It's standard procedure for academics; before starting a research project, check to see what's already out there. In this Nieman Lab article, John Wihbey, managing editor of the Journalist’s Resource portal, that doing so "will make for better questions, more rigorous scrutiny of assumptions, higher-level journalism. Scholars perform a literature review as they approach questions; most topics have been studied for decades. Why neglect all of that accumulated knowledge?"
