Writing summary, synthesis/ review papers: 5 different scenarios

Summary/ synthesis papers play an important role in the scientific process and they are an underappreciated source of productivity during your PhD or postdoc. I discuss 5 different scenarios for writing such papers as a function of the amount of data published in a field.

0:00 Summary papers serve a very important function; this is also for early-career researchers
2:23 New field, barely any published data (or none); no reviews
3:46 Bunch of data published; no review papers
4:32 Solid amount of data published; narrative reviews are available
5:20 Massive amount of data; already many reviews and meta-analyses
7:57 Few primary literature papers, several reviews

Link to paper on opinion papers:    • Writing opinion papers (aka perspecti...  

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Matthias Rillig, professor of ecology at Freie Universität Berlin, chats about life in academia.

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