Why do we care about knowledge gaps?
A knowledge gap justifies why you carried out the study: there is some important information missing, without which the field of research (or the application of the study) cannot easily move forward. With the emphasis on important: some knowledge gaps are not as relevant as others.
From an audience perspective, a knowledge gap tells the reader why your research is important — to fill that specific gap!
What makes a good knowledge gap?
A good gap is specific, important, and relevant.
- Specific. “Little is known about X” is too broad to help anyone. Name what’s missing: a population, a mechanism, a condition, a method.
- Important. Ask what is possible once the gap is filled. If the answer is “not much,” the importance isn’t clearly described yet.
- Relevant. It should clearly link to the larger problem the study aims to address (i.e. the broad problem(s) described in the first paragraph of the Introduction).
How to describe the knowledge gap?
First of all:
Gaps don’t exist.
They’re information that isn’t there yet. So how do you describe something that doesn’t exist? It’s kind of like describing a hole: you describe the surroundings. We can do the same with knowledge gaps: describe what is known, i.e. the current state of knowledge, to emphasise what isn’t known yet.
Finding knowledge gaps in your field
Gaps are framed differently across fields, so it’s not useful to give you one example to copy. Your target journal is a better guide.
Pull up three to five recent papers from it that are related to your own study, and read the middle paragraphs of the Introduction. For each one, ask:
- What does the paragraph describe before it says what’s missing? How much background is there, and how specific is it?
- Where is the turn from “what we know” to “what we don’t”? Which words signal it?
- How specific is the gap?
- How does it lead into the aim of the study?
- How long is/are the paragraph(s)?
Use this as a guide to inform how you can describe knowledge gaps in your own paper.
Related
See Introduction too long for how to structure your Introduction and where the knowledge gap fits.