Writing a review article is most demanding in Biological sciences as a part of their academic assignments.Generally we can define review article as follows:

Review article is the background for further researchers in the field to provide the Gap in the previous research that need to be explored.It should stimulate thinking about topic from different and critical viewpoint that stimulates further research.

Basically,in review article your main objective is to critically analyse the research paper of the authors to create an important research question for the readers.Review article is a starting point for writing a research paper because in review article you try to find the Gap in the research paper which readers in future try to find out the solution.in the words of US National Library of Medicine:

“The main and fundamental purpose of writing a review is to create a readable synthesis of the best resources available in the literature for an important research question or a current area of research. ”

Source : US National Library of Medicine

In Pakistan,Virtual University students are often expected as a part of their academic requirement to write review articles and research papers.

Actually,in review article you are expected to answer the following Questions. This simple definition of a review article contains the following key elements:

1. What question or problem you are dealing with. For example the recent VU students are given following topics for review articles. (a) “Statistical analysis of qPCR data in various cancers’’. (b) “Synthesis and characterization of Gold nano particles in Breast cancer cells”.(c) “Role of Ultraviolet (UV) radiations in cancer”
2. What Methods you will use to find out the solutions of above questions and what research papers can best respond to above question or problems.
3. How and what you will provide as a solution in your paper to respond the question raised.

Term Paper Guidelines for VU Students

How to Write Article Review from published research papers

(Above you can further Read about the formatting of Review articles for your research papers)

Format of Review Article:

A review should be in the following format as per academic standards:

Abstract: It should cover the overall theme of your review article and should be around 250 words with keywords at the end of the Abstract.

Introduction: It should contain the relevant data . It should contain new data that have not yet appeared in a journals which you have read previously.Fro example if you have read 15 papers as a reference then you can find the data that has not been previously explored.Here you will try to put that data for analysis.

Systemic Academic Review:Review article should be a master piece for your readers. So It should contain the information about the already research articles published in this domain in the way that stimulates further research.A good review article needs to be critical and you have to provide the outlook for further research.

Discussion: It should be discussed critically for future prospects and it can be around 250 words or follow your university requirements if you are writing it as a university assignment.

Reference: You have to cite here the references of the papers you studied for review. You have to follow the given reference style like Vancuover, APA,MLA,Chicago etc.The whole article should be quoted properly with proper references.Here you can find complete reference style guide for your review article.