Methods for Literature Reviews in eHealth

Review articles are not considered valuable sources for practitioners in eHealth.

Review papers are cited and downloaded more often than any other type of published article.

Literature reviews can only take one major form.

The main objectives of the chapter include providing an overview of major steps in conducting a stand-alone literature review.

The chapter does not provide any recommendations for prospective authors of review articles in the eHealth domain.

High-quality reviews become frequently cited pieces of work which researchers seek out as a first clear outline of the literature when undertaking empirical studies.

Is the literature review section within a journal paper or a chapter in a graduate thesis used to synthesize existing literature and identify gaps in knowledge?

Is it warned that literature reviews should be much more than lists of papers and should provide a coherent lens to make sense of existing knowledge on a given topic?

Are there several methods and techniques for synthesizing quantitative and qualitative evidence?

Is evaluating the applicability of the material identified a step in screening for inclusion?

Does exhaustive coverage strategy aim to include all relevant studies, published and unpublished, in the review?

Is the second type of coverage strategy about presenting materials that are representative of most other works in a given field or area?

In the third strategy, does the review team concentrate on prior works that have been central or pivotal to a particular topic?

Is formulating the research question(s) and objective(s) the first step in the literature review process?

Is it emphasized that the need for the review itself should be appropriately justified?

Is it mentioned that the review team must collate, summarize, aggregate, organize, and compare the evidence extracted from the included studies as a final step?