honest-scholar literature capability, position mode (sub-spec 2). · Status: verified-source digest; migrates to the plugin’s resources/references/.
For a committed paper: systematically establish novelty, select baselines, situate the contribution. Every named method has a verified identifier below.
1. Named methodologies
- Systematic Literature Review (SLR) — pre-registered, auditable: review questions → search → inclusion/exclusion → screen → extract → synthesize. Kitchenham & Charters (2007), Guidelines for Performing SLRs in Software Engineering, EBSE-2007-01. The backbone the others plug into (plan/conduct/report).
- PRISMA (reporting standard, not a search method) — 27-item checklist + flow diagram (identified → deduped → screened → excluded-with-reasons → included). Page et al. (2021), BMJ 372:n71, DOI:10.1136/bmj.n71; Moher et al. (2009), PLoS Med 6(7):e1000097, DOI:10.1371/journal.pmed.1000097. Durable value = the flow diagram’s audit trail (the anti-cherry-picking defense).
- Snowballing — Wohlin (2014), EASE, DOI:10.1145/2601248.2601268. Diverse start set (Google Scholar to reduce publisher bias); backward (references → foundations/precedent) + forward (citations → newer competitors/SOTA); iterate to saturation.
- Concept-centric matrix — Webster & Watson (2002), MIS Quarterly 26(2):xiii–xxiii. Do not organize author-by-author; organize concept × source (rows=papers, cols=attributes your delta turns on). This matrix is the comparison table you ship.
- Review typology — Cooper (1988), Knowledge in Society 1(1):104–126, DOI:10.1007/BF03177550
[page range unverified]. Choose the organizing spine; for a methods paper a conceptual/thematic taxonomy beats chronological. - Vote-counting / feature matrix — weak for evidence claims, legitimate for a capability comparison table (method × feature, ✓/✗/partial); the artifact reviewers scan first.
- Related-Work section structure — thematic grouping, one paragraph per approach-family, each with an explicit delta: “Unlike ⟨family⟩ we ⟨difference⟩, which yields ⟨consequence⟩.” Contribution as a bulleted delta in intro, mirrored in related work.
2. Process: committed topic → positioning.md
- Frame the claim(s) as 1–3 falsifiable delta statements before searching (the review questions).
- Seed set — 3–6 diverse anchors spanning communities/terminologies.
- Snowball to saturation — backward + forward (S2/OpenAlex for forward); log every candidate with include/exclude reason (PRISMA counts). Stop when no new relevant methods appear.
- Screen against explicit inclusion criteria; record exclusions with reasons.
- Extract into the concept matrix — rows = included methods; cols = the concepts your delta turns on.
- Derive the taxonomy from matrix column clusters (the section spine).
- Write the delta — per taxonomy branch, one sentence grounded in a matrix cell.
- Derive baselines from the taxonomy, not from convenience.
- Ship
positioning.md: taxonomy, comparison table, PRISMA search log, novelty/delta bullets, baseline list with justification.
3. Anti-patterns → safeguards
Venue expectation (NeurIPS/ICML): reviewers judge novelty/significance + relation to prior work; checklists require limitations + reproducibility. The positioning doc should pre-answer “delta over closest work?” and “baselines strong and fairly tuned?” — the two rejection levers.
4. Level split — same method, two configurations
→ one skill,
mode/depth switch; hypothesis = a fast adversarial precedent rapid review. Ship a PRISMA-style log in both modes.
5. Tooling (free/scriptable emphasized)
- Forward snowball + metadata: Semantic Scholar API, OpenAlex, Crossref (DOIs). Google Scholar = best unbiased start set, no API.
- Screening/active learning: ASReview LAB (van de Schoot et al. 2021, Nat. Mach. Intell. 3:125–133, DOI:10.1038/s42256-020-00287-7); Rayyan.
- Reference mgmt/dedup: Zotero (+ Better BibTeX); Publish or Perish.
- PRISMA artifacts: PRISMA2020 R package / official flow-diagram generator.