How (and how not) to present related work

A key part in scientific writing is a description of related work. This section establishes what is known in the given area and the new publication’s contribution. It also provides a signal to reviewers and readers regarding the study’s innovativeness, credibility, and thoroughness. A paper with a shallow related work section may well have overlooked important relevant work that would have supported its theory building, methods, or conclusions. A mistake often made in related work sections is to present them as a laundry list (A did X, B did Y), often in chronological order.

The laundry list approach is easy to write (trivially so with ChatGPT; just ask it to summarize each paper or its abstract in a couple of sentences). However, it’s rarely useful to readers, because it conveys only indirectly the state of the art. The main case where a chronological listing is appropriate, is in survey work describing the evolution of scientific knowledge or ideas. In most other cases a much better approach is to analyze the related work into the areas where contributions have been made and then synthesize the result into an overview of existing knowledge. This synthesis is then presented in the related work section. The contributions of individual researchers are only parenthetically listed when outlining known each fact or contribution.

I often struggle to convey the wrong and the correct approach, finding the above guidelines too abstract. Below is a concrete example that may help you understand the difference between the two approaches. Imagine you want to describe the Earth as known in Europe at the end of the 16th century. The wrong (laundry list) approach is to describe the contributions of the era’s European explorers. A much better approach is to provide a map of the known world (or knowledge in the case of a related work section), with the explorations as parenthetical remarks. Here are the two descriptions.

Suboptimal approach focusing on explorer contributions

During the 13th century, European exploration was primarily driven by the desire to establish trade routes with Asia. The most notable explorer of this period was Marco Polo, a Venetian merchant who traveled extensively throughout Asia between 1271 and 1295. His travels took him along the Silk Road to the court of Kublai Khan in China, where he documented the wealth and splendor of the Mongol Empire in his work, “The Travels of Marco Polo,” which sparked European interest in Asian riches.

In the early 15th century, the Portuguese began exploring the West African coast under the sponsorship of Prince Henry the Navigator. In 1419, they discovered the Madeira Islands, and by 1427, they had reached the Azores. These discoveries marked the beginning of European expansion into the Atlantic Ocean. Portuguese explorers such as Bartolomeu Dias made significant progress in the exploration of Africa. In 1488, Dias rounded the southern tip of Africa, which he named the Cape of Good Hope, proving that it was possible to reach the Indian Ocean from the Atlantic.

At the same time, Christopher Columbus, an Italian navigator sponsored by Spain, set out to find a westward route to Asia. In 1492, Columbus reached the Caribbean, landing on an island in the Bahamas, which he named San Salvador. Although Columbus believed he had reached the Indies, he had actually discovered a new continent, which opened the way for further exploration and colonization of the Americas.

In 1497, the Italian explorer John Cabot, sailing under an English flag, reached the coast of North America, likely the island of Newfoundland. This voyage marked the beginning of the English exploration of the New World.

Shortly after, in 1498, the Portuguese navigator Vasco da Gama succeeded in reaching India by sailing around the Cape of Good Hope. This voyage established a sea route to Asia, which allowed Portugal to establish a lucrative spice trade.

The early 16th century saw further exploration of the Americas. In 1513, the Spanish explorer Vasco Núñez de Balboa crossed the Isthmus of Panama and became the first European to see the Pacific Ocean from the Americas, which he called the “South Sea.” Meanwhile, the Portuguese explorer Ferdinand Magellan, sailing under the Spanish flag, embarked on a voyage to circumnavigate the globe in 1519. Although Magellan was killed in the Philippines in 1521, his expedition completed the journey in 1522, proving that the Earth was round and that the oceans were interconnected.

During this period, Hernán Cortés and Francisco Pizarro led Spanish expeditions that resulted in the conquest of the Aztec Empire in 1521 and the Inca Empire in 1533, respectively. These conquests brought vast territories and wealth under Spanish control.

In 1534, the French explorer Jacques Cartier explored the Gulf of Saint Lawrence and claimed the region for France, laying the groundwork for French colonization in North America. Meanwhile, the English continued their exploration efforts, with Sir Walter Raleigh establishing the Roanoke Colony in 1585, which would later become known as the “Lost Colony” due to its mysterious disappearance.

Better approach describing a map of the known world

[Start with a bird’s eye view.]

By the end of the 16th century, Europeans had developed a much more comprehensive understanding of the world’s geography, thanks to the Age of Exploration. The known world as depicted on European maps included detailed representations of Europe, Asia, Africa, and the newly discovered Americas, with significant oceanic features and islands.

[Continue with descriptions of individual parts.]

Europe was well-charted, with detailed maps highlighting its countries, coastlines, and major trade routes across the Mediterranean Sea. The Mediterranean region was the heart of European trade and exploration, connected to the Middle East and North Africa, regions long familiar to Europeans due to ancient trade networks.

In Africa, the northern regions were well-known due to their proximity to Europe and the Mediterranean. The western coast of Africa was mapped extensively during the 15th century as Portuguese explorers, under the patronage of Prince Henry the Navigator, ventured southward along the coast (1419–1460). This exploration led to the discovery of the Cape of Good Hope by Bartolomeu Dias in 1488, which opened up a sea route to the Indian Ocean. The eastern coast of Africa, including the Swahili Coast, became better known following Vasco da Gama’s voyage to India in 1498, establishing the Indian Ocean as a crucial part of global trade.

Asia was partially known through ancient trade routes and the accounts of travelers like Marco Polo, who journeyed to China and described the riches of the Mongol Empire (1271–1295). The sea route to India, opened by Vasco da Gama in 1498, connected Europe to the Indian subcontinent, and the Portuguese soon established trade outposts along the coast. The islands of Southeast Asia, particularly the Spice Islands, became known to Europeans through exploration efforts such as Ferdinand Magellan’s circumnavigation, which began in 1519. Although the interiors of China, India, and Southeast Asia remained largely mysterious, their coastal regions were increasingly included in European maps due to these contacts.

The Americas were a major area of new geographical knowledge. The eastern coast stretched from Newfoundland in the north, first explored by John Cabot in 1497, down to Brazil in the south, where Pedro Álvares Cabral landed in 1500. The Caribbean Islands, discovered by Christopher Columbus in 1492, lay to the east of the Americas and were among the first parts of the New World encountered by Europeans. Central America connected the two continents, and from this region, Vasco Núñez de Balboa became the first European to reach the Pacific Ocean from the New World in 1513, illustrating the vast expanse of the newly known land.

To the west, the Pacific Ocean was largely unexplored except for the routes established by Magellan’s expedition, which successfully crossed it during the first circumnavigation of the globe, completed in 1522. This journey marked the Pacific as a significant oceanic expanse, lying between the Americas and Asia, though many of its islands and the Australian continent remained undiscovered by Europeans.

Oceania, including the vast Pacific islands, was touched upon by the expeditions that crossed the Pacific, but it was still largely a mystery to Europeans, with only parts of Indonesia and the Spice Islands explored by the Portuguese and Spanish in the early 16th century. The Australian continent, though located in the southern hemisphere, was not yet known to Europeans, with discoveries in this region occurring later in the Age of Exploration.

Note: I had both texts generated with ChatGPT (4o) through suitable prompting.

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