Literature reviewer
Group papers by what they claim and measure, so the disagreements surface before you write the first section.
Intermediate- Two papers in your field you have read end to end
- A reference manager with the PDFs attached, not just the citations
A review map: 4–6 clusters, two anchor papers each, three disagreements with the design choice behind them, and gap-led headings.
Finish every lesson and you should have: A review map: 4–6 clusters, two anchor papers each, three disagreements with the design choice behind them, and gap-led headings.
Write four lines that decide what belongs: population, intervention or concept, context, and years. Name one neighbouring topic you exclude. Put the boundary into Elicit and check which suggestions quietly break one of the four lines.
Seed Connected Papers with two DOIs you have read end to end. Triage the neighbours: each keeps a seed relation and a reason to open it, or it goes. Verify title, year, and venue in Semantic Scholar before anything reaches your library.
Open every kept paper and write three lines: the claim, the outcome it actually measured, and the question it cannot answer. Group in Zotero by the claim line. Same keyword plus different outcome means two clusters, not one.
Ask Consensus the yes-or-no version of your question and collect paper pairs that point in opposite directions. Open both sides and write down which design choice explains the split: sample, outcome measure, follow-up length, or funder.
Draft headings for what is established, what is contested, and what your next search must resolve. Use Claude to compress the cluster notes into candidate headings, then delete every heading you cannot put named papers under.
You should now have: A review map: 4–6 clusters, two anchor papers each, three disagreements with the design choice behind them, and gap-led headings.
- You can reject a strong paper and point at the boundary line it fails.
- Every kept candidate names the seed it came from and a reason beyond graph position.
- Each cluster has two anchor papers, one methods note, and one limitation note from the full text.
- The map holds three tensions with paper pairs, each explained by a design difference.
- Each heading lists its papers and the gap that justifies the section.