Debates and Perspectives Paper
Journal of Information Technology
2022, Vol. 37(2) 209–226
© Association for Information
Technology Trust 2021
Article reuse guidelines:
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DOI: 10.1177/02683962211048201
Journals.sagepub.com/jinf
Artificial intelligence and the conduct of
literature reviews
Gerit Wagner, Roman Lukyanenko and Guy Paré
Abstract
Artificial intelligence (AI) is beginning to transform traditional research practices in many areas. In this context, literature
reviews stand out because they operate on large and rapidly growing volumes of documents, that is, partially structured
(meta)data, and pervade almost every type of paper published in information systems research or related social science
disciplines. To familiarize researchers with some of the recent trends in this area, we outline how AI can expedite individual
steps of the literature review process. Considering that the use of AI in this context is in an early stage of development, we
propose a comprehensive research agenda for AI-based literature reviews (AILRs) in our field. With this agenda, we would
like to encourage design science research and a broader constructive discourse on shaping the future of AILRs in research.
Keywords
Artificial intelligence, machine learning, natural language processing, research data management, data infrastructure,
automation, literature review
Introduction
The potential of artificial intelligence (AI) to augment and
partially automate research has sparked vivid debates in
many scientific disciplines, including the health sciences
(Adams et al., 2013; Tsafnat et al., 2014), biology (King
et al., 2009), and management (Johnson et al., 2019). In
particular, the concept of automated science is raising in-
triguing questions related to the future of research in dis-
ciplines that require “high-level abstract thinking, intricate
knowledge of methodologies and epistemology, and per-
suasive writing capabilities” (Johnson et al., 2019: 292).
These debates resonate with scholars in Information Sys-
tems (IS), who ponder which role AI and automation can
play in theory development (Tremblay et al., 2018) and in
combining data-driven and theory-driven research (Maass
et al., 2018). With this commentary, we join the discussion
which has been resumed recently by Johnson et al. (2019) in
the business disciplines. The authors observe that across this
multi-disciplinary discourse, two dominant narratives have
emerged. The first narrative adopts a provocative and vi-
sionary perspective to present its audience with a choice
between accepting or rejecting future research practices in
which AI plays a dominant role. The second narrative
acknowledges that a gradual adoption of AI-based research
tools has already begun and aims at engaging its readers in a
constructive debate on how to leverage AI-based tools for
the benefit of the research field and its stakeholders. In this
paper, our position resonates more with the latter per-
spective, which is focused on the mid-term instead of the
long-term, and well-positioned to advance the discourse
with less speculative and more actionable discussions of the
specific research processes that are more amenable appli-
cations of AI and those processes that rely more on the
human ingenuity of researchers.
In this essay, we focus on the use of AI-based tools in the
conduct of literature reviews. Advancing knowledge in this
area is particularly promising since (1) standalone review
projects require substantial efforts over months and years
(Larsen et al., 2019), (2) the volume of reviews published in
IS journals has been rising steadily (Schryen et al., 2020),
and (3) literature reviews involve tasks that fall on a
spectrum between the mechanical and the creative . At the
same time, the process of reviewing literature is mostly
conducted manually with sample sizes threatening to exceed
the cognitive limits of human processing capacities. This
Department of Information Technologies, HEC Montréal, Montréal,
Québec, Canada
Corresponding author:
Guy Paré, Research Chair in Digital Health, HEC Montréal, 3000, chemin
de la Côte-Sainte-Catherin Montréal, Québec H3T 2A7, Canada.
Email: guy.pare@hec.ca