Writing Osteoarchaeology Review Articles With Impact

Writing a review article is a different skill to writing a research article. Rather than presenting new data from a research project, a review article brings together information already available in the published literature in order to collate, critique, and interrogate it (Fang 2021; Jalongo and Saracho 2016; Rewhorn 2018). Reviews have the advantage that they give an overview of a topic that can act as a starting point for others to learn more if it is not already their area of expertise. They can also highlight to other scholars gaps in current knowledge where further research is needed, and thus also provide a good resource for early career academics to identify research areas with the most potential to help develop careers. In other words, they tell us what we know and what we need to know (Paul and Criado 2020). In consequence, reviews are often quoted more frequently than papers that make up the original research base for that topic, typically with around three times more citations than original research (Miranda and Garcia-Carpintero 2018).

In recent issues of the International Journal of Osteoarchaeology, review articles have been published on fracture non-unions in past populations (Monje-Calleja et al. 2025), cremated bone (Squires et al. 2025), human juvenile sex estimation from the pelvis (Griffith and Rando 2024), and sturgeons from archaeological sites in Ukraine (Volynskyi and Kovalchuk 2024). But what makes a literature review publishable, and what turns a mediocre review into one that gets everyone talking?

Reviews can be approached in a range of different ways, such as narrative reviews, systematic reviews, meta-analysis, and bibliometric reviews (Amobonye et al. 2024). However, from the perspective of impact, there are two main types of review that tend to be submitted to journals. The first merely summarizes the published literature for a topic and then stops without critical exploration of the evidence. While there is some merit in bringing together the literature so others can look up those papers and read more about the subject, taking this approach misses the opportunity for maximizing the knowledge potential from gathering this information. These reviews often have limited impact and consequently will be harder to publish, as journal editors and peer reviewers are more likely to reject them. Literature reviews in postgraduate theses sometimes form useful bases for publication, but it is important to make sure that submissions are critically framed and well-focused pieces of work and not primarily descriptive.

A more successful approach is to then take that information to analyze it in new and innovative ways, so that an improved understanding of the field can be found (Tay 2020). Creating larger datasets compiled from the original source publications can increase sample size, thus enabling interesting statistical analyses. It can also allow authors of the review to look for geographic or temporal patterns that might not be visible in the data found in each individual research article, but which become apparent when the data from all those papers are brought together and compared. In consequence, it is this second approach to writing a review article that tends to have the greatest impact and lead to a long-term influence upon other researchers (Craswell and Poore 2011; Efron and Ravid 2019).

Well written review articles are important contributions to the literature. They bring together existing knowledge that can be widely distributed, including in hard-to-find locations, so making the evidence more accessible to a wider audience. They also allow previously missed patterns and relationships to be identified and highlighted. As they are often more widely quoted than research articles, they can have a higher impact and broader readership than research articles. In consequence, thought-provoking review articles should be seen as a strong component of the portfolio of both graduate students and academics in all stages of their careers.

The authors declare no conflicts of interest.