Hi.
Im a new PhD student. My supervisor recommended some journals articles and papers for reading to gain some background about my topic.
After i finish reading it i want to make a mini report about what i understood from it.

My question is do i need to put a references section or it is ok to mention in the report that this report is what i understood from x and y articles...

thanks

I often find that it is very useful to make a reference section to reports like these even if it's not necessary. This is because, often, making a reference section in my thesis or paper writing is sort of a pain. If I already have all of my references properly formatted in the beginning, it just makes life easier down the road. So I suggest making a reference section now and any other time, so you make 5 little reference sections during your PhD, rather than one huge one at the end.

It also helps to write a reference section in even very small reports because, if you lose a reference but still have the report, you can easily look it back up again.,

MIKE

Hi,

my advice to every new PhD student starting to read for the background of their topic is the following:

1. use a bibliography program, like Mendeley (free) to organise your references
2. Divide references in categories
3. keep detailed notes of each paper in OneNote (Word)
4. Create an excel database of the results

I used an excel matrix with the following categories:

Author, Year | Sample (Number of responses) | Method | Results (mean, min, max) | comments

These tables (or graphs) can be put in your thesis

5. Compare papers quantitatively - Meta-analysis. What other researchers found? Why do some people disagree? Do the methods affect the results? Where is the gap?

I was very organised from the beginning, and writing all the way (since day one). I managed to publish a meta-analysis paper by the end of the first year. Of course, I had to edit again and again until the final version.

It takes A LOT of time, but lit review is one of the hardest chapters, and when you have results it is very easy to compare with previous research. You can critically analyse if you expected these results or not (so it will help you in your discussion too)

Good luck!

thank you all for your replies. Much appreciated