the approaches.

Currently, as we have shown, there are many instances where “mapping and scoping” are used interchangeably. We argue, in this paper, that while there is considerable overlap between these approaches, there is value in creating a distinction between scoping reviews, mapping reviews, and evidence gap maps. They also could be considered complementary, and a review may have elements of both “mapping” and “scoping.” Each approach, within this family of “broad approach and exploratory reviews” however has a shared objective which is to overview a wider research/topic area, rather than to address a tightly focused question. The methods thereafter diverge in part to address the nature of the research question, the research objectives, the topic area, the depth required for the data extraction, and the expertise of the review team.

We propose that a useful distinction is to see mapping, scoping, and EGMs sitting within the same family of types addressing broad questions but sitting on a spectrum in some of their underpinning epistemologies, concepts, and hence objectives (Fig. 1 ).

This is illustrated in the figure below:

The Big Picture review family (commonalities and differences in approaches)

Scoping review

These review types have been variously defined and described in the literature as described above. To address the confusion in this field, a recent formal definition of scoping reviews has been proposed, describing scoping reviews as follows:

It is a type of evidence synthesis that aims to systematically identify and map the breadth of evidence available on a particular topic, field, concept, or issue, often irrespective of source (i.e., primary research, reviews, non-empirical evidence) within or across particular contexts. Scoping reviews can clarify key concepts/definitions in the literature and identify key characteristics or factors related to a concept, including those related to methodological research [ 32 ].

They can be more exploratory than mapping reviews and EGMs, not requiring an a priori set of codes in order to describe data and may draw upon a range of sources of information (i.e., primary research, reviews, non-empirical evidence) within or across particular contexts. The approach can be more iterative, inductive, or deductive [ 32 ]. The nature of the “cataloging” and coding may be in response to what is found within the literature or using pre-defined categorization codes. Scoping reviews can also be used to identify concepts and clarify terms in the literature. In contrast to a mapping review where the process of coding is predefined. Within a scoping review, the data extracted may be textual and descriptive, allowing for example an analysis of concepts and categories using simple content analysis. It may include both predefined coding and also exploration of themes (for example, Kelly-Blake et al. 2018 [ 33 ]). In contrast, along a continuum, mapping reviews will address broader questions, use predefined coding, and adopt less in-depth data extraction.

Mapping review

Mapping reviews are also a transparent, rigorous, and systematic approach to identifying, describing, and cataloging evidence and evidence gaps in a broader topic area. They are to collate, describe, and catalog the available evidence relating to the question of interest [ 18 ]. They aim to answer the question “what do we know about a topic,” or “what and where research exists on a particular area.” A mapping review typically extracts only descriptive information about the studies and applies predefined codes (high level data). In this sense, they may be informed by an “aggregative” logic. A mapping review may or may not be accompanied by an EGM but provides visual summaries in the form of tables and graphs within the text [ 36 ]. These types of reviews may well have broader focus than a scoping review, with more limited data extracted from the included papers.

Evidence and gap maps

Evidence and gap maps are described as “a systematic presentation of all relevant evidence of a specified kind for a particular sector, sub-sector, or geography”. Evidence and gap maps (EGMs) are a systematic evidence synthesis product which displays the available evidence relevant to a specific research question. EGMs consist of primary dimensions or framework (rows and columns) and secondary dimensions or filters, enabling exploration of the map using a particular focus (e.g., looking at particular populations or study designs). It creates a visual, web-based, and interactive output [ 34 ].

This type of evidence synthesis generally uses a deductive approach with a pre-specified framework to classify the data and identify gaps in the literature. However, if no suitable framework is available, then the research team can develop their own by drawing on the range of resources, such as strategy documents, policy document, and funder reports. This is one of the major differences between mapping with an EGM review and scoping reviews (for the latter, an inductive or deductive approach may be used to identify relevant data elements so the framework for classification of the data and identification of gaps does not need to be pre-specified). Evidence gap maps may accompany a mapping review as a visual representation of the included studies or can stand independently from an accompanying mapping review.

All three of these approaches are characterized by seeking to address a broader topic area rather than a specific intervention or exposure. They are an appropriate tool if the research question is one in which multiple dimensions need to be considered, for example, multiple interventions, outcomes, or types of evidence. They do not aim to synthesize data but rather describe, categorize, and catalog findings. They aim to do so by applying defined methods to ensure transparency and rigor in the process of identifying, screening, data extraction, and interpreting findings. By addressing a broad topic area these approaches support the following purposes [ 3 ]:

Knowledge generation to support broad research questions and objectives such as the following:

What types of evidence are available in a given field?

How are concepts or definitions used within the literature?

How and where research is conducted on a certain topic?

The type of broad research question will inform the choice of approach. Scoping reviews are more likely to address open questions and the concepts may be emergent such “how is a key term used within the literature,” in contrast a mapping review may address more closed questions such as “how often the key term is used within the literature and within which population groups.” An evidence gap map will similarly address a closed question, for example, “is the term used in the following types of population group: children, adolescents, older people, and people with chronic conditions.”

Scoping reviews can provide an approach that allows exploration and clarification of key concepts and definitions within the literature, as well as how research is undertaken. As this approach does not require predefined categories, it allows for more descriptive data extraction. Often the question will be narrower than in a mapping review, allowing a greater depth of exploration of the included studies.

These approaches enable a better understanding is gained of phenomena by seeing it within a wider context. Olson et al. 2021 [ 37 ] uses the allegory of the blind monks who examine the elephant, where close inspection of one part of the whole means that meaning is lost. A complete picture is needed to really understand what the elephant is. It is clear, when seeking to operationalize what is meant by a “broad” topic area that perspective matters. For a cell biologist, the cell nucleus might be a broad topic, which a single country might be too narrow a perspective for the geographer. Understanding this unique feature of “Big Picture” reviews is perhaps easier when seen in contrast to the approach used in a systematic review examining the effectiveness of a single intervention. A Big Picture review question will look at multiple interventions or exposures and multiple outcomes or effects, seeking not to synthesize but to describe (Table 2 ).

To provide a foundation for guiding future research priorities and decisions by identifying available evidence and gaps in research

Mapping reviews and EGMs incorporate a framework that is generated during development of the protocol—it is this framework which guides the development of the data extraction tool or coding tool. This framework becomes the “map” against which existing evidence is plotted.

Identifying research gaps is often a stated part of all types of research; indeed, implications for “research and practice” are an expected part of all health and social care-related research. Identifying research gaps is often a primary purpose of scoping, mapping, and mapping reviews with EGMs more than other types of review design. In particular, mapping reviews with or without evidence gap maps address this purpose with a transparency and rigor that is unique.

Evidence and gap maps aim to enable evidence to be located, both by showing what is there but also in demonstrating knowledge gaps. In order to identify knowledge gaps, an EGM begins by developing the framework against which the evidence is plotted. The development of the framework adheres to the following principles. Firstly, it may be constructed using an existing, widely accepted international typology for either interventions, exposures, or outcomes. Secondly, if no suitable framework is available then the research team may draw on a range of resources including consultation with stakeholders and relevant published theories to ensure the comprehensiveness of the framework. Without such a structure, the gaps are not identified in a systematic way, but rather inferred and chosen by the review authors (no doubt well informed) but nevertheless influenced by their own perspectives and bias. This may be particularly apparent where a review is undertaken to pave the way for further primary research by the same team. Review teams could be strongly invested in identifying their own planned research as the “research gap.”

Evidence gap maps are a systematic approach to identifying the evidence and in particular—its gaps. No other review methodology has developed a systematic approach to identifying gaps in the evidence with this level of rigor and transparency. A limitation of the approach is that it only charts what is known and does not allow a more exploratory approach that may be employed in a scoping review.

Mapping and mapping reviews with EGMs aim to describe the state of evidence for a question or topic. The review questions may therefore be open framed and broad. However, the question can be close framed and narrow. Key elements of the question can be formulated by a framework such as PO (population, outcome). For an EGM, the objectives are formalized in the framework which defines the scope of the map [ 34 ].

To inform policy decisions, where an overview of an area may be more helpful than specific questions about specific types of interventions

Mapping (with or without an EGM) and scoping reviews often have pertinence for policy makers as they are able to cover the breadth of science often needed for policy-based questions; however, it needs to be remembered that the mapping approaches do not synthesize the findings and not include quality or risk of bias appraisal. These factors may limit their value to support some types of policy decisions. However, a mapping review with an accompanying EGM can take users to the research papers and facilitate the ready location of relevant evidence. An EGM can take users to the research papers and facilitate the ready location of relevant evidence. One example has been the use of a country evaluation map used by the Office of the Prime Minister of Uganda to identify studies to inform policy work [ 38 ]. Similarly, scoping reviews can inform policy and further research through identifying the available literature pertaining to a particular topic, along with clarifying key concepts and definitions.

As a stepping stone to building the evidence architecture

Evidence mapping and EGMs may be used as a first step towards the generation of evidence-based decision-making products, such as guidance, checklists, and online decision-making tools [ 39 ]. Maps will identify the (i) existing reviews which are suitable to use a basis for guidance, etc., (ii) where there are clusters of primary studies but no review so reviews may be commissioned in priority areas to inform guidance, etc., and (iii) important policy areas in which evidence is missing. To serve this purpose, the map should be regularly updated (maintained).

While the literature is inconsistent in its definitions of these types of reviews, and different reviews use different terminology to describe methods that appear very similar, many of these differences reflect the different research traditions and adoption of terms within organizations undertaking these types of syntheses. We argue that there is value in having these distinct terms to describe the different approaches within this family of broad review types. Scoping reviews allow a more inductive, in-depth approach with, including fewer included studies and a greater level of data extraction compared with mapping reviews. Mapping reviews and evidence gap maps address more closed questions, with pre-specified items defined and code-able when contrasted with scoping reviews. Evidence gap maps offer a visual, interactive output for users to locate evidence. The predefined framework offers a rigor to locating gaps in the existing literature and displaying these differences which is unique to these approaches.

This proposed new “Big Picture” review family within evidence synthesis contributes to the wide array of possible approaches to synthesizing literature. This multitude of choice presents challenges in selecting the correct evidence synthesis methodology. One tool that has been developed to assist in the appropriate selection of a method is the “right review” tool ( https://whatreviewisrightforyou.knowledgetranslation.net/ ). The tool enables researchers to answer a series of simple questions regarding the type of research questions they are undertaking for their review and selects an appropriate type of review based on their answers to the questions. The tool currently includes 41 different types of evidence synthesis methods [ 40 ].

A recent development has been changes made to the SR Toobox ( http://systematicreviewtools.com/index.php ) to include searching for tools to support different review types, as well as for different stages of the review. The Big Picture review family is increasingly well supported by methodological guidance and automation tools to support the process of undertaking high quality systematic reviews.

The existing guidance for the conduct and reporting of scoping reviews also applies to mapping reviews (JBI). Further development is needed in the methods of preparing a coding framework, particularly when the mapping review will also include the development of an interactive EGM. Current models of good practice exist; however, current guidance and reporting standards are limited.

This commentary details and describes some of the broad approaches within the evidence synthesis toolkit, specifically scoping reviews, mapping reviews, and EGMs. We have identified similarities and differences, based on our expert experience, between these reviews. We propose grouping them as a family of evidence synthesis to address broad research question and objectives. In so doing, we advocate that adherence to the principles of rigor and transparency that give users of evidence synthesis confidence in the reliability of the results of the review.

Change history

01 april 2023.

A Correction to this paper has been published: https://doi.org/10.1186/s13643-023-02224-2

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Acknowledgements

Andrea Tricco is funded by the Tier 2 Canada Research Chair in Knowledge Synthesis.

Zachary Munn is funded by an NHMRC Investigator grant APP1195676.

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Fiona Campbell

Knowledge Translation Program of the Li Ka Shing Knowledge Institute, St. Michael’s Hospital, University of Toronto in the Dalla Lana School of Public Health & Institute of Health Policy, Management, and Evaluation, Toronto, Canada

Andrea C. Tricco

JBI, Faculty of Health and Medical Sciences, University of Adelaide, Adelaide, Australia

Zachary Munn & Danielle Pollock

International Development Coordinating Group, Campbell Collaboration, Oslo, Norway

Ashrita Saran

ScHARR, University of Sheffield, Sheffield, United Kingdom

Anthea Sutton

Evaluation and Evidence Synthesis, Global Development Network, New Delhi, India

Howard White

School of Psychology and Public Health, Department of Public Health, La Trobe University, Melbourne, Australia

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FC and HW conceived the idea for the paper, and FC initiated the initial draft. HK, AT, HW, ZM, AS, and AS contributed to the comments and edits of subsequent drafts of the paper. HK and FC are co-chairs in the NAVIGATOR method group and took a lead in the preparation of this work. The final manuscript has been read, edited, and agreed by all the contributing authors.

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The original online version of this article was revised: The authors identified an error in the author name of Zachary Munn and Danielle Pollock and affiliation of Fiona Campbell. The incorrect author names are: Zacchary Munn, Dannielle Pollock corrected to Zachary Munn, Danielle Pollock and affiliation 2 has been removed from author Fiona Campbell.

Useful resources: https://guides.temple.edu/c.php?g=78618&p=4156607 and https://wiki.joannabriggs.org/display/MANUAL/11.2+Development+of+a+scoping+review+protocol .

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Campbell, F., Tricco, A.C., Munn, Z. et al. Mapping reviews, scoping reviews, and evidence and gap maps (EGMs): the same but different— the “Big Picture” review family. Syst Rev 12 , 45 (2023). https://doi.org/10.1186/s13643-023-02178-5

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Literature Mapping

• Manual Mapping
• Connected Papers
• Open Knowledge Maps
• Research Rabbit

What is Literature Mapping?

Literature mapping is a way of discovering scholarly articles by exploring connections between publications.

Similar articles are often linked by citations, authors, funders, keywords, and other metadata. These connections can be explored manually in a database such as Scopus or by the use of free browser-based tools such as Connected Papers , L itMaps , and Open Knowledge Maps . 

The following is an introduction to these four methods. 

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Here's how to use Litmaps to find articles, stay organized and accomplish your literature review more efficiently.

Whether you're starting on your first literature review, or your hundredth, you can streamline your search and management of literature by using Litmaps. By finding and suggesting literature visually, Litmaps lets you:

See how literature connects

Find relevant articles

Not miss important papers

Get updated on changing literature

Stay organized

In this article, we'll cover all you need to know about accomplishing your literature review with Litmaps.

What's a literature review?

A literature review is a summary of the existing knowledge and research on a particular subject. By identifying gaps in the literature, it provides a foundation for future research. As such, it’s a crucial first step in any research project.

A literature review serves several purposes:

identifies knowledge gaps

evaluates the quality of existing research

provides a foundation for newly presented research

Looking at existing examples of literature reviews is beneficial to get a clear understanding of what they entail. Find examples of a literature review by using an academic search engine (e.g. Google Scholar). As a starting point, search for your keyword or topic along with the term "literature review".

Example Literature Review, with Litmaps

Now, we'll walk through all the steps involved in how to do a literature review. Keep in mind, a literature review isn't a straight line from the first to last step. You'll loop over some of these steps, repeating them iteratively until you're satisfied. However, these steps are the basic structure you'll need to successfully complete a literature review.

Let's get started!

Define your research question or topic

First, identify your research question or topic, making it as narrow as possible.

In our literature review example, we're examining the effects of urbanization on the migration of birds.

Search for relevant literature

Now, we get into the thick of the literature review by diving into the existing scientific publications on our subject.

There are many ways to search for literature, and it can be overwhelming when considering the thousands of resources and databases available. In this example, we'll follow a simple but comprehensive strategy with 3 steps:

Find one or more "starting articles"

Search for related literature using Litmaps

Expand and repeat until satisfied

Repeat these steps until you are satisfied with the coverage of sources you have. You'll know you've covered everything once you don't find any more relevant articles on your topic.

💡 Use the techniques in the next step, "Evaluate the sources" to decide if an article is relevant or not to your work.

Find starting articles

To get started, look for just one paper on your topic .

In our example, we start by searching for our topic in Google Scholar and selecting the most relevant article. Here, we find "Bird Migration Advances More Strongly in Urban Environments".

Tip: Look for highly-cited articles. In this example, our starting paper has been cited 174 times. That will make it easier to find more related literature in the next step.

Find related literature using Litmaps

Next, we'll find additional literature on our topic, by using our article from the last step as a starting point.

Litmaps can find relevant literature from a single article by using the citation network. By looking at how this article connects to the rest of the scientific literature (through citations and references), Litmaps finds relevant and important articles on your topic.

Here's how to find related literature to your initial article:

Go to the Litmaps app and set up a free account

Click the search bar at the top left.

Type in the name or DOI of your starting article and hit enter to see the results. Select your article and click "Explore Related Articles".

Examine your article's Litmap and the suggested articles. The Litmap shows the top connected papers based on your article's citations and references.

Expand and repeat your search

Although your initial Litmap will give you a good idea of the scientific literature related to your input article, it's only a small part of the bigger picture.

To dive deeper into your topic, click "More like this" for articles you find relevant. After you've done this for a few papers, you can hit "Update Results". Litmaps will use these articles as inputs to the search algorithm in order to find more relevant literature.

Just like before, you can save articles that seem important by Tagging them. It's easy to forget or lose track of work, so saving early and often is a good practice.

Evaluate the sources

As you search for articles, you'll need to decide if they are important or not for your topic.

For each article, identify its relevance, quality and importance for your topic. The good news is you don't need to read an entire article to figure this out. Before even opening up the article, you can check the following to evaluate its importance for you: ​

🔍 1️⃣ Date of publication → How recent is the paper? Newer papers have less citations because they simply haven't been around long enough to be cited by even newer research.​

🔍 2️⃣ Citation count → This is the number of other papers that have cited this one in their work. Has it been cited heavily since publication, or overlooked by the community?

🔍 3️⃣ Journal → Do you recognize it? Is it peer-reviewed? Impactful? Most papers on Litmaps are peer-reviewed, but some may be pre-prints.

🔍 4️⃣ Authors → Do you recognize the authors? Learn these names and you'll start to recognize the key contributors in your field.

🔍 5️⃣ Well-written abstract → Can you understand the gist from the abstract? If not, the paper itself may be a challenge to read. ​ ​

Read and analyze the sources

Now that you've collected some articles on your topic, and reviewed their metadata to ensure their relevance, you're ready to start reading!

Take notes on the key findings, methodologies, and theoretical frameworks used in the articles you read.

Use a research-friendly note-taking software, like Obsidian, that provide tagging mechanisms to keep track of key concepts and how they connect. The more you link your notes to one another, the better you can learn and form new ideas .

Organize the literature

As you read and take notes on your articles, make sure to keep your sources organized. You can organize your literature according to themes, subtopics, or categories, whatever helps you to later outline the layout of your literature review.

Write the literature review

You've collected dozens, or perhaps hundreds of sources. You've reviewed each one, taken notes, and tried to stay organized throughout the process. Now, you're well-equipped to start writing up your literature review.

In this step, you'll summarize and synthesize the findings from all the sources you've analyzed. Start with an introduction that defines the research question, followed by the themes, subtopics, or categories identified. After that, provide a discussion or conclusion that addresses any gaps in the literature to motivate future research. Lastly, edit and revise your review to ensure it is well-structured, clear, and concise.

Depending on your field or project, you may have different objectives for your literature review. You could be doing a literature review to learn a new field, or to write a systematic review, a meta-analysis, an umbrella review, or another kind of review article. Make sure to review the requirements, expectations and specific best practices for your kind of review.

This review on the Urban effects on native avifauna neatly summarizes a range of articles in a table, with corresponding notes and references for each one. ​

Cite and reference the sources

The final the step to your literature review is to make sure you've accurately referenced all the sources you used in the literature review. Consider any referencing style requirements of the institution, journal or venue you're submitting to. APA is the most common. However, you may need to familiarize yourself with other citation styles such as MLA, Chicago, or MHRA depending on your venue. See the image below for a literature review example APA of references.

To create a bibliography from the articles you've collected on Litmaps, simply:

Export articles from Litmaps

Import articles into a reference manager

Save them as the necessary file-type. For example, either directly as a bibliography ( Zotero example ), or as a BibTeX that will be formatted in you writing software ( Overleaf example ).

A successful literature review tells a brief story about the topic at hand and leaves the reader satisfied with the state of the topic, field or question up to this point in time. Most importantly, a high-quality literature review addresses any gaps in the field and frame any newly presented research to follow.

To create a high quality literature review, it's important to understand the key steps required and look at the many literature review examples available.

We hope this article provided all you to need to know to get started on your literature review - good luck!

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Writing an effective literature review

Lorelei lingard.

Schulich School of Medicine & Dentistry, Health Sciences Addition, Western University, London, Ontario Canada

In the Writer’s Craft section we offer simple tips to improve your writing in one of three areas: Energy, Clarity and Persuasiveness. Each entry focuses on a key writing feature or strategy, illustrates how it commonly goes wrong, teaches the grammatical underpinnings necessary to understand it and offers suggestions to wield it effectively. We encourage readers to share comments on or suggestions for this section on Twitter, using the hashtag: #how’syourwriting?

This Writer’s Craft instalment is the first in a two-part series that offers strategies for effectively presenting the literature review section of a research manuscript. This piece alerts writers to the importance of not only summarizing what is known but also identifying precisely what is not, in order to explicitly signal the relevance of their research. In this instalment, I will introduce readers to the mapping the gap metaphor, the knowledge claims heuristic, and the need to characterize the gap.

Mapping the gap

The purpose of the literature review section of a manuscript is not to report what is known about your topic. The purpose is to identify what remains unknown— what academic writing scholar Janet Giltrow has called the ‘knowledge deficit’ — thus establishing the need for your research study [ 1 ]. In an earlier Writer’s Craft instalment, the Problem-Gap-Hook heuristic was introduced as a way of opening your paper with a clear statement of the problem that your work grapples with, the gap in our current knowledge about that problem, and the reason the gap matters [ 2 ]. This article explains how to use the literature review section of your paper to build and characterize the Gap claim in your Problem-Gap-Hook. The metaphor of ‘mapping the gap’ is a way of thinking about how to select and arrange your review of the existing literature so that readers can recognize why your research needed to be done, and why its results constitute a meaningful advance on what was already known about the topic.

Many writers have learned that the literature review should describe what is known. The trouble with this approach is that it can produce a laundry list of facts-in-the-world that does not persuade the reader that the current study is a necessary next step. Instead, think of your literature review as painting in a map of your research domain: as you review existing knowledge, you are painting in sections of the map, but your goal is not to end with the whole map fully painted. That would mean there is nothing more we need to know about the topic, and that leaves no room for your research. What you want to end up with is a map in which painted sections surround and emphasize a white space, a gap in what is known that matters. Conceptualizing your literature review this way helps to ensure that it achieves its dual goal: of presenting what is known and pointing out what is not—the latter of these goals is necessary for your literature review to establish the necessity and importance of the research you are about to describe in the methods section which will immediately follow the literature review.

To a novice researcher or graduate student, this may seem counterintuitive. Hopefully you have invested significant time in reading the existing literature, and you are understandably keen to demonstrate that you’ve read everything ever published about your topic! Be careful, though, not to use the literature review section to regurgitate all of your reading in manuscript form. For one thing, it creates a laundry list of facts that makes for horrible reading. But there are three other reasons for avoiding this approach. First, you don’t have the space. In published medical education research papers, the literature review is quite short, ranging from a few paragraphs to a few pages, so you can’t summarize everything you’ve read. Second, you’re preaching to the converted. If you approach your paper as a contribution to an ongoing scholarly conversation,[ 2 ] then your literature review should summarize just the aspects of that conversation that are required to situate your conversational turn as informed and relevant. Third, the key to relevance is to point to a gap in what is known. To do so, you summarize what is known for the express purpose of identifying what is not known . Seen this way, the literature review should exert a gravitational pull on the reader, leading them inexorably to the white space on the map of knowledge you’ve painted for them. That white space is the space that your research fills.

Knowledge claims

To help writers move beyond the laundry list, the notion of ‘knowledge claims’ can be useful. A knowledge claim is a way of presenting the growing understanding of the community of researchers who have been exploring your topic. These are not disembodied facts, but rather incremental insights that some in the field may agree with and some may not, depending on their different methodological and disciplinary approaches to the topic. Treating the literature review as a story of the knowledge claims being made by researchers in the field can help writers with one of the most sophisticated aspects of a literature review—locating the knowledge being reviewed. Where does it come from? What is debated? How do different methodologies influence the knowledge being accumulated? And so on.

Consider this example of the knowledge claims (KC), Gap and Hook for the literature review section of a research paper on distributed healthcare teamwork:

KC: We know that poor team communication can cause errors. KC: And we know that team training can be effective in improving team communication. KC: This knowledge has prompted a push to incorporate teamwork training principles into health professions education curricula. KC: However, most of what we know about team training research has come from research with co-located teams—i. e., teams whose members work together in time and space. Gap: Little is known about how teamwork training principles would apply in distributed teams, whose members work asynchronously and are spread across different locations. Hook: Given that much healthcare teamwork is distributed rather than co-located, our curricula will be severely lacking until we create refined teamwork training principles that reflect distributed as well as co-located work contexts.

The ‘We know that …’ structure illustrated in this example is a template for helping you draft and organize. In your final version, your knowledge claims will be expressed with more sophistication. For instance, ‘We know that poor team communication can cause errors’ will become something like ‘Over a decade of patient safety research has demonstrated that poor team communication is the dominant cause of medical errors.’ This simple template of knowledge claims, though, provides an outline for the paragraphs in your literature review, each of which will provide detailed evidence to illustrate a knowledge claim. Using this approach, the order of the paragraphs in the literature review is strategic and persuasive, leading the reader to the gap claim that positions the relevance of the current study. To expand your vocabulary for creating such knowledge claims, linking them logically and positioning yourself amid them, I highly recommend Graff and Birkenstein’s little handbook of ‘templates’ [ 3 ].

As you organize your knowledge claims, you will also want to consider whether you are trying to map the gap in a well-studied field, or a relatively understudied one. The rhetorical challenge is different in each case. In a well-studied field, like professionalism in medical education, you must make a strong, explicit case for the existence of a gap. Readers may come to your paper tired of hearing about this topic and tempted to think we can’t possibly need more knowledge about it. Listing the knowledge claims can help you organize them most effectively and determine which pieces of knowledge may be unnecessary to map the white space your research attempts to fill. This does not mean that you leave out relevant information: your literature review must still be accurate. But, since you will not be able to include everything, selecting carefully among the possible knowledge claims is essential to producing a coherent, well-argued literature review.

Characterizing the gap

Once you’ve identified the gap, your literature review must characterize it. What kind of gap have you found? There are many ways to characterize a gap, but some of the more common include:

• a pure knowledge deficit—‘no one has looked at the relationship between longitudinal integrated clerkships and medical student abuse’
• a shortcoming in the scholarship, often due to philosophical or methodological tendencies and oversights—‘scholars have interpreted x from a cognitivist perspective, but ignored the humanist perspective’ or ‘to date, we have surveyed the frequency of medical errors committed by residents, but we have not explored their subjective experience of such errors’
• a controversy—‘scholars disagree on the definition of professionalism in medicine …’
• a pervasive and unproven assumption—‘the theme of technological heroism—technology will solve what ails teamwork—is ubiquitous in the literature, but what is that belief based on?’

To characterize the kind of gap, you need to know the literature thoroughly. That means more than understanding each paper individually; you also need to be placing each paper in relation to others. This may require changing your note-taking technique while you’re reading; take notes on what each paper contributes to knowledge, but also on how it relates to other papers you’ve read, and what it suggests about the kind of gap that is emerging.

In summary, think of your literature review as mapping the gap rather than simply summarizing the known. And pay attention to characterizing the kind of gap you’ve mapped. This strategy can help to make your literature review into a compelling argument rather than a list of facts. It can remind you of the danger of describing so fully what is known that the reader is left with the sense that there is no pressing need to know more. And it can help you to establish a coherence between the kind of gap you’ve identified and the study methodology you will use to fill it.

Acknowledgements

Thanks to Mark Goldszmidt for his feedback on an early version of this manuscript.

PhD, is director of the Centre for Education Research & Innovation at Schulich School of Medicine & Dentistry, and professor for the Department of Medicine at Western University in London, Ontario, Canada.

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Creating a Comprehensive Literature Review Map: A Step-by-Step Example

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• Writing Articles & Reviews
• October 16, 2023

A literature review is an essential component of any academic research paper or thesis. IT involves examining existing literature, scholarly articles, books, and other sources related to your research topic. A literature review map acts as a visual representation of the concepts, studies, and theories that have been covered in the literature. In this article, we will guide you through the process of creating a comprehensive literature review map, step-by-step, to help you structure and organize your literature review effectively.

Step 1: Define Your Research Topic

The first step in creating a literature review map is to clearly define your research topic. Be specific and narrow down your focus to ensure that you have a manageable scope for your literature review. Take into consideration the research objectives or guiding questions that will shape your review.

Step 2: Identify Relevant Keywords

Once you have defined your research topic, identify the keywords and search terms that are most relevant to your study. Brainstorm a list of potential keywords that are commonly used in the literature related to your topic. These keywords will help you locate relevant sources during your literature search.

Step 3: Conduct a Thorough Literature Search

Using databases and search engines specific to your field of study, begin conducting a thorough literature search using the identified keywords. Take note of the key articles, books, and studies that are relevant to your research topic. In this step, IT is important to evaluate the credibility and quality of the sources to ensure that you are referring to reputable and reliable information.

Step 4: Read and Analyze the Literature

After collecting a substantial number of sources, carefully read and analyze each one. Highlight key concepts, methodologies, and findings that are relevant to your research. As you progress, make notes or annotations to help you remember important details and connections between different sources.

Step 5: Organize the Literature

Now that you have read and analyzed the literature, IT ‘s time to organize the information into a coherent structure. One effective way to do this is by using a literature review map. Start by creating categories or themes based on the concepts or theories that emerge from the literature. Group together similar ideas or findings to create a visual representation of the interconnectedness of the sources.

Step 6: Create the Literature Review Map

With your categorized information, you can now create the literature review map. This can be done using software such as Microsoft Word, PowerPoint, or dedicated mind mapping tools. Start with your main research topic in the center and branch out with subcategories based on the themes or concepts identified earlier. Connect relevant sources to each subcategory, illustrating how they contribute to the overall understanding of your research topic.

Step 7: Revise and Refine

Review your literature review map for coherence and completeness. Ensure that all the key sources are accurately placed within the appropriate category or subcategory. Check for any gaps in your coverage and make sure that the map represents a comprehensive overview of the literature on your research topic.

Q: How many sources should I include in my literature review map?

A: The number of sources you include will depend on the requirements of your research and the depth of analysis you aim to achieve. However, IT is generally recommended to thoroughly examine a range of sources, including both seminal texts and recent publications, to ensure a well-rounded and comprehensive literature review.

Q: How do I determine the credibility of the sources for my literature review?

A: Evaluating the credibility of your sources is crucial to ensure that you are basing your review on reputable information. Consider the author’s qualifications, the credibility and reputation of the publishing outlet, the presence of citations within the article, and the overall coherence and consistency of the research findings.

Q: Can I use a literature review map for disciplines outside of the humanities and social sciences?

A: Absolutely! While literature reviews are commonly associated with humanities and social sciences, they are applicable to any academic field. Whether you are conducting research in the sciences, engineering, or any other discipline, a literature review map will help you organize and present the relevant scholarly literature specific to your research topic.

By following these step-by-step guidelines, you can create a comprehensive literature review map that will serve as a valuable tool throughout your research. Remember to regularly update and refine your map as you progress in your studies. A well-organized literature review will not only demonstrate your knowledge and understanding of the field, but also provide a solid foundation for your own research and contribute to the wider scholarly conversation.

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Literature Review: A Self-Guided Tutorial

Using concept maps.

• Literature Reviews: A Recap
• Peer Review
• Reading the Literature
• Developing Research Questions
• Considering Strong Opinions
• 2. Review discipline styles
• Super Searching
• Finding the Full Text
• Citation Searching This link opens in a new window
• When to stop searching
• Citation Management
• Annotating Articles Tip
• 5. Critically analyze and evaluate
• How to Review the Literature
• Using a Synthesis Matrix
• 7. Write literature review

Concept maps or mind maps visually represent relationships of different concepts. In research, they can help you make connections between ideas. You can use them as you are formulating your research question, as you are reading a complex text, and when you are creating a literature review. See the video and examples below.

How to Create a Concept Map

Credit: Penn State Libraries ( CC-BY ) Run Time: 3:13

• Bubbl.us Free version allows 3 mind maps, image export, and sharing.
• MindMeister Free version allows 3 mind maps, sharing, collaborating, and importing. No image-based exporting.

Mind Map of a Text Example

Credit: Austin Kleon. A map I drew of John Berger’s Ways of Seeing in 2008. Tumblr post. April 14, 2016. http://tumblr.austinkleon.com/post/142802684061#notes

Literature Review Mind Map Example

This example shows the different aspects of the author's literature review with citations to scholars who have written about those aspects.

Credit: Clancy Ratliff, Dissertation: Literature Review. Culturecat: Rhetoric and Feminism [blog]. 2 October 2005. http://culturecat.net/node/955 .

• << Previous: Reading the Literature
• Next: 1. Identify the question >>
• Last Updated: Jul 30, 2024 4:12 PM
• URL: https://libguides.williams.edu/literature-review

Search form

You are here, structuring your ideas: creating a literature map.

It is important to have a plan of the areas to be discussed, using this to indicated how these will link together. In the overall structure of the literature review, there should be a logical flow of ideas and within each paragraph there should be a clear theme, around which related ideas are explored and developed. A literature map can be useful for this purpose as it enables you to create a visual representation of the themes and how they could relate to one another.

A literature map (Cresswell, 2011) is a two dimensional diagrammatic representation of information where links are made between concepts by drawing arrows (which could be annotated to define the nature of these links). Constructing a literature map helps you to:

• develop your understanding of the key issues and research findings in the literature
• to organise ideas in your mind
• to see more clearly how different research studies relate to one another and to group those with similar findings.

Your map can then be used as a plan for your literature review.

As well has helping you to organise the literature for your review, a literature map can be used to help you analyse the information in a particular journal article, supporting the exploration of strengths and weaknesses of the methodology and the resultant findings and enabling you to explore how key themes and concepts in the article link together.

It is important to represent the different views and any conflicting research findings that exist in the literature (Newby, 2014). There is a danger of selective referencing, only including literature that supports your own beliefs and findings, disregarding alternative views. This should be avoided as it is based on the assumption that your views are the correct ones, and it is possible that you could miss key ideas and findings that could take your research in new and exciting directions.

• research methods
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Literature Reviews

• Getting Started
• Choosing a Type of Review
• Developing a Research Question
• Searching the Literature
• Searching Tips
• ChatGPT [beta]
• Documenting your Search
• Using Citation Managers
• Concept Mapping
• Concept Map Definition

MindMeister

• Writing the Review
• Further Resources

Additional Tools

Google slides.

GSlides can create concept maps using their Diagram feature. Insert > Diagram > Hierarchy will give you some editable templates to use.

Tutorial on diagrams in GSlides .

MICROSOFT WORD

MS Word can create concept maps using Insert > SmartArt Graphic. Select Process, Cycle, Hierarchy, or Relationship to see templates.

NVivo  is software for qualitative analysis that has a concept map feature. Zotero libraries can be uploaded using ris files. NVivo Concept Map information.

A concept map or mind map is a visual representation of knowledge that illustrates relationships between concepts or ideas. It is a tool for organizing and representing information in a hierarchical and interconnected manner. At its core, a concept map consists of nodes, which represent individual concepts or ideas, and links, which depict the relationships between these concepts .

Below is a non-exhaustive list of tools that can facilitate the creation of concept maps.

www.canva.com

Canva is a user-friendly graphic design platform that enables individuals to create visual content quickly and easily. It offers a diverse array of customizable templates, design elements, and tools, making it accessible to users with varying levels of design experience. 

Pros: comes with many pre-made concept map templates to get you started

Cons : not all features are available in the free version

Explore Canva concept map templates here .

Note: Although Canva advertises an "education" option, this is for K-12 only and does not apply to university users.

www.lucidchart.com

Lucid has two tools that can create mind maps (what they're called inside Lucid): Lucidchart is the place to build, document, and diagram, and Lucidspark is the place to ideate, connect, and plan.

Lucidchart is a collaborative online diagramming and visualization tool that allows users to create a wide range of diagrams, including flowcharts, org charts, wireframes, and mind maps. Its mind-mapping feature provides a structured framework for brainstorming ideas, organizing thoughts, and visualizing relationships between concepts. 

Lucidspark , works as a virtual whiteboard. Here, you can add sticky notes, develop ideas through freehand drawing, and collaborate with your teammates. Has only one template for mind mapping.

Explore Lucid mind map creation here .

How to create mind maps using LucidSpark:

Note: U-M students have access to Lucid through ITS. [ info here ] Choose the "Login w Google" option, use your @umich.edu account, and access should happen automatically.

www.figma.com

Figma is a cloud-based design tool that enables collaborative interface design and prototyping. It's widely used by UI/UX designers to create, prototype, and iterate on digital designs. Figma is the main design tool, and FigJam is their virtual whiteboard:

Figma  is a comprehensive design tool that enables designers to create and prototype high-fidelity designs

FigJam focuses on collaboration and brainstorming, providing a virtual whiteboard-like experience, best for concept maps

Explore FigJam concept maps here .

Note: There is a " Figma for Education " version for students that will provide access. Choose the "Login w Google" option, use your @umich.edu account, and access should happen automatically.

www.mindmeister.com

MindMeister  is an online mind mapping tool that allows users to visually organize their thoughts, ideas, and information in a structured and hierarchical format. It provides a digital canvas where users can create and manipulate nodes representing concepts or topics, and connect them with lines to show relationships and associations.

Features : collaborative, permits multiple co-authors, and multiple export formats. The free version allows up to 3 mind maps.

Explore  MindMeister templates here .

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• Last Updated: May 9, 2024 11:44 AM
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Tools to help with literature review mapping – 3 new tools

By Aaron Tay, Lead, Data Services

Tired of entering keywords and getting thousands of hits and not sure where to start your literature review? Or having the opposite problem and entering a keyword and getting few relevant results? You are in luck, we are seeing the rise of a new class of innovative literature review mapping tools, built on the backs of increasingly open metadata and citations coupled with possibly some new machine learning techniques (particularly those that use machine learning on full text for citation contexts). Here are three new tools that you might want to try next time:

• Connected Papers — Simple but powerful one shot visualization tool using one seed paper. 
• Inciteful — Customizable tool , use multiple seed papers in an iterative process
• Litmaps —Use multiple seed papers and overlapping maps, combining search with citation relationships and visualization

1. Connected Papers - simple but powerful – one shot tool

Update date : Aug 2022 - the free version of Connected Papers now allows only the creation of 5 maps per month, so this may be too limiting a tool unless you pay for a premium account .

Connected Papers is a easy to use and powerful tool that promises to help you quickly identify similar papers with just one “Seed paper” (a relevant paper) and detect seminal papers as well as review papers.

Find a “seed paper” and enter it into Connected Papers , and it will automatically attempt to generate for you 25 or so relevant papers that are similar to the paper you entered and arranges the papers into a force—directed graph of papers with similar papers placed close by with connecting lines. Size of the node represents number of citations and shade of colour represents publication year.

The algorithm used to calculate similarity is based on both Co-citation and Bibliographic Coupling. Unlike tools that are based only on co-citations, this ensures that Connected Papers works even for very new papers that do not have many citations, as similarity of references (bibliographic coupling) is considered as well.

Connected Papers generated map - using seed paper - Absorptive Capacity: A Review, Reconceptualization, and Extension

The calculations for the similarity metric has not been publicly disclosed, however it has been mentioned that the algorithm tries to prioritize papers that are in roughly the same “generation” of papers, i.e., are not too far apart in publication years.

As such, once you have generated the similarity graph of similar papers, you can click on either the “Prior Works” button or the “Derivative works” button to help detect seminal works or review/survey papers respectively.

The logic is that if  Connected Papers did in fact successfully identify similar papers on a topic, the papers that are most commonly cited by those papers might be important prior papers or seminal papers. Similarly, the papers that cite a lot of these identified papers could likely be review papers.

All three groups of identified papers can then be exported into most reference managers like Zotero, EndNote, Mendeley.

For any paper identified, you can click on the “build a graph” button to generate  another similarity graph using it as a seed paper.

2. Inciteful - powerful tool that allows iterative building of papers with multiple seed papers

While Connected Papers is an easy to use and simple tool that needs only one relevant seed paper, some users might want a tool that allows more customisation. For example, what if you had more than one relevant paper? Could you take advantage of that?

This is where the equally new Inciteful tool comes in.

While you can input one paper as the seed paper, the tool suggests that it works best if you include at least 5 papers, which you can import in a batch with a BibTex file.

If you have only one paper, you can input that in to generate a list of “similar papers” and use some of these papers as additional seed papers.

Inciteful  produces the following lists of papers

• Similar papers (uses Adamic/Adar index)
• “Most Important Papers in the Graph” (based on PageRank)
• Recent Papers by the Top 100 Authors
• The Most Important Recent Papers

which can be further filtered to look for relevant papers to add as seed papers.

The  documentation provides details on how the network is generated and what metrics are used to generate these different lists of papers .

The author of Inciteful describes this tool as a more complicated Connected Papers . Unlike Connected Papers , which is a one shot tool, you can use Inciteful iteratively, by adding the papers it finds into the seed papers to see what it suggests.

In fact, below each of the categories of papers suggested (e.g. Similar papers, Most Important Papers in the Graph) there is a small SQL button that when clicked shows you the exact SQL query that is used to generate the papers. You can even make some customizations to the SQL query!

3. Litmaps - combining search with citation relationships and visualization

As nice as Inciteful is, you may notice that it lacks any visualisations. What if you want a tool that can do iterative building and visualisation of the papers you have found? Then you can try Litmaps  which create maps of your literature.

Starting the map from the scratch

Litmaps provides multiple ways to start. You can 

Import papers using bibtex format which you can export from most reference managers like Zotero, EndNote, Mendeley (similar to Inciteful) 

Import papers from an ORCID profile 

Do a keyword search of papers indexed in Litmaps and select papers you want 

“Build from a seed paper” — This is similar to Connected Papers where you enter one seed paper and it suggests papers to add based on “highly connected articles from adjacent literature”. 

No matter which method you use to add articles, as you add papers into your project, Litmaps will visualise these papers as nodes and their citation relationships in a timeline with papers published earlier on the left and the latest papers on the right.

As you may expect, the lines or edges between nodes represent citation relationships.

Though not turned on by default, you can set the size of each node to correspond with number of citations.

Sample of Map on topic - Dynamic capabilities - Strategic management

Each map created also offers  the option to get email updates of "emergent literature".

Creating and comparing overlapping maps  

One of the nicest features of Litmaps is that you can overlay different maps to look for overlaps. 

In the example above,  a new map was created with the seed paper “Absorptive capacity: A review, reconceptualization, and extension” (marked in orange) besides the sample map on “Dynamic capabilities and strategic management “(marked in red). Once the new map was created, papers shared by both maps (nodes with both red and orange) could be seen at a glance. Hovering over individual papers (nodes) will show how well connected each paper (node) is in their respective maps.  

Expanding the maps with the explore function

Probably the most advanced feature in Litmaps is the explore function which allows you to find related papers to add to your map. You can combine keywords, papers (nodes) from existing maps and further combine that with filters like publication date and exclusions like articles to "ignore" (will need recomend) or "avoid" (will not use as a citation path to recommend)

These are very new tools that provide a different way of exploring the literature. By using methods that go beyond just keyword searching, they avoid the problem of missing papers if you enter the wrong keyword.

One major limitation of such tools is the index of papers used to construct such maps.

While these tools cover article type sources across most disciplines well, they do not capture book sources (and citations from books) well. 

aarontay [at] smu.edu.sg (Aaron Tay) , Lead Data Services,  has been studying  these tools for the last two years and conducts a bite-sized workshop – Mapping your Literature Review each term. He would be happy to discuss use of such tools with you. 

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Literature review toolkit for policy studies: Concept mapping

Why create a concept map.

A concept map is a visualization of key idea in your research and the relationships between them. To create a concept map, pick out the main concepts of your topic and brainstorm everything you know about them, drawing shapes around your concepts and clustering the shapes in a way that's meaningful to you. How can this help?

• Helps you pull back to see the broader concepts at play.
• Can help identify the subject-based tool where literature can be found. 
• Helps clarify both what you already know and where you have gaps in your knowledge.

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Literature Reviews What is a Literature Review? Concept Mapping Writing a Proposal For Faculty Need help? Ask a librarian Concept map example: Chocolate Purchasing Factors What is concept mapping. Concept Maps are a way to graphically represent ideas and how they relate to each other. Concept maps may be simple designs illustrating a central theme and a few associated topics or complex structures that delineate hierarchical or multiple relationships. J.D. Novak developed concept maps in the 1970's to help facilitate the research process for his students. Novak found that visually representing thoughts helped students freely associate ideas without being blocked or intimidated by recording them in a traditional written format. Concept mapping involves defining a topic; adding related topics; and linking related ideas Use Bubbl.us or search for more free mind-mapping tools on the web. More Examples of Concept Maps Govt Factors in Consumer Choice Mental Health Social Psychology << Previous: Examples Next: Writing a Proposal >> Last Updated: Aug 22, 2024 5:08 PM URL: https://researchguides.njit.edu/literaturereview  |  |   | Literature Reviews Getting started What is a literature review? Why conduct a literature review, stages of a literature review, lit reviews: an overview (video), check out these books. Types of reviews 1. Define your research question 2. Plan your search 3. Search the literature 4. Organize your results 5. Synthesize your findings 6. Write the review Artificial intelligence (AI) tools Thompson Writing Studio This link opens in a new window Need to write a systematic review? This link opens in a new window Guide Owner Contact a Librarian Ask a Librarian Definition: A literature review is a systematic examination and synthesis of existing scholarly research on a specific topic or subject. Purpose: It serves to provide a comprehensive overview of the current state of knowledge within a particular field. Analysis: Involves critically evaluating and summarizing key findings, methodologies, and debates found in academic literature. Identifying Gaps: Aims to pinpoint areas where there is a lack of research or unresolved questions, highlighting opportunities for further investigation. Contextualization: Enables researchers to understand how their work fits into the broader academic conversation and contributes to the existing body of knowledge. tl;dr  A literature review critically examines and synthesizes existing scholarly research and publications on a specific topic to provide a comprehensive understanding of the current state of knowledge in the field. What is a literature review NOT? ❌ An annotated bibliography ❌ Original research ❌ A summary ❌ Something to be conducted at the end of your research ❌ An opinion piece ❌ A chronological compilation of studies The reason for conducting a literature review is to: What has been written about your topic? What is the evidence for your topic? What methods, key concepts, and theories relate to your topic? Are there current gaps in knowledge or new questions to be asked? Bring your reader up to date Further your reader's understanding of the topic Provide evidence of... - your knowledge on the topic's theory - your understanding of the research process - your ability to critically evaluate and analyze information - that you're up to date on the literature Literature Reviews: An Overview for Graduate Students While this 9-minute video from NCSU is geared toward graduate students, it is useful for anyone conducting a literature review. Writing the literature review: A practical guide Available 3rd floor of Perkins Writing literature reviews: A guide for students of the social and behavioral sciences Available online! So, you have to write a literature review: A guided workbook for engineers Telling a research story: Writing a literature review The literature review: Six steps to success Systematic approaches to a successful literature review Request from Duke Medical Center Library Doing a systematic review: A student's guide Next: Types of reviews >> Last Updated: Aug 20, 2024 3:37 PM URL: https://guides.library.duke.edu/litreviews Services for... Faculty & Instructors Graduate Students Undergraduate Students International Students Patrons with Disabilities Harmful Language Statement Re-use & Attribution / Privacy Support the Libraries Mon. Aug 26th, 2024 The City Whisperer How to bring dead city areas to life How to Create a Literature Map How to create a literature map. The Literature Map helps researchers review literature for gaps and points of impact. They are useful in both academic and industry related research projects to help gain traction and market interest. Book a seat for our upcoming Literature Mapping Webinar Workshop Learn More about Literature Mapping Research projects usually start with a Literature Review which involves using tools such as search engines ( e.g. google scholar) and document management and reference systems (e.g. Endnote and Mandalay). The literature review will attempt to create a space for the research project that has not been covered or is yet to be developed. Literature Mapping uses graphical methods to plot your literature in a graphical format. There are many types of graphical method from mind mapping to infographic formats. See our Research Gate Forum where leading experts have discussed the various graphical literature tools from Mind Maps through to Quiqqa and other methods. Dr Jonathan Drane has developed a unique but simple literature mapping method which streamlines your literature review and helps you refine your topic and its place in the literature universe. ‘In our method we prefer to use a ‘cards on desktop’ graphical logic.  It uses cards (like the icons on your desktop) and allocates identifiers to the cards including different colours as well as other key information points. Think of each card as if it was a library card which is also linked back to the actual publication it refers to’. Dr Jonathan Drane In the method there is also an X-Y axis to allow for key concept themes to be pinned to the axis. From there each card is positioned based on its alignment to the theme. In the chart below this method is applied to City Growth Dynamics themes from Dr Drane’s doctorate. ‘ As I spent weeks in the literature mapping phase of my doctorate I realised that it was made clearer by using graphical representation of the various themes and concepts.’ Dr Jonathan Drane An example of his literature map system is shown above which is extracted from Dr Drane’s Doctorate . Impact and Strategic Importance Research occurs in a huge range of endeavours from academic research to competitive analysis, market and corporate strategy. A central activity in these is to make sure you know what the current literature, articles and books are in the relevant strategic arena. The use of literature review is essential to maintaining a strategic advantage and identifying the gaps in the theory or in corporate offerings. We recommed that you take some time out and attend our upcoming webinar on this topic . Whether you are an academic or a business person or government researcher, this is important. We look forward to seeing you at this webinar. Dr Jonathan Drane Download this article and other related resources (free). Fill in this form to receive free downloads: Your message (optional) Other readings and links: Link to Jonathan’s Research Gate page page on Literature Mapping Link to Jonathan’s Doctorate JDNEST Ep 9- Special Interview with Tania Papasotiriou Co-founder BEEMO Ride Share Platform- Startup Journey and Stories Jdnest ep 8- the white shoe brigade meets silicon valley -the skase-bond era- startup journey and stories, jdnest ep 7- special interview with avril dunn-ei platform-startup journey and stories, jdnest ep6- ingenuity and dick dusseldorp- engineer turns entrepreneur- startup journey and stories. 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Mapping scholarly books: library metadata and research assessment Published: 17 August 2024 Cite this article Eleonora Dagienė   ORCID: orcid.org/0000-0003-0043-3837 1 , 2   99 Accesses Explore all metrics This paper proposes an open-science-aligned approach that uses library metadata to evaluate individual books. I analyse the suitability of this approach for individual book assessment and visibility of national books in the library catalogues, to support responsible research evaluation. WorldCat metadata offers valuable insights for the evaluation of books, but the completeness of this metadata varies. Author, contributor, and publisher data require cleaning, while languages, years, formats, editions, and translations provide rich information. Open access data is currently lacking, and national book visibility in WorldCat depends heavily on contributions from national libraries and metadata suppliers. Encouraging national library engagement could boost the global visibility of domestic research. Further exploration is needed regarding long-term preservation, metadata ownership, and technical integration for effective standardisation and improved book evaluation. This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access. Access this article Subscribe and save. Get 10 units per month Download Article/Chapter or eBook 1 Unit = 1 Article or 1 Chapter Cancel anytime Price includes VAT (Russian Federation) Instant access to the full article PDF. Rent this article via DeepDyve Institutional subscriptions Similar content being viewed by others Reviewing, Indicating, and Counting Books for Modern Research Evaluation Systems OCLC library holdings: assessing availability of academic books in libraries in print and electronic compared to citations and altmetrics Readership data and research impact, explore related subjects. Artificial Intelligence Butler, L., & Visser, M. S. (2006). Extending citation analysis to non-source items. Scientometrics, 66 (2), 327–343. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11192-006-0024-1 Article   Google Scholar   Cabezas-Clavijo, Á., Robinson-García, N., Torres-Salinas, D., Jiménez-Contreras, E., Mikulka, T., Gumpenberger, C., Wemisch, A., & Gorraiz, J. (2013). Most borrowed is most cited? Library loan statistics as a proxy for monograph selection in citation indexes. In J. Gorraiz, E. Schiebel, C. Gumpenberger, M. Hörlesberger, & H. Moed (Eds.), 14th International Society of Scientometrics and Informetrics Conference, Vienna, Austria, 15th to 20th July 2013 (pp. 1237–1252). AIT Austrian Institute of Technology GmbH. https://doi.org/10.48550/arXiv.1305.1488 Clemens, E. S., Walter, P. W., McIlwaine, K., & Okamoto, D. (2010). Careers in print: Books, journals, and scholarly reputations. American Journal of Sociology, 101 (2), 433–494. Collins, E., Milloy, C., & Stone, G. (2015). 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Journal of the Association for Information Science and Technology, 65 (11), 2248–2260. https://doi.org/10.1002/asi.23104 Download references Acknowledgements With deep respect and appreciation, I acknowledge the unwavering support of my supervisor, Professor Ludo Waltman. His in-depth feedback and genuine care have played a critical role in bringing this research to fruition, and his dedication to my academic growth has been immensely beneficial and truly inspiring. I am particularly grateful to the empirical data provider, the OCLC, and its research team for their crucial role in facilitating this research. Their generous provision of data was instrumental to the success of this study. No funding was received for this research project. Author information Authors and affiliations. Centre for Science and Technology Studies (CWTS), Leiden University, P.O. Box 905, 2300 AX, Leiden, The Netherlands Eleonora Dagienė Institute of Communication, Mykolas Romeris University, Ateities G. 20, 08303, Vilnius, Lithuania You can also search for this author in PubMed   Google Scholar Corresponding author Correspondence to Eleonora Dagienė . Ethics declarations Competing interests. The author has no relevant financial or non-financial interests to disclose. Additional information Publisher's note. Springer Nature remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations. Rights and permissions Springer Nature or its licensor (e.g. a society or other partner) holds exclusive rights to this article under a publishing agreement with the author(s) or other rightsholder(s); author self-archiving of the accepted manuscript version of this article is solely governed by the terms of such publishing agreement and applicable law. Reprints and permissions About this article Dagienė, E. Mapping scholarly books: library metadata and research assessment. Scientometrics (2024). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11192-024-05120-1 Download citation Received : 18 April 2024 Accepted : 19 July 2024 Published : 17 August 2024 DOI : https://doi.org/10.1007/s11192-024-05120-1 Share this article Anyone you share the following link with will be able to read this content: Sorry, a shareable link is not currently available for this article. Provided by the Springer Nature SharedIt content-sharing initiative Book metadata Research evaluation Research excellence framework (REF) Find a journal Publish with us Track your research An official website of the United States government The .gov means it’s official. Federal government websites often end in .gov or .mil. Before sharing sensitive information, make sure you’re on a federal government site. The site is secure. 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Search in PubMed Search in NLM Catalog Add to Search Identifying and Mapping Canadian Dietetic Students' Interaction(s) with Simulation-Based Education: A Scoping Review Affiliations. 1 Department of Applied Human Nutrition, Mount Saint Vincent University, Halifax, NS. 2 Department of Obstetrics and Gynecology and Pediatrics, IWK Health Centre, Halifax, NS. 3 WK Kellogg Health Sciences Library, Dalhousie University; Aligning Health Needs and Evidence for Transformative Change (AH-NET-C): A JBI Centre of Excellence, Halifax, NS. 4 Department of General Medicine, Cardiology, Dartmouth General Hospital, Nova Scotia Health Authority, Dartmouth, NS. 5 School of Nursing, Dalhousie University, Halifax, NS. 6 Department of Obstetrics and Gynaecology and Pediatrics, Dalhousie University, Halifax, NS. PMID: 37436143 DOI: 10.3148/cjdpr-2023-016 This scoping review mapped literature available on Canadian dietetics, nutrition, and foods students' and graduates' interaction(s) with simulation-based education (SBE) during undergraduate and/or practicum. One certified Librarian led the preliminary search (Summer, 2021), while three Joanna Briggs Institute-trained reviewers conducted the comprehensive search via MEDLINE (OVID), CINAHL (EBSCO), Academic Search Premier (EBSCO), Embase (Elsevier), Scopus (Elsevier), and Google (February 2022). A data extraction tool designed specifically for the study objectives and research inclusion criteria was used. We recorded 354 results and included 7. Seven types of SBE were recorded: ( i ) comprehensive care plan (n = 2); ( ii ) nutritional diagnosis/assessment (n = 2); ( iii ) body composition assessment (n = 1); ( iv ) introducing patient to dysphagia care (n = 1); ( v ) nutrition counselling session (n = 1); ( vi ) nutrition-focused physical examination (n = 1); and ( vii ) professional communications via social media (n = 1). Results indicate that Canadian dietitian-led SBE includes the use of simulated patients, nutritional diagnosis/assessment, and the creation of comprehensive care plans, among others. Students have been assessed for performance of trained tasks through exams, self-awareness surveys, and interviews, and SBE activities have been evaluated for effectiveness through questionnaires and interviews with users/students. Canadian literature is limited, and more can be learned by exploring the global context within and outside the profession. Keywords: Canada; assessment; dietetics; diététique; experience; expérience; simulation; students; étudiants; évaluation. PubMed Disclaimer Similar articles Student and educator experiences of maternal-child simulation-based learning: a systematic review of qualitative evidence protocol. MacKinnon K, Marcellus L, Rivers J, Gordon C, Ryan M, Butcher D. MacKinnon K, et al. JBI Database System Rev Implement Rep. 2015 Jan;13(1):14-26. doi: 10.11124/jbisrir-2015-1694. JBI Database System Rev Implement Rep. 2015. PMID: 26447004 Exploring current nutritional programming and resources available to people living with HIV in Canada: a scoping review. Mannette J, Zhang Y, Rothfus M, Purdy C, Tesfatsion W, Lynch M, Hamilton-Hinch B, Williams PL, Joy P, Grant S. Mannette J, et al. JBI Evid Synth. 2023 Oct 1;21(10):2022-2081. doi: 10.11124/JBIES-22-00168. JBI Evid Synth. 2023. PMID: 37194312 Free PMC article. Review. The impact of design elements on undergraduate nursing students' educational outcomes in simulation education: protocol for a systematic review. Jackson M, McTier L, Brooks LA, Wynne R. Jackson M, et al. Syst Rev. 2022 Mar 23;11(1):52. doi: 10.1186/s13643-022-01926-3. Syst Rev. 2022. PMID: 35321731 Free PMC article. Patient Simulations Improve Dietetics Students' and Interns' Communication and Nutrition-Care Competence. Buchholz AC, Vanderleest K, MacMartin C, Prescod A, Wilson A. Buchholz AC, et al. J Nutr Educ Behav. 2020 Apr;52(4):377-384. doi: 10.1016/j.jneb.2019.09.022. Epub 2019 Nov 5. J Nutr Educ Behav. 2020. PMID: 31699616 Exploring conceptual and theoretical frameworks for nurse practitioner education: a scoping review protocol. Wilson R, Godfrey CM, Sears K, Medves J, Ross-White A, Lambert N. Wilson R, et al. JBI Database System Rev Implement Rep. 2015 Oct;13(10):146-55. doi: 10.11124/jbisrir-2015-2150. JBI Database System Rev Implement Rep. 2015. PMID: 26571290 Review. Publication types Search in MeSH LinkOut - more resources Full text sources. Citation Manager NCBI Literature Resources MeSH PMC Bookshelf Disclaimer The PubMed wordmark and PubMed logo are registered trademarks of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS). Unauthorized use of these marks is strictly prohibited. Introduction Conclusions Article Information LMIC indicates low- and- middle-income country; SR, systematic review. a This review included distinct conclusions about separate conditions and comparators, and so it appears in this map more than once. eAppendix 1. Search Strategies eAppendix 2. Excluded Studies eAppendix 3. Evidence Table eAppendix 4. Conditions in Previously Published Map in 2018 and Current Map eReferences. Data Sharing Statement See More About Sign up for emails based on your interests, select your interests. Customize your JAMA Network experience by selecting one or more topics from the list below. 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Others also liked. Download PDF X Facebook More LinkedIn Mak S , Allen J , Begashaw M, et al. Use of Massage Therapy for Pain, 2018-2023 : A Systematic Review . JAMA Netw Open. 2024;7(7):e2422259. doi:10.1001/jamanetworkopen.2024.22259 Manage citations: © 2024 Permissions Use of Massage Therapy for Pain, 2018-2023 : A Systematic Review 1 Veterans Health Administration, Greater Los Angeles Healthcare System, Los Angeles, California 2 UCLA Fielding School of Public Health, University of California, Los Angeles 3 RAND Corporation, Santa Monica, California Question   What is the certainty or quality of evidence in recent systematic reviews for use of massage therapy for painful adult health conditions? Findings   This systematic review identified 129 systematic reviews in a search of the literature published since 2018; of these, 41 assessed the certainty or quality of evidence of their conclusions. Overall, 17 systematic reviews regarding 13 health conditions were mapped, and most reviews concluded that the certainty of evidence was low or very low. Meaning   This study found that despite massage therapy having been the subject of hundreds of randomized clinical trials and dozens of systematic reviews about adult health conditions since 2018, there were few conclusions that had greater than low certainty of evidence. Importance   Massage therapy is a popular treatment that has been advocated for dozens of painful adult health conditions and has a large evidence base. Objective   To map systematic reviews, conclusions, and certainty or quality of evidence for outcomes of massage therapy for painful adult health conditions. Evidence Review   In this systematic review, a computerized search was conducted of PubMed, the Allied and Complementary Medicine Database, the Cumulated Index to Nursing and Allied Health Literature, the Cochrane Database of Systematic Reviews, and Web of Science from 2018 to 2023. Included studies were systematic reviews of massage therapy for pain in adult health conditions that formally rated the certainty, quality, or strength of evidence for conclusions. Studies of sports massage therapy, osteopathy, dry cupping or dry needling, and internal massage therapy (eg, for pelvic floor pain) were ineligible, as were self-administered massage therapy techniques, such as foam rolling. Reviews were categorized as those with at least 1 conclusion rated as high-certainty evidence, at least 1 conclusion rated as moderate-certainty evidence, and all conclusions rated as low- or very low–certainty evidence; a full list of conclusions and certainty of evidence was collected. Findings   A total of 129 systematic reviews of massage therapy for painful adult health conditions were found; of these, 41 reviews used a formal method to rate certainty or quality of evidence of their conclusions and 17 reviews were mapped, covering 13 health conditions. Across these reviews, no conclusions were rated as high certainty of evidence. There were 7 conclusions that were rated as moderate-certainty evidence; all remaining conclusions were rated as low- or very low–certainty evidence. All conclusions rated as moderate certainty were that massage therapy had a beneficial associations with pain. Conclusions and Relevance   This study found that despite a large number of randomized clinical trials, systematic reviews of massage therapy for painful adult health conditions rated a minority of conclusions as moderate-certainty evidence and that conclusions with moderate- or high-certainty evidence that massage therapy was superior to other active therapies were rare. Massage therapy is a popular and widely accepted complementary and integrative health modality for individuals seeking relief from pain. 1 This therapy is the practice of manual assessment and manipulation of the superficial soft tissues of skin, muscle, tendon, ligament, and fascia and the structures that lie within the superficial tissues for therapeutic purpose. 2 Individuals may seek massage therapy to address pain where conventional treatments may not always provide complete relief or may come with potential adverse effects. Massage therapy encompasses a range of techniques, styles, and durations and is intended to be delivered by uniquely trained and credentialed therapists. 3 Original research studies have reported on massage therapy delivered by a wide variety of health care professionals, such as physical therapists, physiotherapists, and nurses. 4 , 5 Despite massage therapy’s popularity and long history in practice, evidence of beneficial outcomes associated with massage therapy remains limited. The Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) previously produced an evidence map of massage therapy for pain, which included systematic reviews published through 2018. 6 An evidence map is a form of systemic review that assesses a broad field to identify the state of the evidence, gaps in knowledge, and future research needs and that presents results in a user-friendly format, often a visual figure or graph. 7 To categorize this evidence base for use in decision-making by policymakers and practitioners, VA policymakers requested a new evidence map of reviews published since 2018 to answer the question “What is the certainty of evidence in systematic reviews of massage therapy for pain?” This systematic review is an extension of a study commissioned by the VA. While not a full systematic review, this study nevertheless reports methods and results using the Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Reviews and Meta-analyses ( PRISMA ) reporting guideline where applicable and filed the a priori protocol with the VA Evidence Synthesis Program Coordinating Center. Requirements for review and informed consent were waived because the study was designated as not human participants research. Literature searches were based on searches used for the evidence map of massage therapy completed in 2018. 8 We searched 5 databases for relevant records published from July 2018 to April 2023 using the search terms “massage,” “acupressure,” “shiatsu,” “myofascial release therapy,” “systematic*,” “metaanaly*,” and similar terms. The databases were PubMed, the Allied and Complementary Medicine Database, the Cumulated Index to Nursing and Allied Health Literature, the Cochrane Database of Systematic Reviews, and Web of Science. See eAppendix 1 in Supplement 1 for full search strategies. Each title was screened independently by 2 authors for relevance (S.M., J.A., and P.G.S.). Abstracts were then reviewed in duplicate, with any discrepancies resolved by group discussion. To be included, abstracts or titles needed to be about efficacy or effectiveness of massage therapy for a painful adult health condition and be a systematic review with more than 1 study about massage therapy. A systematic review was defined as a review that had a documented systematic method for identifying and critically appraising evidence. In general, any therapist-delivered modality described as massage therapy by review authors was considered eligible (eg, tuina, acupressure, auricular acupressure, reflexology, and myofascial release). Sports massage therapy, osteopathy, dry cupping or dry needling, and internal massage therapy (eg, for pelvic floor pain) were ineligible, as were self-administered massage therapy techniques, like foam rolling. Reviews had to be about a painful condition for adults, and we excluded publications in low- and middle-income countries because of differences in resources for usual care or other active treatments for included conditions. Publications were required to compare massage therapy with sham or placebo massage, usual care, or other active therapies. Systematic reviews that covered other interventions were eligible if results for massage therapy were reported separately. We next restricted eligibility to reviews that used formal methods to assess the certainty (sometimes called strength or quality) of the evidence for conclusions. In general, this meant using Grading of Recommendations, Assessment, Development, and Evaluations (GRADE). 9 However, other formal methods were also included, such as the approach used by the US Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality (AHRQ) Evidence-based Practice Center (EPC) program. To be included, a review had to state or cite the method used and report the certainty (or strength or quality) of evidence for each conclusion. After we applied this restriction, most health conditions had only 1 systematic review meeting the eligibility criteria, and we used this review for the map. Among conditions for which we identified more than 1 review meeting the eligibility criteria, we first assessed whether reviews differed in some other feature used to classify reviews on our map (eg, different comparators or type of massage therapy), which we would label with the appropriate designation (such as vs usual care or reflexology ). If there were multiple reviews about the same condition and they did not differ in some other feature, we selected the systematic review we judged as being most informative for readers. In general, this was the most recent review or the review with the greatest number of included studies. Data on study condition, number of articles in a review, intervention characteristics, comparators, conclusions, and certainty, quality, or strength of evidence were extracted by 1 reviewer and then verified by a second reviewer (S.M., J.A., and P.G.S.). Our evidence mapping process produced a visual depiction of the evidence for massage therapy, as well as an accompanying narrative with an ancillary figure and table. The visual depiction or evidence map uses a bubble plot format to display information on 4 dimensions: bubble size, bubble label, x-axis, and y-axis. This allowed us to provide the following types of information about each included systematic review: Number of articles in systematic review (bubble size): The size of each bubble corresponds to the number of relevant primary research studies included in a systematic review. Condition (bubble label): Each bubble is labeled with the condition discussed by that systematic review. Shapes and colors: Intervention characteristics for each condition are presented in the form of colors (type of intervention) and shapes (comparators). For type of intervention, we included nonspecified massage therapy, tuina, myofascial release, reflexology, acupressure, and auricular acupressure. For comparators, we included mixed comparators with subgroups, mixed comparators with no subgroups, sham or placebo, and active therapy or usual care. A condition can appear more than once if multiple systematic reviews included different type of massage therapy or different comparators. Strength of findings (rows): Each condition is plotted on the map based on the ratings of certainty of evidence statement as reported in the systematic reviews: high, moderate, low, or very low. Outcome associated with massage therapy (columns): Each condition is plotted in potential benefit or no benefit as the outcome associated with massage therapy. Columns are not mutually exclusive. A review could have more than 1 conclusion, and conclusions could differ in the benefit associated with massage therapy. Both conclusions are included on the map. Risk of bias is not part of the method of an evidence map. We assessed the quality of included reviews using criteria developed by the U S Preventive Services Task Force (USPSTF). Certainty of evidence as determined by the original authors of the systematic review was abstracted for each conclusion in each systematic review and tabulated. The search identified 1164 potentially relevant citations. Among 129 full-text articles screened, 41 publications were retained for further review. Of these, 24 reviews were excluded from the map for the following reasons: only 1 primary study about interventions of interest (11 studies), outcomes associated with massage therapy could not be distinguished from other included interventions (5 studies), not an intervention of interest (3 studies), not a comparison of interest (2 studies), overlap with a more recent or larger review that was already included on the map (2 studies), and self-delivered therapy (1 study). We included 17 publications in this map covering 13 health conditions. 4 , 10 - 25 The literature flowchart ( Figure 1 ) summarizes results of the study selection process, and eAppendix 2 in Supplement 1 presents citations for all excluded reviews at full-text screening. The total number of primary studies about massage therapy for pain in the included reviews ranged from 2 studies to 23 studies. There were 12 reviews that included fewer than 10 primary studies 4 , 11 - 17 , 20 - 23 and 5 reviews that included 10 to 25 studies about massage therapy for pain. 10 , 18 , 19 , 24 , 25 Of included reviews, 3 reviews were completed by the Cochrane Collaboration 4 , 19 , 23 and 2 reviews were completed by the AHRQ EPC program. 11 , 18 We categorized the included 17 reviews by health condition. These categories were cancer-related pain, 15 , 24 back pain (including chronic back pain, 25 chronic low back pain, 18 , 22 and low back pain 17 ), chronic neck pain, 18 fibromyalgia, 21 labor pain, 4 , 19 mechanical neck pain, 13 myofascial pain, 14 palliative care needs, 10 plantar fasciitis, 12 post–breast cancer surgery pain, 16 postcesarean pain, 23 postpartum pain, 20 and postoperative pain. 11 Of 17 included reviews, 3 reviews included more than 1 type of massage therapy and 14 reviews included 1 type of massage therapy. Reviews by Chou et al 11 and Smith et al 16 included acupressure and nonspecified massage therapy as interventions. The review by Candy et al 7 included reflexology and nonspecified massage therapy as interventions. Of the 14 reviews with 1 type of massage therapy, there were 5 reviews describing nonspecified massage therapy, 10 , 14 , 17 , 20 1 review about tuina, 22 5 reviews about myofascial release, 8 , 9 , 12 , 18 , 19 and 3 reviews about acupressure. 13 , 15 , 21 A variety of comparators were included in reviews. Of 9 reviews that included more than 1 comparator in analyses, 4 , 11 , 13 , 14 , 18 - 22 2 reviews did not conduct separate analyses by comparator (labeled mixed with no subgroups ) 13 , 14 and 3 reviews conducted separate analyses by comparator (labeled mixed with subgroups ). 4 , 21 , 22 The other 4 reviews included a mix of comparators with separate conclusions: sham or placebo and active therapy or usual care, 11 mixed with no subgroups and active therapy or usual care, 18 mixed with subgroups and active therapy or usual care, 20 and mixed with no subgroups, sham, and active therapy or usual care. 19 There were 8 reviews that included 1 comparator only in their analyses, 10 , 12 , 15 - 17 , 23 - 25 with 7 reviews that described interventions compared with active therapy or usual care only, 10 , 12 , 15 , 17 , 23 - 25 while 1 review limited inclusion to primary studies with a sham or placebo comparator. 16 There was substantial variation in the reporting of other details from primary studies in included reviews. Any study that did not specify the mode of delivery was included; studies that explicitly stated that massage therapy was self-delivered were excluded. Of the 17 included reviews, 5 reviews provided details of personnel who administered the therapy, including massage therapist, nurse, aromatherapist, physiotherapist, and reflexologist. 4 , 10 , 19 - 21 A total of 7 reviews presented length of sessions (eg, 5-minute or 90-minute sessions for massage therapy studies and 30-second or 5-minute sessions for acupressure studies). 10 , 16 , 18 , 20 - 23 With the exception of the review by He et al, 15 all reviews reported details about frequency, duration, or both when available. A total of 9 reviews included information about frequency of sessions (eg, 1 session or once every 3 weeks for massage therapy studies and 4 times per day or daily for acupressure studies), 10 , 12 , 16 - 18 , 20 - 23 and 9 reviews reported duration of sessions (eg, single session or 3 months). 10 - 12 , 16 - 18 , 20 , 22 , 23 There were 7 reviews that included details about follow-up (eg, 1 week or 12 months). 10 , 13 , 17 , 18 , 21 , 23 , 25 Using USPSTF criteria to rate the quality of included reviews, 10 reviews were rated good 4 , 10 , 11 , 14 - 16 , 18 , 19 , 21 , 23 and 7 reviews were rated fair. 12 , 13 , 17 , 20 , 22 , 24 , 25 See eAppendix 3 in Supplement 1 for each review’s rating. Figure 2 is a visual depiction of the following types of information about each included systematic review: condition, types of comparison treatments (shapes), types of massage therapy (color), number of articles included for each conclusion (bubble size), outcomes associated with massage therapy for pain (columns), and certainty of evidence rating (rows). There were 6 reviews mapped more than once, reflecting primary studies describing more than 1 health condition, 18 more than 1 type of massage therapy, 10 , 20 or outcomes associated with massage therapy compared with different comparators. 11 , 17 - 19 There were 7 conditions from reviews 14 , 16 - 19 , 21 , 22 that reported 1 conclusion rated as moderate-certainty evidence, all of which concluded that massage therapy was associated with beneficial outcomes for pain ( Table 1 ). However, most other conditions had conclusions rated as low- or very low–certainty evidence (12 reviews about 10 conditions 4 , 10 - 13 , 15 , 17 - 20 , 23 - 25 ). This rating means “Our confidence in the effect estimate is limited. The true effect may be substantially different from the estimate of effect,” or “We have very little confidence in the effect estimate.” See eAppendix 3 in Supplement 1 for conclusions in all reviews. This map included 4 conditions that did not appear in the 2018 map, 12 , 16 , 20 , 23 and there were 8 conditions in the 2018 map that did not have new reviews meeting eligibility criteria (mainly a formal grading of the certainty of evidence); 7 health conditions 10 , 11 , 13 - 15 , 17 , 18 , 21 , 22 , 24 , 25 were included in the 2018 map and the new map (see details in eAppendix 4 in Supplement 1 ). Evidence about adverse events was collected by approximately half of included reviews, and no serious adverse events were reported. While 11 of 17 reviews 10 , 11 , 13 , 15 , 17 - 19 , 22 - 25 described adverse events, 2 reviews 18 , 23 included certainty of evidence conclusions for adverse events for 3 health conditions ( Table 2 ). There is a large literature of original randomized clinical trials and systematic reviews of randomized clinical trials of massage therapy as a treatment for pain. Our systematic review found that despite this literature, there were only a few conditions for which authors of systematic reviews concluded that there was at least moderate-certainty evidence regarding health outcomes associated with massage therapy and pain. Most reviews reported low- or very low–certainty evidence. Although adverse events associated with massage therapy for pain were rare, the evidence was limited. For reviews that had conclusions about adverse events, authors were uncertain if there was a difference between groups or did not find a difference between groups and rated the evidence low to very low certainty of evidence. Massage therapy is a broad term that is inclusive of many styles and techniques. We applied exclusion criteria determined a priori to help identify publications for inclusion in the evidence map. Despite that procedure, there was still a lack of clarity in determining what massage therapy is. For instance, acupressure was sometimes considered acupuncture and other times considered massage therapy, depending on author definition. In this case, we reviewed and included only publications that were explicitly labeled acupressure and did not review publications about acupuncture only. This highlights a fundamental issue with examining the evidence base of massage therapy for pain when there is ambiguity in defining what is considered massage therapy. Unlike a pharmaceutical placebo, sham massage therapy may not be truly inactive. It is conceivable that even the light touch or touch with no clear criterion 26 used in sham massage therapy may be associated with some positive outcomes, meaning that patients who receive the massage therapy intervention and those who receive a sham massage therapy could both demonstrate some degree of symptom improvement. Limitations of sham comparators raise the question of whether sham or placebo treatment is an appropriate comparison group in massage therapy trials. It may be more informative to compare massage therapy with other treatments that are accessible and whose benefits are known so that any added beneficial outcomes associated with massage therapy could be better isolated and understood. Compared with the 2018 map, our map included 4 new conditions not on the 2018 map, while 8 conditions from the 2018 map had no new reviews meeting eligibility criteria and 7 health conditions appeared in both maps. Despite identifying new conditions and conclusions with higher certainty of evidence in several reviews in our updated search, most included reviews reported low or very low certainty of evidence, suggesting that the most critical research need is for better evidence to increase certainty of evidence for massage therapy for pain. This is a challenge given that massage, like other complementary and integrative health interventions, does not have the historical research infrastructure that most health professions have. 27 Nevertheless, it is only when systematic reviews and meta-analyses are conducted with high-quality primary studies that the association or lack of association of massage therapy with pain will reach higher certainties of evidence. Studies comparing massage therapy with placebo or sham are probably not the priority; rather, the priority should be studies comparing massage therapy with other recommended, accepted, and active therapies for pain. Studies comparing massage therapy with other recommended therapies should also have a sufficiently long follow-up to allow any nonspecific outcomes (eg, those associated with receiving some new treatment) to dissipate. For example, this period has been proposed to be at least 6 months for studies of chronic pain. There are 2 main limitations to this systematic review’s evidence map. The first, common to all systematic reviews, is that we may not have identified all potentially eligible evidence. If a systematic review was published in a journal not indexed in any of 5 databases we searched and we did not identify it as part of our search of references of included publications, then we would have missed it. Nevertheless, our search strategy identified more than 200 publications about massage therapy for pain published since July 2018, so we did not lack potential reviews to evaluate. The second limitation of evidence maps is that we did not independently evaluate the source evidence; in other words, we took conclusions of authors of the systematic review at face value. That is the nature of an evidence map. Particular to this application of the mapping process, we mapped the review we deemed most informative for the 2 health conditions that had more than 1 eligible review (back pain and labor pain). This necessarily requires judgment, and others could disagree with that judgment. We included the citation for reviews excluded from the map for this overlap reason in supplemental material, and interested readers can review it for additional information. As in all evidence-based products and particularly in 1 such as this covering a large and complex evidence base, it is possible that there are errors of data extraction and compilation. We used dual review to minimize the chance of such errors, but if we are notified of errors, we will correct them. Although this systematic review found that the number of conclusions about the effectiveness of massage therapy that were judged to have at least moderate certainty of evidence was greater now than in 2018, it was still small relative to the need. More high-quality randomized clinical trials are needed to provide a stronger evidence base to assess the effect of massage therapy on pain. For painful conditions that do not have at least moderate-certainty evidence supporting use of massage therapy, new studies that address limitations of existing research are needed. The field of massage therapy would be best advanced by educating the wider research community with clearer definitions of massage therapy and whether it is appropriate to include multiple modalities in the same systematic review. Accepted for Publication: May 15, 2024. Published: July 15, 2024. doi:10.1001/jamanetworkopen.2024.22259 Open Access: This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the CC-BY License . © 2024 Mak S et al. JAMA Network Open . Corresponding Author: Selene Mak, PhD, MPH, Veterans Health Administration, Greater Los Angeles Healthcare System, 11301 Wilshire Blvd, Los Angeles, CA 90073 ( [email protected] ). Author Contributions: Drs Mak and Shekelle had full access to all of the data in the study and take responsibility for the integrity of the data and the accuracy of the data analysis. Concept and design: Mak, Miake-Lye, Shekelle. Acquisition, analysis, or interpretation of data: Mak, Allen, Begashaw, Beroes-Severin, De Vries, Lawson, Shekelle. Drafting of the manuscript: Mak, Allen, Begashaw, Beroes-Severin, De Vries, Lawson, Shekelle. Critical review of the manuscript for important intellectual content: Mak, Miake-Lye, Shekelle. Statistical analysis: Allen. Obtained funding: Shekelle. Administrative, technical, or material support: Begashaw, Miake-Lye, Beroes-Severin, De Vries, Lawson. Supervision: Mak, Shekelle. Conflict of Interest Disclosures: None reported. Funding/Support: Funding was provided by the Department of Veterans Affairs Health Services Research and Development. Role of the Funder/Sponsor: The funders had no role in the collection, management, analysis, and interpretation of the data and preparation of the manuscript. The funders participated in the design and conduct of the study, the review and approval of the manuscript, and the decision to submit the manuscript for publication. Data Sharing Statement: See Supplement 2 . Register for email alerts with links to free full-text articles Access PDFs of free articles Manage your interests Save searches and receive search alerts 106 COMMENTS Litmaps The Seed Maps and Discover features of Litmaps have transformed my literature review process, streamlining the identification of key citations while revealing previously overlooked relevant literature, ensuring no crucial connection goes unnoticed. A true game-changer indeed! Ritwik Pandey. How to Master at Literature Mapping: 5 Most Recommended Tools ... Here are the most recommended literature mapping tools to choose from: 1. Connected Papers. a. Connected Papers is a simple, yet powerful, one-stop visualization tool that uses a single starter article. b. It is easy to use tool that quickly identifies similar papers with just one "Seed paper" (a relevant paper). c. Literature Mapping in Scientific Research: A Comprehensive Review 06/06/2023. Literature mapping is a process that involves analyzing and visualizing the scientific literature on a particular topic to identify research gaps, improve collaboration, and inform decision-making. In this article, we list five benefits of literature mapping for scientists and researchers and show you types and tools to save your ... Mapping reviews, scoping reviews, and evidence and gap maps (EGMs): the A mapping review may also scope the literature. It has also been suggested that when the term mapping is included in the description of the method that the review will incorporate a geographical mapping exercise or charting of the data in a tabular or any other visual format that can plot or portray the data. Overview Literature mapping is a way of discovering scholarly articles by exploring connections between publications.. Similar articles are often linked by citations, authors, funders, keywords, and other metadata. 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Spot relevant papers you'd miss with traditional search. Creating a Comprehensive Literature Review Map: A Step-by-Step Example A literature review map acts as a visual representation of the concepts, studies, and theories that have been covered in the literature. In this article, we will guide you through the process of creating a comprehensive literature review map, step-by-step, to help you structure and organize your literature review effectively. Step 1: Define ... Using Concept Maps Concept maps or mind maps visually represent relationships of different concepts. In research, they can help you make connections between ideas. You can use them as you are formulating your research question, as you are reading a complex text, and when you are creating a literature review. See the video and examples below. Structuring your ideas: Creating a literature map Constructing a literature map helps you to: develop your understanding of the key issues and research findings in the literature. to organise ideas in your mind. to see more clearly how different research studies relate to one another and to group those with similar findings. Your map can then be used as a plan for your literature review. Litmaps Litmaps is an online platform that allows users to organize, visualize, and share their research. A methodological quest for systematic literature mapping Systematic maps tend to be conceived as a stage of the systematic review, while systematic literature mapping tends to be a research project in itself. This article reported in detail the methodological journey of literature retrieving and analysis through timeline, conceptual and thematic maps so that interested scholars and students could ... Research Guides: Literature Reviews: Concept Mapping Concept Mapping - Literature Reviews - Research Guides at University of Michigan Library. A concept map or mind map is a visual representation of knowledge that illustrates relationships between concepts or ideas. It is a tool for organizing and representing information in a hierarchical and interconnected manner. Tools to help with literature review mapping Connected Papers — Simple but powerful one shot visualization tool using one seed paper. Inciteful — Customizable tool , use multiple seed papers in an iterative process. Litmaps —Use multiple seed papers and overlapping maps, combining search with citation relationships and visualization. 1. 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Research Guides: Literature Reviews: Concept Mapping Concept Maps are a way to graphically represent ideas and how they relate to each other. Concept maps may be simple designs illustrating a central theme and a few associated topics or complex structures that delineate hierarchical or multiple relationships. J.D. Novak developed concept maps in the 1970's to help facilitate the research process ... Concept Mapping to Write a Literature Review There are just two basic items you need to know about concept maps in order to create one. First, you need to know what a concept is, and secondly, you need to know how the concepts are linked. This is pretty simple: A concept is an idea that we can label. It could be a noun, such as "cars" or "stars," or a description, such as "bright" or "fast." Getting started What is a literature review? Definition: A literature review is a systematic examination and synthesis of existing scholarly research on a specific topic or subject. Purpose: It serves to provide a comprehensive overview of the current state of knowledge within a particular field. Analysis: Involves critically evaluating and summarizing key findings, methodologies, and debates found in ... CONCEPT MAPPING: A TOOL FOR CREATING A LITERATURE REVIEW The objectives of this article are to identify the major challenges faced. by students in creating a literature review, to determine what concept maps are being used for in the process and. to ... Subject Guides: How to Research: Literature Reviews A literature review is a summary of the published work in a field of study. It can be a section of a larger paper or article, or the focus of an entire paper. Literature reviews show you have examined the breadth of knowledge on a topic and can justify your thesis or research question. They are also valuable tools for other researchers who need ... How to Create a Literature Map The Literature Map helps researchers review literature for gaps and points of impact. They are useful in both academic and industry related research projects to help gain traction and market interest. Book a seat for our upcoming Literature Mapping Webinar Workshop. Literature Reviews Literature Review Full Guide. A Crash Course in Lit Review. This is an in-depth guide on how to create literature reviews! ... Click the image above to explore Literature Review entry in the Methods Map from Sage Research Methods << Previous: Research Basics; Next: Search Strategies >> Research Guides: Research at NJAES : Literature Reviews There are many different types of literature reviews from traditional literature reviews to rigorous systematic reviews. Each has its own methodology. Please review resources on this page and familiarize yourself with the task, commitment, and purpose of each before trying to decide on the type of review best fitting your research question. Mapping scholarly books: library metadata and research ... Evaluating the impact of scholarly books presents a unique challenge compared to journal articles. In this section I review the literature on metrics and approaches for assessing the impact of scholarly books, moving beyond sole reliance on citation counts to consider diverse indicators such as book reviews, library holdings, online platforms, and altmetrics. Identifying and Mapping Canadian Dietetic Students ... This scoping review mapped literature available on Canadian dietetics, nutrition, and foods students' and graduates' interaction(s) with simulation-based education (SBE) during undergraduate and/or practicum. One certified Librarian led the preliminary search (Summer, 2021), while three Joanna Brigg … Use of Massage Therapy for Pain, 2018-2023 : A Systematic Review Importance Massage therapy is a popular treatment that has been advocated for dozens of painful adult health conditions and has a large evidence base.. Objective To map systematic reviews, conclusions, and certainty or quality of evidence for outcomes of massage therapy for painful adult health conditions.. Evidence Review In this systematic review, a computerized search was conducted of ... essay homework paper phd project resume review speech study thesis