Method of preparing an international and national literature review for novice researchers

Abstract

Many papers offer methods for preparing a systematic literature review. These methods assume that the researchers have some experience in research, are proficient in English, and that the research objective is solely a literature review. This article presents a systematic method for preparing a literature review aimed at novice researchers who have four to twelve weeks to develop their work and do not have the guidance of a professor. Originality is associated with the objective of the literature review. The proposed method aims to elaborate the literature section of a technical article, while the other methods aim to elaborate a literature review article. The method's flexible structure allows for increasing the depth of the results according to the researcher's capacity. Another innovation of the presented method consists of a structure that allows the simultaneous consideration of international and national literature.•This paper introduces a systematized method to guide novice researchers in preparing the literature review section of their research.•The method has an easy-to-follow structure that does not require the novice researcher to follow up with a professor.•The method allows adjusting the depth level of the international literature review through the number of articles subject to content analysis, exploring the international and national literature through a set of materials (graphs, forms, and figures) that facilitate and speed up the elaboration, synthesis, and presentation of the results.

Keywords: Co-citation analysis; Literature review; Method of preparing an international and national literature review for novice researchers; Novice researchers; Research methodology; Systematized method.