I hate writing literature reviews, although I do see the need to situate one's own work within a larger picture. I really liked Scholarpedia when it started up (http://www.scholarpedia.org/article/Main_Page) although it hasn't taken off like I hoped it would. If I had my own way, the literature review section in my article would be a list of URLs.
Do you have any thoughts on what form a literature review might take in a couple of decades from now?
Thanks for commenting! I agree, there are many annoying aspects of writing literature reviews, from the purely technical annoyances (PDFs, citations, etc), to the challenge for an early student to organize their thoughts and not "drown", to an experienced researcher writing for other experts who have clear results, and now need to "justify" things that are perhaps already well understood in the field. (Similarly, I dislike reading articles that start with "MOOCs were first invented in this time". "Social learning has been shown to beneficial (cite, cite)"... Get to the point!... I guess literature reviews are also useful in positioning yourself - so perhaps you could say you subscribe to the "social learning is beneficial paradigm" (link), and then people can go to that link and see the whole discussion, and if they don't agree with this premise, they can skip your paper, if they agree, they can continue reading to the actual stuff you did.
I would love if literature reviews were somehow alive, so that when you published a paper, part of the process would be to go to a map of the research and position your paper (or the statements/claims you make), show how it fills a gap, what it builds on, etc. Things like Scholarpedia are difficult, because academics are busy and are highly driven by incentives. These incentives can come from their institution (mostly at hiring/promotion, although these processes tend to change very slowly). They can come from funders (we see some success with things like open access requirements, open data requirements etc), and from journals (the most prestigious journals can ask for almost anything, and faculty will do it - I hazily remember a chemistry journal that required publications to create Wikipedia pages for any new compounds they described for example).
There are also annoying practicalities - I remember vividly a paper called "Why can't I manage academic papers like MP3s? The evolution and intent of metadata standards". This was written in 2004, and I tweeted about it in 2013 (http://reganmian.net/blog/2013/03/22/tweets-from-beyond-the-pdf-2/), but I don't think a lot has changed since then. Why can't I drag and drop a citation from your literature review into my citation manager (and get not just a semantically correct citation, but also the PDF of the article)?
I think this is a great example of what they can look like -- http://tensornetwork.org/ - in this case it is a community maintained review with open contributions maintained through github
Nice post! I feel that frustration with debates that don't ever start in common ground, and really like the idea of having info tools like argument maps that help collectively reach that ground. I've also been pretty interested in techniques for solving the 'human' part of this problem -- building trust and collaborative engagement on emotionally and politically charged issue-- convergent facilitation is one of the tools I've heard a lot about, which focuses on establishing not just common ground in 'facts' but also in 'needs/values' (see. e.g. http://efficientcollaboration.org/wp-content/uploads/MinnesotaCaseStudy.pdf). One of the complaints about these kinds of processes is the slowness and pain of reaching common ground and moving back up from there, and it's interesting to think how collaboration tech like Roam can help with this. I'm imagining building up a network of info from many different convergent facilitation processes, and using this as a resource to develop a vocabulary of shared values that stretch across many different problem domains (rather than reinventing the wheel each time or relying on the mediator's background).
Hi Kiel, thanks for being the first commenter! There is so much collective wisdom and knowledge among the subscribers to this newsletter, and I'm really hoping to generate some discussion - ideas for how I can better enable that are welcome.
Have heard about things like conflict resolution and different ways of facilitating group democracy before, but not specifically convergent facilitation. You're right that the human factors are hugely important - one thing I've seen often in studies of Computer-Supported Collaborative Learning technologies is a too strong focus on the data that gets captured on a certain platform, like Compendium, and too little focus on the facilitation that happens in the classroom (and the classroom culture, which might have been built up over a very long period of time), and which might make some cases wildly successful, and leave others trying to replicate it confused about why it doesn't work for them.
Another friend of mine sent me links to the Better Angels (https://www.better-angels.org/) and deliberative polling (https://www.jstor.org/stable/pdf/3325851.pdf?seq=1) which also seem to try to bridge the divisions in the US. Very interested in learning more about these approaches, and how mapping and even technological tools can help in these human processes.
I hate writing literature reviews, although I do see the need to situate one's own work within a larger picture. I really liked Scholarpedia when it started up (http://www.scholarpedia.org/article/Main_Page) although it hasn't taken off like I hoped it would. If I had my own way, the literature review section in my article would be a list of URLs.
Do you have any thoughts on what form a literature review might take in a couple of decades from now?
Thanks for commenting! I agree, there are many annoying aspects of writing literature reviews, from the purely technical annoyances (PDFs, citations, etc), to the challenge for an early student to organize their thoughts and not "drown", to an experienced researcher writing for other experts who have clear results, and now need to "justify" things that are perhaps already well understood in the field. (Similarly, I dislike reading articles that start with "MOOCs were first invented in this time". "Social learning has been shown to beneficial (cite, cite)"... Get to the point!... I guess literature reviews are also useful in positioning yourself - so perhaps you could say you subscribe to the "social learning is beneficial paradigm" (link), and then people can go to that link and see the whole discussion, and if they don't agree with this premise, they can skip your paper, if they agree, they can continue reading to the actual stuff you did.
I would love if literature reviews were somehow alive, so that when you published a paper, part of the process would be to go to a map of the research and position your paper (or the statements/claims you make), show how it fills a gap, what it builds on, etc. Things like Scholarpedia are difficult, because academics are busy and are highly driven by incentives. These incentives can come from their institution (mostly at hiring/promotion, although these processes tend to change very slowly). They can come from funders (we see some success with things like open access requirements, open data requirements etc), and from journals (the most prestigious journals can ask for almost anything, and faculty will do it - I hazily remember a chemistry journal that required publications to create Wikipedia pages for any new compounds they described for example).
There are also annoying practicalities - I remember vividly a paper called "Why can't I manage academic papers like MP3s? The evolution and intent of metadata standards". This was written in 2004, and I tweeted about it in 2013 (http://reganmian.net/blog/2013/03/22/tweets-from-beyond-the-pdf-2/), but I don't think a lot has changed since then. Why can't I drag and drop a citation from your literature review into my citation manager (and get not just a semantically correct citation, but also the PDF of the article)?
I think this is a great example of what they can look like -- http://tensornetwork.org/ - in this case it is a community maintained review with open contributions maintained through github
Nice post! I feel that frustration with debates that don't ever start in common ground, and really like the idea of having info tools like argument maps that help collectively reach that ground. I've also been pretty interested in techniques for solving the 'human' part of this problem -- building trust and collaborative engagement on emotionally and politically charged issue-- convergent facilitation is one of the tools I've heard a lot about, which focuses on establishing not just common ground in 'facts' but also in 'needs/values' (see. e.g. http://efficientcollaboration.org/wp-content/uploads/MinnesotaCaseStudy.pdf). One of the complaints about these kinds of processes is the slowness and pain of reaching common ground and moving back up from there, and it's interesting to think how collaboration tech like Roam can help with this. I'm imagining building up a network of info from many different convergent facilitation processes, and using this as a resource to develop a vocabulary of shared values that stretch across many different problem domains (rather than reinventing the wheel each time or relying on the mediator's background).
Hi Kiel, thanks for being the first commenter! There is so much collective wisdom and knowledge among the subscribers to this newsletter, and I'm really hoping to generate some discussion - ideas for how I can better enable that are welcome.
Have heard about things like conflict resolution and different ways of facilitating group democracy before, but not specifically convergent facilitation. You're right that the human factors are hugely important - one thing I've seen often in studies of Computer-Supported Collaborative Learning technologies is a too strong focus on the data that gets captured on a certain platform, like Compendium, and too little focus on the facilitation that happens in the classroom (and the classroom culture, which might have been built up over a very long period of time), and which might make some cases wildly successful, and leave others trying to replicate it confused about why it doesn't work for them.
Another friend of mine sent me links to the Better Angels (https://www.better-angels.org/) and deliberative polling (https://www.jstor.org/stable/pdf/3325851.pdf?seq=1) which also seem to try to bridge the divisions in the US. Very interested in learning more about these approaches, and how mapping and even technological tools can help in these human processes.