Finding more recent review articles

Question

How can I find a more recent review article in a topic I am interested in? I have found a review article on biosynthesis of silver nanoparticles published in 2015. (https://doi.org/10.1016/j.indcrop.2015.03.015) How do I go about finding more recent work done on the same?

Answer 1

In addition to Google Scholar and searching for work by influential scholars, as suggested by GrotesqueSI's answer, it is often helpful to look at the works that have cited the reviews you have found already.

Frequently, new reviews will cite previous reviews of the topic, especially in fast-moving fields, so as not to waste space describing the same information. The review article you linked has 100+ citations, and maybe one of those is by a newer review.

Also, if you can find a landmark or high-impact article in the field, it is almost certainly cited by all good reviews, so looking at the "cited by" list of such an article is often helpful too.

Answer 2

In my field, 2015 is considered quite recent and it would be unreasonable to expect there to be much in the way of "more recent" work. However this may be different in your field.

One place to start would be to use Google Scholar to search the keywords associated with the topic you are interested in, and to restrict the searches to publication after 2015. A more labour intensive but, perhaps, more targeted way forward would be to specifically seek out the work of influential scholars cited in your 2015 article and see if they have published more on the topic since that date.

Finding sources of information is not easy. Expect to spend some time on this.

Answer 3

I recommend that you use Google Scholar to conduct a forward citation search. The basic logic of this strategy is that any decent literature review conducted since 2015 should surely cite this 2015 literature review. This logic is surpisingly sound under a system of peer review because even if the authors of the new review somehow missed the 2015 review, competent peer reviewers should alert them to its existence and ask them to include it.

So, based on that logic, here's how you would do it:

1. Look up the article in Google Scholar.

2. Click the "Cited by [numer of citations]" link:

3. Browse through the 193 results (as of October 13, 2019) to see if there are any new literature reviews.

That strategy should exhaustively identify any new literature reviews from now and the future.