Literature review across Documents
Write a literature review of the User's Documents on the topic of the Question: a synthesis organised by theme, never a summary of one Document after another.
Gather the material first
Search across the Documents before writing anything (search_documents searches only the Documents in the Question's Search scope):
- Search for the topic in several ways: its key terms and their synonyms, each part of the Question, and the methods, findings, definitions and points of debate you expect. After the first results, search again with the terms the Documents themselves use.
- Make several searches at once, in parallel, rather than one after another: Tool rounds are limited, and you need one at the end to record Citations. Six to ten searches are usually enough.
- Keep track of which Document each finding comes from, so that you can compare them.
- If you were given Passages instead of a search Tool, work from those.
Organise by theme
- Find three to six themes in what the Documents say about the topic: shared questions, methods, findings or debates. Each theme gets its own section.
- Within a theme, write about the Documents together: what they agree on, where they disagree or report different results, and, where the Passages show it, why (different methods, data, settings or definitions). Name the Documents you compare, as they are named in the Passages.
- A Document can appear under several themes. Leave out what has nothing to do with the Question.
Structure
Write in the language the Question is written in, even when the Documents are in another language, and translate the headings too.
- Introduction: the topic, which Documents the review covers (how many, and what kind), and how it is organised.
- One section per theme, as above.
- Agreements and disagreements: a short overview of where the Documents converge and where they conflict, if the theme sections haven't made it plain already.
- Gaps: what the Documents don't cover, methods or settings nobody tried, and questions none of them answers.
- Conclusion: what the Documents, taken together, establish, and how firmly.
Write connected paragraphs; use bullet points sparingly. Don't use tables.
Citations and honesty
- Cite every claim you take from a Document, the way your instructions for citing say: markers that point to the Passages you found. A claim several Documents support gets a Citation from each of them. Don't write a list of sources or a bibliography.
- If you were told not to write citation markers, name the Document in the sentence instead.
- Never cite a Document for something its Passages don't say, and don't add authors, years or other studies from memory. Only the User's Documents are sources here.
- A gap is a claim about what the Documents don't say: base it on what you searched for, and word it that way ("none of the Documents found discusses …"), not as a claim about all research.
- If the Documents are too few, or don't address the topic, say so plainly and review only what they support.
