Tag Archives: literature reviews

Peer review explained by Professor Brian Cox

Posted on September 15, 2021 by Andrew Defty

Peer review is a process designed to ensure the quality, more specifically the reliability and validity of material which is published in academic journals. It is absolutely central to the development of academic knowledge and provides a barrier to unfounded … Continue reading →

Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged , | Comments Off on Peer review explained by Professor Brian Cox

Systematic Reviews in the Social Sciences

Posted on January 13, 2016 by Andrew Defty

There is a tendency amongst some students looking for an approach for their undergraduate dissertation to claim they want to do “library based research”, by which they mean they are going to look through whatever literature is available to them … Continue reading →

Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged , | Comments Off on Systematic Reviews in the Social Sciences

Beware the alibi of photocopies

Posted on November 10, 2015 by Andrew Defty

There are many intellectual aspirins in Oliver Burkeman’s weekly, ‘This column will save your life’, in the Saturday edition of The Guardian. The column ‘What unread books can teach us’ is particularly pertinent to the budding researcher. In it Burkeman, drawing on observations by … Continue reading →

Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged , | 1 Comment

On the importance of literature reviews

Posted on October 29, 2015 by Andrew Defty

In a recent article in The Washington Post, Daniel W. Drezner, professor of international politics at the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy at Tufts University, neatly summarised the importance of literature reviews in academic papers: Done well, a literature … Continue reading →

Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged | Comments Off on On the importance of literature reviews

Let’s hear it for librarians, the pitbulls of democracy

Posted on May 16, 2014 by Andrew Defty

I don’t like the phrase, ‘library-based research’. It implies that research either takes place in the library or somewhere else. That students can choose between undertaking their own fieldwork or spending time in the library reading the findings of others … Continue reading →

Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged | Comments Off on Let’s hear it for librarians, the pitbulls of democracy