Efficient literature review and evidence mapping

Week 3 · 2105620 Research Communication Skills for Chemical Engineers

Soorathep Kheawhom

20 August 2026

Three hours, at your own keyboard

Today

  • 10 min Why a pile of papers is not a review
  • 8 min Laptop check — open Zotero now
  • 22 min The search as a reproducible object
  • 15 min Activity 1 — build a search you could publish
  • 10 min Break
  • 35 min Zotero laboratory — capture, repair, organise, cite
  • 15 min Screening in two passes
  • 15 min Activity 2 — the evidence matrix
  • 10 min Break
  • 20 min Reading a gap out of the matrix
  • 10 min Assignment 1 · Week 4 is a video

 

A literature review is not a pile
of papers you have read.

It is a map of claims,
and the evidence for each one.

Week 1: a list of papers is a bibliography. Today you build the thing that makes it a review.

What the map buys you

Why bother

You stop re-reading

A paper you have mapped is a row you can consult. A paper you have only read is one you will open again in six months and re-read from the start.

Disagreements surface

Two rows, one column apart. This is the single most common source of a real research question.

Empty columns are findings

If nobody reports a quantity, that is not a hole in your reading. It is a hole in the field.

All three of these are invisible when your literature lives in a folder of PDFs named paper1.pdf.

Everybody open Zotero. Now.

Laptop check · 8 minutes

  1. Open the desktop app If it is not there, install it now from zotero.org/download while I talk
  2. Open a journal page and look for the connector icon In the browser toolbar. No icon: zotero.org/download/connectors
  3. Raise a hand if either one failed We fix it now, not at eleven-ten

Two minutes per machine, maximum. After that you work with a neighbour and we fix yours in the break.

Three blocks, joined by AND

Structure before syntax

  1. Material or system What the work is made of, or acts on — the anode, the membrane, the catalyst, the feedstock
  2. Process or phenomenon What happens — dendrite growth, deactivation, fouling, selectivity, corrosion
  3. Property or metric What is measured — cycle life, coulombic efficiency, conversion, permeance

Inside a block, synonyms joined by OR. Between blocks, AND. Almost every chemical-engineering question decomposes this way.

The synonym you did not think of

Where searches fail

  • Spelling sulfur / sulphur · aluminum / aluminium · these are different searches
  • The older name What the material was called before 2015. Reviewers who are older than you use it
  • Abbreviation and expansion Both. “SEI” and “solid electrolyte interphase” do not retrieve the same set
  • Trade and systematic names Nafion and perfluorosulfonic acid. One is in the title; the other is in the methods

Forty hits and an empty field is almost never an empty field. It is a missing synonym — and a gap found that way is an artefact of your search.

Four operators, and where they apply

Syntax

AND OR NOT Use NOT sparingly. It removes papers you have not seen, and it removes them silently
"exact phrase" Quotes make a phrase one unit. Without them you get the words anywhere, in any order
dendrit* Truncation catches dendrite, dendrites, dendritic. Truncating too early catches too much
Field limits Title / abstract / keyword. The single most effective way to cut a result set without losing relevance

Syntax differs between databases. What does not differ is that you must record which one you used.

Write the search down like a result

The log line

Scopus · searched 20 Aug 2026 · TITLE-ABS-KEY( (“zinc anode” OR “Zn anode”) AND (dendrit* OR “dendrite suppression”) AND (“cycle life” OR “coulombic efficiency”) ) · 2015–2026 · articles and reviews only · 412 hits

Five things, every time: database · date · the full string · the filters · the number of hits.

If you cannot produce this line, your review has no Methods section — and a review without one is an opinion.

Build a search you could publish

Activity 1 · 15 minutes · your own topic

Eight minutes building and running.
Seven minutes reporting.

Use your own research question. Not a made-up one.

What to do

Activity 1 · 8 min building, 7 min report

  1. Split Your question into three blocks. Material · process · metric
  2. List synonyms At least three per block. Include the ones you would not use yourself
  3. Run it Record the hit count
  4. Refine once One filter only — date, document type, or title/abstract/keyword. Record the new count

Then write the log line. That is what you report.

 

10

minute break

Come back with Zotero open. Anyone still stuck — come and find me now.

Zotero

Block 3 · 35 minutes · follow along

Six moves. Do each one on your own machine as I do it.

Six moves

The laboratory

1Capturethree ways in

2Repairthe metadata

3Organisefolders vs labels

4Readand annotate

5Citein your manuscript

6Sharea group library

Move 2 is the one that decides whether you are still using this in a year.

Three ways in

Move 1 · capture

The connector

On a journal page, click the toolbar icon. Takes the record and usually the PDF.

Drag a PDF in

Zotero tries to identify it. Sometimes it cannot — see move 2.

By identifier

DOI, ISBN, PubMed ID, arXiv ID, ADS Bibcode. Several at once, separated by spaces or line breaks.

The third one is the fastest and the most accurate. Almost nobody uses it.

zotero.org/support/adding_items_to_zotero — verified 16 August 2026

 

A library full of broken metadata

produces a broken bibliography —
and you find out the night before.

Move 2. The five most valuable minutes in this session.

Folders and labels are not the same thing

Move 3 · organise

Collections

Folders. A paper sits in one. Organise these by project — one per chapter, one per manuscript.

Tags

Labels. A paper can carry five. Organise these by claim type — method, contradicts-X, key, to-read.

Deleting from a collection does not delete the item. That confuses everyone exactly once.

Cite, then change your mind

Move 5 · the word processor

  • The plugin is already installed Bundled with the app. It appears in Word and LibreOffice the first time you launch Zotero — there is nothing extra to download
  • Google Docs works too But through the browser connector, not the bundled plugin, and Zotero must be running
  • LibreOffice needs Java A JRE or JDK. This is the single most common setup failure
  • Then switch the style One menu. Every citation and the whole bibliography reformat

zotero.org/support/word_processor_integration · zotero.org/support/google_docs — verified 16 August 2026

What it costs, and what it does not

Move 6 · sync and share

Free

Data syncing — items, notes, tags, links. Unlimited, on a free account.

300 MB

File storage free, then paid tiers. PDFs are files. This is the limit you will actually hit.

Groups

Free, no limit on members. Only the owner’s quota is charged for group files.

So: sync your library everywhere for nothing. If you also sync every PDF, you will fill 300 MB and have to decide.

zotero.org/storage · zotero.org/support/sync · zotero.org/support/groups — verified 16 August 2026

One warning about plugins

Before you go looking

Zotero itself does not maintain a plugin list, and its own documentation says plugins have full access to your Zotero and your computer, so install only from developers you trust.

Third-party plugins also break when Zotero updates — and it now ships a new major version every six to ten weeks. Useful ones exist. None of them is required for anything in this course.

zotero.org/support/plugins · zotero.org/blog/a-faster-release-cycle-for-zotero — verified 16 August 2026

Two passes, and the criteria come first

Screening

  1. Write the criteria before you read What makes a paper in-scope. Two or three lines, written down before you open anything
  2. Pass 1 — title and abstract Seconds each. In, out, or unsure. Never read the full text in this pass
  3. Pass 2 — full text, only the survivors And record why each exclusion was excluded, against a criterion

Criteria written afterwards are not criteria. They are a description of what you happened to keep.

The evidence matrix

Activity 2 · 15 minutes · in pairs

Four abstracts. One row each.
Then find where two of them disagree.

The four abstracts were written for this exercise. They are not real papers — do not cite them.

One row per paper

Activity 2 · 8 min filling, 7 min report

Claim What the paper says is true — in one sentence, not a summary
System Material, electrolyte, cell format
Conditions Current density, depth of discharge, temperature, cycle count
Metric The number, with its units. If none is given, write none
Limitation What the authors themselves admit

Then: where do two rows disagree — and what single experiment would settle it?

 

10

minute break

Then: what your matrix is actually telling you

Three gaps, three shapes

Reading the matrix

Two rows contradict An unresolved question “Reports disagree on whether … under X the effect is …, whereas under Y …”
A column is empty for every row Nobody has measured it “No study to date reports … under … conditions”
Every row shares one condition The field has tested one regime only “Existing work is confined to …; behaviour under … remains uncharacterised”

Each of these is a sentence you can defend, because the table is the evidence for it.

 

“Not much work has been done on X”
is none of those three.

That is an absence.
A gap is what the absence costs us.

Week 1, sentence 2. Most of you could not finish it. This table is how you finish it.

Assignment 1 · critical appraisal

Due before Week 5

  1. One paper from your own area Chosen by you. Plus at least three neighbouring papers
  2. An evidence matrix Your paper and the three others, one row each
  3. 600 words What it claims · what evidence supports it · what the matrix shows is missing
  4. The AI-use declaration form attached This is the first assignment it applies to

Marked on the appraisal, not the summary. A summary of the paper scores nothing.

Week 4 is a video

Before we meet again

  1. Week 4 is pre-recorded 27 / 30 August. I am away. The video goes up before the session and Prof. Supareak runs the room
  2. Bring the same paper Week 4 takes a whole paper apart. Bring the one you chose today, printed
  3. Finish your matrix Four rows. It is the spine of Assignment 1 and of Week 5

Week 4 · 27 August — Reverse-engineering I: IMRaD architecture · pre-recorded, facilitated by Prof. Supareak Praserthdam

 

You are not looking for papers.

You are building the evidence
for a claim you have not made yet.

See you in the video.

 

Before you go · 45 seconds

How was today?

Five questions. Anonymous — no name, no email, no login.

The fourth question is the one I actually use.

The two most common answers open next week’s session.

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