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How to Write a Literature Review | Guide, Examples, & Templates

How to Write a Literature Review | Guide, Examples, & Templates

Published on January 2, 2023 by Shona McCombes . Revised on September 11, 2023.

What is a literature review? A literature review is a survey of scholarly sources on a specific topic. It provides an overview of current knowledge, allowing you to identify relevant theories, methods, and gaps in the existing research that you can later apply to your paper, thesis, or dissertation topic .

There are five key steps to writing a literature review:

Search for relevant literature
Evaluate sources
Identify themes, debates, and gaps
Outline the structure
Write your literature review

A good literature review doesn’t just summarize sources—it analyzes, synthesizes , and critically evaluates to give a clear picture of the state of knowledge on the subject.

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What is the purpose of a literature review, examples of literature reviews, step 1 – search for relevant literature, step 2 – evaluate and select sources, step 3 – identify themes, debates, and gaps, step 4 – outline your literature review’s structure, step 5 – write your literature review, free lecture slides, other interesting articles, frequently asked questions, introduction.

Quick Run-through
Step 1 & 2

When you write a thesis , dissertation , or research paper , you will likely have to conduct a literature review to situate your research within existing knowledge. The literature review gives you a chance to:

Demonstrate your familiarity with the topic and its scholarly context
Develop a theoretical framework and methodology for your research
Position your work in relation to other researchers and theorists
Show how your research addresses a gap or contributes to a debate
Evaluate the current state of research and demonstrate your knowledge of the scholarly debates around your topic.

Writing literature reviews is a particularly important skill if you want to apply for graduate school or pursue a career in research. We’ve written a step-by-step guide that you can follow below.

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Writing literature reviews can be quite challenging! A good starting point could be to look at some examples, depending on what kind of literature review you’d like to write.

Example literature review #1: “Why Do People Migrate? A Review of the Theoretical Literature” ( Theoretical literature review about the development of economic migration theory from the 1950s to today.)
Example literature review #2: “Literature review as a research methodology: An overview and guidelines” ( Methodological literature review about interdisciplinary knowledge acquisition and production.)
Example literature review #3: “The Use of Technology in English Language Learning: A Literature Review” ( Thematic literature review about the effects of technology on language acquisition.)
Example literature review #4: “Learners’ Listening Comprehension Difficulties in English Language Learning: A Literature Review” ( Chronological literature review about how the concept of listening skills has changed over time.)

You can also check out our templates with literature review examples and sample outlines at the links below.

Download Word doc Download Google doc

Before you begin searching for literature, you need a clearly defined topic .

If you are writing the literature review section of a dissertation or research paper, you will search for literature related to your research problem and questions .

Make a list of keywords

Start by creating a list of keywords related to your research question. Include each of the key concepts or variables you’re interested in, and list any synonyms and related terms. You can add to this list as you discover new keywords in the process of your literature search.

Social media, Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, Snapchat, TikTok
Body image, self-perception, self-esteem, mental health
Generation Z, teenagers, adolescents, youth

Search for relevant sources

Use your keywords to begin searching for sources. Some useful databases to search for journals and articles include:

Your university’s library catalogue
Google Scholar
Project Muse (humanities and social sciences)
Medline (life sciences and biomedicine)
EconLit (economics)
Inspec (physics, engineering and computer science)

You can also use boolean operators to help narrow down your search.

Make sure to read the abstract to find out whether an article is relevant to your question. When you find a useful book or article, you can check the bibliography to find other relevant sources.

You likely won’t be able to read absolutely everything that has been written on your topic, so it will be necessary to evaluate which sources are most relevant to your research question.

For each publication, ask yourself:

What question or problem is the author addressing?
What are the key concepts and how are they defined?
What are the key theories, models, and methods?
Does the research use established frameworks or take an innovative approach?
What are the results and conclusions of the study?
How does the publication relate to other literature in the field? Does it confirm, add to, or challenge established knowledge?
What are the strengths and weaknesses of the research?

Make sure the sources you use are credible , and make sure you read any landmark studies and major theories in your field of research.

You can use our template to summarize and evaluate sources you’re thinking about using. Click on either button below to download.

Take notes and cite your sources

As you read, you should also begin the writing process. Take notes that you can later incorporate into the text of your literature review.

It is important to keep track of your sources with citations to avoid plagiarism . It can be helpful to make an annotated bibliography , where you compile full citation information and write a paragraph of summary and analysis for each source. This helps you remember what you read and saves time later in the process.

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To begin organizing your literature review’s argument and structure, be sure you understand the connections and relationships between the sources you’ve read. Based on your reading and notes, you can look for:

Trends and patterns (in theory, method or results): do certain approaches become more or less popular over time?
Themes: what questions or concepts recur across the literature?
Debates, conflicts and contradictions: where do sources disagree?
Pivotal publications: are there any influential theories or studies that changed the direction of the field?
Gaps: what is missing from the literature? Are there weaknesses that need to be addressed?

This step will help you work out the structure of your literature review and (if applicable) show how your own research will contribute to existing knowledge.

Most research has focused on young women.
There is an increasing interest in the visual aspects of social media.
But there is still a lack of robust research on highly visual platforms like Instagram and Snapchat—this is a gap that you could address in your own research.

There are various approaches to organizing the body of a literature review. Depending on the length of your literature review, you can combine several of these strategies (for example, your overall structure might be thematic, but each theme is discussed chronologically).

Chronological

The simplest approach is to trace the development of the topic over time. However, if you choose this strategy, be careful to avoid simply listing and summarizing sources in order.

Try to analyze patterns, turning points and key debates that have shaped the direction of the field. Give your interpretation of how and why certain developments occurred.

If you have found some recurring central themes, you can organize your literature review into subsections that address different aspects of the topic.

For example, if you are reviewing literature about inequalities in migrant health outcomes, key themes might include healthcare policy, language barriers, cultural attitudes, legal status, and economic access.

Methodological

If you draw your sources from different disciplines or fields that use a variety of research methods , you might want to compare the results and conclusions that emerge from different approaches. For example:

Look at what results have emerged in qualitative versus quantitative research
Discuss how the topic has been approached by empirical versus theoretical scholarship
Divide the literature into sociological, historical, and cultural sources

Theoretical

A literature review is often the foundation for a theoretical framework . You can use it to discuss various theories, models, and definitions of key concepts.

You might argue for the relevance of a specific theoretical approach, or combine various theoretical concepts to create a framework for your research.

Like any other academic text , your literature review should have an introduction , a main body, and a conclusion . What you include in each depends on the objective of your literature review.

The introduction should clearly establish the focus and purpose of the literature review.

Depending on the length of your literature review, you might want to divide the body into subsections. You can use a subheading for each theme, time period, or methodological approach.

As you write, you can follow these tips:

Summarize and synthesize: give an overview of the main points of each source and combine them into a coherent whole
Analyze and interpret: don’t just paraphrase other researchers — add your own interpretations where possible, discussing the significance of findings in relation to the literature as a whole
Critically evaluate: mention the strengths and weaknesses of your sources
Write in well-structured paragraphs: use transition words and topic sentences to draw connections, comparisons and contrasts

In the conclusion, you should summarize the key findings you have taken from the literature and emphasize their significance.

When you’ve finished writing and revising your literature review, don’t forget to proofread thoroughly before submitting. Not a language expert? Check out Scribbr’s professional proofreading services !

This article has been adapted into lecture slides that you can use to teach your students about writing a literature review.

Scribbr slides are free to use, customize, and distribute for educational purposes.

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If you want to know more about the research process , methodology , research bias , or statistics , make sure to check out some of our other articles with explanations and examples.

Sampling methods
Simple random sampling
Stratified sampling
Cluster sampling
Likert scales
Reproducibility

Statistics

Null hypothesis
Statistical power
Probability distribution
Effect size
Poisson distribution

Research bias

Optimism bias
Cognitive bias
Implicit bias
Hawthorne effect
Anchoring bias
Explicit bias

A literature review is a survey of scholarly sources (such as books, journal articles, and theses) related to a specific topic or research question .

It is often written as part of a thesis, dissertation , or research paper , in order to situate your work in relation to existing knowledge.

There are several reasons to conduct a literature review at the beginning of a research project:

To familiarize yourself with the current state of knowledge on your topic
To ensure that you’re not just repeating what others have already done
To identify gaps in knowledge and unresolved problems that your research can address
To develop your theoretical framework and methodology
To provide an overview of the key findings and debates on the topic

Writing the literature review shows your reader how your work relates to existing research and what new insights it will contribute.

The literature review usually comes near the beginning of your thesis or dissertation . After the introduction , it grounds your research in a scholarly field and leads directly to your theoretical framework or methodology .

A literature review is a survey of credible sources on a topic, often used in dissertations , theses, and research papers . Literature reviews give an overview of knowledge on a subject, helping you identify relevant theories and methods, as well as gaps in existing research. Literature reviews are set up similarly to other academic texts , with an introduction , a main body, and a conclusion .

An annotated bibliography is a list of source references that has a short description (called an annotation ) for each of the sources. It is often assigned as part of the research process for a paper .

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Writing a Literature Review

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A literature review is a document or section of a document that collects key sources on a topic and discusses those sources in conversation with each other (also called synthesis ). The lit review is an important genre in many disciplines, not just literature (i.e., the study of works of literature such as novels and plays). When we say “literature review” or refer to “the literature,” we are talking about the research ( scholarship ) in a given field. You will often see the terms “the research,” “the scholarship,” and “the literature” used mostly interchangeably.

Where, when, and why would I write a lit review?

There are a number of different situations where you might write a literature review, each with slightly different expectations; different disciplines, too, have field-specific expectations for what a literature review is and does. For instance, in the humanities, authors might include more overt argumentation and interpretation of source material in their literature reviews, whereas in the sciences, authors are more likely to report study designs and results in their literature reviews; these differences reflect these disciplines’ purposes and conventions in scholarship. You should always look at examples from your own discipline and talk to professors or mentors in your field to be sure you understand your discipline’s conventions, for literature reviews as well as for any other genre.

A literature review can be a part of a research paper or scholarly article, usually falling after the introduction and before the research methods sections. In these cases, the lit review just needs to cover scholarship that is important to the issue you are writing about; sometimes it will also cover key sources that informed your research methodology.

Lit reviews can also be standalone pieces, either as assignments in a class or as publications. In a class, a lit review may be assigned to help students familiarize themselves with a topic and with scholarship in their field, get an idea of the other researchers working on the topic they’re interested in, find gaps in existing research in order to propose new projects, and/or develop a theoretical framework and methodology for later research. As a publication, a lit review usually is meant to help make other scholars’ lives easier by collecting and summarizing, synthesizing, and analyzing existing research on a topic. This can be especially helpful for students or scholars getting into a new research area, or for directing an entire community of scholars toward questions that have not yet been answered.

What are the parts of a lit review?

Most lit reviews use a basic introduction-body-conclusion structure; if your lit review is part of a larger paper, the introduction and conclusion pieces may be just a few sentences while you focus most of your attention on the body. If your lit review is a standalone piece, the introduction and conclusion take up more space and give you a place to discuss your goals, research methods, and conclusions separately from where you discuss the literature itself.

Introduction:

An introductory paragraph that explains what your working topic and thesis is
A forecast of key topics or texts that will appear in the review
Potentially, a description of how you found sources and how you analyzed them for inclusion and discussion in the review (more often found in published, standalone literature reviews than in lit review sections in an article or research paper)
Summarize and synthesize: Give an overview of the main points of each source and combine them into a coherent whole
Analyze and interpret: Don’t just paraphrase other researchers – add your own interpretations where possible, discussing the significance of findings in relation to the literature as a whole
Critically Evaluate: Mention the strengths and weaknesses of your sources
Write in well-structured paragraphs: Use transition words and topic sentence to draw connections, comparisons, and contrasts.

Conclusion:

Summarize the key findings you have taken from the literature and emphasize their significance
Connect it back to your primary research question

How should I organize my lit review?

Lit reviews can take many different organizational patterns depending on what you are trying to accomplish with the review. Here are some examples:

Chronological : The simplest approach is to trace the development of the topic over time, which helps familiarize the audience with the topic (for instance if you are introducing something that is not commonly known in your field). If you choose this strategy, be careful to avoid simply listing and summarizing sources in order. Try to analyze the patterns, turning points, and key debates that have shaped the direction of the field. Give your interpretation of how and why certain developments occurred (as mentioned previously, this may not be appropriate in your discipline — check with a teacher or mentor if you’re unsure).
Thematic : If you have found some recurring central themes that you will continue working with throughout your piece, you can organize your literature review into subsections that address different aspects of the topic. For example, if you are reviewing literature about women and religion, key themes can include the role of women in churches and the religious attitude towards women.
Qualitative versus quantitative research
Empirical versus theoretical scholarship
Divide the research by sociological, historical, or cultural sources
Theoretical : In many humanities articles, the literature review is the foundation for the theoretical framework. You can use it to discuss various theories, models, and definitions of key concepts. You can argue for the relevance of a specific theoretical approach or combine various theorical concepts to create a framework for your research.

What are some strategies or tips I can use while writing my lit review?

Any lit review is only as good as the research it discusses; make sure your sources are well-chosen and your research is thorough. Don’t be afraid to do more research if you discover a new thread as you’re writing. More info on the research process is available in our "Conducting Research" resources .

As you’re doing your research, create an annotated bibliography ( see our page on the this type of document ). Much of the information used in an annotated bibliography can be used also in a literature review, so you’ll be not only partially drafting your lit review as you research, but also developing your sense of the larger conversation going on among scholars, professionals, and any other stakeholders in your topic.

Usually you will need to synthesize research rather than just summarizing it. This means drawing connections between sources to create a picture of the scholarly conversation on a topic over time. Many student writers struggle to synthesize because they feel they don’t have anything to add to the scholars they are citing; here are some strategies to help you:

It often helps to remember that the point of these kinds of syntheses is to show your readers how you understand your research, to help them read the rest of your paper.
Writing teachers often say synthesis is like hosting a dinner party: imagine all your sources are together in a room, discussing your topic. What are they saying to each other?
Look at the in-text citations in each paragraph. Are you citing just one source for each paragraph? This usually indicates summary only. When you have multiple sources cited in a paragraph, you are more likely to be synthesizing them (not always, but often
Read more about synthesis here.

The most interesting literature reviews are often written as arguments (again, as mentioned at the beginning of the page, this is discipline-specific and doesn’t work for all situations). Often, the literature review is where you can establish your research as filling a particular gap or as relevant in a particular way. You have some chance to do this in your introduction in an article, but the literature review section gives a more extended opportunity to establish the conversation in the way you would like your readers to see it. You can choose the intellectual lineage you would like to be part of and whose definitions matter most to your thinking (mostly humanities-specific, but this goes for sciences as well). In addressing these points, you argue for your place in the conversation, which tends to make the lit review more compelling than a simple reporting of other sources.

What is a Literature Review? How to Write It (with Examples)

A literature review is a critical analysis and synthesis of existing research on a particular topic. It provides an overview of the current state of knowledge, identifies gaps, and highlights key findings in the literature. 1 The purpose of a literature review is to situate your own research within the context of existing scholarship, demonstrating your understanding of the topic and showing how your work contributes to the ongoing conversation in the field. Learning how to write a literature review is a critical tool for successful research. Your ability to summarize and synthesize prior research pertaining to a certain topic demonstrates your grasp on the topic of study, and assists in the learning process.

What is the purpose of literature review , a. habitat loss and species extinction: , b. range shifts and phenological changes: , c. ocean acidification and coral reefs: , d. adaptive strategies and conservation efforts: .

Choose a Topic and Define the Research Question:
Decide on the Scope of Your Review:
Select Databases for Searches:
Conduct Searches and Keep Track:
Review the Literature:
Organize and Write Your Literature Review:
How to write a literature review faster with Paperpal?

Frequently asked questions

What is a literature review .

A well-conducted literature review demonstrates the researcher’s familiarity with the existing literature, establishes the context for their own research, and contributes to scholarly conversations on the topic. One of the purposes of a literature review is also to help researchers avoid duplicating previous work and ensure that their research is informed by and builds upon the existing body of knowledge.

A literature review serves several important purposes within academic and research contexts. Here are some key objectives and functions of a literature review: 2

1. Contextualizing the Research Problem: The literature review provides a background and context for the research problem under investigation. It helps to situate the study within the existing body of knowledge.

2. Identifying Gaps in Knowledge: By identifying gaps, contradictions, or areas requiring further research, the researcher can shape the research question and justify the significance of the study. This is crucial for ensuring that the new research contributes something novel to the field.

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3. Understanding Theoretical and Conceptual Frameworks: Literature reviews help researchers gain an understanding of the theoretical and conceptual frameworks used in previous studies. This aids in the development of a theoretical framework for the current research.

4. Providing Methodological Insights: Another purpose of literature reviews is that it allows researchers to learn about the methodologies employed in previous studies. This can help in choosing appropriate research methods for the current study and avoiding pitfalls that others may have encountered.

5. Establishing Credibility: A well-conducted literature review demonstrates the researcher’s familiarity with existing scholarship, establishing their credibility and expertise in the field. It also helps in building a solid foundation for the new research.

6. Informing Hypotheses or Research Questions: The literature review guides the formulation of hypotheses or research questions by highlighting relevant findings and areas of uncertainty in existing literature.

Literature review example

Let’s delve deeper with a literature review example: Let’s say your literature review is about the impact of climate change on biodiversity. You might format your literature review into sections such as the effects of climate change on habitat loss and species extinction, phenological changes, and marine biodiversity. Each section would then summarize and analyze relevant studies in those areas, highlighting key findings and identifying gaps in the research. The review would conclude by emphasizing the need for further research on specific aspects of the relationship between climate change and biodiversity. The following literature review template provides a glimpse into the recommended literature review structure and content, demonstrating how research findings are organized around specific themes within a broader topic.

Literature Review on Climate Change Impacts on Biodiversity:

Climate change is a global phenomenon with far-reaching consequences, including significant impacts on biodiversity. This literature review synthesizes key findings from various studies:

Climate change-induced alterations in temperature and precipitation patterns contribute to habitat loss, affecting numerous species (Thomas et al., 2004). The review discusses how these changes increase the risk of extinction, particularly for species with specific habitat requirements.

Observations of range shifts and changes in the timing of biological events (phenology) are documented in response to changing climatic conditions (Parmesan & Yohe, 2003). These shifts affect ecosystems and may lead to mismatches between species and their resources.

The review explores the impact of climate change on marine biodiversity, emphasizing ocean acidification’s threat to coral reefs (Hoegh-Guldberg et al., 2007). Changes in pH levels negatively affect coral calcification, disrupting the delicate balance of marine ecosystems.

Recognizing the urgency of the situation, the literature review discusses various adaptive strategies adopted by species and conservation efforts aimed at mitigating the impacts of climate change on biodiversity (Hannah et al., 2007). It emphasizes the importance of interdisciplinary approaches for effective conservation planning.

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How to write a good literature review

Writing a literature review involves summarizing and synthesizing existing research on a particular topic. A good literature review format should include the following elements.

Introduction: The introduction sets the stage for your literature review, providing context and introducing the main focus of your review.

Opening Statement: Begin with a general statement about the broader topic and its significance in the field.
Scope and Purpose: Clearly define the scope of your literature review. Explain the specific research question or objective you aim to address.
Organizational Framework: Briefly outline the structure of your literature review, indicating how you will categorize and discuss the existing research.
Significance of the Study: Highlight why your literature review is important and how it contributes to the understanding of the chosen topic.
Thesis Statement: Conclude the introduction with a concise thesis statement that outlines the main argument or perspective you will develop in the body of the literature review.

Body: The body of the literature review is where you provide a comprehensive analysis of existing literature, grouping studies based on themes, methodologies, or other relevant criteria.

Organize by Theme or Concept: Group studies that share common themes, concepts, or methodologies. Discuss each theme or concept in detail, summarizing key findings and identifying gaps or areas of disagreement.
Critical Analysis: Evaluate the strengths and weaknesses of each study. Discuss the methodologies used, the quality of evidence, and the overall contribution of each work to the understanding of the topic.
Synthesis of Findings: Synthesize the information from different studies to highlight trends, patterns, or areas of consensus in the literature.
Identification of Gaps: Discuss any gaps or limitations in the existing research and explain how your review contributes to filling these gaps.
Transition between Sections: Provide smooth transitions between different themes or concepts to maintain the flow of your literature review.

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Conclusion: The conclusion of your literature review should summarize the main findings, highlight the contributions of the review, and suggest avenues for future research.

Summary of Key Findings: Recap the main findings from the literature and restate how they contribute to your research question or objective.
Contributions to the Field: Discuss the overall contribution of your literature review to the existing knowledge in the field.
Implications and Applications: Explore the practical implications of the findings and suggest how they might impact future research or practice.
Recommendations for Future Research: Identify areas that require further investigation and propose potential directions for future research in the field.
Final Thoughts: Conclude with a final reflection on the importance of your literature review and its relevance to the broader academic community.

Conducting a literature review

Conducting a literature review is an essential step in research that involves reviewing and analyzing existing literature on a specific topic. It’s important to know how to do a literature review effectively, so here are the steps to follow: 1

Choose a Topic and Define the Research Question:

Select a topic that is relevant to your field of study.
Clearly define your research question or objective. Determine what specific aspect of the topic do you want to explore?

Decide on the Scope of Your Review:

Determine the timeframe for your literature review. Are you focusing on recent developments, or do you want a historical overview?
Consider the geographical scope. Is your review global, or are you focusing on a specific region?
Define the inclusion and exclusion criteria. What types of sources will you include? Are there specific types of studies or publications you will exclude?

Select Databases for Searches:

Identify relevant databases for your field. Examples include PubMed, IEEE Xplore, Scopus, Web of Science, and Google Scholar.
Consider searching in library catalogs, institutional repositories, and specialized databases related to your topic.

Conduct Searches and Keep Track:

Develop a systematic search strategy using keywords, Boolean operators (AND, OR, NOT), and other search techniques.
Record and document your search strategy for transparency and replicability.
Keep track of the articles, including publication details, abstracts, and links. Use citation management tools like EndNote, Zotero, or Mendeley to organize your references.

Review the Literature:

Evaluate the relevance and quality of each source. Consider the methodology, sample size, and results of studies.
Organize the literature by themes or key concepts. Identify patterns, trends, and gaps in the existing research.
Summarize key findings and arguments from each source. Compare and contrast different perspectives.
Identify areas where there is a consensus in the literature and where there are conflicting opinions.
Provide critical analysis and synthesis of the literature. What are the strengths and weaknesses of existing research?

Organize and Write Your Literature Review:

Literature review outline should be based on themes, chronological order, or methodological approaches.
Write a clear and coherent narrative that synthesizes the information gathered.
Use proper citations for each source and ensure consistency in your citation style (APA, MLA, Chicago, etc.).
Conclude your literature review by summarizing key findings, identifying gaps, and suggesting areas for future research.

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A literature review is a critical and comprehensive analysis of existing literature (published and unpublished works) on a specific topic or research question and provides a synthesis of the current state of knowledge in a particular field. A well-conducted literature review is crucial for researchers to build upon existing knowledge, avoid duplication of efforts, and contribute to the advancement of their field. It also helps researchers situate their work within a broader context and facilitates the development of a sound theoretical and conceptual framework for their studies.

Literature review is a crucial component of research writing, providing a solid background for a research paper’s investigation. The aim is to keep professionals up to date by providing an understanding of ongoing developments within a specific field, including research methods, and experimental techniques used in that field, and present that knowledge in the form of a written report. Also, the depth and breadth of the literature review emphasizes the credibility of the scholar in his or her field.

Before writing a literature review, it’s essential to undertake several preparatory steps to ensure that your review is well-researched, organized, and focused. This includes choosing a topic of general interest to you and doing exploratory research on that topic, writing an annotated bibliography, and noting major points, especially those that relate to the position you have taken on the topic.

Literature reviews and academic research papers are essential components of scholarly work but serve different purposes within the academic realm. 3 A literature review aims to provide a foundation for understanding the current state of research on a particular topic, identify gaps or controversies, and lay the groundwork for future research. Therefore, it draws heavily from existing academic sources, including books, journal articles, and other scholarly publications. In contrast, an academic research paper aims to present new knowledge, contribute to the academic discourse, and advance the understanding of a specific research question. Therefore, it involves a mix of existing literature (in the introduction and literature review sections) and original data or findings obtained through research methods.

Literature reviews are essential components of academic and research papers, and various strategies can be employed to conduct them effectively. If you want to know how to write a literature review for a research paper, here are four common approaches that are often used by researchers. Chronological Review: This strategy involves organizing the literature based on the chronological order of publication. It helps to trace the development of a topic over time, showing how ideas, theories, and research have evolved. Thematic Review: Thematic reviews focus on identifying and analyzing themes or topics that cut across different studies. Instead of organizing the literature chronologically, it is grouped by key themes or concepts, allowing for a comprehensive exploration of various aspects of the topic. Methodological Review: This strategy involves organizing the literature based on the research methods employed in different studies. It helps to highlight the strengths and weaknesses of various methodologies and allows the reader to evaluate the reliability and validity of the research findings. Theoretical Review: A theoretical review examines the literature based on the theoretical frameworks used in different studies. This approach helps to identify the key theories that have been applied to the topic and assess their contributions to the understanding of the subject. It’s important to note that these strategies are not mutually exclusive, and a literature review may combine elements of more than one approach. The choice of strategy depends on the research question, the nature of the literature available, and the goals of the review. Additionally, other strategies, such as integrative reviews or systematic reviews, may be employed depending on the specific requirements of the research.

The literature review format can vary depending on the specific publication guidelines. However, there are some common elements and structures that are often followed. Here is a general guideline for the format of a literature review: Introduction: Provide an overview of the topic. Define the scope and purpose of the literature review. State the research question or objective. Body: Organize the literature by themes, concepts, or chronology. Critically analyze and evaluate each source. Discuss the strengths and weaknesses of the studies. Highlight any methodological limitations or biases. Identify patterns, connections, or contradictions in the existing research. Conclusion: Summarize the key points discussed in the literature review. Highlight the research gap. Address the research question or objective stated in the introduction. Highlight the contributions of the review and suggest directions for future research.

Both annotated bibliographies and literature reviews involve the examination of scholarly sources. While annotated bibliographies focus on individual sources with brief annotations, literature reviews provide a more in-depth, integrated, and comprehensive analysis of existing literature on a specific topic. The key differences are as follows:

	Annotated Bibliography	Literature Review
Purpose	List of citations of books, articles, and other sources with a brief description (annotation) of each source.	Comprehensive and critical analysis of existing literature on a specific topic.
Focus	Summary and evaluation of each source, including its relevance, methodology, and key findings.	Provides an overview of the current state of knowledge on a particular subject and identifies gaps, trends, and patterns in existing literature.
Structure	Each citation is followed by a concise paragraph (annotation) that describes the source’s content, methodology, and its contribution to the topic.	The literature review is organized thematically or chronologically and involves a synthesis of the findings from different sources to build a narrative or argument.
Length	Typically 100-200 words	Length of literature review ranges from a few pages to several chapters
Independence	Each source is treated separately, with less emphasis on synthesizing the information across sources.	The writer synthesizes information from multiple sources to present a cohesive overview of the topic.

References

Denney, A. S., & Tewksbury, R. (2013). How to write a literature review.  Journal of criminal justice education ,  24 (2), 218-234.
Pan, M. L. (2016).  Preparing literature reviews: Qualitative and quantitative approaches . Taylor & Francis.
Cantero, C. (2019). How to write a literature review.  San José State University Writing Center .

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Literature reviews, what is a literature review, learning more about how to do a literature review.

Planning the Review
The Research Question
Choosing Where to Search
Organizing the Review
Writing the Review

A literature review is a review and synthesis of existing research on a topic or research question. A literature review is meant to analyze the scholarly literature, make connections across writings and identify strengths, weaknesses, trends, and missing conversations. A literature review should address different aspects of a topic as it relates to your research question. A literature review goes beyond a description or summary of the literature you have read.

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What is a Literature Review? | Guide, Template, & Examples

What is a Literature Review? | Guide, Template, & Examples

Published on 22 February 2022 by Shona McCombes . Revised on 7 June 2022.

There are five key steps to writing a literature review:

Search for relevant literature
Evaluate sources
Identify themes, debates and gaps
Outline the structure
Write your literature review

A good literature review doesn’t just summarise sources – it analyses, synthesises, and critically evaluates to give a clear picture of the state of knowledge on the subject.

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Why write a literature review, examples of literature reviews, step 1: search for relevant literature, step 2: evaluate and select sources, step 3: identify themes, debates and gaps, step 4: outline your literature review’s structure, step 5: write your literature review, frequently asked questions about literature reviews, introduction.

Quick Run-through
Step 1 & 2

When you write a dissertation or thesis, you will have to conduct a literature review to situate your research within existing knowledge. The literature review gives you a chance to:

Demonstrate your familiarity with the topic and scholarly context
Develop a theoretical framework and methodology for your research
Position yourself in relation to other researchers and theorists
Show how your dissertation addresses a gap or contributes to a debate

You might also have to write a literature review as a stand-alone assignment. In this case, the purpose is to evaluate the current state of research and demonstrate your knowledge of scholarly debates around a topic.

The content will look slightly different in each case, but the process of conducting a literature review follows the same steps. We’ve written a step-by-step guide that you can follow below.

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Writing literature reviews can be quite challenging! A good starting point could be to look at some examples, depending on what kind of literature review you’d like to write.

Example literature review #1: “Why Do People Migrate? A Review of the Theoretical Literature” ( Theoretical literature review about the development of economic migration theory from the 1950s to today.)
Example literature review #2: “Literature review as a research methodology: An overview and guidelines” ( Methodological literature review about interdisciplinary knowledge acquisition and production.)
Example literature review #3: “The Use of Technology in English Language Learning: A Literature Review” ( Thematic literature review about the effects of technology on language acquisition.)
Example literature review #4: “Learners’ Listening Comprehension Difficulties in English Language Learning: A Literature Review” ( Chronological literature review about how the concept of listening skills has changed over time.)

You can also check out our templates with literature review examples and sample outlines at the links below.

Download Word doc Download Google doc

Before you begin searching for literature, you need a clearly defined topic .

If you are writing the literature review section of a dissertation or research paper, you will search for literature related to your research objectives and questions .

If you are writing a literature review as a stand-alone assignment, you will have to choose a focus and develop a central question to direct your search. Unlike a dissertation research question, this question has to be answerable without collecting original data. You should be able to answer it based only on a review of existing publications.

Make a list of keywords

Start by creating a list of keywords related to your research topic. Include each of the key concepts or variables you’re interested in, and list any synonyms and related terms. You can add to this list if you discover new keywords in the process of your literature search.

Social media, Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, Snapchat, TikTok
Body image, self-perception, self-esteem, mental health
Generation Z, teenagers, adolescents, youth

Search for relevant sources

Use your keywords to begin searching for sources. Some databases to search for journals and articles include:

Your university’s library catalogue
Google Scholar
Project Muse (humanities and social sciences)
Medline (life sciences and biomedicine)
EconLit (economics)
Inspec (physics, engineering and computer science)

You can use boolean operators to help narrow down your search:

Read the abstract to find out whether an article is relevant to your question. When you find a useful book or article, you can check the bibliography to find other relevant sources.

To identify the most important publications on your topic, take note of recurring citations. If the same authors, books or articles keep appearing in your reading, make sure to seek them out.

You probably won’t be able to read absolutely everything that has been written on the topic – you’ll have to evaluate which sources are most relevant to your questions.

For each publication, ask yourself:

What question or problem is the author addressing?
What are the key concepts and how are they defined?
What are the key theories, models and methods? Does the research use established frameworks or take an innovative approach?
What are the results and conclusions of the study?
How does the publication relate to other literature in the field? Does it confirm, add to, or challenge established knowledge?
How does the publication contribute to your understanding of the topic? What are its key insights and arguments?
What are the strengths and weaknesses of the research?

Make sure the sources you use are credible, and make sure you read any landmark studies and major theories in your field of research.

You can find out how many times an article has been cited on Google Scholar – a high citation count means the article has been influential in the field, and should certainly be included in your literature review.

The scope of your review will depend on your topic and discipline: in the sciences you usually only review recent literature, but in the humanities you might take a long historical perspective (for example, to trace how a concept has changed in meaning over time).

Remember that you can use our template to summarise and evaluate sources you’re thinking about using!

Take notes and cite your sources

As you read, you should also begin the writing process. Take notes that you can later incorporate into the text of your literature review.

It’s important to keep track of your sources with references to avoid plagiarism . It can be helpful to make an annotated bibliography, where you compile full reference information and write a paragraph of summary and analysis for each source. This helps you remember what you read and saves time later in the process.

You can use our free APA Reference Generator for quick, correct, consistent citations.

Prevent plagiarism, run a free check.

To begin organising your literature review’s argument and structure, you need to understand the connections and relationships between the sources you’ve read. Based on your reading and notes, you can look for:

Trends and patterns (in theory, method or results): do certain approaches become more or less popular over time?
Themes: what questions or concepts recur across the literature?
Debates, conflicts and contradictions: where do sources disagree?
Pivotal publications: are there any influential theories or studies that changed the direction of the field?
Gaps: what is missing from the literature? Are there weaknesses that need to be addressed?

This step will help you work out the structure of your literature review and (if applicable) show how your own research will contribute to existing knowledge.

Most research has focused on young women.
There is an increasing interest in the visual aspects of social media.
But there is still a lack of robust research on highly-visual platforms like Instagram and Snapchat – this is a gap that you could address in your own research.

There are various approaches to organising the body of a literature review. You should have a rough idea of your strategy before you start writing.

Depending on the length of your literature review, you can combine several of these strategies (for example, your overall structure might be thematic, but each theme is discussed chronologically).

Chronological

The simplest approach is to trace the development of the topic over time. However, if you choose this strategy, be careful to avoid simply listing and summarising sources in order.

Try to analyse patterns, turning points and key debates that have shaped the direction of the field. Give your interpretation of how and why certain developments occurred.

If you have found some recurring central themes, you can organise your literature review into subsections that address different aspects of the topic.

Methodological

Look at what results have emerged in qualitative versus quantitative research
Discuss how the topic has been approached by empirical versus theoretical scholarship
Divide the literature into sociological, historical, and cultural sources

Theoretical

A literature review is often the foundation for a theoretical framework . You can use it to discuss various theories, models, and definitions of key concepts.

You might argue for the relevance of a specific theoretical approach, or combine various theoretical concepts to create a framework for your research.

Like any other academic text, your literature review should have an introduction , a main body, and a conclusion . What you include in each depends on the objective of your literature review.

The introduction should clearly establish the focus and purpose of the literature review.

If you are writing the literature review as part of your dissertation or thesis, reiterate your central problem or research question and give a brief summary of the scholarly context. You can emphasise the timeliness of the topic (“many recent studies have focused on the problem of x”) or highlight a gap in the literature (“while there has been much research on x, few researchers have taken y into consideration”).

Depending on the length of your literature review, you might want to divide the body into subsections. You can use a subheading for each theme, time period, or methodological approach.

As you write, make sure to follow these tips:

Summarise and synthesise: give an overview of the main points of each source and combine them into a coherent whole.
Analyse and interpret: don’t just paraphrase other researchers – add your own interpretations, discussing the significance of findings in relation to the literature as a whole.
Critically evaluate: mention the strengths and weaknesses of your sources.
Write in well-structured paragraphs: use transitions and topic sentences to draw connections, comparisons and contrasts.

In the conclusion, you should summarise the key findings you have taken from the literature and emphasise their significance.

If the literature review is part of your dissertation or thesis, reiterate how your research addresses gaps and contributes new knowledge, or discuss how you have drawn on existing theories and methods to build a framework for your research. This can lead directly into your methodology section.

A literature review is a survey of scholarly sources (such as books, journal articles, and theses) related to a specific topic or research question .

It is often written as part of a dissertation , thesis, research paper , or proposal .

There are several reasons to conduct a literature review at the beginning of a research project:

To familiarise yourself with the current state of knowledge on your topic
To ensure that you’re not just repeating what others have already done
To identify gaps in knowledge and unresolved problems that your research can address
To develop your theoretical framework and methodology
To provide an overview of the key findings and debates on the topic

Writing the literature review shows your reader how your work relates to existing research and what new insights it will contribute.

The literature review usually comes near the beginning of your dissertation . After the introduction , it grounds your research in a scholarly field and leads directly to your theoretical framework or methodology .

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Steps in Conducting a Literature Review

What is a literature review?

A literature review is an integrated analysis -- not just a summary-- of scholarly writings and other relevant evidence related directly to your research question. That is, it represents a synthesis of the evidence that provides background information on your topic and shows a association between the evidence and your research question.

A literature review may be a stand alone work or the introduction to a larger research paper, depending on the assignment. Rely heavily on the guidelines your instructor has given you.

Why is it important?

A literature review is important because it:

Explains the background of research on a topic.
Demonstrates why a topic is significant to a subject area.
Discovers relationships between research studies/ideas.
Identifies major themes, concepts, and researchers on a topic.
Identifies critical gaps and points of disagreement.
Discusses further research questions that logically come out of the previous studies.

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APA Style Blog - for those harder to find answers

1. Choose a topic. Define your research question.

Your literature review should be guided by your central research question. The literature represents background and research developments related to a specific research question, interpreted and analyzed by you in a synthesized way.

Make sure your research question is not too broad or too narrow. Is it manageable?
Begin writing down terms that are related to your question. These will be useful for searches later.
If you have the opportunity, discuss your topic with your professor and your class mates.

2. Decide on the scope of your review

How many studies do you need to look at? How comprehensive should it be? How many years should it cover?

This may depend on your assignment. How many sources does the assignment require?

3. Select the databases you will use to conduct your searches.

Make a list of the databases you will search.

Where to find databases:

use the tabs on this guide
Find other databases in the Nursing Information Resources web page
More on the Medical Library web page
... and more on the Yale University Library web page

4. Conduct your searches to find the evidence. Keep track of your searches.

Use the key words in your question, as well as synonyms for those words, as terms in your search. Use the database tutorials for help.
Save the searches in the databases. This saves time when you want to redo, or modify, the searches. It is also helpful to use as a guide is the searches are not finding any useful results.
Review the abstracts of research studies carefully. This will save you time.
Use the bibliographies and references of research studies you find to locate others.
Check with your professor, or a subject expert in the field, if you are missing any key works in the field.
Ask your librarian for help at any time.
Use a citation manager, such as EndNote as the repository for your citations. See the EndNote tutorials for help.

Review the literature

Some questions to help you analyze the research:

What was the research question of the study you are reviewing? What were the authors trying to discover?
Was the research funded by a source that could influence the findings?
What were the research methodologies? Analyze its literature review, the samples and variables used, the results, and the conclusions.
Does the research seem to be complete? Could it have been conducted more soundly? What further questions does it raise?
If there are conflicting studies, why do you think that is?
How are the authors viewed in the field? Has this study been cited? If so, how has it been analyzed?

Tips:

Review the abstracts carefully.
Keep careful notes so that you may track your thought processes during the research process.
Create a matrix of the studies for easy analysis, and synthesis, across all of the studies.
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How to Write a Literature Review: Six Steps to Get You from Start to Finish

Writing-a-literature-review-six-steps-to-get-you-from-start-to-finish.

Tanya Golash-Boza, Associate Professor of Sociology, University of California

February 03, 2022

Writing a literature review is often the most daunting part of writing an article, book, thesis, or dissertation. “The literature” seems (and often is) massive. I have found it helpful to be as systematic as possible when completing this gargantuan task.

Sonja Foss and William Walters* describe an efficient and effective way of writing a literature review. Their system provides an excellent guide for getting through the massive amounts of literature for any purpose: in a dissertation, an M.A. thesis, or preparing a research article for publication in any field of study. Below is a summary of the steps they outline as well as a step-by-step method for writing a literature review.

How to Write a Literature Review

Step One: Decide on your areas of research:

Before you begin to search for articles or books, decide beforehand what areas you are going to research. Make sure that you only get articles and books in those areas, even if you come across fascinating books in other areas. A literature review I am currently working on, for example, explores barriers to higher education for undocumented students.

Step Two: Search for the literature:

Conduct a comprehensive bibliographic search of books and articles in your area. Read the abstracts online and download and/or print those articles that pertain to your area of research. Find books in the library that are relevant and check them out. Set a specific time frame for how long you will search. It should not take more than two or three dedicated sessions.

Step Three: Find relevant excerpts in your books and articles:

Skim the contents of each book and article and look specifically for these five things:

1. Claims, conclusions, and findings about the constructs you are investigating

2. Definitions of terms

3. Calls for follow-up studies relevant to your project

4. Gaps you notice in the literature

5. Disagreement about the constructs you are investigating

When you find any of these five things, type the relevant excerpt directly into a Word document. Don’t summarize, as summarizing takes longer than simply typing the excerpt. Make sure to note the name of the author and the page number following each excerpt. Do this for each article and book that you have in your stack of literature. When you are done, print out your excerpts.

Step Four: Code the literature:

Get out a pair of scissors and cut each excerpt out. Now, sort the pieces of paper into similar topics. Figure out what the main themes are. Place each excerpt into a themed pile. Make sure each note goes into a pile. If there are excerpts that you can’t figure out where they belong, separate those and go over them again at the end to see if you need new categories. When you finish, place each stack of notes into an envelope labeled with the name of the theme.

Step Five: Create Your Conceptual Schema:

Type, in large font, the name of each of your coded themes. Print this out, and cut the titles into individual slips of paper. Take the slips of paper to a table or large workspace and figure out the best way to organize them. Are there ideas that go together or that are in dialogue with each other? Are there ideas that contradict each other? Move around the slips of paper until you come up with a way of organizing the codes that makes sense. Write the conceptual schema down before you forget or someone cleans up your slips of paper.

Step Six: Begin to Write Your Literature Review:

Choose any section of your conceptual schema to begin with. You can begin anywhere, because you already know the order. Find the envelope with the excerpts in them and lay them on the table in front of you. Figure out a mini-conceptual schema based on that theme by grouping together those excerpts that say the same thing. Use that mini-conceptual schema to write up your literature review based on the excerpts that you have in front of you. Don’t forget to include the citations as you write, so as not to lose track of who said what. Repeat this for each section of your literature review.

Once you complete these six steps, you will have a complete draft of your literature review. The great thing about this process is that it breaks down into manageable steps something that seems enormous: writing a literature review.

I think that Foss and Walter’s system for writing the literature review is ideal for a dissertation, because a Ph.D. candidate has already read widely in his or her field through graduate seminars and comprehensive exams.

It may be more challenging for M.A. students, unless you are already familiar with the literature. It is always hard to figure out how much you need to read for deep meaning, and how much you just need to know what others have said. That balance will depend on how much you already know.

For people writing literature reviews for articles or books, this system also could work, especially when you are writing in a field with which you are already familiar. The mere fact of having a system can make the literature review seem much less daunting, so I recommend this system for anyone who feels overwhelmed by the prospect of writing a literature review.

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Literature Review: The What, Why and How-to Guide
Introduction

Literature Review: The What, Why and How-to Guide — Introduction

Getting Started
How to Pick a Topic
Strategies to Find Sources
Evaluating Sources & Lit. Reviews
Tips for Writing Literature Reviews
Writing Literature Review: Useful Sites
Citation Resources
Other Academic Writings

What are Literature Reviews?

So, what is a literature review? "A literature review is an account of what has been published on a topic by accredited scholars and researchers. In writing the literature review, your purpose is to convey to your reader what knowledge and ideas have been established on a topic, and what their strengths and weaknesses are. As a piece of writing, the literature review must be defined by a guiding concept (e.g., your research objective, the problem or issue you are discussing, or your argumentative thesis). It is not just a descriptive list of the material available, or a set of summaries." Taylor, D. The literature review: A few tips on conducting it . University of Toronto Health Sciences Writing Centre.

Goals of Literature Reviews

What are the goals of creating a Literature Review? A literature could be written to accomplish different aims:

To develop a theory or evaluate an existing theory
To summarize the historical or existing state of a research topic
Identify a problem in a field of research

Baumeister, R. F., & Leary, M. R. (1997). Writing narrative literature reviews . Review of General Psychology , 1 (3), 311-320.

What kinds of sources require a Literature Review?

A research paper assigned in a course
A thesis or dissertation
A grant proposal
An article intended for publication in a journal

All these instances require you to collect what has been written about your research topic so that you can demonstrate how your own research sheds new light on the topic.

Types of Literature Reviews

What kinds of literature reviews are written?

Narrative review: The purpose of this type of review is to describe the current state of the research on a specific topic/research and to offer a critical analysis of the literature reviewed. Studies are grouped by research/theoretical categories, and themes and trends, strengths and weakness, and gaps are identified. The review ends with a conclusion section which summarizes the findings regarding the state of the research of the specific study, the gaps identify and if applicable, explains how the author's research will address gaps identify in the review and expand the knowledge on the topic reviewed.

Example : Predictors and Outcomes of U.S. Quality Maternity Leave: A Review and Conceptual Framework: 10.1177/08948453211037398

Systematic review : "The authors of a systematic review use a specific procedure to search the research literature, select the studies to include in their review, and critically evaluate the studies they find." (p. 139). Nelson, L. K. (2013). Research in Communication Sciences and Disorders . Plural Publishing.

Example : The effect of leave policies on increasing fertility: a systematic review: 10.1057/s41599-022-01270-w

Meta-analysis : "Meta-analysis is a method of reviewing research findings in a quantitative fashion by transforming the data from individual studies into what is called an effect size and then pooling and analyzing this information. The basic goal in meta-analysis is to explain why different outcomes have occurred in different studies." (p. 197). Roberts, M. C., & Ilardi, S. S. (2003). Handbook of Research Methods in Clinical Psychology . Blackwell Publishing.

Example : Employment Instability and Fertility in Europe: A Meta-Analysis: 10.1215/00703370-9164737

Meta-synthesis : "Qualitative meta-synthesis is a type of qualitative study that uses as data the findings from other qualitative studies linked by the same or related topic." (p.312). Zimmer, L. (2006). Qualitative meta-synthesis: A question of dialoguing with texts . Journal of Advanced Nursing , 53 (3), 311-318.

Example : Women’s perspectives on career successes and barriers: A qualitative meta-synthesis: 10.1177/05390184221113735

Literature Reviews in the Health Sciences

UConn Health subject guide on systematic reviews Explanation of the different review types used in health sciences literature as well as tools to help you find the right review type
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What is a Literature Review?

A literature or narrative review is a comprehensive review and analysis of the published literature on a specific topic or research question. The literature that is reviewed contains: books, articles, academic articles, conference proceedings, association papers, and dissertations. It contains the most pertinent studies and points to important past and current research and practices. It provides background and context, and shows how your research will contribute to the field.

A literature review should:

Provide a comprehensive and updated review of the literature;
Explain why this review has taken place;
Articulate a position or hypothesis;
Acknowledge and account for conflicting and corroborating points of view

From S age Research Methods

Purpose of a Literature Review

A literature review can be written as an introduction to a study to:

Demonstrate how a study fills a gap in research
Compare a study with other research that's been done

Or it can be a separate work (a research article on its own) which:

Organizes or describes a topic
Describes variables within a particular issue/problem

Limitations of a Literature Review

Some of the limitations of a literature review are:

It's a snapshot in time. Unlike other reviews, this one has beginning, a middle and an end. There may be future developments that could make your work less relevant.
It may be too focused. Some niche studies may miss the bigger picture.
It can be difficult to be comprehensive. There is no way to make sure all the literature on a topic was considered.
It is easy to be biased if you stick to top tier journals. There may be other places where people are publishing exemplary research. Look to open access publications and conferences to reflect a more inclusive collection. Also, make sure to include opposing views (and not just supporting evidence).

Source: Grant, Maria J., and Andrew Booth. “A Typology of Reviews: An Analysis of 14 Review Types and Associated Methodologies.” Health Information & Libraries Journal, vol. 26, no. 2, June 2009, pp. 91–108. Wiley Online Library, doi:10.1111/j.1471-1842.2009.00848.x.

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Introduction

Literature reviews take time. here is some general information to know before you start. .

VIDEO -- This video is a great overview of the entire process. (2020; North Carolina State University Libraries) --The transcript is included --This is for everyone; ignore the mention of "graduate students" --9.5 minutes, and every second is important
OVERVIEW -- Read this page from Purdue's OWL. It's not long, and gives some tips to fill in what you just learned from the video.
NOT A RESEARCH ARTICLE -- A literature review follows a different style, format, and structure from a research article.

Reports on the work of others.

Reports on original research.

To examine and evaluate previous literature.

To test a hypothesis and/or make an argument.

May include a short literature review to introduce the subject.

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Does your assignment or publication require that you write a literature review? This guide is intended to help you understand what a literature is, why it is worth doing, and some quick tips composing one.

Understanding Literature Reviews

What is a literature review .

Typically, a literature review is a written discussion that examines publications about a particular subject area or topic. Depending on disciplines, publications, or authors a literature review may be:

A summary of sources An organized presentation of sources A synthesis or interpretation of sources An evaluative analysis of sources

A Literature Review may be part of a process or a product. It may be:

A part of your research process A part of your final research publication An independent publication

Why do a literature review?

The Literature Review will place your research in context. It will help you and your readers:

Locate patterns, relationships, connections, agreements, disagreements, & gaps in understanding Identify methodological and theoretical foundations Identify landmark and exemplary works Situate your voice in a broader conversation with other writers, thinkers, and scholars

The Literature Review will aid your research process. It will help you to:

Establish your knowledge Understand what has been said Define your questions Establish a relevant methodology Refine your voice Situate your voice in the conversation

What does a literature review look like?

The Literature Review structure and organization may include sections such as:

An introduction or overview A body or organizational sub-divisions A conclusion or an explanation of significance

The body of a literature review may be organized in several ways, including:

Chronologically: organized by date of publication Methodologically: organized by type of research method used Thematically: organized by concept, trend, or theme Ideologically: organized by belief, ideology, or school of thought

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Literature review

How to write a literature review in 6 steps

How do you write a good literature review? This step-by-step guide on how to write an excellent literature review covers all aspects of planning and writing literature reviews for academic papers and theses.

How to write a systematic literature review [9 steps]

How do you write a systematic literature review? What types of systematic literature reviews exist and where do you use them? Learn everything you need to know about a systematic literature review in this guide

What is a literature review? [with examples]

Not sure what a literature review is? This guide covers the definition, purpose, and format of a literature review.

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Types of Literature Review — A Guide for Researchers

Researchers often face challenges when choosing the appropriate type of literature review for their study. Regardless of the type of research design and the topic of a research problem , they encounter numerous queries, including:

What is the right type of literature review my study demands?

How do we gather the data?
How to conduct one?
How reliable are the review findings?
How do we employ them in our research? And the list goes on.

If you’re also dealing with such a hefty questionnaire, this article is of help. Read through this piece of guide to get an exhaustive understanding of the different types of literature reviews and their step-by-step methodologies along with a dash of pros and cons discussed.

Heading from scratch!

What is a Literature Review?

A literature review provides a comprehensive overview of existing knowledge on a particular topic, which is quintessential to any research project. Researchers employ various literature reviews based on their research goals and methodologies. The review process involves assembling, critically evaluating, and synthesizing existing scientific publications relevant to the research question at hand. It serves multiple purposes, including identifying gaps in existing literature, providing theoretical background, and supporting the rationale for a research study.

What is the importance of a Literature review in research?

Literature review in research serves several key purposes, including:

Background of the study: Provides proper context for the research. It helps researchers understand the historical development, theoretical perspectives, and key debates related to their research topic.
Identification of research gaps: By reviewing existing literature, researchers can identify gaps or inconsistencies in knowledge, paving the way for new research questions and hypotheses relevant to their study.
Theoretical framework development: Facilitates the development of theoretical frameworks by cultivating diverse perspectives and empirical findings. It helps researchers refine their conceptualizations and theoretical models.
Methodological guidance: Offers methodological guidance by highlighting the documented research methods and techniques used in previous studies. It assists researchers in selecting appropriate research designs, data collection methods, and analytical tools.
Quality assurance and upholding academic integrity: Conducting a thorough literature review demonstrates the rigor and scholarly integrity of the research. It ensures that researchers are aware of relevant studies and can accurately attribute ideas and findings to their original sources.

Types of Literature Review

Literature review plays a crucial role in guiding the research process , from providing the background of the study to research dissemination and contributing to the synthesis of the latest theoretical literature review findings in academia.

However, not all types of literature reviews are the same; they vary in terms of methodology, approach, and purpose. Let's have a look at the various types of literature reviews to gain a deeper understanding of their applications.

1. Narrative Literature Review

A narrative literature review, also known as a traditional literature review, involves analyzing and summarizing existing literature without adhering to a structured methodology. It typically provides a descriptive overview of key concepts, theories, and relevant findings of the research topic.

Unlike other types of literature reviews, narrative reviews reinforce a more traditional approach, emphasizing the interpretation and discussion of the research findings rather than strict adherence to methodological review criteria. It helps researchers explore diverse perspectives and insights based on the research topic and acts as preliminary work for further investigation.

Steps to Conduct a Narrative Literature Review

Source:- https://www.researchgate.net/figure/Steps-of-writing-a-narrative-review_fig1_354466408

Define the research question or topic:

The first step in conducting a narrative literature review is to clearly define the research question or topic of interest. Defining the scope and purpose of the review includes — What specific aspect of the topic do you want to explore? What are the main objectives of the research? Refine your research question based on the specific area you want to explore.

Conduct a thorough literature search

Once the research question is defined, you can conduct a comprehensive literature search. Explore and use relevant databases and search engines like SciSpace Discover to identify credible and pertinent, scholarly articles and publications.

Select relevant studies

Before choosing the right set of studies, it’s vital to determine inclusion (studies that should possess the required factors) and exclusion criteria for the literature and then carefully select papers. For example — Which studies or sources will be included based on relevance, quality, and publication date?

*Important (applies to all the reviews): Inclusion criteria are the factors a study must include (For example: Include only peer-reviewed articles published between 2022-2023, etc.). Exclusion criteria are the factors that wouldn’t be required for your search strategy (Example: exclude irrelevant papers, preprints, written in non-English, etc.)

Critically analyze the literature

Once the relevant studies are shortlisted, evaluate the methodology, findings, and limitations of each source and jot down key themes, patterns, and contradictions. You can use efficient AI tools to conduct a thorough literature review and analyze all the required information.

Synthesize and integrate the findings

Now, you can weave together the reviewed studies, underscoring significant findings such that new frameworks, contrasting viewpoints, and identifying knowledge gaps.

Discussion and conclusion

This is an important step before crafting a narrative review — summarize the main findings of the review and discuss their implications in the relevant field. For example — What are the practical implications for practitioners? What are the directions for future research for them?

Write a cohesive narrative review

Organize the review into coherent sections and structure your review logically, guiding the reader through the research landscape and offering valuable insights. Use clear and concise language to convey key points effectively.

Structure of Narrative Literature Review

A well-structured, narrative analysis or literature review typically includes the following components:

Introduction: Provides an overview of the topic, objectives of the study, and rationale for the review.
Background: Highlights relevant background information and establish the context for the review.
Main Body: Indexes the literature into thematic sections or categories, discussing key findings, methodologies, and theoretical frameworks.
Discussion: Analyze and synthesize the findings of the reviewed studies, stressing similarities, differences, and any gaps in the literature.
Conclusion: Summarizes the main findings of the review, identifies implications for future research, and offers concluding remarks.

Pros and Cons of Narrative Literature Review

Flexibility in methodology and doesn’t necessarily rely on structured methodologies
Follows traditional approach and provides valuable and contextualized insights
Suitable for exploring complex or interdisciplinary topics. For example — Climate change and human health, Cybersecurity and privacy in the digital age, and more
Subjectivity in data selection and interpretation
Potential for bias in the review process
Lack of rigor compared to systematic reviews

Example of Well-Executed Narrative Literature Reviews

Paper title: Examining Moral Injury in Clinical Practice: A Narrative Literature Review

Source: SciSpace

You can also chat with the papers using SciSpace ChatPDF to get a thorough understanding of the research papers.

While narrative reviews offer flexibility, academic integrity remains paramount. So, ensure proper citation of all sources and maintain a transparent and factual approach throughout your critical narrative review, itself.

2. Systematic Review

A systematic literature review is one of the comprehensive types of literature review that follows a structured approach to assembling, analyzing, and synthesizing existing research relevant to a particular topic or question. It involves clearly defined criteria for exploring and choosing studies, as well as rigorous methods for evaluating the quality of relevant studies.

It plays a prominent role in evidence-based practice and decision-making across various domains, including healthcare, social sciences, education, health sciences, and more. By systematically investigating available literature, researchers can identify gaps in knowledge, evaluate the strength of evidence, and report future research directions.

Steps to Conduct Systematic Reviews

Source:- https://www.researchgate.net/figure/Steps-of-Systematic-Literature-Review_fig1_321422320

Here are the key steps involved in conducting a systematic literature review

Formulate a clear and focused research question

Clearly define the research question or objective of the review. It helps to centralize the literature search strategy and determine inclusion criteria for relevant studies.

Develop a thorough literature search strategy

Design a comprehensive search strategy to identify relevant studies. It involves scrutinizing scientific databases and all relevant articles in journals. Plus, seek suggestions from domain experts and review reference lists of relevant review articles.

Screening and selecting studies

Employ predefined inclusion and exclusion criteria to systematically screen the identified studies. This screening process also typically involves multiple reviewers independently assessing the eligibility of each study.

Data extraction

Extract key information from selected studies using standardized forms or protocols. It includes study characteristics, methods, results, and conclusions.

Critical appraisal

Evaluate the methodological quality and potential biases of included studies. Various tools (BMC medical research methodology) and criteria can be implemented for critical evaluation depending on the study design and research quetions .

Data synthesis

Analyze and synthesize review findings from individual studies to draw encompassing conclusions or identify overarching patterns and explore heterogeneity among studies.

Interpretation and conclusion

Interpret the findings about the research question, considering the strengths and limitations of the research evidence. Draw conclusions and implications for further research.

The final step — Report writing

Craft a detailed report of the systematic literature review adhering to the established guidelines of PRISMA (Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Reviews and Meta-Analyses). This ensures transparency and reproducibility of the review process.

By following these steps, a systematic literature review aims to provide a comprehensive and unbiased summary of existing evidence, help make informed decisions, and advance knowledge in the respective domain or field.

Structure of a systematic literature review

A well-structured systematic literature review typically consists of the following sections:

Introduction: Provides background information on the research topic, outlines the review objectives, and enunciates the scope of the study.
Methodology: Describes the literature search strategy, selection criteria, data extraction process, and other methods used for data synthesis, extraction, or other data analysis..
Results: Presents the review findings, including a summary of the incorporated studies and their key findings.
Discussion: Interprets the findings in light of the review objectives, discusses their implications, and identifies limitations or promising areas for future research.
Conclusion: Summarizes the main review findings and provides suggestions based on the evidence presented in depth meta analysis.

*Important (applies to all the reviews): Remember, the specific structure of your literature review may vary depending on your topic, research question, and intended audience. However, adhering to a clear and logical hierarchy ensures your review effectively analyses and synthesizes knowledge and contributes valuable insights for readers.

Pros and Cons of Systematic Literature Review

Adopts rigorous and transparent methodology
Minimizes bias and enhances the reliability of the study
Provides evidence-based insights
Time and resource-intensive
High dependency on the quality of available literature (literature research strategy should be accurate)
Potential for publication bias

Example of Well-Executed Systematic Literature Review

Paper title: Systematic Reviews: Understanding the Best Evidence For Clinical Decision-making in Health Care: Pros and Cons.

Read this detailed article on how to use AI tools to conduct a systematic review for your research!

3. Scoping Literature Review

A scoping literature review is a methodological review type of literature review that adopts an iterative approach to systematically map the existing literature on a particular topic or research area. It involves identifying, selecting, and synthesizing relevant papers to provide an overview of the size and scope of available evidence. Scoping reviews are broader in scope and include a diverse range of study designs and methodologies especially focused on health services research.

The main purpose of a scoping literature review is to examine the extent, range, and nature of existing studies on a topic, thereby identifying gaps in research, inconsistencies, and areas for further investigation. Additionally, scoping reviews can help researchers identify suitable methodologies and formulate clinical recommendations. They also act as the frameworks for future systematic reviews or primary research studies.

Scoping reviews are primarily focused on —

Emerging or evolving topics — where the research landscape is still growing or budding. Example — Whole Systems Approaches to Diet and Healthy Weight: A Scoping Review of Reviews .
Broad and complex topics : With a vast amount of existing literature.
Scenarios where a systematic review is not feasible: Due to limited resources or time constraints.

Steps to Conduct a Scoping Literature Review

While Scoping reviews are not as rigorous as systematic reviews, however, they still follow a structured approach. Here are the steps:

Identify the research question: Define the broad topic you want to explore.

Identify Relevant Studies: Conduct a comprehensive search of relevant literature using appropriate databases, keywords, and search strategies.

Select studies to be included in the review: Based on the inclusion and exclusion criteria, determine the appropriate studies to be included in the review.

Data extraction and charting : Extract relevant information from selected studies, such as year, author, main results, study characteristics, key findings, and methodological approaches. However, it varies depending on the research question.

Collate, summarize, and report the results: Analyze and summarize the extracted data to identify key themes and trends. Then, present the findings of the scoping review in a clear and structured manner, following established guidelines and frameworks .

Structure of a Scoping Literature Review

A scoping literature review typically follows a structured format similar to a systematic review. It includes the following sections:

Introduction: Introduce the research topic and objectives of the review, providing the historical context, and rationale for the study.
Methods : Describe the methods used to conduct the review, including search strategies, study selection criteria, and data extraction procedures.
Results: Present the findings of the review, including key themes, concepts, and patterns identified in the literature review.
Discussion: Examine the implications of the findings, including strengths, limitations, and areas for further examination.
Conclusion: Recapitulate the main findings of the review and their implications for future research, policy, or practice.

Pros and Cons of Scoping Literature Review

Provides a comprehensive overview of existing literature
Helps to identify gaps and areas for further research
Suitable for exploring broad or complex research questions
Doesn’t provide the depth of analysis offered by systematic reviews
Subject to researcher bias in study selection and data extraction
Requires careful consideration of literature search strategies and inclusion criteria to ensure comprehensiveness and validity.

In short, a scoping review helps map the literature on developing or emerging topics and identifying gaps. It might be considered as a step before conducting another type of review, such as a systematic review. Basically, acts as a precursor for other literature reviews.

Example of a Well-Executed Scoping Literature Review

Paper title: Health Chatbots in Africa Literature: A Scoping Review

Check out the key differences between Systematic and Scoping reviews — Evaluating literature review: systematic vs. scoping reviews

4. Integrative Literature Review

Integrative Literature Review (ILR) is a type of literature review that proposes a distinctive way to analyze and synthesize existing literature on a specific topic, providing a thorough understanding of research and identifying potential gaps for future research.

Unlike a systematic review, which emphasizes quantitative studies and follows strict inclusion criteria, an ILR embraces a more pliable approach. It works beyond simply summarizing findings — it critically analyzes, integrates, and interprets research from various methodologies (qualitative, quantitative, mixed methods) to provide a deeper understanding of the research landscape. ILRs provide a holistic and systematic overview of existing research, integrating findings from various methodologies. ILRs are ideal for exploring intricate research issues, examining manifold perspectives, and developing new research questions.

Steps to Conduct an Integrative Literature Review

Identify the research question: Clearly define the research question or topic of interest as formulating a clear and focused research question is critical to leading the entire review process.
Literature search strategy: Employ systematic search techniques to locate relevant literature across various databases and sources.
Evaluate the quality of the included studies : Critically assess the methodology, rigor, and validity of each study by applying inclusion and exclusion criteria to filter and select studies aligned with the research objectives.
Data Extraction: Extract relevant data from selected studies using a structured approach.
Synthesize the findings : Thoroughly analyze the selected literature, identify key themes, and synthesize findings to derive noteworthy insights.
Critical appraisal: Critically evaluate the quality and validity of qualitative research and included studies by using BMC medical research methodology.
Interpret and present your findings: Discuss the purpose and implications of your analysis, spotlighting key insights and limitations. Organize and present the findings coherently and systematically.

Structure of an Integrative Literature Review

Introduction : Provide an overview of the research topic and the purpose of the integrative review.
Methods: Describe the opted literature search strategy, selection criteria, and data extraction process.
Results: Present the synthesized findings, including key themes, patterns, and contradictions.
Discussion: Interpret the findings about the research question, emphasizing implications for theory, practice, and prospective research.
Conclusion: Summarize the main findings, limitations, and contributions of the integrative review.

Pros and Cons of Integrative Literature Review

Informs evidence-based practice and policy to the relevant stakeholders of the research.
Contributes to theory development and methodological advancement, especially in the healthcare arena.
Integrates diverse perspectives and findings
Time-consuming process due to the extensive literature search and synthesis
Requires advanced analytical and critical thinking skills
Potential for bias in study selection and interpretation
The quality of included studies may vary, affecting the validity of the review

Example of Integrative Literature Reviews

Paper Title: An Integrative Literature Review: The Dual Impact of Technological Tools on Health and Technostress Among Older Workers

5. Rapid Literature Review

A Rapid Literature Review (RLR) is the fastest type of literature review which makes use of a streamlined approach for synthesizing literature summaries, offering a quicker and more focused alternative to traditional systematic reviews. Despite employing identical research methods, it often simplifies or omits specific steps to expedite the process. It allows researchers to gain valuable insights into current research trends and identify key findings within a shorter timeframe, often ranging from a few days to a few weeks — unlike traditional literature reviews, which may take months or even years to complete.

When to Consider a Rapid Literature Review?

When time impediments demand a swift summary of existing research
For emerging topics where the latest literature requires quick evaluation
To report pilot studies or preliminary research before embarking on a comprehensive systematic review

Steps to Conduct a Rapid Literature Review

Define the research question or topic of interest. A well-defined question guides the search process and helps researchers focus on relevant studies.
Determine key databases and sources of relevant literature to ensure comprehensive coverage.
Develop literature search strategies using appropriate keywords and filters to fetch a pool of potential scientific articles.
Screen search results based on predefined inclusion and exclusion criteria.
Extract and summarize relevant information from the above-preferred studies.
Synthesize findings to identify key themes, patterns, or gaps in the literature.
Prepare a concise report or a summary of the RLR findings.

Structure of a Rapid Literature Review

An effective structure of an RLR typically includes the following sections:

Introduction: Briefly introduce the research topic and objectives of the RLR.
Methodology: Describe the search strategy, inclusion and exclusion criteria, and data extraction process.
Results: Present a summary of the findings, including key themes or patterns identified.
Discussion: Interpret the findings, discuss implications, and highlight any limitations or areas for further research
Conclusion: Summarize the key findings and their implications for practice or future research

Pros and Cons of Rapid Literature Review

RLRs can be completed quickly, authorizing timely decision-making
RLRs are a cost-effective approach since they require fewer resources compared to traditional literature reviews
Offers great accessibility as RLRs provide prompt access to synthesized evidence for stakeholders
RLRs are flexible as they can be easily adapted for various research contexts and objectives
RLR reports are limited and restricted, not as in-depth as systematic reviews, and do not provide comprehensive coverage of the literature compared to traditional reviews.
Susceptible to bias because of the expedited nature of RLRs. It would increase the chance of overlooking relevant studies or biases in the selection process.
Due to time constraints, RLR findings might not be robust enough as compared to systematic reviews.

Example of a Well-Executed Rapid Literature Review

Paper Title: What Is the Impact of ChatGPT on Education? A Rapid Review of the Literature

A Summary of Literature Review Types

Literature Review Type	Narrative	Systematic	Integrative	Rapid	Scoping
Approach	The traditional approach lacks a structured methodology	Systematic search, including structured methodology	Combines diverse methodologies for a comprehensive understanding	Quick review within time constraints	Preliminary study of existing literature
How Exhaustive is the process?	May or may not be comprehensive	Exhaustive and comprehensive search	A comprehensive search for integration	Time-limited search	Determined by time or scope constraints
Data Synthesis	Narrative	Narrative with tabular accompaniment	Integration of various sources or methodologies	Narrative and tabular	Narrative and tabular
Purpose	Provides description of meta analysis and conceptualization of the review	Comprehensive evidence synthesis	Holistic understanding	Quick policy or practice guidelines review	Preliminary literature review
Key characteristics	Storytelling, chronological presentation	Rigorous, traditional and systematic techniques approach	Diverse source or method integration	Time-constrained, systematic approach	Identifies literature size and scope
Example Use Case	Historical exploration	Effectiveness evaluation	Quantitative, qualitative, and mixed combination	Policy summary	Research literature overview

Tools and Resources for Conducting Different Types of Literature Reviews

Online scientific databases.

Platforms such as SciSpace , PubMed , Scopus , Elsevier , and Web of Science provide access to a vast array of scholarly literature, facilitating the search and data retrieval process.

Reference management software

Tools like SciSpace Citation Generator , EndNote, Zotero , and Mendeley assist researchers in organizing, annotating, and citing relevant literature, streamlining the review process altogether.

Automate Literature Review with AI tools

Automate the literature review process by using tools like SciSpace literature review which helps you compare and contrast multiple papers all on one screen in an easy-to-read matrix format. You can effortlessly analyze and interpret the review findings tailored to your study. It also supports the review in 75+ languages, making it more manageable even for non-English speakers.

Goes without saying — literature review plays a pivotal role in academic research to identify the current trends and provide insights to pave the way for future research endeavors. Different types of literature review has their own strengths and limitations, making them suitable for different research designs and contexts. Whether conducting a narrative review, systematic review, scoping review, integrative review, or rapid literature review, researchers must cautiously consider the objectives, resources, and the nature of the research topic.

If you’re currently working on a literature review and still adopting a manual and traditional approach, switch to the automated AI literature review workspace and transform your traditional literature review into a rapid one by extracting all the latest and relevant data for your research!

There you go!

Frequently Asked Questions

Narrative reviews give a general overview of a topic based on the author's knowledge. They may lack clear criteria and can be biased. On the other hand, systematic reviews aim to answer specific research questions by following strict methods. They're thorough but time-consuming.

A systematic review collects and analyzes existing research to provide an overview of a topic, while a meta-analysis statistically combines data from multiple studies to draw conclusions about the overall effect of an intervention or relationship between variables.

A systematic review thoroughly analyzes existing research on a specific topic using strict methods. In contrast, a scoping review offers a broader overview of the literature without evaluating individual studies in depth.

A systematic review thoroughly examines existing research using a rigorous process, while a rapid review provides a quicker summary of evidence, often by simplifying some of the systematic review steps to meet shorter timelines.

A systematic review carefully examines many studies on a single topic using specific guidelines. Conversely, an integrative review blends various types of research to provide a more comprehensive understanding of the topic.

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Conducting a literature review: why do a literature review, why do a literature review.

How To Find "The Literature"
Found it -- Now What?

Besides the obvious reason for students -- because it is assigned! -- a literature review helps you explore the research that has come before you, to see how your research question has (or has not) already been addressed.

You identify:

core research in the field
experts in the subject area
methodology you may want to use (or avoid)
gaps in knowledge -- or where your research would fit in

It Also Helps You:

Publish and share your findings
Justify requests for grants and other funding
Identify best practices to inform practice
Set wider context for a program evaluation
Compile information to support community organizing

Great brief overview, from NCSU

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Writing an effective literature review

Lorelei lingard.

Schulich School of Medicine & Dentistry, Health Sciences Addition, Western University, London, Ontario Canada

In the Writer’s Craft section we offer simple tips to improve your writing in one of three areas: Energy, Clarity and Persuasiveness. Each entry focuses on a key writing feature or strategy, illustrates how it commonly goes wrong, teaches the grammatical underpinnings necessary to understand it and offers suggestions to wield it effectively. We encourage readers to share comments on or suggestions for this section on Twitter, using the hashtag: #how’syourwriting?

This Writer’s Craft instalment is the first in a two-part series that offers strategies for effectively presenting the literature review section of a research manuscript. This piece alerts writers to the importance of not only summarizing what is known but also identifying precisely what is not, in order to explicitly signal the relevance of their research. In this instalment, I will introduce readers to the mapping the gap metaphor, the knowledge claims heuristic, and the need to characterize the gap.

Mapping the gap

The purpose of the literature review section of a manuscript is not to report what is known about your topic. The purpose is to identify what remains unknown— what academic writing scholar Janet Giltrow has called the ‘knowledge deficit’ — thus establishing the need for your research study [ 1 ]. In an earlier Writer’s Craft instalment, the Problem-Gap-Hook heuristic was introduced as a way of opening your paper with a clear statement of the problem that your work grapples with, the gap in our current knowledge about that problem, and the reason the gap matters [ 2 ]. This article explains how to use the literature review section of your paper to build and characterize the Gap claim in your Problem-Gap-Hook. The metaphor of ‘mapping the gap’ is a way of thinking about how to select and arrange your review of the existing literature so that readers can recognize why your research needed to be done, and why its results constitute a meaningful advance on what was already known about the topic.

Many writers have learned that the literature review should describe what is known. The trouble with this approach is that it can produce a laundry list of facts-in-the-world that does not persuade the reader that the current study is a necessary next step. Instead, think of your literature review as painting in a map of your research domain: as you review existing knowledge, you are painting in sections of the map, but your goal is not to end with the whole map fully painted. That would mean there is nothing more we need to know about the topic, and that leaves no room for your research. What you want to end up with is a map in which painted sections surround and emphasize a white space, a gap in what is known that matters. Conceptualizing your literature review this way helps to ensure that it achieves its dual goal: of presenting what is known and pointing out what is not—the latter of these goals is necessary for your literature review to establish the necessity and importance of the research you are about to describe in the methods section which will immediately follow the literature review.

To a novice researcher or graduate student, this may seem counterintuitive. Hopefully you have invested significant time in reading the existing literature, and you are understandably keen to demonstrate that you’ve read everything ever published about your topic! Be careful, though, not to use the literature review section to regurgitate all of your reading in manuscript form. For one thing, it creates a laundry list of facts that makes for horrible reading. But there are three other reasons for avoiding this approach. First, you don’t have the space. In published medical education research papers, the literature review is quite short, ranging from a few paragraphs to a few pages, so you can’t summarize everything you’ve read. Second, you’re preaching to the converted. If you approach your paper as a contribution to an ongoing scholarly conversation,[ 2 ] then your literature review should summarize just the aspects of that conversation that are required to situate your conversational turn as informed and relevant. Third, the key to relevance is to point to a gap in what is known. To do so, you summarize what is known for the express purpose of identifying what is not known . Seen this way, the literature review should exert a gravitational pull on the reader, leading them inexorably to the white space on the map of knowledge you’ve painted for them. That white space is the space that your research fills.

Knowledge claims

To help writers move beyond the laundry list, the notion of ‘knowledge claims’ can be useful. A knowledge claim is a way of presenting the growing understanding of the community of researchers who have been exploring your topic. These are not disembodied facts, but rather incremental insights that some in the field may agree with and some may not, depending on their different methodological and disciplinary approaches to the topic. Treating the literature review as a story of the knowledge claims being made by researchers in the field can help writers with one of the most sophisticated aspects of a literature review—locating the knowledge being reviewed. Where does it come from? What is debated? How do different methodologies influence the knowledge being accumulated? And so on.

Consider this example of the knowledge claims (KC), Gap and Hook for the literature review section of a research paper on distributed healthcare teamwork:

KC: We know that poor team communication can cause errors. KC: And we know that team training can be effective in improving team communication. KC: This knowledge has prompted a push to incorporate teamwork training principles into health professions education curricula. KC: However, most of what we know about team training research has come from research with co-located teams—i. e., teams whose members work together in time and space. Gap: Little is known about how teamwork training principles would apply in distributed teams, whose members work asynchronously and are spread across different locations. Hook: Given that much healthcare teamwork is distributed rather than co-located, our curricula will be severely lacking until we create refined teamwork training principles that reflect distributed as well as co-located work contexts.

The ‘We know that …’ structure illustrated in this example is a template for helping you draft and organize. In your final version, your knowledge claims will be expressed with more sophistication. For instance, ‘We know that poor team communication can cause errors’ will become something like ‘Over a decade of patient safety research has demonstrated that poor team communication is the dominant cause of medical errors.’ This simple template of knowledge claims, though, provides an outline for the paragraphs in your literature review, each of which will provide detailed evidence to illustrate a knowledge claim. Using this approach, the order of the paragraphs in the literature review is strategic and persuasive, leading the reader to the gap claim that positions the relevance of the current study. To expand your vocabulary for creating such knowledge claims, linking them logically and positioning yourself amid them, I highly recommend Graff and Birkenstein’s little handbook of ‘templates’ [ 3 ].

As you organize your knowledge claims, you will also want to consider whether you are trying to map the gap in a well-studied field, or a relatively understudied one. The rhetorical challenge is different in each case. In a well-studied field, like professionalism in medical education, you must make a strong, explicit case for the existence of a gap. Readers may come to your paper tired of hearing about this topic and tempted to think we can’t possibly need more knowledge about it. Listing the knowledge claims can help you organize them most effectively and determine which pieces of knowledge may be unnecessary to map the white space your research attempts to fill. This does not mean that you leave out relevant information: your literature review must still be accurate. But, since you will not be able to include everything, selecting carefully among the possible knowledge claims is essential to producing a coherent, well-argued literature review.

Characterizing the gap

Once you’ve identified the gap, your literature review must characterize it. What kind of gap have you found? There are many ways to characterize a gap, but some of the more common include:

a pure knowledge deficit—‘no one has looked at the relationship between longitudinal integrated clerkships and medical student abuse’
a shortcoming in the scholarship, often due to philosophical or methodological tendencies and oversights—‘scholars have interpreted x from a cognitivist perspective, but ignored the humanist perspective’ or ‘to date, we have surveyed the frequency of medical errors committed by residents, but we have not explored their subjective experience of such errors’
a controversy—‘scholars disagree on the definition of professionalism in medicine …’
a pervasive and unproven assumption—‘the theme of technological heroism—technology will solve what ails teamwork—is ubiquitous in the literature, but what is that belief based on?’

To characterize the kind of gap, you need to know the literature thoroughly. That means more than understanding each paper individually; you also need to be placing each paper in relation to others. This may require changing your note-taking technique while you’re reading; take notes on what each paper contributes to knowledge, but also on how it relates to other papers you’ve read, and what it suggests about the kind of gap that is emerging.

In summary, think of your literature review as mapping the gap rather than simply summarizing the known. And pay attention to characterizing the kind of gap you’ve mapped. This strategy can help to make your literature review into a compelling argument rather than a list of facts. It can remind you of the danger of describing so fully what is known that the reader is left with the sense that there is no pressing need to know more. And it can help you to establish a coherence between the kind of gap you’ve identified and the study methodology you will use to fill it.

Acknowledgements

Thanks to Mark Goldszmidt for his feedback on an early version of this manuscript.

PhD, is director of the Centre for Education Research & Innovation at Schulich School of Medicine & Dentistry, and professor for the Department of Medicine at Western University in London, Ontario, Canada.

Literature Reviews

What is a Literature Review?

Steps for Creating a Literature Review
Providing Evidence / Critical Analysis
Challenges when writing a Literature Review
Systematic Literature Reviews

A literature review is an academic text that surveys, synthesizes, and critically evaluates the existing literature on a specific topic. It is typically required for theses, dissertations, or long reports and serves several key purposes:

Surveying the Literature : It involves a comprehensive search and examination of relevant academic books, journal articles, and other sources related to the chosen topic.
Synthesizing Information : The literature review summarizes and organizes the information found in the literature, often identifying patterns, themes, and gaps in the current knowledge.
Critical Analysis : It critically analyzes the collected information, highlighting limitations, gaps, and areas of controversy, and suggests directions for future research.
Establishing Context : It places the current research within the broader context of the field, demonstrating how the new research builds on or diverges from previous studies.

Types of Literature Reviews

Literature reviews can take various forms, including:

Narrative Reviews : These provide a qualitative summary of the literature and are often used to give a broad overview of a topic. They may be less structured and more subjective, focusing on synthesizing the literature to support a particular viewpoint.
Systematic Reviews : These are more rigorous and structured, following a specific methodology to identify, evaluate, and synthesize all relevant studies on a particular question. They aim to minimize bias and provide a comprehensive summary of the existing evidence.
Integrative Reviews : Similar to systematic reviews, but they aim to generate new knowledge by integrating findings from different studies to develop new theories or frameworks.

Importance of Literature Reviews

Foundation for Research : They provide a solid background for new research projects, helping to justify the research question and methodology.

Identifying Gaps : Literature reviews highlight areas where knowledge is lacking, guiding future research efforts.

Building Credibility : Demonstrating familiarity with existing research enhances the credibility of the researcher and their work.

In summary, a literature review is a critical component of academic research that helps to frame the current state of knowledge, identify gaps, and provide a basis for new research.

The research, the body of current literature, and the particular objectives should all influence the structure of a literature review. It is also critical to remember that creating a literature review is an ongoing process - as one reads and analyzes the literature, one's understanding may change, which could require rearranging the literature review.

Paré, G. and Kitsiou, S. (2017) 'Methods for Literature Reviews' , in: Lau, F. and Kuziemsky, C. (eds.) Handbook of eHealth evaluation: an evidence-based approach . Victoria (BC): University of Victoria.

Perplexity AI (2024) Perplexity AI response to Kathy Neville, 31 July.

Royal Literary Fund (2024) The structure of a literature review. Available at: https://www.rlf.org.uk/resources/the-structure-of-a-literature-review/ (Accessed: 23 July 2024).

Library Services for Undergraduate Research (2024) Literature review: a definition . Available at: https://libguides.wustl.edu/our?p=302677 (Accessed: 31 July 2024).

Making sense of what has been written on your topic.

Goals of a literature review:.

Before doing work in primary sources, historians must know what has been written on their topic. They must be familiar with theories and arguments–as well as facts–that appear in secondary sources.

Before you proceed with your research project, you too must be familiar with the literature: you do not want to waste time on theories that others have disproved and you want to take full advantage of what others have argued. You want to be able to discuss and analyze your topic.

Your literature review will demonstrate your familiarity with your topic’s secondary literature.

GUIDELINES FOR A LITERATURE REVIEW:

1) LENGTH: 8-10 pages of text for Senior Theses (485) (consult with your professor for other classes), with either footnotes or endnotes and with a works-consulted bibliography. [See also the citation guide on this site.]

2) NUMBER OF WORKS REVIEWED: Depends on the assignment, but for Senior Theses (485), at least ten is typical.

3) CHOOSING WORKS:

Your literature review must include enough works to provide evidence of both the breadth and the depth of the research on your topic or, at least, one important angle of it. The number of works necessary to do this will depend on your topic. For most topics, AT LEAST TEN works (mostly books but also significant scholarly articles) are necessary, although you will not necessarily give all of them equal treatment in your paper (e.g., some might appear in notes rather than the essay). 4) ORGANIZING/ARRANGING THE LITERATURE:

As you uncover the literature (i.e., secondary writing) on your topic, you should determine how the various pieces relate to each other. Your ability to do so will demonstrate your understanding of the evolution of literature.

You might determine that the literature makes sense when divided by time period, by methodology, by sources, by discipline, by thematic focus, by race, ethnicity, and/or gender of author, or by political ideology. This list is not exhaustive. You might also decide to subdivide categories based on other criteria. There is no “rule” on divisions—historians wrote the literature without consulting each other and without regard to the goal of fitting into a neat, obvious organization useful to students.

The key step is to FIGURE OUT the most logical, clarifying angle. Do not arbitrarily choose a categorization; use the one that the literature seems to fall into. How do you do that? For every source, you should note its thesis, date, author background, methodology, and sources. Does a pattern appear when you consider such information from each of your sources? If so, you have a possible thesis about the literature. If not, you might still have a thesis.

Consider: Are there missing elements in the literature? For example, no works published during a particular (usually fairly lengthy) time period? Or do studies appear after long neglect of a topic? Do interpretations change at some point? Does the major methodology being used change? Do interpretations vary based on sources used?

Follow these links for more help on analyzing historiography and historical perspective .

5) CONTENTS OF LITERATURE REVIEW:

The literature review is a research paper with three ingredients:

a) A brief discussion of the issue (the person, event, idea). [While this section should be brief, it needs to set up the thesis and literature that follow.] b) Your thesis about the literature c) A clear argument, using the works on topic as evidence, i.e., you discuss the sources in relation to your thesis, not as a separate topic.

These ingredients must be presented in an essay with an introduction, body, and conclusion.

6) ARGUING YOUR THESIS:

The thesis of a literature review should not only describe how the literature has evolved, but also provide a clear evaluation of that literature. You should assess the literature in terms of the quality of either individual works or categories of works. For instance, you might argue that a certain approach (e.g. social history, cultural history, or another) is better because it deals with a more complex view of the issue or because they use a wider array of source materials more effectively. You should also ensure that you integrate that evaluation throughout your argument. Doing so might include negative assessments of some works in order to reinforce your argument regarding the positive qualities of other works and approaches to the topic.

Within each group, you should provide essential information about each work: the author’s thesis, the work’s title and date, the author’s supporting arguments and major evidence.

In most cases, arranging the sources chronologically by publication date within each section makes the most sense because earlier works influenced later ones in one way or another. Reference to publication date also indicates that you are aware of this significant historiographical element.

As you discuss each work, DO NOT FORGET WHY YOU ARE DISCUSSING IT. YOU ARE PRESENTING AND SUPPORTING A THESIS ABOUT THE LITERATURE.

When discussing a particular work for the first time, you should refer to it by the author’s full name, the work’s title, and year of publication (either in parentheses after the title or worked into the sentence).

For example, “The field of slavery studies has recently been transformed by Ben Johnson’s The New Slave (2001)” and “Joe Doe argues in his 1997 study, Slavery in America, that . . . .”

Your paper should always note secondary sources’ relationship to each other, particularly in terms of your thesis about the literature (e.g., “Unlike Smith’s work, Mary Brown’s analysis reaches the conclusion that . . . .” and “Because of Anderson’s reliance on the president’s personal papers, his interpretation differs from Barry’s”). The various pieces of the literature are “related” to each other, so you need to indicate to the reader some of that relationship. (It helps the reader follow your thesis, and it convinces the reader that you know what you are talking about.)

7) DOCUMENTATION:

Each source you discuss in your paper must be documented using footnotes/endnotes and a bibliography. Providing author and title and date in the paper is not sufficient. Use correct Turabian/Chicago Manual of Style form. [See Bibliography and Footnotes/Endnotes pages.]

In addition, further supporting, but less significant, sources should be included in content foot or endnotes . (e.g., “For a similar argument to Ben Johnson’s, see John Terry, The Slave Who Was New (New York: W. W. Norton, 1985), 3-45.”)

8 ) CONCLUSION OF LITERATURE REVIEW:

Your conclusion should not only reiterate your argument (thesis), but also discuss questions that remain unanswered by the literature. What has the literature accomplished? What has not been studied? What debates need to be settled?

Additional writing guidelines

History and American Studies

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What is a Living Literature Review?

Table of contents.

The number of academic papers doubles every 12 years. This wealth of new knowledge is exciting, but the pace of growth makes keeping up with the latest developments increasingly difficult.

One response to this challenge is “living literature reviews”. At Open Phil, we define a living literature review as a continuously updated online collection of accessible articles that synthesize academic research on a specific topic. These reviews are primarily written by a single expert who is responsible for its quality and accuracy.

Living literature reviews aim to be accessible to readers unfamiliar with a field while maintaining rigor. Unlike news articles that often focus on single, sensational studies, these reviews provide a broader perspective, synthesizing findings from multiple sources. They differ from traditional academic literature reviews by avoiding paywalls, dense jargon, and lengthy formats that pose barriers to non-specialists. Moreover, because they don’t assume familiarity with the assumptions of a field, living literature reviews aim to describe how conclusions were reached, not just what the conclusions are. This transparency allows readers to better understand the research methodology and form their own judgment on the strength of the findings.

Living literature reviews also help readers assess a field by relying on a single individual to provide a consistent voice, perspective, and expert curatorial taste. While these individuals collaborate with other experts in their fields, having one consistent author allows readers to gauge how much they trust the author’s judgment over time.

Finally, living literature reviews leverage digital platforms for hosting and distribution. Websites allow for post-publication corrections and updates, enabling a level of currency that traditional print reviews can’t match. Complementing these, email newsletters and podcasts extend the reach and convenience of learning about academic research.

By making research accessible to a broader audience, living literature reviews can facilitate interdisciplinary connections and inform policy work. They offer insights into work happening in adjacent fields, potentially inspiring collaborations and novel research directions.

Open Philanthropy supports several living literature reviews:

New Things Under the Sun by Matt Clancy: social science research on science and innovation
Existential Crunch by Florian Jehn: academic literature on societal collapse
Some Are Useful by Tom Gebhart: how AI and machine learning are used in different parts of science
Good Questions Review by Paul Kellner: the relationship between academic research and policy impact

We are now seeking pre-proposals from individuals to write living literature reviews . We are particularly interested in reviews on neglected topics relevant to policymaking. Ideal candidates will have a PhD or equivalent expertise in their proposed area. Our support typically allows authors to dedicate a quarter to a third of their time to the project.

If you’re interested in launching your own living literature review, we encourage you to reach out. For more information on how to submit a pre-proposal, please contact [email protected] .

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Speaker 1: A literature review is an objective, concise, critical summary of published research literature relevant to a topic being researched in an article. A good literature review will order articles and books to focus on unresolved debates, inconsistencies, tensions, and questions in a research field. It will also summarize the most relevant, important aspects of scientific literature related to your area of research, and synthesize past and current research on the topic and show how your research fits in. One way to think about doing a literature review is to imagine building a bookshelf. You don't need to cut each piece by yourself, rather you can take the pieces that other researchers have made and put them together to build your project. The literature review provides an understanding of the background of the field, identifying which studies are important and which are not, to put together your bookshelf of a study. So what should the literature review include? Historical background for research. You should show what has been written about your field of research so that you can present something new and significant and contribute to the understanding of this field, even in a small way. This also demonstrates to other researchers and journal editors that you know how to read theoretical concepts and put them in your own words to show understanding. Include current research context in which your research is situated. This means discussion questions, issues, and debates in the field. You can contextualize your work by showing related work as both historical background and the modern state of research, showing the development and trends of research. Include relevant theories and concepts. For example, if you are researching the relationship between the ecological environment and human population in that environment, providing models and theories that focus on specific aspects of this connection will help contextualize your study. Introduce and define relevant terminology to show how terms fit into the context of your work. Add related research and show how your work expands or challenges this research, or works to fill in a gap in the work in this field. You can use the literature review as evidence of what works, what doesn't, and what is missing. Provide supporting evidence for a practical problem or issue that your research is addressing, showing its importance. Referencing related research establishes your area of research as reputable and shows you are building upon previous work that other researchers have deemed significant. Literature reviews range from the selective, a very narrow area of research or only a single work, to the comprehensive, or a larger amount or range of works. They can also exist as part of a larger work or stand on their own. A course assignment is an example of a selective, standalone work. It focuses on a small segment of the literature on a topic and makes up an entire work on its own. The literature review in a dissertation or thesis is both comprehensive and helps make up a larger work. A majority of journal articles start with a selective literature review to provide context for research reported in the manuscript, which is the broader work for which the literature gives context. The literature review is often included in the introduction. Some literature reviews are both comprehensive and stand as a separate work. The entire article analyzes the literature on a given topic. Thus, the literature review, while it has common applications across many kinds of documents, can serve slightly different purposes and take different forms. The two types of literature reviews found in journals are research articles, such as studies and surveys, and standalone literature analyses. They differ in their scope, length, and specific purpose. The literature review found at the beginning of a journal article is used to introduce the research related to the specific study and is found in the introduction section, usually near the end. It is shorter than standalone reviews because it must limit its scope to very specific studies and theories that are directly relevant to this study. It is also often used to set research precedent and support theory or methods. Here is an example of a review of the literature, accompanied by the heading, Related Research. This section is four paragraphs in length and cites four to five sources, or roughly one source per short paragraph. This is fairly standard for a literature review introducing an article or study. When a literature review exists as a part of an introduction to a study, it follows the structure of the introduction itself and moves from the general to the specific, presenting the broadest background information about a topic first and then moving to specific studies that support your study, finally leading to your hypothesis statement. The literature is often indistinguishable from the introduction itself, introducing the background and defining the gaps your study aims to fill. The standalone literature review published as its own article, on the other hand, presents and analyzes as much of the important text in an area of study as possible to provide background information and context for a current area of research or a specific study that is being conducted now or will be conducted in the future. This can be an excellent resource for researchers when they are first seeking out the most relevant information on an area of study. Such an article, thus, presents and analyzes as many relevant texts as necessary to give a full account of a research topic, approach, or theory. It is generally a bit broader in scope and extends further back in time. This means that sometimes a scientific literature review can be highly theoretical. In addition, it focuses on the results and methods of previous studies. It often has a more extended analysis and goes into greater detail. All of the sections of this kind of review refer to the literature rather than detailing a specific current study. In this example of a literature review in a journal, there are two features that distinguish it. First, the words literature review are contained in the title. While it is not necessary to include this exact term, many literature reviews do indicate the type of article in their title. The second feature one notices is the length of the text. It is much longer than the literature review that introduces a study. The headings indicate what kind of literature is being discussed and how it contributes to the topic. At the end of the review is a conclusion that once again explicitly ties all of these works together to show how this analysis is itself a contribution to the literature. So how do authors turn a network of articles into a coherent review of relevant literature? Writing the literature review is not usually a linear process. You will often need to go back and check the literature while reformulating your ideas. This means you will not be writing the literature review at any one time, but constantly working on it before, during, and after your study is complete. This process will apply more to standalone literature reviews, but can also be useful in understanding what to include to introduce your study. The first step is to choose a topic to write on, focus, and explore this topic. Choose a topic that you are familiar with and highly interested in analyzing, a topic your intended readers and researchers will find interesting and useful, and a topic that is current, well-established in the field, and about which there has been sufficient research conducted for a review. This will help you find the sweet spot for what to focus on. In a journal article introduction, this is the point where you might realize you need to adjust your scope depending on what you learn from the literature. Next, research and collect all of the scholarly information on that topic that might be pertinent to your study. Scholarly articles, books, academic conference speeches, dissertations and theses, and any other academic work related to your area of study is called the literature. Next, analyze the network of information that extends or responds to the major works in your area. Select the material that is most useful. Use thought maps and charts to identify intersections in the research and to outline important categories. Select the material that will be most useful for you to review. Following this, it's time to describe and summarize each article. Provide the essential information of the article that pertains to your study. Determine two to three important concepts, depending on the length of your article, that are discussed in the literature. Take notes about all of the important aspects of the study relevant to your topic being reviewed. For example, in a study of heart disease, perhaps some of the main concepts are arthrosclerosis, hypertension, and obesity. Note these concepts and then write a brief summary about how the article incorporates them. For instance, Yang's 1995 longitudinal study of obese patients attempts to measure the effects of chronic hypertension on arthrosclerosis. In reviews that introduce a study, these can be relatively short summaries. In standalone reviews, there may be significantly more text and concepts to review. After you've summarized each article, you want to demonstrate how these concepts in the literature relate to what you discovered in your study or how the literature connects the concepts or topics being discussed. In a literature intro for the article, this information might include a summary of the results or methods of previous studies that correspond or confirm to the sections in your own study. You might identify the missing parts in previous studies that your study addresses or highlight concepts that support your hypothesis, methods, results, or conclusions. In a standalone literature review, this may mean highlighting the concepts in each article and showing they strengthen a hypothesis or show a pattern. For example, you might identify any unaddressed issues in the previous studies. You can identify what is accurate and what is out of scope within these works. The final step in the literature review process is to identify relationships in the literature and develop and connect your own ideas to them. This is essentially the same as the previous step, but focus on the connections between the literature and the current study or guiding concepts or arguments in the paper, not only the connections between the works themselves. Examining these concepts is almost like doing a study in itself, pointing to the most important information from previous studies and drawing possible conclusions from the results of these works. Your hypothesis, argument, or guiding concept is the golden thread that will ultimately tie the works together and give them the importance they wouldn't have had outside of your literature review. Furthermore, your review will not only cover publications on your topics, but will include your own ideas and contributions. By following these steps, you will be telling the specific story that sets the background and shows the significance of your research, and you can turn a network of related works into a focused review of the literature. How long should a literature review be? The length of your literature review will be determined by how many sources you are reviewing and how many concepts you are exploring, as well as how much tension exists between these concepts. A stand-alone literature review can be anywhere from 2-3 pages to an entire book in length. For a separate article, this section is usually no more than 2-4 paragraphs maximum. How many sources should I review? The amount of articles you review will be heavily determined by how broad or narrow your topic is, how in-depth you want to explore an issue, and perhaps how much consensus or disagreement exists in this area. In a stand-alone review, the number of works reviewed might be anywhere from 5-15 and up to 30 or more in a full book of literature review, whereas a journal article usually has fewer than 5 sources and does not go into great depth, but often focuses on the most important points. Here are some tips for creating a stronger literature review. Always define your topic and audience before beginning your research. This will help later when deciding which works to ultimately include in the review. Read as many journal articles as you can, especially those that are in your area of interest. These will give you an excellent idea of how to structure and order your review. Focus on more current literature, especially when it comes to studies and articles. Using older theories is fine if they are fundamental and provide a stable foundation for work that hasn't changed over the years, but more current research will always be highly sought after by researchers and other readers. This might go without saying, but researchers should always take ample notes while they are researching the texts. Using note cards, tables, and computing programs like Microsoft Excel will help organize and index information and make it much easier to categorize later. Whatever you do, don't simply stack texts in the relevant pile without first writing down exactly what in the texts makes them relevant. For more resources on research writing and publication information, as well as a full list of academic editing services, visit wordvice.com.

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Literature Review

15 Best AI For Research (Quick and Efficient)

Discover the 15 best AI for research that offer quick and efficient tools to boost productivity and streamline your studies.

Aug 31, 2024

Consider you’ve just been assigned a research paper, and the pressure is on. You know that writing a solid research paper takes time. First, you must find and analyze relevant academic sources, which can be tedious. The good news is that you don’t have to tackle this task alone. The best AI for research can make literature searches , the most daunting part of writing research papers, a breeze. This guide will help you find the right AI tools to ease your burden of writing efficient research papers and get unique study material with AI. One of the best tools for achieving these goals is Otio's AI research and writing partner. This innovative program streamlines the entire research process, making literature searches and writing efficient papers more effortless than ever.

Can i use ai to do research, benefits of using ai for research, applications of ai in research, 10 tips for effective research using ai tools, supercharge your researching ability with otio — try otio for free today.

Person Working on Laptop - Best AI For Research

Absolutely! AI tools , such as Otio, can assist you with research. Whether working on a literature review or any other research assignment, these AI tools can help you discover new sources.

They synthesize information from vast databases of scholarly output to find the most relevant articles. Using AI tools can save you time and improve the quality of your research. However, don't rely on one tool, as you risk missing crucial information on your topic of interest.

1. Speeding Up Peer-Reviewing

Peer reviewing has long been a slow process, and AI can help speed things up. This process involves experts reviewing one another’s research manuscripts before publication. AI can assist with the early stages of peer reviewing by acting as a natural collaborator and automating time-consuming tasks. The faster research can get through the peer-review process, the quicker it can be shared with the public and inform policy debate. This is especially critical regarding groundbreaking research that can help resolve urgent societal issues.

2. Simplifying Literature Reviews

Literature reviews synthesize existing knowledge in a field of research, and AI can assist with identifying, analyzing, and synthesizing relevant literature. By automating the process, AI helps researchers access and quickly summarize the existing body of work, making it easier to efficiently identify gaps, trends, and emerging themes.

Natural Language Processing (NLP) algorithms analyze content and help researchers identify relevant studies more swiftly. Literature reviews can take significant time, and any assistance that helps speed up the process can make a researcher’s life easier.

3. Analyzing Complex Data Sets

Data analysis is at the heart of rigorous research, and AI enhances this process. Machine learning (ML) algorithms can navigate vast databases, and identifying patterns and correlations is one of its greatest strengths. This isn’t just about speed; it’s about uncovering nuanced insights that humans may miss. However, AI relies heavily on the quality of input data, and researchers need to be mindful of this fact.

Biased or incomplete datasets can lead to inaccurate insights. Additionally, knowing how complex machine learning models have arrived at a particular decision can be extremely difficult—and sometimes impossible. This is known as the ‘black box’ problem, and it can be tricky for humans to understand how a model arrived at a specific conclusion or prediction based on its input data.

4. Forming Global Partnerships to Address the Digital Divide

AI holds enormous potential for countries in the global south to overcome many barriers to achieving sustainable development goals (SDGs). However, accessibility and resource disparities still pose a significant challenge – not only between global north and south researchers but also between institutions and individuals.

The development and adoption of AI also pose unique challenges for these countries, especially regarding internet penetration, electricity connections, and concerns about AI's negative impacts. The price tag of AI technology can be steep, threatening to create a digital divide that exacerbates discrimination and human rights violations.

Let Otio be your AI research and writing partner — try Otio for free today!

1. Otio: an AI-Native Workspace for Researchers

Otio is one of the best AI tools for research . Knowledge workers, researchers, and students today need help with content overload and are left to deal with it using fragmented, complex, and manual tooling. Too many settle for stitching together complicated bookmarking, read-it-later, and note-taking apps to get through their workflows.

Now that anyone can create content with a button, this problem will only worsen. Otio solves this problem by providing researchers with one AI-native workspace. It helps them:

1. Collect a wide range of data sources, from bookmarks, tweets, and extensive books to YouTube videos.

2. extract key takeaways with detailed ai-generated notes and source-grounded q&a chat. , 3. create draft outputs using the sources you’ve collected. .

Otio helps you to go from the reading list to the first draft faster. Along with this, Otio also enables you to write research papers/essays faster. Here are our top features that researchers love: AI-generated notes on all bookmarks (Youtube videos, PDFs, articles, etc.), Otio enables you to chat with individual links or entire knowledge bases, just like you chat with ChatGPT, as well as AI-assisted writing.

2. Bit AI: Collaborate on Interactive Documents with Bit AI

Bit AI is an AI program designed to help teams collaborate on documents, wikis, and knowledge bases. It goes beyond just text and images, allowing users to create interactive documents containing videos, cloud files, and audio. It works much like Google Drive, allowing for real-time collaboration on documents. Multiple people can work on documents simultaneously and chat with one another within the interface.

Built-In AI Writing Assistant: AI Genius is the perfect tool for generating documents, wikis, and other information based on a text prompt

Multiple Use Cases: Bit AI is great for researchers and marketers, but also for product management, startups, and Human Resources due to its document development features

Collaboration Tools: Bit.ai allows multiple users to simultaneously collaborate on documents, notes, wikis, and other content in real-time

Wide Range of Integrations: Bit AI integrates with a large number of third-party tools, including YouTube, Google Sheets, Figma, GitHub, and more

Limited Customizations: Bit AI would be better if it had text formatting or options to customize the appearance of documents, such as matching company branding

3. Semantic Scholar: Discover Relevant Literature Fast

Semantic Scholar is one of the top AI tools for research and is widely used by students pursuing computer science, biomedical science, and neuroscience. It uses natural language processing to analyze academic papers to find relevant literature.

Besides, Semantic Scholar offers detailed overviews of research topics and can identify the most critical parts of a paper, making it a valuable AI tool for research.

Refine search results for greater efficiency and relevance.

Continuously improves the tool based on user feedback and provides a personalized user experience.

The summary has accuracy issues and AI-generated citations.

It only gives you access to the full text of some papers.

4. Scite: Understand the Citation Landscape of Research

Scite is one of the most popular AI-powered academic research tools . It improves any academic research in one go. Its natural language processing and machine learning help users do better research on scholarly articles and analyze citations.

Moreover, Scite allows researchers like you to assess the dependability of references in any particular context. It helps in evaluating the quality and impact of the research. It also provides better visualizations and metrics to understand the citation landscape of a specific paper or topic. If you have missed out on using this tool, try it today.

Innovative Citations: Scite analyzes how an article is referenced in other research. It can tell you if the citing article supports, contradicts, or simply mentions the original article.

Citation Context: Scite shows you how different sections of an article are being cited in other research, which helps you to understand how the original research is being used and interpreted by other researchers

Citation Reports: Generates reports that show you citation patterns and trends, which helps users to identify articles and authors in a related field

Large Dataset: Scite was training on more than 187 million articles, books, preprints, and other datasets, making it a solid choice for researchers

Not All Articles Cited Are Accessible: Although Scite offers full-text access for most articles cited, some publishers have not.

5. Google Scholar: A Comprehensive Search Engine for Academic Research

Google Scholar is a beacon for academic research, offering a straightforward platform akin to its browser counterpart. It’s a treasure trove of recent articles, research papers, and scholarly literature, simplifying the quest for up-to-date information with easy-to-identify tags for quick access.

Use natural language searching to find academic and literature topics.

Allow your search for gray literature for systematic reviews.

Cons

The content you find will not be reviewed thoroughly, and there are concerns about source credibility.

I should have shown significant literature topics.

6. PDFGear Copilot: Summarize and Extract Information From PDFs With Ease

PDFgear Copilot is an AI-powered assistant that extracts and summarizes information in PDF documents. It utilizes OpenAI’s ChatGPT language model to help users locate important information in documents while conducting research. It lets you chat with a document, ask questions about its contents, and quickly summarize entire PDFs.

Interact With PDFs: Summarize, analyze, and interact with PDF content through natural language processing.

ChatGPT Integration: Find essential information and get answers by using built-in ChatGPT functionality

Streamline PDF Workflows: Complete tasks, such as converting, printing, and saving PDFs with natural language processing

Support for Multiple Languages: PDFgear Copilot supports over 100 languages, making it accessible to a large number of users

No Dark Mode: PDFgear doesn’t come with an option to switch to dark mode, potentially alienating those who prefer it

7. Consensus: Gather Information From Peer-Reviewed Research

Consensus is a research tool that gathers information from published material and peer-reviewed articles. It is helpful for those who want to understand scientific subjects thoroughly by scanning for trustworthy and accurate research articles. This tool is handy for students and researchers in STEM and business fields.

Natural language processing is used to analyze data and verify the source.

Generate a summary of research queries and help get information for the early research stage.

Favor only for STEM and business fields, not humanities and fine arts.

Not suitable for rigorous and reproducible research works.

8. Trinka: Improve Grammar and Writing Style for Academic Research

It is one of the most commonly used AI tools for scholars and students. It helps with grammar and language correction for academic and technical writing. It has 3000+ grammar checks and tone, as well as style enhancements, which allow scholars to write better theses and projects without errors.

Trinka helps you document scientific findings and allows you to have a more technical tone and style without any difficulty. Therefore, Trinka is the most promising tool for academic research, as it helps you better document research papers and white papers.

Save time in checking grammar while doing academic writing.

Let you check grammar and correct spelling, and offer context suggestions based on your writing style.

The response time of the tool could be faster, which would cause a hindrance to quick feedback needs.

It may be challenging to understand the technical jargon.

9. Connected Papers: Create Visual Maps of Related Literature

Connected Papers is an innovative research tool that helps scientists and scholars efficiently explore relevant literature by providing a visual, similarity-based mapping of related academic papers. It uses circles to represent different papers. The size of the circle corresponds to the frequency of citations by other researchers.

Papers that closely resemble the original paper you provided are positioned closer together and connected by lines. The thickness of the line indicates the strength of the relationship between the documents. By following the connections between papers, you can use Connected Papers to explore new research areas within your field.

Similarity Graphs: Connected Papers produce a visual graph displaying related papers. However, unlike a traditional citation tree, it emphasizes semantic similarity, meaning that documents with shared citations and references are more connected.

Prior and Derivative Works: Connected Papers identifies influential prior works that have shaped the current research landscape. Additionally, it can reveal derivative works that build upon the original paper’s ideas.

Multi-Origin Graphs: You can enter multiple papers as a starting point so that CP can create a combined graph highlighting the relationships between them

Save Papers and Graphs: Save papers and graphs to revisit and explore topics further.

Limited Citation View: Unlike citation trees, Connected Papers doesn’t directly show how papers cite each other

10. Mendeley: Your Research Companion

Mendeley is a user-friendly AI tool for organizing, sharing, and citing your research papers properly in one place. It also helps you easily manage your PDFs, create better bibliographies, and annotate documents.

Moreover, this tool enables researchers to collaborate on projects and discover relevant articles based on their interests. Mendeley’s powerful features and integration into academic workflows make it a practical tool. It helps streamline your management and enhance collaboration within the scholarly community.

Offer citation styles for journals and boost citation efficiency.

Organize and share references for collaborative research.

Do not make PDF annotations as expected.

Users commonly face server downtime and syncing errors.

11. Litmaps: Visualize Relationships Between Academic Papers

Litmaps is a literature mapping tool that helps researchers discover new and relevant research papers, visualize the relationships between papers, and share their research. It works by using connectedness theory, which allows researchers to quickly scan Litmap’s network of academic papers around the documents they know, discovering vital related papers they may not know about. Litmaps can also generate reading lists and notify users when relevant new papers are published, making it easier to stay up-to-date on the latest research.

Search Academic Papers: Litmaps allows you to search a vast database of over 260 million academic papers to find relevant articles.

Mind Mapping: Litmaps lets you visualize your research by creating a map of interconnected articles and annotating them for a better understanding

Explore Research From Various Angles: Dynamic Exploration allows users to explore research from different angles by rearranging how papers are positioned on the map.

Collaboration Features: The platform allows you to share your research maps with colleagues, students, or advisors to facilitate collaboration

Limited Free Plan: Some features, like unlimited searches, are only available on paid plans.

12. Scholarcy: Automate Summarization and Information Extraction

Scholarly is an AI tool that improves academic research by automating the process of reading, summarizing, and extracting information. It can help you recognize figures, tables, and references in articles and grasp the main concepts.

Additionally, this tool has citation extraction features that allow users to organize and cite the sources used in the research. It also provides a literature review process, which enables users to save valuable time and effort.

Summarize the topics of research papers to save time and effort.

Offer links to the cited resources to access the research material.

The essay summary may need to be more precise, which may result in plagiarism.

The AI-generated summary will only cover some of the critical points of the research paper.

13. Jenni: Academic Writing Assistant

The following AI tool for research on our list is Jenni. It’s an AI-powered writing assistant designed to help students and researchers with academic writing tasks. It uses machine learning and natural language processing (NLP) to provide content suggestions, writing feedback, and research assistance. It’s handy for writing essays, research papers, literature reviews, and more. Jenni can also help with citations and references and check for plagiarism.

AskJenni: Use an AI research assistant that can help answer research questions and provide document-related clarifications

Citation and Reference Assistance: Jenni can properly format citations and references in styles like APA, MLA, and Chicago

AI Commands: Jenni can perform tasks like paraphrasing, rewriting, and simplifying existing text

AI Autocompletion: Jenni can suggest and complete sentences to help you write faster

Limited Content Types: Compared to other AI writing tools like Copy.ai and Jasper, Jenni.ai only offers a limited number of content types such as blogs, essays, emails, and free-flow writing

14. Knewton: Personalized Learning Powered by AI

Using artificial intelligence and machine learning algorithms, Knewton allows users to deliver

personalized educational content. You can tailor the tool for educational content according to individual needs and learning styles. This is a one-stop and easy-to-use tool in the academic learning phase.

Knewton also allows users to analyze student performance data, strengths, weaknesses, and progress. By leveraging AI's benefits, Knewton seeks to improve engagement, making it one of the best online learning platforms.

Provide you with a personalized learning experience with the help of adaptive learning.

Offer student interaction to keep cheating at bay by offering different questions to each student.

The problems in the tool are generic and need to align with the curriculum.

Offer feedback and flexible assessment options that impact students’ learning.

1. AI and Pattern Recognition: A Match Made in Research Heaven

Artificial intelligence algorithms can analyze large datasets and identify patterns, correlations, and trends that may not be easily recognizable by humans alone. This is particularly useful in genomics, climate science, and social sciences.

2. Natural Language Processing: AI That Understands Us

Natural language processing techniques enable computers to understand and generate human language. Researchers use natural language processing to analyze large volumes of textual data, extract information, summarize documents, and detect sentiment. It has applications in fields like literature, linguistics, and social sciences.

3. Computer Vision: AI That Sees It All

AI-based computer vision systems process and interpret visual data, such as images and videos. Researchers use computer vision to analyze medical images, satellite imagery, and surveillance footage. It has applications in fields like biology, astronomy, and environmental sciences.

4. Drug Discovery and Development: AI That Speeds Up the Process

AI is being used to accelerate the drug discovery process by predicting the properties and interactions of potential drug compounds. Machine learning models can analyze vast amounts of chemical and biological data to identify potential drug targets and design novel molecules.

5. Robotics and Automation: AI That Does the Boring Work

AI-powered robots and automated systems are increasingly used in academic research to perform lab experiments, data collection, and sample processing tasks. These robots can work 24/7, reducing human error and increasing efficiency in research workflows.

6. Recommendation Systems: AI That Knows What You Need

AI algorithms can provide personalized recommendations based on user preferences and behaviors. In academia, these systems can suggest relevant research papers, conferences, or collaborations based on a researcher’s interests and previous work.

7. Simulation and Modeling: AI That Makes Research Easier

AI techniques like machine learning and neural networks can create complex models and simulations. Researchers can use these models to study and predict phenomena of physics, economics, and social sciences.

8. Knowledge Discovery and Synthesis: AI That Finds What You Need

AI can assist researchers in discovering and synthesizing information from vast amounts of existing research papers, patents, and other academic sources. This can help identify research gaps, find relevant literature, and generate new insights.

1. Automate Literature Reviews and Data Collection

Ai-powered tools.

Use tools like Otio , Zotero, Mendeley, or Connected Papers to automatically gather and organize relevant research papers. Tip: Employ AI for keyword extraction, sentiment analysis, and clustering similar studies. This helps you quickly identify important themes and gaps in the literature.

2. Enhance Data Analysis

Data cleaning, ai tools like .

OpenRefine or Trifacta can efficiently clean and preprocess large datasets.

Pattern Recognition

AI tools such as TensorFlow, Scikit-learn, or KNIME can help you identify patterns, trends, and anomalies that traditional analysis methods might miss.

Automate repetitive data analysis tasks to save time and reduce errors.

3. Natural Language Processing (NLP) for Text Analysis

Utilize AI-driven NLP tools like GPT-4 (or other language models), TextRazor, or MonkeyLearn for text mining, sentiment analysis, and summarization.

Use NLP to analyze qualitative data, such as interviews or open-ended survey responses, to uncover insights that quantitative methods might miss.

4. Predictive Analytics and Modeling

Implement predictive models using tools like R or Python (with libraries such as Scikit-learn, PyTorch, or Keras).

Test different models to find the most accurate and reliable one for your research , and use AI to optimize parameters automatically.

5. Visualization and Data Presentation

Visualization tools.

Tools like Tableau, Power BI, or Google Data Studio often integrate AI to suggest optimal ways to visualize your data.

Use AI to generate and customize visualizations highlighting your research's key findings.

6. Stay Updated with AI-Driven Recommendations

Ai news aggregators.

Use AI-driven news aggregators like Feedly or Perplexity to stay up-to-date with your field's latest research and developments.

Set up AI-generated alerts for specific topics to receive updates on the most relevant and recent studies.

7. Ethical Considerations and Bias Detection

Bias detection tools.

Use AI tools like AI Fairness 360 or What-If Tool to assess and mitigate bias in your research data and models.

Regularly evaluate the ethical implications of using AI in your research, ensuring transparency and fairness.

8. Collaboration and Workflow Automation

Ai collaboration tools.

Platforms like Slack, Asana, or Notion can use AI to optimize project management and collaboration.

Automate task assignments and progress tracking with AI to improve team efficiency.

9. Enhance Writing and Editing

Ai writing assistants.

Tools like Grammarly or QuillBot can help improve the clarity, coherence, and style of your writing.

Use AI to draft and revise sections of your research paper, focusing on complex or technical content.

10. Ethical Use of AI in Research

Transparency.

Always disclose the use of AI in your methodology and ensure your results are reproducible.

To maintain the integrity of your research, be mindful of the ethical implications, such as data privacy and AI bias.

• Literature Search Template • ChatGPT Prompts For Research • How To Find Gaps In Research • Research Journal Example • How To Find Limitations Of A Study • How To Do A Literature Search • Research Concept Map • Meta-Analysis Methods • How To Identify Bias In A Source • Search Strategies For Research • Literature Search Template • How To Read A Research Paper Quickly • How to summarize a research article • How To Evaluate An Article • ChatGPT Summarize Paper • How To Take Notes For A Research Paper

Researchers face an uphill battle in sifting through the massive content available today. Information overload is accurate, and it creates severe hurdles to productivity. As a result of the web's rapid expansion, it has become increasingly more difficult to locate quality research material, and this daunting task is getting worse by the day. On the one hand, scholars can use search engines and academic databases to find relevant information.

However, these complex tools come with their own set of problems. For one, they often return thousands of results, many of which need to be more credible and valuable. Then, once you finally find something that looks promising, you have to download it, read it, take notes, and organize everything before you can even think about writing. Sound tedious? It is. And for researchers who are already pressed for time, this meticulous approach to academic writing can be a natural killer. In short, researchers today are stuck in a vicious cycle of information overload, making the academic writing process longer and more painful than ever.

The Rise of AI for Research

Fortunately, researchers have a new ally in the fight against information overload: artificial intelligence (AI). By leveraging the power of machine learning, AI takes the tediousness out of academic research so that you can focus on what matters: writing your paper. While traditional research methods haven’t changed much over the years, AI for research transforms how we approach academic writing.

With AI, researchers can sift through massive amounts of information, find the most relevant content, and summarize their findings. Then, once they start writing, AI can help with organization, structure, and even language suggestions to improve clarity and readability. Using AI for research can drastically reduce the time it takes to complete academic writing tasks so that you can get back to your studies and other essential activities.

Let Otio be your AI research and writing partner — try Otio for free today !

• Sharly AI Alternatives • AI For Summarizing Research Papers • Literature Review Tools • How To Identify Theoretical Framework In An Article • Graduate School Reading • Research Tools • AI For Academic Research • Research Paper Organizer • Best AI Tools For Research • Zotero Alternatives • Zotero Vs Endnote • ChatGPT For Research Papers • ChatGPT Literature Review • Mendeley Alternative • Unriddle AI Alternatives • Literature Matrix Generator • Research Assistant • Research Tools • Research Graphic Organizer • Good Websites for Research • Research Paper Graphic Organizer

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Brand Activism in the Service Industry: A Systematic Literature Review and Directions for Future Research and Practices

35 Pages Posted: 29 Aug 2024

Nilsah Cavdar-Aksoy

Galatasaray University

Nihal Yazici

Researchers are increasingly examining brand activism, where companies integrate strong social, environmental, or political stances into their core strategies. This study focuses on brand activism within the service industry. A systematic literature review was conducted, combining bibliometric analysis and structured review, following the SPAR-4-SLR protocol. 48 publications were analyzed without time limits to uncover themes within brand activism. The study refines understanding of brand activism in marketing strategy, suggests new research directions, and offers managerial insights. This research advances the study of brand activism by exploring its role in the service industry.

Keywords: Brand activism, Service Industry, Systematic literature review, Structural literature review, Bibliometrics literature review, Hybrid Techniques, SPAR-4-SLR protocol

Suggested Citation: Suggested Citation

Galatasaray University ( email )

Cyraoan Cad. 102 Ortakoy, 80840 Turkey

Nihal Yazici (Contact Author)

Do you have a job opening that you would like to promote on ssrn, paper statistics, related ejournals, managerial marketing ejournal.

Subscribe to this fee journal for more curated articles on this topic

Information Policy, Ethics, Access & Use eJournal

IMAGES

Sample of Research Literature Review
Writing a Research Paper Literature Review in APA or MLA
How to write a literature review in research paper
15 Reasons Why Literature Review Is Important?
(PDF) Writing a Literature Review Research Paper: A step-by-step approach
SOLUTION: How to write a review of related literature (RRL)

VIDEO

Part 03: Literature Review (Research Methods and Methodology) By Dr. Walter
Why to do Literature Review?| Research Methods in Education,
What is Literature Review?
Identifying Sources for Literature Review
Approaches to Literature Review
116. Literature Review #literaturesearch in research #Basic Course in Biomedical Research #bcbr

COMMENTS

How to Write a Literature Review
What is a literature review? A literature review is a survey of scholarly sources on a specific topic. It provides an overview of current knowledge, allowing you to identify relevant theories, methods, and gaps in the existing research that you can later apply to your paper, thesis, or dissertation topic.
Writing a Literature Review
Writing a Literature Review. A literature review is a document or section of a document that collects key sources on a topic and discusses those sources in conversation with each other (also called synthesis). The lit review is an important genre in many disciplines, not just literature (i.e., the study of works of literature such as novels and ...
What is a Literature Review? How to Write It (with Examples)
A literature review is a comprehensive analysis of existing research on a topic, identifying trends, gaps, and insights to inform new scholarly contributions. Read this comprehensive article to learn how to write a literature review, with examples.
Literature review as a research methodology: An overview and guidelines
This paper discusses literature review as a methodology for conducting research and offers an overview of different types of reviews, as well as some guidelines to how to both conduct and evaluate a literature review paper. It also discusses common pitfalls and how to get literature reviews published. 1.
Research Guides: Literature Reviews: What is a Literature Review?
A literature review is a review and synthesis of existing research on a topic or research question. A literature review is meant to analyze the scholarly literature, make connections across writings and identify strengths, weaknesses, trends, and missing conversations. A literature review should address different aspects of a topic as it ...
What is a Literature Review?
A literature review is a survey of scholarly sources on a specific topic. It provides an overview of current knowledge, allowing you to identify relevant theories, methods, and gaps in the existing research. There are five key steps to writing a literature review: Search for relevant literature. Evaluate sources. Identify themes, debates and gaps.
YSN Doctoral Programs: Steps in Conducting a Literature Review
What is a literature review? A literature review is an integrated analysis -- not just a summary-- of scholarly writings and other relevant evidence related directly to your research question. That is, it represents a synthesis of the evidence that provides background information on your topic and shows a association between the evidence and your research question.
How to write a literature review in 6 steps
How do you write a good literature review? This step-by-step guide on how to write an excellent literature review covers all aspects of planning and writing literature reviews for academic papers and theses.
Writing a literature review
Writing a literature review requires a range of skills to gather, sort, evaluate and summarise peer-reviewed published data into a relevant and informative unbiased narrative. Digital access to research papers, academic texts, review articles, reference databases and public data sets are all sources of information that are available to enrich ...
How to Write a Literature Review: Six Steps to Get You from ...
How to Write a Literature Review. Step One: Decide on your areas of research: Before you begin to search for articles or books, decide beforehand what areas you are going to research. Make sure that you only get articles and books in those areas, even if you come across fascinating books in other areas.
Literature Review: The What, Why and How-to Guide
Narrative review: The purpose of this type of review is to describe the current state of the research on a specific topic/research and to offer a critical analysis of the literature reviewed. Studies are grouped by research/theoretical categories, and themes and trends, strengths and weakness, and gaps are identified. The review ends with a conclusion section which summarizes the findings ...
What is a literature review? [with examples]
Definition. A literature review is an assessment of the sources in a chosen topic of research. In a literature review, you're expected to report on the existing scholarly conversation, without adding new contributions. If you are currently writing one, you've come to the right place. In the following paragraphs, we will explain: the objective ...
What is a literature review?
A literature or narrative review is a comprehensive review and analysis of the published literature on a specific topic or research question. The literature that is reviewed contains: books, articles, academic articles, conference proceedings, association papers, and dissertations. It contains the most pertinent studies and points to important ...
Write a Literature Review
Literature reviews take time. Here is some general information to know before you start. VIDEO -- This video is a great overview of the entire process. (2020; North Carolina State University Libraries) --The transcript is included. --This is for everyone; ignore the mention of "graduate students". --9.5 minutes, and every second is important.
How To Write A Literature Review
Learn everything you need to know about how to write literature reviews — how long it should be, the different types, how to write a literature review, among many other things.
Literature Review
The Literature Review will place your research in context. It will help you and your readers: Locate patterns, relationships, connections, agreements, disagreements, & gaps in understanding. Identify methodological and theoretical foundations. Identify landmark and exemplary works. Situate your voice in a broader conversation with other writers ...
Writing a literature review
How to write a literature review in 6 steps. How do you write a good literature review? This step-by-step guide on how to write an excellent literature review covers all aspects of planning and writing literature reviews for academic papers and theses.
Ten Simple Rules for Writing a Literature Review
The bottom-right situation (many literature reviews but few research papers) is not just a theoretical situation; it applies, for example, to the study of the impacts of climate change on plant diseases, where there appear to be more literature reviews than research studies [33].
Types of Literature Review
Explore various types of literature review —Narrative, Systematic, Scoping, Integrative, and Rapid reviews for comprehensive research insights.
Reviewing literature for research: Doing it the right way
Selecting the right quality of literature is the key to successful research literature review. The quality can be estimated by what is known as "The Evidence Pyramid.". The level of evidence of references obtained from the aforementioned search tools are depicted in Figure 9. Systematic reviews obtained from Cochrane library constitute ...
Why Do A Literature Review?
Why Do A Literature Review? Besides the obvious reason for students -- because it is assigned! -- a literature review helps you explore the research that has come before you, to see how your research question has (or has not) already been addressed.
Writing an effective literature review
Writing an effective literature review. In the Writer's Craft section we offer simple tips to improve your writing in one of three areas: Energy, Clarity and Persuasiveness. Each entry focuses on a key writing feature or strategy, illustrates how it commonly goes wrong, teaches the grammatical underpinnings necessary to understand it and ...
PDF LITERATURE REVIEWS
The literature review is an opportunity to discover and craft your scholarly identity through the kinds of questions you engage, the discussions you enter, the critiques you launch, and the research you advance.
LSBU Library: Literature Reviews: What is a Literature Review?
The research, the body of current literature, and the particular objectives should all influence the structure of a literature review. It is also critical to remember that creating a literature review is an ongoing process - as one reads and analyzes the literature, one's understanding may change, which could require rearranging the literature ...
Literature Review Guidelines
GOALS OF A LITERATURE REVIEW: Before doing work in primary sources, historians must know what has been written on their topic. They must be familiar with theories and arguments-as well as facts-that appear in secondary sources. Before you proceed with your research project, you too must be familiar with the literature: you do not want to ...
What is a Living Literature Review?
Good Questions Review by Paul Kellner: the relationship between academic research and policy impact; We are now seeking pre-proposals from individuals to write living literature reviews. We are particularly interested in reviews on neglected topics relevant to policymaking. Ideal candidates will have a PhD or equivalent expertise in their ...
Comprehensive Guide to Crafting Effective Literature Reviews for
Speaker 1: A literature review is an objective, concise, critical summary of published research literature relevant to a topic being researched in an article. A good literature review will order articles and books to focus on unresolved debates, inconsistencies, tensions, and questions in a research field.
15 Best AI For Research (Quick and Efficient)
Additionally, this tool has citation extraction features that allow users to organize and cite the sources used in the research. It also provides a literature review process, which enables users to save valuable time and effort. Pros . Summarize the topics of research papers to save time and effort.
Brand Activism in the Service Industry: A Systematic Literature Review
A systematic literature review was conducted, combining bibliometric analysis and structured review, following the SPAR-4-SLR protocol. 48 publications were analyzed without time limits to uncover themes within brand activism. ... Brand Activism in the Service Industry: A Systematic Literature Review and Directions for Future Research and ...
Acupuncture: Effectiveness and Safety
Research has shown that acupuncture may be helpful for several pain conditions, including back or neck pain, knee pain associated with osteoarthritis, and postoperative pain. ... In a 2018 review, data from 12 studies (8,003 participants) showed acupuncture was more effective than no treatment for back or neck pain, and data from 10 studies ...

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Writing a Literature Review

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What is a Literature Review? How to Write It (with Examples)

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Literature review example

Literature Review on Climate Change Impacts on Biodiversity:

How to write a good literature review

Conducting a literature review

Choose a Topic and Define the Research Question:

Decide on the Scope of Your Review:

Select Databases for Searches:

Conduct Searches and Keep Track:

Review the Literature:

Organize and Write Your Literature Review:

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YSN Doctoral Programs: Steps in Conducting a Literature Review

What is a literature review?

APA7 Style resources

1. Choose a topic. Define your research question.

2. Decide on the scope of your review

3. Select the databases you will use to conduct your searches.

4. Conduct your searches to find the evidence. Keep track of your searches.

Review the literature

How to Write a Literature Review: Six Steps to Get You from Start to Finish

How to Write a Literature Review

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