How should literature survey be done?
How should literature survey be done? Literature survey is a very important part of research. However, students are generally not told how to do it systematically. In India, students are often expected to present their research as if they started their actual work only after completing the literature survey. New researchers typically ask me for papers to start with. If I give them a couple of papers, they will take a couple of weeks to read them line by line, then come back to explain what they understood and ask me to explain the parts they did not. I call this passive research -- the course of your research is defined by what you read. Instead, I promote active research. Start with a question. Check the literature for answers. What is the difference? You don’t need to read and understand an entire paper you come across. You are only checking whether an answer already exists or not. It is much more efficient. An example when the research objective is improving streamflow prediction: P...