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EES 325: Remote Sensing of Terrestrial and Aquatic Environments

Course guide for EES 325 on Remote Sensing. Used in Fall 2023, Fall 2025

What is a Review Article?

"Review articles" are a type of scholarly article that gives a bird's eye view of the latest developments in a field or niche within a field. They can help provide background information or context that helps in learning about a specific field of research. Plus they can contain a valuable bibliography.

The titles of these articles often have a more generic quality than the titles of  articles reporting very specific research findings. For example, compare these titles:

  • Physiological responses of coastal and oceanic diatoms to diurnal fluctuations in seawater carbonate chemistry under two CO2 concentrations
  • History of Seawater Carbonate Chemistry, Atmospheric CO2, and Ocean Acidification

Which sounds more like a review article?

Finding Review Articles

After doing a search in a library database, scan over the results for items that look as if they will provide a review of a field. 

A more systematic way to search for review articles is to look for the ability to restrict to review articles in the databases you use, typically through using a filter. 

Another source (among others!) of review articles is the following database, which is dedicated to this type of article. Sort the search results in descending date order so you see the most recent articles for your topic.