Literature Synthesis Research

Our reviewers often note that contributing authors to this journal have a tendency to give short shrift to the background literature on which we build our field. Too frequently, we return papers to authors requesting revisions that highlight the central issues that have already been part of our publication record. And all too frequently, we receive research papers that create new scales for measuring constructs that already have reliable tools, validated instruments, and data that can be compared to the results. For the past two years, I’ve been collaborating with colleagues to undertake a configurative review of what the literature says about museums working at the intersection of science, technology, engineering and math (STEM) and the social problems that challenge our societies, thanks to support from the U.S. National Science Foundation. This journal, our publisher, the non-profit I lead, the U.S. Institute of Museum and Library Services, and a group of private donors supported our work with emerging museum professionals to undertake similar studies of the Curator archives through a professional development program (see issue 63.4 of this journal). Both of these activities revealed that we have a rich tradition of research and innovation. At the same time, we also found that much of the research is framed as isolated studies that quietly answer a question without situating that work in the context of scholarly practice. Museum studies is often characterized as a humanities discipline, but we are truly a transdisciplinary field. We draw from across the full breadth of systemic scholarly methods to uncover the meaning of our form. I can think of a wide range of examples that illustrate the diversity of this field: people study improved safety for archivists, new techniques for restoring or preserving our material culture, strategies for breeding flora and fauna so they can protect the biodiversity on which we depend, or the innovations in social science research methods that can help us better know how we are serving the cultural heterogeneity that makes society strong. To fully serve the field, this journal and the entire peer-reviewed journal enterprise needs to turn our eyes toward reconciling what we know in the present to the publications of those who came before us. By increasing our efforts to publish research synthesis work, we offer future researchers a more stable ground on which to build their own innovations. To accomplish this aspiration, I turn to the many comments I’ve received from reviewers about work that falls short and to the work my colleagues and I have just completed. Literature synthesis is not a comprehensive list of all the papers published on a given topic. A good literature review is an appraisal of what has been published in the past. It represents a critical inquiry into what is known from a given set of studies, how that knowledge was assembled, and what may be missing from that path to knowledge. We have turned to the journal, Systemic Reviews, for some wonderful thinking about the value of aggregation and configurative reviews, and the terms of reference that can help researchers illustrate what they seek to know from existing literature. As a short-cut to that literature, I highly recommend Gough et al. (2012) introduction to systemic reviews. One of the interesting findings from our work was the disaggregation of our literature. Not only are museum studies found in almost every discipline’s peer-reviewed publications, but our study found that seldom do the peer-reviewed journal articles reference the graduate-level research that can be accessed in public repositories. Moreover, there is a vast trove of online grey literature that includes rigorous methods and representative data that can be brought into focus in a peer-reviewed publication. It appears that we suffer from a wealth of resources, now available through many online platforms, but little in the way of maps and guides to help us bring those resources together. What I have learned, from the Curator-Knology professional development emerging professionals workshop and my interactions with colleagues is that literature reviews are inherently political. Museum studies is not a scientific or humanities discipline. Rather, museum studies appear to be a hybrid field that draws from many epistemic traditions and paths to knowledge. As a result, we engage in intense debates over what truth can be claimed based on methodological preference or practice. But those debates do not advance understanding. They merely reveal a politics that can distract. Post-positivism, constructivism, interpretivism, and critical pedagogies are all well-established paths to knowledge in museum studies. Auto-ethnographies provide rich insight into how individuals come to use museums in their lives, and professional observations from across the field are seldom given their due. To move forward, it seems time to invest in much greater triangulation between the different paradigms that have laid our foundation, so we can fully appreciate the breadth of value museums bring to our cultures. This journal seeks new contributions that focus explicitly on literature synthesis to advance the work of our field. We look to contributions that are charitable rather than mired in the politics of epistemic debate. We seek contributions that are systematic and replicable, even when they are conducted with a view to redress past wrongs or harms. And we seek contributions that describe their iterative process of discovery so that others can build on that work. In our recent work, I acknowledge that one of my colleagues and I could not reconcile our disagreements regarding what constitutes an informal STEM learning setting and how to understand the political valence of methodologies. My perspective assumes that any venue can afford STEM learning, from an auto repair shop to a public street. And I also believe that we can compare methods by their sampling procedures to understand where that body of literature places emphasis and what that emphasis might mean when we seek to use it to aggregate learning. I think it can also shed light on how that literature might replicate disciplinary biases that systematically exclude. The process of engaging in our review and the accompanying epistemic debate illustrated what we know and don’t know about how to conduct a collaborative literature review. While we could not reconcile ourselves to a common vision of what we found, I appreciate the critical dialogue that emerged from our debates. The experience encouraged me to seek out more literature synthesis contributions of all types to this journal. And, more importantly, to call on my colleagues editing other journals to invest in publishing this type of work. The results of my own work cannot appear in this journal due to my conflict of interest. But I value the learning I have gained in the process, and look forward to learning more from the literature syntheses that others will contribute. Our editorial team is committed to publishing these works on the basis of fair review, whether they agree with my thoughts on a good review or heartily disagree with these ideas. John Fraser, Editor ([email protected]) is a psychologist and President & CEO of Knology. He was co-Prinicipal Investigator for Addressing Societal Issues through STEM, a project funded by the National Science Foundation (Grant DRL-1906556). Any opinions, findings, and conclusions or recommendations expressed in this editorial are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of the National Science Foundation.