Why isn't literature search a waste of time if centralized documentation is a better alternative?

I am asking this question regarding to the documents (thesis, research papers, and publications) that contain original, novel work.

Before starting to write a research paper/ thesis, searching for a problem statement, submitting to a journal, staring research work for Ph.D., etc., every researcher has to do a proper literature search. It is a well-known fact that literature search is mandatory for every professional researcher.

There is a finite number of existing disciplines and each discipline has a finite number of existing topics to research and to publish upon. Why is there no centralized mechanism to document the research that has happened till the previous year? If the discipline or topic is totally new anyway there is no need for the literature search.

If there is such a mechanism, then there is almost no chance for rediscoveries and there is no need to search for the whole literature that is randomly distributed across the Internet, paid journals, libraries, etc.

5 Answers
5

These central repositories exists - they are called a (digital) library. What we typically mean with "doing literature review" is going into one or more digital libraries and retrieving all information on the subject. Given how heterogenous research questions, approaches, and scientific results are, it seems fundamentally impossible to provide much more structured information than that across disciplines. That said, for some fields (notably medicine, as I understand it), more fine-grained repository structures have emerged, which allow researchers to query for specific data sets etc.

"If the discipline or topic is totally new, anyway there is no need for the literature search." : But how do you know your totally new topic on hypermetabolic quiver systems isn't the same thing as what Prof. X's work called totally supernormal inverted forms?

For example, I am a mathematician. I was recently leading a group of students in studying Paley graphs, which are defined on elements of finite fields. There are all of the obvious papers on Paley graphs to look at, of course; but then there are also papers that concern large families of graphs that may or may not include the Paley graphs. Then there are papers on finite fields that don't mention graph theory at all, but really describe Paley graphs. Or papers in finite geometry that are really talking about Paley graphs using slightly different language.

So unless this repository actually included all of the results of every single paper ever written in full, I'm not sure it would provide much use. Of course, there are only a finite number of results in a finite number of topics that have been published about, so this is theoretically possible. Even then, looking through this repository would be not much different than what is usually called a literature search.

I agree literature search in its current form, by reading loads of free-form documents with large overlaps¹ to extract the relevant bits and pieces is not efficient.

Let's first look at your individual statements:

I agree with the assessment that

There is a finite number of existing disciplines and each discipline has a finite number of existing topics to research and to publish upon.

though I consider it quite theoretical: We are probably far from knowing all disciplines that will ever be relevant, thus it's not like a "map" where we could check which areas are still blank.

The claim

If the discipline or topic is totally new anyway there is no need for the literature search.

strikes me as questionable, though. "Totally new" topics do not emerge out of nowhere, they result from unexpected findings in existing disciplines that pave the way for what can be called a new topic.

Now, a "central repository" across all fields (because, also based upon what I wrote about "new topics", they are all linked in some way) would indeed be helpful, but is not yet feasible for two reasons:

Doing and maintaining it would be a tremendous effort. Do not get me wrong, it would be much less of an effort than the net effort of all the researchers around the globe individually reading all those original papers, but as long as there is no good worldwide system to compensate those involved for the effort (and I don't really see one for now), the decentralized approach of everyone just individually publishing their source documents and leaving most of the "linking" of source documents for further use up to everyone on their own² looks like the only achievable solution.

Our technology is not far enough yet. The topic of formalizing knowledge is still in its early stages (when compared to the task of representing complex knowledge on arbitrary topics), and without that, any plan to summarize, juxtapose, and link papers can only be implemented by humans reading natural language text and, at best, producing condensed natural language text that may bring different results into a uniform scheme. Automatization of that process is not yet feasible, leading back to point one.

¹: Note that I am referring to the text here, not just the novel findings or results. The results should indeed be overlap-free, but the text describing them is only a part of a paper beside e.g. problem statements or summaries of related work.

²: Except for some comparably localized efforts including survey papers, textbooks, encyclopediae, and similar.

There is such a repository - see the Wikipedia article on Annual Reviews.

1st- Rediscovery in the year of 2018 is totally the guilt of the researcher. Keywords, topics, and specific journals & reviews are quite enough to prevent that.

2nd- Reading hundreds of papers is not a waste of time. Each has its own idea and perspective, which may make other researchers change or update research topic/interest or the question and also mature their ideas.

3rd- A "new topic" never means that there is no need for a literature review. Everything is related to each other even though we subdivide them to more easily focus, just like Richard Feynman said. There will surely be parts of the research requiring review of the literature.

The last remark is, literature review is not only something you do before starting research. It should be a dynamic process which at least requires weekly updates. Otherwise, you will just see that at the end of your research there was actually a couple of people who did your work before you completed yours. Continuous review of literature may prevent that and permit you to add something unique to your research.

Thanks for contributing an answer to Academia Stack Exchange!

But avoid …

To learn more, see our tips on writing great answers.

Some of your past answers have not been well-received, and you're in danger of being blocked from answering.

Please pay close attention to the following guidance:

But avoid …

To learn more, see our tips on writing great answers.

Required, but never shown

Required, but never shown

By clicking "Post Your Answer", you acknowledge that you have read our updated terms of service, privacy policy and cookie policy, and that your continued use of the website is subject to these policies.