How To Identify Research Gap Based On Literature Review

Let's learn what gap in research means. When you read papers or books on subjects of interest to you, you might know that certain areas have significant potential for further analysis but other researchers have not tapped them into them. In other words, certain ideas were not picked up or put to work. A void in research or literature refers to these unexplored or underexplored areas that have scope for further investigation. Suppose you've finished your study and published the results just to find out that another researcher has already published something similar. How devastating might this be! Therefore, it is important to find out such things that were not addressed in your field of study before. Not only should you invest your funds and money in the right project, but you'd also improve the likelihood of publishing your results.

How We Can Identify Research Gap?

Bearing in mind the variety of current research, identifying differences in the research can seem difficult or even impossible. There are various methods in different disciplines used by different popular dissertation writing services but most of them can be reduced to a few moves, which are:

Define the driving principal demand.
Identify keywords that are important to the problem.
Check the literature, and find correct publications for these main words.
Review the literature cited in the main publications in the section above.
Identify issues not discussed in the literature concerning your critical motivating problem.

This is the last film we all find the toughest. It can be difficult to find out what a research paper is not saying. You may want to store a list of biased or incoherent documents. You should also watch what authors write as "future directions of research" that can often guide us to the current gaps.

Tips To Identify Research Gap:

Take Guidance From Written Literature:

Read books and articles on subjects you like best. It will not only help you understand the depth of work that researchers undertake in your field, but will also allow you to ask questions that may lead to a research gap. You should ask yourself questions like: What does this study mean for my work or the broader field? Why does this article help me answer research-related questions? Does the author need more information on his argument? Which problems or concerns the author didn't address?

While reading research papers, you can concentrate on the Introduction section in which the authors explain the importance of their research topic and the gaps they have identified and attempted to fill in their report. Often look at the instructions or recommendations made by the writers for more study, as this could be highly motivational. Scan the meta-analysis and review papers over the years to learn more about trends and research patterns in your area of interest. This will help you familiarize yourself with the issues addressed in the past as well as trend questions about the subjects you find interesting.

Seek Advice From A Research Advisor:

To generate research ideas, discuss the issues and concerns with your research consultant in your field. Articulating your ideas and learning what others are thinking about and working on will help you identify your research area, or maybe even find errors in your method. When you think the work on a topic will be interesting, you should discuss it with your consultant and get their feedback.

Use Digital Tools:

You should use digital resources to familiarize yourself with your area's trend-saving questions as they can save time and help you cast a wider net in your quest for a study gap. There are some websites that classify the most cited papers in a field along with the new classes, influential authors, conferences, and countries in that field can be considered to be immensely useful for knowing the topics. You can also find out more about common research-related questions using Google Trends. This will make the search for an untapped region within the research field easier and in result; you will be able to ease your education.

Check Influential Newspaper Websites:

Popular newspaper websites also have a segment called 'main concepts' where experts in an area highlight the core ideas in that field. Reading through this section will help you gain insight and develop new ideas, too. Besides, you should also look through these papers' reference section as this can lead to useful information about the subject.

Study Each Question:

You will be doing thorough research on them before you have a list of problems that could be addressed. What does that mean? Learn more about any question or concern you may have. Find out if there are related questions from other researchers and whether they find answers to those questions. That will help you avoid duplication of work.