You probably know the difference between a popular magazine article, and a peer-reviewed journal article. But do you know the difference between a scoping review and literature review? What about between a conference paper and a clinical trial? Take a look at the different the information below on the different types of publishing and research methods. And as always, if you're ever confused, ask your librarian!
What sets apart an empirical study from other types of scholarly work is the presence of original data collection driven by a research question, ultimately leading to a conclusion based on the data. Unlike a review article or a literature review that attempts to collect and synthesize salient literature on a particular topic, an empirical research article reports on the collection and analysis of original data in order to answer a research question.
Things to look for:
What is grey literature? It is actually a broad category for any scholarly research information produced outside of traditional publishing and distribution channels. This can include research produced by academic, government, or business sources. For example, a journal article is ultimately controlled and distributed by it's commercial publisher, but a dissertation or thesis is produced in an academic environment, and generally not published commercially outside of the institution. Grey literature is usually not peer-reviewed (but sometimes it is!) and processes of quality control can vary depending on the source type.
Adapted from the UNSW Sydney "Grey Literature" libguide and Simon Fraser University libguide on grey literature.
A literature review (or lit review, for short) is an in-depth critical analysis of published scholarly research related to a specific topic. Published scholarly research (the "literature") may include journal articles, books, book chapters, dissertations and thesis, or conference proceedings.
A solid lit review must:
View the video below for a brief explanation of lit reviews. (It's not just for grad students!)
Systematic, scoping, and meta-analysis reviews are types of literature reviews that use a well-defined and logical method for research synthesis. It's like if you took similar standards for primary research, and applied it to the process of researching and writing a lit review. Similar to primary or empirical research, these types of review articles usually include:
Systematic research synthesis first formally came to prominence in the field of psychotherapy, coined by Smith and Glass in 1975. This work was part of a larger movement towards "evidence-based medicine" in an effort to connect research with public policy and social interventions.
From opensource.com:
Open access (OA) refers to the practice of making peer-reviewed scholarly research and literature freely available online to anyone interested in reading it.
Open Access is fundamentally just another business model that enables the publication of scholarly works. The open in open access means that the published work can be read at no direct cost to the reader, without a subscription.
Open access to scholarship can have some big impacts for readers. Removing barriers to access means that the circle of potential readers is widened beyond those who have access via a well funded library or their own subscriptions to readers beyond the academy and to readers in the global south. Readers still need Internet access, which still leaves out over two billion people around the world, but open access has transformed access to scholarship in many parts of the globe.
OA is changing the publishing landscape and reshaping the relationship between libraries and publishers. Without the revenue from subscriptions, publishers must fund the editorial and production cost of publication through other means. These could be institutional funds or these costs could be funded by authors. With approximately 50% of contemporary journal literature now open access libraries have been able to end some expensive contracts with commercial publishers and rely on open access to the literature. Most recently machine learning and GenAI uses of scholarship have been facilitated by this open publishing model.