How to Write a Rave Review

Abstract

The Thomson Reuters (ISI) Web of Knowledge service lists data for nearly 7400 science journals. How many journals do you read on a regular basis? How many topics can you keep up with? If your answer to either question reached double digits, you are well beyond most scientists. The truth is that the number of papers published each year is so large that no one can keep up with the pace of science. If you want to gather even basic knowledge of a subject that is not within your immediate sphere of activity, you must rely on some sort of summary document that can bring you “up to speed” on the current state of a discipline. This is the perfect role for a review article. Scientific review articles are critical analyses of available information about a particular topic. Unlike research articles, review articles do not present new data. Their purpose is to assess and put into perspective what is already known. Unlike research articles written on narrowly defined topics for a specialized audience of peers, review articles often examine broader topics for a more general audience. For example, a review of the extracellular matrix might be published in a journal whose readers are surgeons, rather than research specialists and pathologists with a greater knowledge of the topic, or it might be read by specialists who need to keep up with developments in related subspecialties. Many reviews, however, are written on narrow topics. For example, a review of mass spectrometry principles would be quite general, whereas a review of mass spectrometry in the clinical laboratory would be more specific and a review of the ionization effect in mass spectrometry would be even more specific. There are 3 main types of review articles. The most common, which we discuss in detail in …