Approach towards writing Introduction that targets the Information gap

Here is some guidance on how one should approach writing Introduction that repeatedly points to the "information gap”

The “information gap” is nothing but the “objective” of our study, though it could be broader than the objective that we have laid down for our study.

For example, I have a study which talks about the software application, namely, Database of database, developed for collecting metadata.

What is the information gap here?

Lack of applications that collect metadata

But then, why I want to collect metadata, what is the significance of its collection?

By making the metadata available to other researchers, the research collaboration can be fostered and the duplication of research can be avoided.

Again, are there not other ways by which people are already doing this?

Yes, there are number of applications which have been developed, however, these applications focus on collecting data and thus are not successful enough due to hesitance of the researchers to share their data. This has lead to problems, in terms of scalability of these applications.

So, when I am writing Introduction, I will find number of application focusing on collection of data. I will go on listing them. It is going to be obvious that, I would not find much literature on metadata (that is the reason it is an information gap and I have chosen to answer this info gap in my study by developing the DoD application). However, my introduction can not just point to applications that are collecting data. Rather I need to extend it further by saying that there are applications that collect data but they are generating problems in relation to scalability and therefore applications that only collect meta-data are needed. If I only talk about applications that need data, then reviewers will expect that DoD captures data (which is not the case). The DoD is collecting metadata and not data.

Thus, the structure of introduction in this case would be as follows:

Information gap: that's something that nobody has ever done, and therefore I should not be able to do a literature review on it since that review is empty. If I do find something which is exactly same, it is no longer a gap

Literature review in support of the gap: the idea here is not to simply focus on other areas, rather to focus on other close areas but ***pointing to the presence of your gap****. What those close areas are, is completely up to the author, but here are a few examples in the case of DoD:

Notice an important tip in the following points, at every instance, which refers to importance of data/metadata sharing, the sentence is concluding with the need of an application that captures metadata-information gap of our manuscript.

(1) There are number of applications that capture information about data, but applications focusing on data have scalability problems since biomedical researchers are not always willing to share data. Therefore a need for applications focusing on meta-data is present.

(2) NIH has recently emphasized the need for publications being in the free domain. However, little has been done in terms of pushing for release of information about the contents of specific data sets. An application focusing on meta-data would fulfill that purpose.

(3) Thousands of articles are published every year, with very little information about the study database being available on the full-text articles. An application that could store meta-data would significantly enhance the dissemination of information about the study database.

(4) thousands of graduate students are currently focused on specific methods for which they are currently searching for databases. A meta-data repository would fulfill this role

I have to point to something that currently exists (web applications that capture data, NIH talking about open access, thousands of published articles involving study data sets, and thousands of graduate students) but I **can't stop there**. If I stop there, reviewers will think that I am going to talk about those topics, which I am not going to do.... I only use these topics as a leverage to point to the information gap.