Writing a Review

[Merely]

I have just started my summer research with a physician at a local hospital. He asked me if I was interested in just getting experience in research or actually publishing and getting authorship and obviously the general wisdom on SDN is to def get authorship. He told me that I could get authorship if I wrote a lit review of some topic. I accepted immediately so now I'm wondering how difficult is a lit review, how long does it need to be, and how long does it take? (I'm entering med school in fall, just graduated college last week). Thanks everyone!

 

[deleted343839]

Here are some pointers: http://cures.cardiff.ac.uk/files/2014/10/NSAMR-Systematic-Review.pdf

Writing a lit review is time consuming, but if you are disciplined about it you can probably submit it by the time you start med school. Look up some journals in your area of interest to get a sense for the length. Each journal will have its own guidelines, but 4000-5000 words is pretty typical for a review article.

 

[dermacat]

I am also an incoming student and accepted this same opportunity recently. Being my first research related assignment, I was lost on where to begin. The link posted above by MamaPhD is helpful, though, after collecting an abundance of articles related to the topic, I'm a bit overwhelmed and having trouble with the 'managing your findings' part. OP, how did you go about your next step? To the more seasoned review writers on SDN, what processes have worked best for you in managing information, deciding which articles to include/not include, organizing your thoughts, organizing your article, etc.? Any direction/advice/tips would be helpful!