literature-review

SKILL.md

Literature Review

Use this skill when the task is to find, screen, synthesize, and cite a body of
academic or technical literature.

When to Use

Building a systematic, scoping, or narrative literature review.

Synthesizing the state of the art for a research question.

Finding gaps, contradictions, or future-work directions.

Preparing citation-backed background sections for papers or reports.

Comparing evidence across peer-reviewed papers, preprints, patents, and
technical reports.

Review Types

Narrative review: broad synthesis; useful for orientation.

Scoping review: maps concepts, methods, and evidence gaps.

Systematic review: predefined protocol, reproducible search, explicit
screening and exclusion.

Meta-analysis: systematic review plus quantitative effect aggregation.

Ask the user which level of rigor is needed. If unspecified, default to a
scoping review for exploratory work and a systematic review for publication or
clinical claims.

Workflow

1. Define the Question

Convert the prompt into a searchable research question.

For clinical or biomedical work, use PICO:

Population

Intervention or exposure

Comparator

Outcome

For technical work, use:

system or domain

method or intervention

comparison baseline

evaluation metric

2. Plan the Search

Create a search protocol before collecting sources:

databases to search

date range

languages

publication types

inclusion criteria

exclusion criteria

exact search strings

Minimum useful database set:

PubMed for biomedical and life-sciences literature.

arXiv for CS, math, physics, quantitative biology, and preprints.

Semantic Scholar or Crossref for broad academic discovery.

Domain-specific sources when relevant, such as clinical-trial registries,
patent databases, standards bodies, or official technical docs.

3. Search and Log Evidence

Keep a search log that makes the review reproducible:

| Database | Date searched | Query | Filters | Results | Export |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | ---: | --- |
| PubMed | 2026-05-11 | `("CRISPR"[tiab] OR "Cas9"[tiab]) AND "sickle cell"[tiab]` | 2020:2026, English | 86 | PMID list |
| arXiv | 2026-05-11 | `CRISPR sickle cell gene editing` | q-bio, 2020:2026 | 9 | BibTeX |

Save raw IDs, URLs, DOIs, abstracts, and notes separately from the final prose.

4. Deduplicate

Deduplicate in this order:

DOI

PMID or arXiv ID

exact title

normalized title plus first author and year

Record how many duplicates were removed.

5. Screen Sources

Screen in stages:

title

abstract

full text

For systematic work, record exclusion reasons:

wrong population

wrong intervention

wrong outcome

not primary research

duplicate

unavailable full text

outside date range

6. Extract Data

Use a structured extraction table:

| Study | Design | Population/Data | Method | Comparator | Outcome | Key finding | Limitations |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| Author Year | RCT/cohort/review/etc. | sample or corpus | method | baseline | measured outcome | result | caveat |

For technical papers, include dataset, benchmark, metric, baseline, and
reproducibility notes.

7. Synthesize

Group evidence by theme rather than summarizing papers one by one.

Useful synthesis lenses:

strongest evidence

conflicting evidence

methodological weaknesses

population or dataset limits

recency and replication

practical implications

unanswered questions

Separate claims by confidence:

High confidence: replicated, high-quality evidence across sources.

Medium confidence: plausible but limited by sample, method, or recency.

Low confidence: early, speculative, single-source, or weakly measured.

8. Verify Citations

Before finalizing:

verify DOI, PMID, arXiv ID, or official URL

check author names and publication year

do not cite a paper for a claim it does not make

mark preprints as preprints

distinguish reviews from primary evidence

Output Template

# Literature Review: <Topic>

Generated: <date>
Review type: <narrative | scoping | systematic | meta-analysis>
Search window: <dates>
Databases: <list>

## Research Question

## Search Strategy

## Inclusion and Exclusion Criteria

## Evidence Summary

## Thematic Synthesis

## Gaps and Limitations

## References

## Search Log

Pitfalls

Do not treat search snippets as evidence.

Do not mix preprints, reviews, and primary studies without labeling them.

Do not omit negative or conflicting findings.

Do not claim systematic-review rigor without a reproducible protocol.

Do not use a single database for a broad claim unless the scope is explicitly
limited to that database.