Calibvo answers

Every answer below is aimed at a question people measurably search for, is written from named sources, and links to the page that handles the job itself. None of them is a landing page in disguise.

• Literature review example: what a good one shows and how to read it

  A literature review example, read the way a reviewer should read one: the structure underneath it, and the four things a good one always does.

• What is a literature review: the working answer, what it is for in a thesis and in a paper, and the three things people mistake it for

  What is a literature review: an argument about a body of evidence, not a summary of it, and the three things it is regularly mistaken for.

• Systematic review vs literature review: where the line actually falls

  Systematic review vs literature review: the line is reproducibility, not thoroughness, and it decides what your method section has to contain.

• Scoping review: when to map a field rather than answer a question

  A scoping review maps what exists rather than answering whether something works, and that difference in question decides the whole method.

• What is meta-analysis: what pooling buys, and its limits

  What is meta-analysis: statistically combining results from separate studies, what that buys you, and the two conditions that make it meaningless.

• Systematic review vs meta analysis: one contains the other

  Systematic review vs meta-analysis: not two options. One is the whole process and the other is an optional statistical step inside it.

• Rapid review: which parts of the systematic method get shortened, which must not be, and what you have to declare when the timetable is weeks rather than months

  A rapid review shortens a systematic method against a deadline. What matters is which shortcuts you took and that you said so.

• What is PICO: the four parts, how they turn a vague topic into a searchable question, and where the framework stops being the right tool

  What is PICO: population, intervention, comparison and outcome, and how the four parts turn a topic into something you can actually search.

• Search strategy for a review: how a strategy is built block by block, what has to be recorded for it to be reproducible, and the two tests that tell you it is working

  A search strategy is the part of a review somebody else has to be able to repeat, which is why it is written down rather than remembered.

• Extraction table: why the columns decide what your synthesis can say, and how a literature matrix turns a pile of papers into something you can read across

  An extraction table is where a review stops being reading and starts being analysis. The columns decide what the synthesis can possibly say.

• Systematic review software: what it has to hold that a reference manager does not

  Systematic review software, judged on one thing: whether it holds a reason against every excluded record, which is what nothing else does.

• Best reference manager: why the best citation manager is usually the one your co-authors already use, and the four things that actually differ between them

  The best reference manager is usually whichever one your co-authors and library already use. Here are the four things that genuinely differ.

• Best research AI: what it can and cannot do for a literature review

  Best research AI, honestly: useful for finding and summarising, useless for deciding, and governed by rules your institution sets rather than the vendor.