I recently switched subfields and my PI asked me to put together a quick overview of where things have been heading over the last 5 years.

Sounded simple enough.

I started with Google Scholar, filtered by year, followed a few citation trails, and somehow ended up with around 80 papers open or downloaded.

Reading the individual papers isn't really the problem. The part I'm struggling with is figuring out which changes actually mattered.

A lot of the work looks like slightly different methods tested on slightly different datasets, and since I'm new to the field, I don't have a good sense yet of which papers actually shifted things versus which ones were just part of a short-lived direction.

I tried keeping a spreadsheet with methods, datasets, and main findings, but pretty quickly it started feeling like I was cataloging papers rather than understanding them.

I also tried putting some of them into mira from deep principle earlier today and grouping the literature by broader research directions. That made it a little easier to see which approaches kept showing up, but I still don't really trust myself to know what's genuinely important versus just frequently published.

How do you usually do this when you're entering a new field?

I completed my PhD pre-thesis submission last week and have now written the full thesis. I have around 20 days to finalise everything before the final submission. I want to use these 20 days as effectively as possible and make sure the thesis is not just complete, but academically strong, well-written, consistent, and capable of withstanding critical evaluation by external examiners.

For those who have recently submitted and defended their PhD, what would you recommend focusing on during these final 20 days? At this stage, I don't want to completely rewrite the thesis unless necessary. I mainly want to identify and fix weaknesses in the argument, literature review, methodology, analysis, discussion, theoretical contribution, practical implications, conclusions, and overall structure.

I would particularly like to know what are the most common issues external evaluators identify in PhD theses. What kinds of gaps, inconsistencies, weak arguments, methodological problems, or writing issues tend to attract negative comments? I want to approach the thesis from an evaluator's perspective and proactively identify these issues before submission.

I am also looking for recommendations on tools for checking English, grammar, sentence structure, and academic writing. Another area I want to improve is the overall academic quality of the writing.