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Related work

Function

  • Science is standing on the shoulders of giants; here you describe the works that influence your work or that your work builts upon
  • This section helps readers to see where your work positions itself in the science discourse of a community
  • It helps to link your research to related research
  • The section’s intention is to identify a delta in research i.e., an unsolved problem or a still undiscovered or sparsely researched topic of a domain

Style

  • use a neutral, unbiased language
  • only criticise facts not persons or institutions
  • critisism should exclusively based on comprehensible and replicable facts, not opinions or on vagueness etc.

Structure

Usually there are three ways of structuring the related work section

  • The Bad

    • just present a set of more or less related work in a few paragraphs without a summary of the results, i.e., the insights gathered from analysing them
    • the selection of works seems arbitrary
    • no separation of works is deployed

    Example

    2.1 Related Work

    For this paper, a number of scientific papers were consulted. They are:

    Neal E. Seymour, Anthony G. Gallagher, Sanziana A. Roman, et al. Virtual reality training improves operating room performance: results of a randomized, double-blinded study, Ann Surg, 2002 [3].

    This paper details an experiment in which a number of participants were trained using virtual reality alongside standard training and then they performed a surgery. Their results were compared to a control group of trainees who only received standard training.

    Alin Moldoveanu, Florica Moldoveanu, Ionut Negoi, et al. Challenges and Issues For Successfully Applying Virtual Reality In Medical Rehabilitation, The 11th International Scientific Conference eLearning and Software for Education Bucharest, April 23-24, 2015 [4].

    This paper outlines some important issues regarding virtual reality and medical rehabilitation. Some of the issues include cost and issues with the user interface.

    Lan Li, Fei Yu, et al. Application of virtual reality technology in clinical medicine, Am J Transl Res. 2017 [5].

    This paper discusses VR’s application in numerous surgeries such as in orthopedics, as well as treatment for pain management in patients.

  • The Ugly

    • The method for selecting related works is outlined
    • A structure for presenting related works, separating them by topic is presented
    • The section closes with a discussion about the results (or insights) gathered from the literature study (i.e., the analysis of the presented works)

  • The Good

    • Set the scope for the analysis, i.e., define a set of criteria (or aspects) beforehand that represent cornerstones of your research
    • Use that criteria to select related works
    • Use all tipps from The Ugly plus create an anaylsis framework, i.e., define a set of criteria that you use for the analysis of these works
    • Discuss each related work wrt. the extent to which each criteria is implemented by it
    • Summarize your findings in a table
    • Discuss your findings
    • Outline the consequences that can be deduced from your analysis

  • The No-Go

    • No related works are discussed at all
    • At serious conferences or journals this causes a desk rejection (ie. a rejection without review)

Tipps and Remarks

  • usually, you have or should have read most of the related works beforehand, i.e., before you started your research
  • reading related works helps you in the identification of an unsovled problem or an sparsely researched area in a domain
  • The Good structure is usually used for rather extensive scientific works such as PhD theses etc.; most papers you will read usually employ The Ugly structure – which is, when conducted thoroughly sufficient.
  • Collect some papers that won best-paper-awards at highly recognized conferences and look how they present and discuss related works
Letztes Update: 17. September 2024