PRACTICAL

RESEARCH

HERBERT A. JUAGPAO _ Qualitative Research

 ETHICAL WAYS IN
WRITING LITERATURE
REVIEW
Lesson Objectives:
Knowledge: identify ethical ways in
writing literature review;
Skill: analyze ethics violated in a
literature review; and
Attitude: value the relevance of ethics
in Qualitative Research by writing own
literature review.
Mark and Nonoy mistakenly thought ethics as proper action or a physical expression.
Well, ethics in literature review is not exclusively an action of doing what is right and
moral. It is more on following the standards of writing literature review. At the end of
the day, after following the proper protocols and standards, your literature review will
be ethical. Let us be ethical writers! For you what do you mean by ethics in literature
review?
Ethics etymologically came from the Greek
word ethos which means right action. In any
society, standard action is ought to be
followed. For example, if you go out, you need
to wear facemask. If you will buy goods, you
need to fall in queue. Aside from that, we
respect elders, those in authority, and people
around us. In literature review, we also follow
ethics. But this ethics is not expressed
through concrete action like bowing our
heads, using “po” and “opo”, or being generous
to others. This is manifested to the way we
write our literature review.
 Five (5) ethical ways on writing our literature
review that we need to follow.
1. Observe proper citation. In writing
academic text like research, you ought to
observe proper citation. This is from proper
paraphrasing to correct citation entry in
different citations. Observance of this is one
way of acknowledging their contribution, as
well as your professionalism. As a novice
researcher, you need to master different kinds
of citation styles depending on what your is
school is requiring you.
2. Keep the original thoughts. There
are many times that we lose the original
thoughts of the text that we are
paraphrasing. It is unethical if we will
just cite writing wherein the original
essence of the sentence is different from
what we have interpreted it or written
down. We need to be abreast with proper
skills in paraphrasing and interpreting
others’ work.
3. Avoid biases. As a novice researcher,
it is important that you eliminate
personal interest or biases on your
studies (Fleming & Zegwaard, 2018).
You should be fair, not one sided. This
is not just demeaning your literature
but also destroying the integrity of
research as vessel of new knowledge.
Therefore, any form of biases must be
eliminated.
4. Be scientific. Becoming
scientific is to have strong
basis on reviewing literature.
One has to state only what is
written and provided evidence
alone not on personal and
intuitive deductions of
interpretation.
5. Embrace positivism. Research is
always geared towards positivity.
Thus, the literature review has to
be in line with positivism
(Polonski, 2004). Though not all
reviewed literature is an
affirmation of your research,
negation of it on the other hand
provides clearer picture of
implication.