Laura L. McConnell, Coralia Osorio Roa, and Thomas F. Hofmann
Imagine you are lost in a dark, dense forest with no guide to find your way through to safety. Luckily you find a small flashlight that allows you to see a path forward. With this flashlight, you can quickly find your way out instead of spending hours fumbling in the dark. An excellent review paper can serve as a flashlight for the scientific community to illuminate a path toward fruitful lines of research or to reveal research gaps in need of attention. Careful analysis of the literature may also reveal new more efficient pathways toward solving a difficult problem. Thus, a review paper can help scientists to focus on solving problems at the forefront of science while avoiding research that may lead to a dead end. In the writing of a review paper, it is especially important to spend a significant amount of time considering and crafting the conclusions and future recommendations in your Perspectives for Future Research section. This section is where the real impact of the review comes into focus, allowing you to shine a light toward the future and stimulate new research approaches.
A recent editorial by Skrabalak in Chemistry of Materials suggests that review articles should be original, timely, and authoritative and perhaps inspire new directions in a field. An editorial from many decades ago by Hart suggested that a “review will not only provide a summary of the state of affairs ..., but will also pinpoint the problems which still need attention and, ... will set (the reader) off in the “right” direction”. Some recent reviews from Journal of Agricultural and Food Chemistry, ACS Food Science & Technology, and ACS Agricultural Science & Technology are highlighted to provide examples of review papers that provide a clear path forward for readers.