Week 3 essay
Copyright 2011 by the RESEARCH IN THE SCHOOLS Mid-South Educational Research Association 2011, Vol. 18, No. 1, 62-70
Spring 2011 62 RESEARCH IN THE SCHOOLS
Use of Bibliographic Systems and Concept Maps:
Innovative Tools to Complete a Literature Review
Maira L. Martelo
University of North Florida
Writing a literature review is probably one of the
most challenging aspects of being a doctoral student.
It is not only a matter of selecting a topic of interest,
but it is also a particularly challenging exercise in
regard to getting all the information organized,
classified, and accessible when the literature reviewer
needs it most. Particular attention to details is
important for a literature reviewer accurately to cite a
particular researcher’s work and also to find her/his
own voice in the process. As a doctoral student, the
literature reviewer needs to find his or her own voice
to be able to contribute some perspective to the
existing conversations in the academic world.
According to Graff and Birkenstein (2006), it is very
challenging to engage students in this type of
academic discussion, particularly when they are
required to make their own claims and to add
something of value to the conversation. In my
academic experience in Colombia, Mexico, and now
in the United States, I have recognized that perhaps
the greatest challenge for students is not only to be
able to convey what others have previously stated,
which, in most of the cases, becomes a summary of
the existing literature, but also to be able to find their
own voices in the conversation.
According to Boote and Beile (2005), a high-
quality dissertation, and more specifically, a good
literature review, requires not only reporting results
from previous research but also a critical review of
the methodology. By critically reviewing the methods
used by previous researchers, the reviewer will be
able to synthesize information, offering a new
perspective to the existing conversation
(Onwuegbuzie, Collins, Leech, Dellinger, & Jiao,
2010). After the researcher has decided upon a
dissertation topic and read the required articles,
books, and other references, the question is how to
organize all the references so that they can be used
when appropriate. Even more so, the question is how
to find a particular reference that the reviewer recalls
reading when he/she does not remember the location
or the name of that author. Let us now suppose that
the reviewer has a way of tracking all the materials
that her/she has read for the literature review. The
question that remains is how to create a conversation
among authors who actually might not be discussing
a topic in real life. In other words, it is possible that
the reviewer has all the key authors for a particular
topic, and that in the write-up, he/she is able to
provide the different perspectives about a contested
topic. However, determining how to create new
relationships within the existing perspectives is
probably the most common challenge for many
doctoral students. Unfortunately, the majority of
doctoral students receive little training “in how to
analyze and synthesize the research literature in their
This article presents a process for utilizing a bibliographic system built with Microsoft Excel as well as concept
maps to organize and to synthesize information that can be included in a literature review. A review of the
conceptual framework behind these tools is included as well as a detailed description about how to build the
system in Excel. Also discussed in this article is the importance of the literature review as a dynamic component
of any scholarly work. Doctoral students usually face the challenge of writing a literature review, lacking the
necessary skills to search, to organize, to analyze, and to synthesize information. Some ideas about how to build
relationships among existing scholars’ work on a particular topic and ideas for generating new knowledge also
are discussed.
Correspondence should be addressed to Maira L.
Martelo, Doctoral Candidate, Educational
Leadership, University of North Florida,
Jacksonville, FL, 32224
Email: mairamartelo@gmail.com
MAIRA L. MARTELO
Spring 2011 63 RESEARCH IN THE SCHOOLS
field” (Boote & Beile , 2005, p. 5). The poor quality
of literature reviews is not a unique problem for only
doctoral students, but for scholars in general.
Onwuegbuzie and Daniel (2005) found that 40% of
the manuscripts submitted for a research journal had
inadequate literature reviews, and these manuscripts
were more than six times more likely than were
manuscripts containing adequate literature reviews to
be rejected for publication. The poor quality of
literature reviews has been discussed by several
authors over the years (Boote & Beile, 2005; Fink,
2009; Hart, 2005). Recently, Onwuegbuzie et al.
(2010) have outlined a model for a rigorous literature
review that offers a clear guide about how to select,
to analyze, and to synthesize qualitative and
quantitative sources.
Organizing the Information
Writing a literature review requires enormous
amounts of time and effort that challenge even the
organization of daily life. It is not only about reading
the materials; it is more about classifying, analyzing,
and synthesizing great amounts of information, and
making sense of it before the writing process begins
(Machi & McEvoy, 2009; Onwuegbuzie et al., 2010).
Even though the topic of literature reviews seems to
be popular among scholars, there are scant published
works in this area offering methodological guidance
about how to conduct literature reviews
(Onwuegbuzie et al., 2010).
Several authors have reported that students, most
of the time, only have acquired pieces of information
about a particular field in a disorganized fashion.
Boote and Beile (2005) remarked that doctoral
students lack the bibliographic skills properly to
locate and to analyze the existing literature on a
particular topic. Also, they surmised that not all
educational doctoral programs have high-quality
standards for writing a literature review. This is
clearly exemplified by the inaccurate understanding
of the literature review as a summary of existing
knowledge or research about a particular topic; an
idea that is very commonly shared among doctoral
students (Hart, 2005; Onwuegbuzie, Leech, &
Collins, 2011). Further, Combs, Bustamante and
Onwuegbuzie (2010) documented the need for
doctoral students to find effective strategies to
“organize, catalog, and abstract the large amounts of
information gleaned from their searches” (p.172)
It is important to mention that by selecting books
and articles related to a particular topic, the writer of
the literature review is presenting a personal
interpretation in the sense that there has been a
selective process, which gives a certain ownership to
the writer (Dellinger, 2005; Onwuegbuzie et al.,
2010). However, it is not enough for the reviewer
simply to contribute to the existing conversation.
There is a clear and urgent need for doctoral students,
or any person aspiring for an academic career, to
develop advanced skills in searching bibliography,
but even more importantly, to develop ways of
collecting and classifying information in a
meaningful way (Boote & Beile, 2005; González,
Amozurrutia & Maass, 2006), so that they advance
the academic discussion with their own voices.
The process of finding and capturing information
about a particular topic can be messy, and that is why
having a central and unique control document is
highly recommended as a good strategy for
organizing, categorizing, and analyzing the
information available (Fink, 2009; González et al.,
2006; Machi & McEvoy, 2009; Onwuegbuzie et al.,
2010). Nowadays, there are several software
packages that allow the reviewer to do this; however,
Excel from Microsoft offers a great option without
the need to pay for an extra package.
Bibliographic System in Excel
Before sharing the particular details about the
bibliographic system in Excel, I would like to discuss
the knowledge behind it. I first want to give credit to
the researchers at the Complex Communication
Laboratory (LABCOMPLEX) at the Universidad
Nacional Autonoma de Mexico (UNAM), one of the
most prestigious universities in Latin America, from
whom I learned how to use this tool, and who are
leaders in the field of complex thinking and
cyberculture. LABCOMPLEX is seeking to promote
a cyberculture that is built upon three important
social processes or systems: information,
communication, and research—all of them in the
context of interdisciplinary work. Even though all
these systems are equally important, information is
the foundation of them all; through information we
build new human ecologies from which the number
of relationships is endless.
González et al. (2006) proposed the idea of
emergent communities in which knowledge is
socially constructed and shared; these ideas are all
based on the systemic paradigm in which all elements
are equally important and interdependent. With
information systems, it is possible to build
communication and cultural systems that will allow
the advancement of knowledge in any field. With a
cyberculture, according to these authors, it is possible
to adopt new perspectives and new dynamics of
interaction among researchers (González et al.,
2006). In short, the idea of building information
systems in Microsoft Excel is the first to take
advantage of existing software for a different use
from the functions for which it was originally
designed. For the purpose of writing literature
USE OF BIBLIOGRAPHIC SYSTEMS AND CONCEPT MAPS:
INNOVATIVE TOOLS TO COMPLETE A LITERATURE REVIEW
Spring 2011 64 RESEARCH IN THE SCHOOLS
reviews, I have built my bibliographic system in
Excel since I started the doctoral program in
Educational Leadership at the University of North
Florida. I mention this because, as will be seen later
in this paper, building the system requires a lot of
time and effort at the beginning of the process, which
later is beneficial. I need to clarify that my
bibliographic system is a simplified version of the
original one proposed by the researchers at
LABCOMPLEX in Mexico, but one that still
encompasses its central idea.
The bibliographic system in Excel consists of six
columns as follows: (a) Authors, (b) Bibliography
using an appropriate style guide (e.g. American
Psychological Association (APA) style, Chicago
Manual of Style), (c) Type of document, (d)
Quotation-including page numbers, (e) Categories,
and (f) Comments (see Figure 1). The reason behind
having a column only for authors’ names is that when
filters are used in Excel, there is a limit in the number
of characters that can be used for the filters to
function. In the Bibliography column, I include the
full reference of the particular material in APA style
so that I do not have to invest additional time citing
the references correctly. Type of document is a
useful column that allows the reviewer to indicate if
the document is a journal article or a chapter of a
book. In the Quotation column, I include direct
quotations from all documents I read, including the
page number(s) from which it is extracted. The
reason to include direct quotations is not to use it as it
is when writing the literature review (because this
would lead to plagiarism), but to be able to
paraphrase a particular author’s words with the
required precision. Probably the most important part
of the bibliographic system is the Categories column.
The categories are key words associated with a
particular reference that will assist in classifying the
information included in the system. This is when
knowledge about the topic comes into play because
assigning categories requires a building and creative
process to structure a particular field in a way that
might be nonexistent. In other words, when using
categories to classify information from journal
articles, as well as from books or electronic
documents, the designer of the system is building her
or his own voice. This is an iterative process due the
fact that the chances of redefining the categories
become higher as a person reads more about a
particular topic (Dellinger, 2005; Onwuegbuzie et al.,
2010). The process of creating categories is similar
to coding and sorting qualitative and quantitative
information suggested by Frels and Onwuegbuzie
(2010) as an appropriate approach to conducting a
comprehensive literature review. I will revisit this
component of the system later on when addressing
the use of concept mapping. Finally, the section for
comments is for writing notes to oneself about a
particular reference for later use or even to indicate
sections or references that one can use when writing
the literature review.
My dissertation topic is in the area of early
literacy practices among Hispanic children. When
building my system, some of the categories I used
were parental involvement, multicultural
perspectives, literacy practices, and socioeconomic
status, only to cite some topics that are shared among
researchers in this field. The category called country
of origin is not widely mentioned in the existing
literature about my topic, but there are some authors
who have suggested that this could be an important
factor in determining the type of literacy practices at
home among Hispanic families. By choosing to
create this category, I am building my own voice to
contribute to the existing discussion.
Advantages and Disadvantages of the
Bibliographic System
Building the bibliographic system is time
consuming, but that is part of the nature of writing a
literature review or any other academic endeavor. In
some cases, particularly where information is coming
from books or from non-searchable PDF files, the
person building the system might have to type the
particular quotation needed for the system word by
word. However, nowadays, there is existing software
that allows one to scan documents and later convert
them into Word documents (e.g.,
http://www.pdftodocconverterpro.com/). In the case
of journal articles, the html version usually is
available, so one can copy and paste easily directly
into the system, avoiding the pitfalls of typing that
could lead to typographical errors, among other
problems (Fink, 2009). Before building the system, it
is recommended that the person working on this
project reads and highlights the relevant information
in articles and books that will be later included into
the system. Even though this could be seen as time
consuming, it gives the reader the opportunity better
to incorporate information because, later, at the point
of building the system, the person will have read the
same information at least twice, providing ample
opportunity to analyze materials and to establish
relationships among them. The process of reading
and classifying information with categories also is
known as constant comparison analysis, a technique
suggested by Combs et al. (2010) to cluster
information in groups, helping the establishment of
relationships among theories, and later during the
write-up of the literature review.
The main advantage of having a bibliographic
system comes from assigning categories and using
the filter tool. Filters are tools used to hide or to show
MAIRA L. MARTELO
Spring 2011 65 RESEARCH IN THE SCHOOLS
particular information in a spreadsheet. When the
reviewer has finished the inclusion of all the
references with their correspondent categories, he/she
should select the whole spread sheet and, under the
Home menu, select Filter (see Figure 2). By doing so,
the reviewer will create a scroll down menu for each
of the columns included in the system: Authors,
Bibliography, Type of document, Quotation,
Categories, and Comments. Most of the time, the
reviewer will filter by categories and by authors. The
bibliographic system captures precise ideas from
different authors in a way that makes it easier to give
the appropriate credit. Giving appropriate credit to
the authors of a particular concept is essential in the
scholarly world, as a way of showing respect for the
work of others (APA, 2010). By creating a new
connection among authors working on a particular
research topic, the user of the bibliographic system is
promoting a cyberculture because new relationships
are generated that were nonexistent in the real world
(González et al., 2006; Hart, 2005). Moreover, the
ability to connect previous research gives the
opportunity for doctoral students to contribute to the
generativity required and expected from scholars
(Boote & Beile, 2005). It also promotes higher
cognitive levels instead of just the repetition of what
has been stated by others (Combs et al., 2010). This
is when the reviewer’s own voice comes into the
process due to the fact that the reviewer, as the owner
of the system, is building a second-level order of
relationships by putting together perspectives of the
world that were not necessarily in place (González et
al., 2006). If we share our bibliographic systems with
other people interested in the same topic, we can
enrich our perspectives on education or any other
field because each observer who interacts with the
system will see different aspects of it. The
bibliographic system in Excel allows us to structure a
specific reality in a particular way and, in doing so,
the system itself will structure new ways of thinking.
Figure 1. Screenshot showing the Bibliographic System in Excel.
USE OF BIBLIOGRAPHIC SYSTEMS AND CONCEPT MAPS:
INNOVATIVE TOOLS TO COMPLETE A LITERATURE REVIEW
Spring 2011 66 RESEARCH IN THE SCHOOLS
Figure 2. Screenshot showing how to use Filters.
The Use of Concept Maps
When I already had included approximately 300
references in the bibliographic system, I found new
information about my topic that had been recently
published. After reading the new material, I faced the
challenge of presenting what I had learned from the
literature to some members of my committee, and
because I did not have sufficient time to include all
those references in my bibliographic system in Excel,
I decided to create a concept map. I used a free
software program called Cmaps Tools (Novak &
Cañas, 2008), created by the Florida Institute for
Human and Machine Cognition (IHMC) under the
leadership of Joseph Novak and Alberto Cañas.
According to Novak and Cañas (2008), concept maps
are powerful tools not only for organizing and
structuring knowledge, but also for promoting
meaningful learning. By structuring knowledge in
concept maps, it is easier to identify and to build new
knowledge and new meanings. A concept map
promotes creativity because the person building it is
creating meaningful relationships, knowledge that
can later be incorporated into the existing schema of
the designer, which makes learning easier (Eggen &
Kauchak, 2010; Hart, 2005). When undertaken in an
appropriate way, concept maps can promote “high
levels of cognitive performance” (Novak & Cañas,
2010, p. 13). Concept maps also are useful for
capturing and archiving large volumes of knowledge
or information (Novak & Cañas, 2010).
MAIRA L. MARTELO
Spring 2011 67 RESEARCH IN THE SCHOOLS
Cmpas tools is a great software program for
building maps easily because it allows the user to link
various types of files into a particular concept (e.g.,
text, presentations, maps, tables, images, and
websites), which makes it richer in the sense that
people can create knowledge models about a
particular topic without being limited to a single map
(Novak & Cañas, 2008). The other interesting aspect
of using this software programs is that it allows the
reviewer to archive the concept maps on the Internet
so that others around the world can see a map and
contribute to it. Also, the reviewer can have access to
it from any location. This idea is consistent with the
one promoted by people at the LABCOMPLEX in
the sense that they both pursue creating knowledge-
emergent communities in which knowledge is
socially constructed (González et al., 2006)
I built my concept map about the topic of early
literacy based on a focused question (see Figure 3),
as suggested by Novak and Cañas (2008). According
to these authors, a good concept map is one that is
built around a particular question because it provides
a clear context for what it is included in the map. In
other words, concept maps that do not answer a
particular question tend to be too broad, which goes
against the idea of establishing meaningful
relationships among related elements. The process of
building a concept map around a focus question is
iterative because the question guides the search for
information, and the extracted information reshapes
the question constantly or creates new questions
(Novak & Cañas, 2010).
Figure 3. Concept map about early literacy.
USE OF BIBLIOGRAPHIC SYSTEMS AND CONCEPT MAPS:
INNOVATIVE TOOLS TO COMPLETE A LITERATURE REVIEW
Spring 2011 68 RESEARCH IN THE SCHOOLS
Integrating the Tools
When I used the two tools together, the
bibliographic system and the concept map about early
literacy, I was faced with the challenge of how to
integrate the information contained in both tools.
This is when I discovered that the words used in the
concept map were indeed the categories I needed to
classify all references included in my bibliographic
system. What I first decided to do was to include all
new references that were represented in the concept
map in the bibliographic system. In addition, I
revisited the existing categories in the bibliographic
system and changed some of them, based on the
words included in the concept map. The new
categories became the key components in the
conceptual framework of my literature review, and
even more so, key elements for the design of my
study.
The most exciting part of using these two tools
occurs when the reviewer actually begins to write the
literature review. The best tool for that, at least for
structuring the literature review itself, is to use the
concept map. Selecting each element included in the
concept map and filtering the system in Excel
according to these criteria will provide the reviewer
with all information related to a particular topic,
making the writing process much easier. The
reviewer then will have all pertinent references. After
reading what all the authors included in the
bibliographic system have written, it becomes easier
to write a synthesis of the existing discussion about
it. In this way, the reviewer, as the writer, can give
credit to the authors who have proposed a particular
concept without having to dig into the reviewer’s
memory or pile of articles, and the reviewer also can
avoid unintentional plagiarism. By using these two
tools the reviewer will be in a better position to find
her/his own voice and the chances of plagiarizing or
only summarizing what has been written is lower.
Advantages of these Tools
The existence of plagiarism is a recurrent
problem in academia (Ercegovac & Richardson,
2004; Hulsart & McCarthy, 2009), and I believe that
one of the reasons behind this problem has to do with
the lack of a system to match references with authors.
As doctoral students, we all have experienced this:
after reading numerous articles and books about a
topic, we assimilate terms and concepts, making it
difficult to remember to whom to give credit. The
importance of giving credit to people who have
proposed particular concepts is emphasized by APA
not only as a way to respect what others have written
previously but also as a great path to finding our own
contribution to a specific field.
The use of the bibliographic system in Excel
allows the user clearly to identify particular ideas of a
specific researcher or author; it also provides a great
opportunity for creativity because it promotes new
relationships among existing authors interested in the
same topic. By building those relationships, the
writer is able to find his or her own voice in the sense
that his or her own perspective becomes unique.
After summarizing, analyzing, and synthesizing the
literature, the writer can make supported claims about
that literature (Boote & Beile, 2005), instead of just
writing an annotated bibliography, a common
mistake found in dissertations (Hart, 2005). If the
same references included in the bibliographic system
are used by another person, a different perspective
will appear, and that is part of building emergent
communities of knowledge wherein several points of
view are shared (González et al., 2006).
If the bibliographic systems in Excel are shared
among a group of doctoral students or scholars
interested in the same topic, we can promote a new
perspective about research conducted collectively, in
which researchers not only receive credit for the
work they have undertaken but also build a collective
perspective that can contribute to solving social
issues (González et al., 2006).
When writing the literature review itself, each
tool plays a different role. The concept map functions
as the outline for the literature review, whereas the
bibliographic systems group references in categories.
During the writing process, the writer can color code
each reference that has been used so that it becomes
easier to look for new information related to a
particular topic. The richness of the literature review
increases by using the bibliographic system because
the writer easily can track what has or has not been
included and even make notes about how a particular
reference can be used later in additional sections.
When using the two tools, the writing process is
faster because all the required information is already
consolidated in one system that is easily accessible.
Many other options exist for integrating these two
tools such as creating links with the original articles
in PDF files, which can be conducted with both tools.
Each user can explore many other options to discover
how having a consolidated system enriches the
researcher’s perspective on the topic and provides
new solutions for old problems.
In addition, the combined use of the
bibliographic system with concept maps could
contribute to a better understanding of the literature
review as a dynamic chapter that evolves from the
proposal to the dissertation itself, and not as a “static
artifact” (Boote & Beile, 2005, p.11). Writing a
literature review, as part of any research endeavor,
needs to be understood as an “iterative, complex,
contradictory, ambiguous, and hence extremely
MAIRA L. MARTELO
Spring 2011 69 RESEARCH IN THE SCHOOLS
messy” process (Onwuegbuzie et al., 2010, p. 174).
The fact that the dissertator is able to have an
organized system with all references also facilitates
the development of a rationale for the selection of
particular articles as part of the literature review
(Frels & Onwuegbuzie, 2010).
Conclusion
Building the two tools and integrating them is
time consuming as I mentioned before. However, the
allocation of this time is rewarded at the point of
writing the literature review, which could take only a
few weeks. My personal experience in using these
two tools has been extremely valuable. Not only did I
write the first draft of my literature review in
approximately two weeks, but I also found the
process of making adjustments to be easier because
there is a sense of ownership that comes from using
the two tools. The use of the bibliographic system in
Excel and the concept maps helps the reviewer to
create a good synthesis of the existing research,
generating new knowledge and also contributing to
the generativity expected from scholarly work (Boote
& Beile, 2005). I highly recommend that doctoral
students and professors use these two tools because
their perspectives on their research interests can be
enriched greatly, and with more powerful knowledge,
I am certain that we can find better solutions to
educational problems.
The lead editors for this article were Anthony J.
Onwuegbuzie and John R. Slate.
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