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Week 21, Part 1 of 2. First person pronoun in Academic Writing, an error or a stylistic choice ?

Here I shall use the Nguyen 5 component model of reflection to structure this post. Discussed in my previous post in Week 20.

The trigger-

Week 22 class notes states "Try to avoid using the first person (‘I’ statements)." https://app.themindlab.com/course/release/1299-week-22-writing-a-literature-review

In the required reading: Common errors in literature reviews. https://app.themindlab.com/media/35179/view  comment 1 states "Don't use the first person in  a literature review."
Thoughts
I immediately felt a deep antipathy with this position.  In the 20th century, when I was an undergraduate, I copied the style of academic writing  I was reading. This mostly was written in the passive voice, using the third person, with absent authorial voice, and convoluted constructions.  This style of academic writing was hard to read, difficult to understand, and not engaging.
Recently, in the 21st century, at Professional Development sessions for Academics at the University of Auckland, I have learned to show my  voice  as the author by using the personal pronouns I and we (for multi author papers), and to use the active voice,  to increase clarity and concision.
Actions
To consider alternative views to this position  with evidence.
The instructions in the Mindlab literature review template state "Use formal, academic writing conventions…" Let's rephrase the instruction to an inquiry. Can the personal pronoun be used in academic literature reviews?

Attentive, critical, explorative, iterative

I think it is both clumsy and deceptive to write 'This literature review compares....' . It is a form of deception, because literature reviews don't  write themselves, they are written by the author/s. This sentence  is clumsy because it strangely gives the piece of writing agency of it's own, as a substitute for the absent author.    It is me, the author,  who takes responsibility for selecting and reviewing these articles and excluding others. I believe I/we the authors, can chose to use the authorial voice in academic writing, it is authentic and it makes academic writing more engaging and readable. The APA guidelines do not prohibit personal pronouns. http://blog.apastyle.org/apastyle/2009/09/use-of-first-person-in-apa-style.html

The idea that using 'I' reduces objectivity is based on the incorrect premise that a selective review of the literature is  objective in the first place. A systematic review may be objective, but not a review of a select handful of articles such as for this assignment.



Using 'I' clarifies my role when discussing the existing literature, for example. "In this literature review I compare ….", it is clear that my role is doing the comparing, it is a description of the method.



Next I present exemplars from a contemporary reviews in a peer reviewed academic medical journals that use the personal pronoun. These reviews are multi authored so they use the inclusive 'our' and 'we'. The authors clearly distinguish  their thoughts and actions from the opinions expressed in the reviewed  literature. Here are examples, Bing-You uses the first person in the introduction, methods and discussion. The 'our traditional sources' in the discussion, includes the reader and is an example of the second person in academic writing.

In our view....

We conducted a scoping review....

Our aim was to explore....

Our goal...

We began by...

We determined ....

We reviewed the...

We selected

Our traditional sources…

Taveira-Gomes et al 2016 uses the first person for this multiauthor paper in the methods and results section.

In this systematic review, we aimed to…

We conducted…

We included…

We analyzed

We uncovered…
Blog post continued in part 2 due to 400 word count restriction.
REFERENCES
Bing-You, R., Hayes, V., Varaklis, K., Trowbridge, R., Kemp, H., & McKelvy, D. (2017). Feedback for learners in medical education: What is known? A scoping review. Academic medicine, 92(9), 1346-1354.
Taveira-Gomes, T., Ferreira, P., Taveira-Gomes, I., Severo, M., & Ferreira, M. A. (2016). What are we looking for in computer-based learning interventions in medical education? A systematic review. Journal of medical Internet research, 18(8).

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