Project I: Literature Review

A. General: Literature review is generally the first step of any research work, wherein the
researcher sifts through a great number of research papers, reports and dissertations, and
identifies the relevant documents. A patient study of the relevant documents is the primary
way of knowing the state-of-the-art. The literature review project is introduced in the course
to make the students learn about the special topics mentioned in the course description, and
to provide them with an exposure to technical communication (reading, writing, and
presenting).
B. Structure: The six activities of this project are identified in the table below. The project
accounts for 15% of the total weightage of the entire course (see course description). The
weightages for each of the six activities are listed in the table. Due dates for the reports on
different activities are between August 28 and September 16.
Activity

Name

Topic selection

Review article
(RA)

Peer review-I
(PR-I)

Response to peer review-I

(RPR-I)

Peer review-II
(PR-II)

Response to peer review-II

(RPR-II)

PowerPoint presentation
(PPT)

Description
Every student identifies a
topic of his/her interest
Every student prepares a
review article
Every student reviews the
RA
authored
by
a
classmate
Every student responds to
the comments from PR-I
on his/her own RA
Every student reviews the
revised RA authored by
another classmate
Every student responds to
the comments from PR-II
on his/her own RA
Every student will make a
ten-minute presentation in
front of the class followed
by a five-minute long
question-answer session

Due on

Weightage

Aug. 3

0%

Aug. 28

30%

Sep. 2

15%

Sep. 7

15%

Sep. 11

10%

Sep. 14

10%

Sep. 16

20%

Total

C. Suggested topics for literature review

Blast-resistant design of structures

Energy dissipation devices for earthquake protection
Seismic isolation of buildings and bridges
Seismic design of non-structural components
Seismic analysis and design of
o earth retaining walls

100%

o liquid storage tanks

o buried pipelines
o suspension bridges
o cable-stayed bridges
o dams
o unreinforced masonry-infilled RC frames
o reinforced masonry-infilled RC frames
Soil-structure interaction
Characterization of near-fault ground motions
Selection and scaling of ground motions
Processing of recorded ground motions

D. Guidelines for preparing review article (Activity 1)

A format to prepare the articles will be shared separately. Students may, however,
choose any other format that suits them better.

The article must be shorter than 10 pages. Standard fonts (e.g., Times New Roman,
Book Antiqua), font sizes (e.g., 11, 12) and line spacing (e.g., single line) should be
used.

Every figure must be followed by a caption below it (along with the figure number).
The figure must be cited in the running text before the figure appears (e.g., Figure 1
presents the ).

A caption (along with table number) must immediately precede every table. The
table must be cited in the running text before the table appears.

All equations must be numbered.

Any information (including data, equation, figure, text) that is not created by the
author should be accompanied by the source. Guidelines on how to cite a source
(e.g., book, paper) will be shared separately. All sources cited in the running text
should appear in the Reference section. Suggestions for managing citations are
presented later in this document.

Pointing forward (e.g., referring to section 7 in section 3) should be avoided to the

extent possible.

E. Evaluation criteria for review article (Activity 1)

Grades for Activity 1 will depend on the following factors:

Timely submission of the article

Following guidelines outlined in Section D

Grammatically sound sentences

Clarity and flow in the text

Whether the most important basic principles are correctly and clearly explained

Whether the state-of-the-art and state-of-the-practise (code provisions) are clearly

explained

Extra credit (on case-by-case basis) if a potential research problem is identified by the
author with properly articulated reasons

F. Guidelines for peer review (Activities 2 and 4)

Present the review in a tabular format

First column should be for serial number

Second column should identify the location (e.g., first paragraph on page 2)

Third column should be for the nature of the issue (e.g., grammatical mistake,
spelling error, unclear sentence, incorrect statement, incorrect reference, suggestion
for improvement)

Fourth column should contain description of the issue and/or the justification for
raising the point

Fifth column should contain corrective suggestions

G. Evaluation criteria for peer review (Activities 2 and 4)

Timely submission

Pointing out most formatting/grammatical errors

Pointing out most errors related to citation

Pointing out incorrect statements with appropriate justifications

Constructive suggestions for improvements

H. Guidelines for responding to peer review (Activities 3 and 5)

Present the review in a tabular format

First column should be for serial number

Second column should be for the location

Third column should be the comments from the reviewer (column 4 of the reviewers
comments)

Fourth column should contain the responses to the reviewers comments, with
justification and the changes made in the original article

I. Evaluation criteria for response to peer review (Activities 3 and 5)

Timely submission of the response to reviewers comments and the revised article

Whether all comments are properly addressed

J. Guidelines for making presentation (Activity 6)

Presentations will be 10 minutes long each. There will be five minutes for questions.

Do not prepare more than 10 slides.

Minimum font size should be 20.

Do not use CAPITAL, Bold or italics until it is very necessary.

Goal should be to make everyone understand the key learnings during this project.

Avoid equations.

Pictures/cartoons are your real friends in a presentation.

Cite the sources of pictures/tables.

Do not write entire sentences and read them.

Do not flood a slide with information.

A presentation format will be shared in due course.

K. Evaluation criteria for presentation (Activity 6)

Finishing in time

Speaks clearly and slowly

Slides are easy to follow

Basics on the topic are clearly explained

Answers the questions well

L. Practical suggestions for carrying out literature review

Google Scholar (scholar.google.com) is perhaps the best tool for literature search. One
can search by author or by relevant keywords.

It is a better idea to start with relatively easy-to-understand documents (e.g.,

conference papers, literature review articles, reports, dissertations, text books, design
guidelines with commentaries). Research articles published in reputed journals
should be next on the reading list.

It is not advisable to read a whole document in the initial stages of literature review.
You may just read abstract, introduction, conclusion and any other easy-to-follow
sections in the paper first. You can read it further depending on your interest.

Identify first a set of most relevant documents. It normally helps to identify one very
relevant document, go through the reference section of the relevant document to
identify more useful documents, and finally find out which documents cite the
relevant document (easily available in Google Scholar search results).

A potentially useful paper that did not show in initial search results might be on the
first page if a different keyword is used for search.

Research on some topics is dominated by a group of researchers. It may be a good

idea to go through their websites and identify articles useful for the present purpose.

Journals such as those published by American Society of Civil Engineers (ASCE),

Earthquake Spectra, Earthquake Engineering and Structural Dynamics, and Bulletin of
Seismological Society of America are most relevant for this course project.

IITGN library has access to many journals. In case you find a paper from a journal
that the library does not have subscription to, write to library (librarian@iitgn.ac.in)
with complete details of the document you are looking for.

It may also be a good idea to look at the website of the author, who may have shared
a version of the paper/report. Many authors share their papers/reports for free
download on the ResearchGate website: www.researchgate.net. It is advisable to
create an account with the ResearchGate website.

Some agencies provide their documents free of cost: Federal Emergency

Management
Agency
(FEMA),
Applied
Technology
Council
(ATC),
Multidisciplinary Centre for Earthquake Engineering Research (MCEER) etc.

Numerous reports/papers are available with the National Information Service for
Earthquake Engineering (NISEE) library, which operates from University of
California at Berkeley, at the website http://nisee.berkeley.edu/elibrary/. These
documents are generally not for free downloading. Our library has a limited access
to this library. You may write to the librarian to get a document from this website.

Many reports are available with the National Information Centre of Earthquake
Engineering (NICEE) website, which operates from IIT Kanpur, at
http://www.nicee.org/IITK-GSDMA_Codes.php for free downloading. The NICEE
website also hosts all papers presented in the world conferences on earthquake
engineering (http://www.nicee.org/wcee/index2.php).

M. Practical suggestions for organizing the documents

It helps greatly if the documents are named in the following manner:

Year_Author_KeywordsFromTitleOfThePaper_Publisher
(e.g.,
2006_Baker
&
Cornell_Which spectral acceleration are you using_EQ Spectra). Do not make the
filename too long; there is a limit on the number of characters in the filename
(including the path of the file). If you have more than two authors, just use the last
name of the first author and et al. for the remaining authors.

Strongly recommended: Use software such as Zotero (free for download) for
managing citations. This saves immense amount of time in managing the reference
section of a paper/report. The website http://libguides.mit.edu/zotero provides
some
tips
on
download
and
how
to
use
it.
A
video
at
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=imSxa5MbXrc shows how to cite a paper in
MS Word using Zotero.