This article compiles the necessary details that you must know about a review article. From its definition to examples, everything we’ll cover here. Let’s delve into it to explore these details.
Reviewing articles is an academic requirement and an essential skill for excelling in the transforming educational realm. It can help students separate the wheat from the chaff by offering a summary, highlighting the key findings, and identifying the gaps in the research areas.
Due to its importance, scholars, research students, and scientists publish numerous articles each year. According to a report by the STM Association, the CAGR of articles, reviews, and research papers increased from 11% to 38% from 2013 to 2023. If you also want to publish your review paper, then you have knocked at the right place.
In this article, we’ll share what is a review article, its purpose, and how to write a winning one. Continue reading to explore everything about this academic document.
Review Articles Explained – Definition, Purpose, & How to Write One
Reviewing articles is an important academic exercise that gives students insights into the research design, method, and key findings. It also allows them to stay well-informed about the latest industry trends. However, writing this paper requires strong critical thinking, analytical, and writing skills.
Therefore, many students get overwhelmed while writing this document as an assignment. Such students can seek assistance from a London-based assignment writing services to get a winning assignment that ensures higher grades in their academic career.
Additionally, they can get guidance from this article, in which we will discuss everything about this paper. Let’s get started by understanding what a review article is.
What is a Review Article?
The Taylor & Francis Group defines the review article as “a constructive survey of the previously published research work about a specific topic.” This survey can take various forms, including analysis, summary, comparison, and classification. However, it demands an in-depth evaluation of the previous results and well-structured arguments. The most important thing about this academic document is that, unlike other research documents, it does not present any new results.
Three basic types of reviews are usually conducted in the scientific field. These include the following:
- Research Article Review: This paper primarily evaluates different research techniques used in a particular research paper.
- Journal Article Review: A journal article basically analyses the merits and demerits of a particular research work, which allows researchers to conduct their own research successfully.
- Science Article Review: This type of review article covers a broad spectrum of subjects and provides in-depth background information to conduct a holistic analysis.
Now that you have learned what is an article review and its common types, it’s time to explore the purpose of this research paper.
What is the Purpose of the Review Article?
Reviewing articles is an invaluable skill in academic research. It has several essential purposes; however, here we are going to discuss some primary purposes of review articles.
Have a look at what they are:
- Provide Historical Information: The main purpose of this academic paper is to provide the historical context of a topic by tracking the development of the related field. It also highlights the important findings, key achievements, and evolution of concepts over time.
- Summarise Existing Literature: This educational document comprises a comprehensive and detailed summary of research on a particular topic. It gathers information from various sources and enables readers to thoroughly understand the topic.
- Evaluate Research Designs and Methodologies: This paper assesses the research designs and methodologies of the reviewed study. This provides researchers with insights into the strengths and weaknesses of different research methods, ultimately helping them design their research.
- Give Suggestions for Future Implication: Review articles generally comprise potential areas for future research. Further, they identify research gaps in the existing literature that encourage researchers to contribute to the advancement of knowledge.
- Highlight Trends and Patterns: The review article’s best feature is that it identifies trends and patterns in the existing literature. Analysing these patterns uncovers the common paradigm within the particular field.
As you have explored the purpose of a review article, now check out what steps you must follow to write a perfect document.
6 Key Steps to Write a Winning Review Article
A review article is a great opportunity for novice researchers to comprehend the topic well and polish their analytical skills. It also gives you a chance to write your original review about a particular topic. However, to write this review, you must follow key steps to guide you to write a win-win article.
Check out how to write a review article.
- Choose a Topic: The first step you must do while writing your review article is to select a topic. Make sure that you choose a unique, fresh, and catchy topic that grabs your readers’ attention. Also, ensure that your title reflects the main idea of your paper.
- Find the Literature: The next step is to search the existing literature review related to your topic after selecting the topic. You can have 100 papers related to your title. You just have to select the papers that are the most relatable to your field. It is good to save these papers in some reference tool like EndNote. It will help you to cite these papers during the writing process.
- Start Reading the Papers: The next step is to start reading the papers that you have shortlisted. Just make sure that you make a mind map while reading these papers. This will help you to better analyse these papers and capture the crux of this research.
- Analyse the Introduction of Each Paper: An introduction is a tiny review of each experimental paper, providing a comprehensive overview. Therefore, you must read the introduction of each paper carefully to get a good understanding of the paper.
- Start Structuring Your Paper: Now, it’s time to structure your paper using the information that you have collected from the papers. Start your paper by providing the background information about your topic to help the readers understand its importance. Now, add the mind map of your selected articles to your paper structure. For this, just add a brief one or two-liner summary of these papers with a twist of your own perspective.
- Add Figures: Visual aids make your paper more appealing and let the readers better understand your work. For this, it is good to add some pictures to your review paper. Just make sure that these pictures are the true schematic representation of your paper and are colourful so they make your paper more appealing.
Review Article Examples
Writing a peer-reviewed article is undoubtedly not a piece of cake as it is considered one of the most difficult academic assignments. To write this assignment, you can follow the steps that we have mentioned in the above section. For additional support, you can approach professional assignment writing company that knows how to write a winning academic paper.
Besides, you can explore the review article examples to clarify your understanding.
The first example is by ResearchGate, in which the authors have presented their review on the growing usage of smartphones and tablets.
The next example of a peer-reviewed journal article is also by ResearchGate. Check out how the author structured this document.