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Activity
Literature search

This activity is designed to help you practice conducting a focused, efficient literature search on a computational biology topic, critically analyze key papers, and identify potential research directions. This will help you prepare for your homework assignment and paper. You will submit your completed assignment as a PDF through Gradescope.

You may work in groups, but each student must submit their own individual work.

Tip

  • Pick a topic that interests you and go with it.
  • Focus on skimming and extracting key information rather than reading papers in-depth.
  • When identifying gaps, consider what's missing across multiple papers, not just one study.

Rapid topic exploration (10 minutes)

  1. Choose a perspective primer as your topic for this activity. Write this down in your document.
  2. Use Google Scholar to find one to two recent review papers (within the last five years) on your chosen topic.
  3. Skim the reviews and write down:
    • Your chosen topic.
    • At least three key subtopics or methodologies you identified from the review papers.

Focused Literature Search (20 minutes)

  1. Develop focused search strategies using at least four specific keywords or phrases based on your initial exploration.
  2. Conduct additional Google Scholar searches using your strategies. Use advanced search features like:
    • Exact phrase search: Use quotation marks to search for an exact phrase, e.g., "machine learning".
    • Author search: Use author: followed by the name, e.g.,author:"J Smith".
    • Publication search: Use source: to search within a specific publication, e.g., source:"Nature".
    • Date range: Use after: and before: to specify publication dates, e.g., after:2020 before:2023.
    • Title search: Use intitle: to search only in article titles, e.g., intitle:robotics.
    • Exclude terms: Use - before a word to exclude it from results, e.g., machine learning -supervised.
    • Operator: Use AND or OR (in capitals) to search for either term, e.g., AI OR "artificial intelligence".
    • Wildcard: Use * as a wildcard for unknown words, e.g., effect of * on climate change.
  3. Identify and select at least five primary research articles that seem most relevant and impactful for your primer.
  4. Write down:
    • Your search strategies (the keywords and any filters you used).
    • The titles and authors of your selected articles.
    • At least two takeaways for each article.

Synthesis and Gap Identification (10 minutes)

Based on your analysis, address the following:

  1. Identify a common thread or trend across the papers.
  2. Identify your papers' approaches to address this common trend.
  3. Identify one potential gap or unexplored area in the current research.

Reflection (5 minutes)

Briefly reflect on the following:

  1. What did you learn about the literature search process?
  2. How might you apply these skills in future assignments or research projects?
  3. What challenges did you face during this activity, and how did you overcome them?