Systematic review workshop

Nine of us OUBS PhD students have spent an engrossing and exciting day working on how to review literature. Dave Denyer from Cranfield led the day. He comes across as a practitioner, not just someone who says "you should do it this systematic way", but someone who does review systematically.

The approach

• stimulates thoughts
• stimulates creativity
• is systematic
• distinguishes between literature review as a scoping exercise and a literature review of the relevant literature

It gives you a structure, a logic and an audit for tackling the literature. Dave left us with files, overheads and templates for mapping, documenting and analysing.

One student was so impressed that half way through the day was cross that we hadn't had the training a year ago, and suggested this session should be compulsory for first year PhD students, it is so worth doing. Two of our third years came along considering it worth repeating for revision.