[democanarchis]

So, my supervisor has been invited to submit a review article, and he has asked that I write it. I haven't written a paper before, let alone a review! It's in a pretty prestigous publication, so he'll be expecting a very high standard. I have another 2/3 months to complete it, but its on a very large topic. Has anyone any advice on how to start writing a review? How should I organise my references? How do I make sure my literature search is comprehensive?

[Doc Oc]

This is highly inappropriate to ask you to do and lazy on the part of your mentor.  I can say this because my mentor had me write a review as a 2nd year grad student and it was a horrible experience.  Ask your mentor to defer this responsibility to a more senior grad student or do it himself.  This is akin to asking someone to perform a difficult Bach piece after one year of piano lessons.

First of all, reviews are very lengthy (obviously), which requires not only significant knowledge of the field you are reviewing but how to write scientific papers.  If you've never written one you are already at a disadvantage in this area and a review is a terrible crash course in how to write a scientific manuscript.  Second, as a 2nd year student you cannot possibly have absorbed the information necessary to write a thorough review, and you will probably get some bad reviews based on that (some may be scathing).  This is not your fault, but you should be prepared for that.  Lastly, if you get it accepted, you will probably look back someday and feel a little embarrassed by the content of it.  Again, it wouldn't your fault, but it still sucks to feel like you published something subpar and now have to live with it.

So in case the message isn't clear, my advice to you is not to do this.  I gather from some of your posts that your PI is absentee, which is probably why he's deferring this off to you.  But it's HIS responsibility and a bad review will still reflect poorly on HIM.  He should man up and do his damn job.  If you encounter resistance and still end up having to do this let me know, I'll help you however I can.

[Mitch]

I assume you will be mainly focusing on the research conducted in your PI's lab? How many papers does he have out in the topic area?

[democanarchis]

There isn't really a more senior grad student that could do it; the final years are all writing up at the minute, and neither of the 3rd years are doing this particular reaction. It is something that he has about 10-20 papers on, and he has written a review on an aspect of it before, a few years back though. Its a topic in asymmetric catalysis, and i'm doing that class of reaction so it does have some relevance for me. It won't really be focusing on my groups work, more an overview of the reaction and applications, ligand design etc.

[Doc Oc]

That is indeed, a HUGE topic.  You'll be at your computer all day for the next few months, I hope you're ready.

Can you give more detail?  If you're willing to sacrifice your anonymity and tell us your PI, we can look through some of the papers he's published on the topic that might help.  Otherwise, just more detail about the reaction would be a good start.

If you're not familiar with EndNote now would probably be a good time to start familiarizing yourself with it.  I personally didn't like it very much because I ended up plugging in most of the information myself rather than being able to drop it in from the publication, but I have a couple friends who absolutely swear by it and it will most certainly be useful when you're putting your references together.

The one good thing about this is that it will basically count as a chapter in your thesis, so you're getting a headstart on that.

[OC pro]

Your supervisor is a complete jerk. This is way too heavy for a second year stud. Your experimental work will suffer alot.

Writing a paper needs a lot experience (style, citations, format and so on) and literature overview. Best to start with is a 2-3 page communication. Even that is a challenge and will take at least a full week (if you really want to publish it in a good journal like Chem Comm, Angewandte, JACS, OrgLett or JOC).
A review is for those who have finished experimental work for their Ph.D. or when being a Postdoc.

I had 13 papers before I have written my first review article (14 pages). Then it was relatively easy.

[democanarchis]

The topic is the asymmetric Heck cross coupling reaction, so its pretty huge. I have a copy of the previous review which was on the intramolecular asymmetric Heck, and it goes into the mechanism/theory in good depth. I want to avoid plagarising it, although there is only so much you can say about an established mechanism and catalytic cycle.

Members of our group don't publish much; it's usual for someone to turn in their thesis having only one or two papers, one of which is often a review, although usually they do it in 3rd year. I am aware that this will mean me being almost completely out of the lab for the next 3 months which i'm not delighted about, but as someone said it'll be pretty much a chapter in my thesis, so i guess three months for a chapter isn't too bad if one looks at it like that.

Thanks for all the advice guys. I'll do a lit survey over the holidays and then talk to my PI in the new year to voice some of my concerns.

[demoninatutu]

It does indeed seem a bit tough, especially when you should be in the main push for your experimental work.

That said, the first thing to do is to narrow down the topic to something more manageable. All asymmetric Heck reactions is a very large topic so you have two ways to go: comprehensive but little detail or narrow and in-depth. I personally hate the wide reviews that just list a couple of hundred reactions — I really don't see the point now that we have online searches.

Try and find an angle that has relevance to you personally and will form a niche for your publication. Is there a specific class of ligands or catalysts that you can focus on? Is there a particular class of applications? Is there a gap in previously published reviews? You might be able to find an overlap between Heck reactions and carbohydrate chemistry, for example, reactions that proceed in water, or whatever. Anything that narrows down the topic to something that you can manage.

Remember that journals usually give authors a wide topic specifically to allow them the flexibility to find their own angle.

[movies]

I missed this topic before – but I am really surprised by the reactions of people above.

I wrote a few reviews during my PhD studies and I had some mixed experiences, but it was generally positive.  I certainly don't think it is unreasonable for your PI to offer you the chance to write a review on a topic related to your work.  Yes, it does take a lot of time and effort, but then again you are expected to be an expert on this topic by the completion of your PhD.  Think of it as an effort in understanding the context of your work in the greater field of chemistry.  You will probably learn a lot.  You should also consider that this review may become a significant part of your PhD thesis, so in that sense it will end up saving you time toward the end of your studies when you are trying to write up.

[Borek]

It is well over a month since the original post, that means about half of the time (2/3 months) already passed.

[408]

I missed this topic before – but I am really surprised by the reactions of people above.

I wrote a few reviews during my PhD studies and I had some mixed experiences, but it was generally positive.  I certainly don't think it is unreasonable for your PI to offer you the chance to write a review on a topic related to your work.  Yes, it does take a lot of time and effort, but then again you are expected to be an expert on this topic by the completion of your PhD.  Think of it as an effort in understanding the context of your work in the greater field of chemistry.  You will probably learn a lot.  You should also consider that this review may become a significant part of your PhD thesis, so in that sense it will end up saving you time toward the end of your studies when you are trying to write up.

Have to agree with all of the above.  I had the same experience as movies, except I volunteered and it was for a book chapter.  Some of the best gains in my topic-relevant knowledge were made while writing that, and I ended up doing it again.
Besides for scholarships and future job opportunities, you should try to publish as fast as possible as soon as you start graduate school. 

[Doc Oc]

Although there are upsides to being asked to prepare a review, there is an appropriate context in which to do it.  The original poster is a 2nd year graduate student who hasn't written a paper before and was given a timeline of 2-3 months to research AND write on a topic that garnered this year's Nobel Prize.  That's wrong, plain and simple.  There is a base level of training and knowledge that a grad student should have before tackling something like a review, and the training isn't there in this situation.

democanarchis, I do hope this all works out for you.  If you need objective eyes to look over any of your drafts it sounds like people in this thread (myself included) would be willing to help you.

[jeffrey.struss]

My boss said in his graduate lab, one of the things a first year grad student did was write a review for his particular area. The important point being this was an internal use only review. The idea being a review is an EXCELLENT way to get a good footing in the topic. By forcing yourself to not only research and read articles but to also PROCESS them into a coherent topic you are able to get an idea of what you are working on and get a good footing to build your future research. The OPs situation is VERY different, that timeline, more than anything is CRAZY short. For a first time student, I could see it getting done is 5-6 months (since a first time author will require extensive revisions). I know when my wife was doing her PhD her first paper took around the 2-3 month time frame IIRC. That being said, this was in her third year (first full research year) and she had a good idea of the background because of what she had studied for orals. This paper wasn't a review either. It was a standard research paper and it still took that long. The good news what it got into Analytical Chemistry and ended up the most read paper from Oct-Dec of that year. So she was really stoked about it, but still at the time it was very very difficult for her. Plus her topic was bacterial quorum sensing molecules not the recent nobel prize. Honestly, I pity the OP this is going to be a demon hell-ride.

Additionally, to the OP publish as often as you can. I know my wife published 2-3 book chapters and at least 3-4 papers before she graduated. She could have published more but the manuscripts are still being revised/edited and weren't done before she graduated last Dec. I think she just finished one of the left overs recently and the other one is waiting on a new grad student to do a few reactions to tie up some loose ends. Her publications really helped her when she was looking for post docs. They showed she could do good publishable research in the lab on a timely basis. Top level schools (heck all of them to some degree) look for these abilities.

As an aside, OP some sort of reference management program like Endnote etc. will help you immensely if you didn't know that already. I am familiar with endnote because our university gave it to us for free. It is a great program (albeit buggy at times).

[Darel2021]

I assume you will be mainly focusing on the research conducted in your PI's lab? How many papers does he have out in the topic area?

Thanks for the great advice, share the source where you got these instructions. Is this a guide? Thanks in advance, for me this is important because I am going to write a scientific work.