Review Articles: A Resource and an Opportunity

A few days ago, the US National Academy of Sciences (NAS) announced the 2009 recipient of the NAS Award for Scientific Reviewing. This award recognizes “authors whose reviews have synthesized extensive and difficult material, rendering a significant service to science and influencing the course of scientific thought”.

Different years, the award is given for writing review articles in different fields. This year, the award was for reviewing in genetics. Last year it was for reviewing in social and political sciences, and next year it will be for reviewing in geosciences. The award has been given since 1979, and a list of the fields and recipients has been posted.

Review articles—which summarize what is known about a topic—are an important part of the scholarly literature. They can be a good way to start learning about a field of research. Thus, they can be very useful to graduate students. They also can help researchers entering new fields.

Although not done in a laboratory, preparing a review article is a type of research. Writing a review article is a big responsibility—because to serve its purpose, a review article must be thorough, balanced, and thoughtful.

As the NAS award recognizes, review articles can contribute much. If you are starting to search the literature on the topic, consider seeking review articles. (In some databases, such as PubMed, one can search specifically for review articles.) And if you know much about a topic, consider writing a review article yourself.