The first step that I took, as an undergrad, before writing a class paper on a scientific topic, was to simply type the relevant keyword(s) into the Google search bar, in order to gain a broad overview of the assigned topic at once. I then read scientific papers from websites like google scholar or JSTOR, based on the search items that appeared on the GOogle search homepage. I was able to take advantage of the access granted by my college to journal websites that would otherwise require a subscription fee or payment.
My main aim during the early part of the literature review was to narrow down the main idea I was researching to a more specific topic of interest. For example, when I was researching women’s health for my senior seminar paper, I kept reading and narrowing down the topics which fall under women’s health till I decided on supplementation of required nutrients for pregnant women. I went ahead and narrowed it down some more, picking a specific nutrient (folate) along with its corresponding deficiency (neural tube defects) and wrote a paper on how supplementation of folate could impact the prevalence of neural tube defects.
It seems like a simple process when explained in this manner, but the journey from having an idea of what I wanted to research and what I ended up writing on was filled with a lot of deviations, backtracking, and modifications of my thesis. I believe I was able to stick with it because I was researching a topic that I was interested in. I was even tempted to include more than I did in my final paper, especially after discovering how different countries have different policies surrounding the fortification of foods like flour and rice with folate. Knowing when to stop is very important, as including too much information may interrupt the flow of the paper and lead to a deviation from the main goal (Cartoon: CC-BY 4.0 https://libraries.psu.edu/services/research-help/choose-topic). However, I still read more about folate supplementation policies as a personal project even though I did not include that in my paper.
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