The Lotus Protocol
Guidelines for multi-domain systematic literature review
Complex problems increasingly sit across several knowledge domains at once, but most review methods still assume a single field or a single intersection.
What the paper argues
The article introduces the Lotus Protocol: a structured method for reviewing evidence across multiple domains and their intersections. Instead of treating a complex topic as one search problem, the protocol maps the domains, constructs corpora around each domain and overlap, and then captures contributions across the full evidence space.
The paper demonstrates the method through a review problem involving food waste, behaviour change, mobile applications, and revenue models. Its purpose is practical: to help researchers synthesise fragmented evidence without losing sight of the intersections where useful insight often appears.
Core contribution: A repeatable protocol for evidence synthesis across multiple domains and intersections
Why it matters
Many social, organisational, environmental, and technological problems are too entangled for single-domain reviews. The Lotus Protocol gives researchers a clearer way to build cumulative knowledge when the relevant literature is scattered across fields that do not normally speak to one another.
Evidence synthesis as infrastructure
This paper supports the broader research-tools stream: methods that make complex bodies of evidence easier to inspect, reuse, and extend.
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