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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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Table of contents

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.

Literature review guide

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how to write a literature review in a research paper

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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.

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How To Write A Literature Review - A Complete Guide

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Table of Contents

A literature review is much more than just another section in your research paper. It forms the very foundation of your research. It is a formal piece of writing where you analyze the existing theoretical framework, principles, and assumptions and use that as a base to shape your approach to the research question.

Curating and drafting a solid literature review section not only lends more credibility to your research paper but also makes your research tighter and better focused. But, writing literature reviews is a difficult task. It requires extensive reading, plus you have to consider market trends and technological and political changes, which tend to change in the blink of an eye.

Now streamline your literature review process with the help of SciSpace Copilot. With this AI research assistant, you can efficiently synthesize and analyze a vast amount of information, identify key themes and trends, and uncover gaps in the existing research. Get real-time explanations, summaries, and answers to your questions for the paper you're reviewing, making navigating and understanding the complex literature landscape easier.

Perform Literature reviews using SciSpace Copilot

In this comprehensive guide, we will explore everything from the definition of a literature review, its appropriate length, various types of literature reviews, and how to write one.

What is a literature review?

A literature review is a collation of survey, research, critical evaluation, and assessment of the existing literature in a preferred domain.

Eminent researcher and academic Arlene Fink, in her book Conducting Research Literature Reviews , defines it as the following:

“A literature review surveys books, scholarly articles, and any other sources relevant to a particular issue, area of research, or theory, and by so doing, provides a description, summary, and critical evaluation of these works in relation to the research problem being investigated.

Literature reviews are designed to provide an overview of sources you have explored while researching a particular topic, and to demonstrate to your readers how your research fits within a larger field of study.”

Simply put, a literature review can be defined as a critical discussion of relevant pre-existing research around your research question and carving out a definitive place for your study in the existing body of knowledge. Literature reviews can be presented in multiple ways: a section of an article, the whole research paper itself, or a chapter of your thesis.

A literature review paper

A literature review does function as a summary of sources, but it also allows you to analyze further, interpret, and examine the stated theories, methods, viewpoints, and, of course, the gaps in the existing content.

As an author, you can discuss and interpret the research question and its various aspects and debate your adopted methods to support the claim.

What is the purpose of a literature review?

A literature review is meant to help your readers understand the relevance of your research question and where it fits within the existing body of knowledge. As a researcher, you should use it to set the context, build your argument, and establish the need for your study.

What is the importance of a literature review?

The literature review is a critical part of research papers because it helps you:

  • Gain an in-depth understanding of your research question and the surrounding area
  • Convey that you have a thorough understanding of your research area and are up-to-date with the latest changes and advancements
  • Establish how your research is connected or builds on the existing body of knowledge and how it could contribute to further research
  • Elaborate on the validity and suitability of your theoretical framework and research methodology
  • Identify and highlight gaps and shortcomings in the existing body of knowledge and how things need to change
  • Convey to readers how your study is different or how it contributes to the research area

How long should a literature review be?

Ideally, the literature review should take up 15%-40% of the total length of your manuscript. So, if you have a 10,000-word research paper, the minimum word count could be 1500.

Your literature review format depends heavily on the kind of manuscript you are writing — an entire chapter in case of doctoral theses, a part of the introductory section in a research article, to a full-fledged review article that examines the previously published research on a topic.

Another determining factor is the type of research you are doing. The literature review section tends to be longer for secondary research projects than primary research projects.

What are the different types of literature reviews?

All literature reviews are not the same. There are a variety of possible approaches that you can take. It all depends on the type of research you are pursuing.

Here are the different types of literature reviews:

Argumentative review

It is called an argumentative review when you carefully present literature that only supports or counters a specific argument or premise to establish a viewpoint.

Integrative review

It is a type of literature review focused on building a comprehensive understanding of a topic by combining available theoretical frameworks and empirical evidence.

Methodological review

This approach delves into the ''how'' and the ''what" of the research question —  you cannot look at the outcome in isolation; you should also review the methodology used.

Systematic review

This form consists of an overview of existing evidence pertinent to a clearly formulated research question, which uses pre-specified and standardized methods to identify and critically appraise relevant research and collect, report, and analyze data from the studies included in the review.

Meta-analysis review

Meta-analysis uses statistical methods to summarize the results of independent studies. By combining information from all relevant studies, meta-analysis can provide more precise estimates of the effects than those derived from the individual studies included within a review.

Historical review

Historical literature reviews focus on examining research throughout a period, often starting with the first time an issue, concept, theory, or phenomenon emerged in the literature, then tracing its evolution within the scholarship of a discipline. The purpose is to place research in a historical context to show familiarity with state-of-the-art developments and identify future research's likely directions.

Theoretical Review

This form aims to examine the corpus of theory accumulated regarding an issue, concept, theory, and phenomenon. The theoretical literature review helps to establish what theories exist, the relationships between them, the degree the existing approaches have been investigated, and to develop new hypotheses to be tested.

Scoping Review

The Scoping Review is often used at the beginning of an article, dissertation, or research proposal. It is conducted before the research to highlight gaps in the existing body of knowledge and explains why the project should be greenlit.

State-of-the-Art Review

The State-of-the-Art review is conducted periodically, focusing on the most recent research. It describes what is currently known, understood, or agreed upon regarding the research topic and highlights where there are still disagreements.

Can you use the first person in a literature review?

When writing literature reviews, you should avoid the usage of first-person pronouns. It means that instead of "I argue that" or "we argue that," the appropriate expression would be "this research paper argues that."

Do you need an abstract for a literature review?

Ideally, yes. It is always good to have a condensed summary that is self-contained and independent of the rest of your review. As for how to draft one, you can follow the same fundamental idea when preparing an abstract for a literature review. It should also include:

  • The research topic and your motivation behind selecting it
  • A one-sentence thesis statement
  • An explanation of the kinds of literature featured in the review
  • Summary of what you've learned
  • Conclusions you drew from the literature you reviewed
  • Potential implications and future scope for research

Here's an example of the abstract of a literature review

Abstract-of-a-literature-review

Is a literature review written in the past tense?

Yes, the literature review should ideally be written in the past tense. You should not use the present or future tense when writing one. The exceptions are when you have statements describing events that happened earlier than the literature you are reviewing or events that are currently occurring; then, you can use the past perfect or present perfect tenses.

How many sources for a literature review?

There are multiple approaches to deciding how many sources to include in a literature review section. The first approach would be to look level you are at as a researcher. For instance, a doctoral thesis might need 60+ sources. In contrast, you might only need to refer to 5-15 sources at the undergraduate level.

The second approach is based on the kind of literature review you are doing — whether it is merely a chapter of your paper or if it is a self-contained paper in itself. When it is just a chapter, sources should equal the total number of pages in your article's body. In the second scenario, you need at least three times as many sources as there are pages in your work.

Quick tips on how to write a literature review

To know how to write a literature review, you must clearly understand its impact and role in establishing your work as substantive research material.

You need to follow the below-mentioned steps, to write a literature review:

  • Outline the purpose behind the literature review
  • Search relevant literature
  • Examine and assess the relevant resources
  • Discover connections by drawing deep insights from the resources
  • Structure planning to write a good literature review

1. Outline and identify the purpose of  a literature review

As a first step on how to write a literature review, you must know what the research question or topic is and what shape you want your literature review to take. Ensure you understand the research topic inside out, or else seek clarifications. You must be able to the answer below questions before you start:

  • How many sources do I need to include?
  • What kind of sources should I analyze?
  • How much should I critically evaluate each source?
  • Should I summarize, synthesize or offer a critique of the sources?
  • Do I need to include any background information or definitions?

Additionally, you should know that the narrower your research topic is, the swifter it will be for you to restrict the number of sources to be analyzed.

2. Search relevant literature

Dig deeper into search engines to discover what has already been published around your chosen topic. Make sure you thoroughly go through appropriate reference sources like books, reports, journal articles, government docs, and web-based resources.

You must prepare a list of keywords and their different variations. You can start your search from any library’s catalog, provided you are an active member of that institution. The exact keywords can be extended to widen your research over other databases and academic search engines like:

  • Google Scholar
  • Microsoft Academic
  • Science.gov

Besides, it is not advisable to go through every resource word by word. Alternatively, what you can do is you can start by reading the abstract and then decide whether that source is relevant to your research or not.

Additionally, you must spend surplus time assessing the quality and relevance of resources. It would help if you tried preparing a list of citations to ensure that there lies no repetition of authors, publications, or articles in the literature review.

3. Examine and assess the sources

It is nearly impossible for you to go through every detail in the research article. So rather than trying to fetch every detail, you have to analyze and decide which research sources resemble closest and appear relevant to your chosen domain.

While analyzing the sources, you should look to find out answers to questions like:

  • What question or problem has the author been describing and debating?
  • What is the definition of critical aspects?
  • How well the theories, approach, and methodology have been explained?
  • Whether the research theory used some conventional or new innovative approach?
  • How relevant are the key findings of the work?
  • In what ways does it relate to other sources on the same topic?
  • What challenges does this research paper pose to the existing theory
  • What are the possible contributions or benefits it adds to the subject domain?

Be always mindful that you refer only to credible and authentic resources. It would be best if you always take references from different publications to validate your theory.

Always keep track of important information or data you can present in your literature review right from the beginning. It will help steer your path from any threats of plagiarism and also make it easier to curate an annotated bibliography or reference section.

4. Discover connections

At this stage, you must start deciding on the argument and structure of your literature review. To accomplish this, you must discover and identify the relations and connections between various resources while drafting your abstract.

A few aspects that you should be aware of while writing a literature review include:

  • Rise to prominence: Theories and methods that have gained reputation and supporters over time.
  • Constant scrutiny: Concepts or theories that repeatedly went under examination.
  • Contradictions and conflicts: Theories, both the supporting and the contradictory ones, for the research topic.
  • Knowledge gaps: What exactly does it fail to address, and how to bridge them with further research?
  • Influential resources: Significant research projects available that have been upheld as milestones or perhaps, something that can modify the current trends

Once you join the dots between various past research works, it will be easier for you to draw a conclusion and identify your contribution to the existing knowledge base.

5. Structure planning to write a good literature review

There exist different ways towards planning and executing the structure of a literature review. The format of a literature review varies and depends upon the length of the research.

Like any other research paper, the literature review format must contain three sections: introduction, body, and conclusion. The goals and objectives of the research question determine what goes inside these three sections.

Nevertheless, a good literature review can be structured according to the chronological, thematic, methodological, or theoretical framework approach.

Literature review samples

1. Standalone

Standalone-Literature-Review

2. As a section of a research paper

Literature-review-as-a-section-of-a-research-paper

How SciSpace Discover makes literature review a breeze?

SciSpace Discover is a one-stop solution to do an effective literature search and get barrier-free access to scientific knowledge. It is an excellent repository where you can find millions of only peer-reviewed articles and full-text PDF files. Here’s more on how you can use it:

Find the right information

Find-the-right-information-using-SciSpace

Find what you want quickly and easily with comprehensive search filters that let you narrow down papers according to PDF availability, year of publishing, document type, and affiliated institution. Moreover, you can sort the results based on the publishing date, citation count, and relevance.

Assess credibility of papers quickly

Assess-credibility-of-papers-quickly-using-SciSpace

When doing the literature review, it is critical to establish the quality of your sources. They form the foundation of your research. SciSpace Discover helps you assess the quality of a source by providing an overview of its references, citations, and performance metrics.

Get the complete picture in no time

SciSpace's-personalized-informtion-engine

SciSpace Discover’s personalized suggestion engine helps you stay on course and get the complete picture of the topic from one place. Every time you visit an article page, it provides you links to related papers. Besides that, it helps you understand what’s trending, who are the top authors, and who are the leading publishers on a topic.

Make referring sources super easy

Make-referring-pages-super-easy-with-SciSpace

To ensure you don't lose track of your sources, you must start noting down your references when doing the literature review. SciSpace Discover makes this step effortless. Click the 'cite' button on an article page, and you will receive preloaded citation text in multiple styles — all you've to do is copy-paste it into your manuscript.

Final tips on how to write a literature review

A massive chunk of time and effort is required to write a good literature review. But, if you go about it systematically, you'll be able to save a ton of time and build a solid foundation for your research.

We hope this guide has helped you answer several key questions you have about writing literature reviews.

Would you like to explore SciSpace Discover and kick off your literature search right away? You can get started here .

Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs)

1. how to start a literature review.

• What questions do you want to answer?

• What sources do you need to answer these questions?

• What information do these sources contain?

• How can you use this information to answer your questions?

2. What to include in a literature review?

• A brief background of the problem or issue

• What has previously been done to address the problem or issue

• A description of what you will do in your project

• How this study will contribute to research on the subject

3. Why literature review is important?

The literature review is an important part of any research project because it allows the writer to look at previous studies on a topic and determine existing gaps in the literature, as well as what has already been done. It will also help them to choose the most appropriate method for their own study.

4. How to cite a literature review in APA format?

To cite a literature review in APA style, you need to provide the author's name, the title of the article, and the year of publication. For example: Patel, A. B., & Stokes, G. S. (2012). The relationship between personality and intelligence: A meta-analysis of longitudinal research. Personality and Individual Differences, 53(1), 16-21

5. What are the components of a literature review?

• A brief introduction to the topic, including its background and context. The introduction should also include a rationale for why the study is being conducted and what it will accomplish.

• A description of the methodologies used in the study. This can include information about data collection methods, sample size, and statistical analyses.

• A presentation of the findings in an organized format that helps readers follow along with the author's conclusions.

6. What are common errors in writing literature review?

• Not spending enough time to critically evaluate the relevance of resources, observations and conclusions.

• Totally relying on secondary data while ignoring primary data.

• Letting your personal bias seep into your interpretation of existing literature.

• No detailed explanation of the procedure to discover and identify an appropriate literature review.

7. What are the 5 C's of writing literature review?

• Cite - the sources you utilized and referenced in your research.

• Compare - existing arguments, hypotheses, methodologies, and conclusions found in the knowledge base.

• Contrast - the arguments, topics, methodologies, approaches, and disputes that may be found in the literature.

• Critique - the literature and describe the ideas and opinions you find more convincing and why.

• Connect - the various studies you reviewed in your research.

8. How many sources should a literature review have?

When it is just a chapter, sources should equal the total number of pages in your article's body. if it is a self-contained paper in itself, you need at least three times as many sources as there are pages in your work.

9. Can literature review have diagrams?

• To represent an abstract idea or concept

• To explain the steps of a process or procedure

• To help readers understand the relationships between different concepts

10. How old should sources be in a literature review?

Sources for a literature review should be as current as possible or not older than ten years. The only exception to this rule is if you are reviewing a historical topic and need to use older sources.

11. What are the types of literature review?

• Argumentative review

• Integrative review

• Methodological review

• Systematic review

• Meta-analysis review

• Historical review

• Theoretical review

• Scoping review

• State-of-the-Art review

12. Is a literature review mandatory?

Yes. Literature review is a mandatory part of any research project. It is a critical step in the process that allows you to establish the scope of your research, and provide a background for the rest of your work.

But before you go,

  • Six Online Tools for Easy Literature Review
  • Evaluating literature review: systematic vs. scoping reviews
  • Systematic Approaches to a Successful Literature Review
  • Writing Integrative Literature Reviews: Guidelines and Examples

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How To Write An A-Grade Literature Review

3 straightforward steps (with examples) + free template.

By: Derek Jansen (MBA) | Expert Reviewed By: Dr. Eunice Rautenbach | October 2019

Quality research is about building onto the existing work of others , “standing on the shoulders of giants”, as Newton put it. The literature review chapter of your dissertation, thesis or research project is where you synthesise this prior work and lay the theoretical foundation for your own research.

Long story short, this chapter is a pretty big deal, which is why you want to make sure you get it right . In this post, I’ll show you exactly how to write a literature review in three straightforward steps, so you can conquer this vital chapter (the smart way).

Overview: The Literature Review Process

  • Understanding the “ why “
  • Finding the relevant literature
  • Cataloguing and synthesising the information
  • Outlining & writing up your literature review
  • Example of a literature review

But first, the “why”…

Before we unpack how to write the literature review chapter, we’ve got to look at the why . To put it bluntly, if you don’t understand the function and purpose of the literature review process, there’s no way you can pull it off well. So, what exactly is the purpose of the literature review?

Well, there are (at least) four core functions:

  • For you to gain an understanding (and demonstrate this understanding) of where the research is at currently, what the key arguments and disagreements are.
  • For you to identify the gap(s) in the literature and then use this as justification for your own research topic.
  • To help you build a conceptual framework for empirical testing (if applicable to your research topic).
  • To inform your methodological choices and help you source tried and tested questionnaires (for interviews ) and measurement instruments (for surveys ).

Most students understand the first point but don’t give any thought to the rest. To get the most from the literature review process, you must keep all four points front of mind as you review the literature (more on this shortly), or you’ll land up with a wonky foundation.

Okay – with the why out the way, let’s move on to the how . As mentioned above, writing your literature review is a process, which I’ll break down into three steps:

  • Finding the most suitable literature
  • Understanding , distilling and organising the literature
  • Planning and writing up your literature review chapter

Importantly, you must complete steps one and two before you start writing up your chapter. I know it’s very tempting, but don’t try to kill two birds with one stone and write as you read. You’ll invariably end up wasting huge amounts of time re-writing and re-shaping, or you’ll just land up with a disjointed, hard-to-digest mess . Instead, you need to read first and distil the information, then plan and execute the writing.

Free Webinar: Literature Review 101

Step 1: Find the relevant literature

Naturally, the first step in the literature review journey is to hunt down the existing research that’s relevant to your topic. While you probably already have a decent base of this from your research proposal , you need to expand on this substantially in the dissertation or thesis itself.

Essentially, you need to be looking for any existing literature that potentially helps you answer your research question (or develop it, if that’s not yet pinned down). There are numerous ways to find relevant literature, but I’ll cover my top four tactics here. I’d suggest combining all four methods to ensure that nothing slips past you:

Method 1 – Google Scholar Scrubbing

Google’s academic search engine, Google Scholar , is a great starting point as it provides a good high-level view of the relevant journal articles for whatever keyword you throw at it. Most valuably, it tells you how many times each article has been cited, which gives you an idea of how credible (or at least, popular) it is. Some articles will be free to access, while others will require an account, which brings us to the next method.

Method 2 – University Database Scrounging

Generally, universities provide students with access to an online library, which provides access to many (but not all) of the major journals.

So, if you find an article using Google Scholar that requires paid access (which is quite likely), search for that article in your university’s database – if it’s listed there, you’ll have access. Note that, generally, the search engine capabilities of these databases are poor, so make sure you search for the exact article name, or you might not find it.

Method 3 – Journal Article Snowballing

At the end of every academic journal article, you’ll find a list of references. As with any academic writing, these references are the building blocks of the article, so if the article is relevant to your topic, there’s a good chance a portion of the referenced works will be too. Do a quick scan of the titles and see what seems relevant, then search for the relevant ones in your university’s database.

Method 4 – Dissertation Scavenging

Similar to Method 3 above, you can leverage other students’ dissertations. All you have to do is skim through literature review chapters of existing dissertations related to your topic and you’ll find a gold mine of potential literature. Usually, your university will provide you with access to previous students’ dissertations, but you can also find a much larger selection in the following databases:

  • Open Access Theses & Dissertations
  • Stanford SearchWorks

Keep in mind that dissertations and theses are not as academically sound as published, peer-reviewed journal articles (because they’re written by students, not professionals), so be sure to check the credibility of any sources you find using this method. You can do this by assessing the citation count of any given article in Google Scholar. If you need help with assessing the credibility of any article, or with finding relevant research in general, you can chat with one of our Research Specialists .

Alright – with a good base of literature firmly under your belt, it’s time to move onto the next step.

Need a helping hand?

how to write a literature review in a research paper

Step 2: Log, catalogue and synthesise

Once you’ve built a little treasure trove of articles, it’s time to get reading and start digesting the information – what does it all mean?

While I present steps one and two (hunting and digesting) as sequential, in reality, it’s more of a back-and-forth tango – you’ll read a little , then have an idea, spot a new citation, or a new potential variable, and then go back to searching for articles. This is perfectly natural – through the reading process, your thoughts will develop , new avenues might crop up, and directional adjustments might arise. This is, after all, one of the main purposes of the literature review process (i.e. to familiarise yourself with the current state of research in your field).

As you’re working through your treasure chest, it’s essential that you simultaneously start organising the information. There are three aspects to this:

  • Logging reference information
  • Building an organised catalogue
  • Distilling and synthesising the information

I’ll discuss each of these below:

2.1 – Log the reference information

As you read each article, you should add it to your reference management software. I usually recommend Mendeley for this purpose (see the Mendeley 101 video below), but you can use whichever software you’re comfortable with. Most importantly, make sure you load EVERY article you read into your reference manager, even if it doesn’t seem very relevant at the time.

2.2 – Build an organised catalogue

In the beginning, you might feel confident that you can remember who said what, where, and what their main arguments were. Trust me, you won’t. If you do a thorough review of the relevant literature (as you must!), you’re going to read many, many articles, and it’s simply impossible to remember who said what, when, and in what context . Also, without the bird’s eye view that a catalogue provides, you’ll miss connections between various articles, and have no view of how the research developed over time. Simply put, it’s essential to build your own catalogue of the literature.

I would suggest using Excel to build your catalogue, as it allows you to run filters, colour code and sort – all very useful when your list grows large (which it will). How you lay your spreadsheet out is up to you, but I’d suggest you have the following columns (at minimum):

  • Author, date, title – Start with three columns containing this core information. This will make it easy for you to search for titles with certain words, order research by date, or group by author.
  • Categories or keywords – You can either create multiple columns, one for each category/theme and then tick the relevant categories, or you can have one column with keywords.
  • Key arguments/points – Use this column to succinctly convey the essence of the article, the key arguments and implications thereof for your research.
  • Context – Note the socioeconomic context in which the research was undertaken. For example, US-based, respondents aged 25-35, lower- income, etc. This will be useful for making an argument about gaps in the research.
  • Methodology – Note which methodology was used and why. Also, note any issues you feel arise due to the methodology. Again, you can use this to make an argument about gaps in the research.
  • Quotations – Note down any quoteworthy lines you feel might be useful later.
  • Notes – Make notes about anything not already covered. For example, linkages to or disagreements with other theories, questions raised but unanswered, shortcomings or limitations, and so forth.

If you’d like, you can try out our free catalog template here (see screenshot below).

Excel literature review template

2.3 – Digest and synthesise

Most importantly, as you work through the literature and build your catalogue, you need to synthesise all the information in your own mind – how does it all fit together? Look for links between the various articles and try to develop a bigger picture view of the state of the research. Some important questions to ask yourself are:

  • What answers does the existing research provide to my own research questions ?
  • Which points do the researchers agree (and disagree) on?
  • How has the research developed over time?
  • Where do the gaps in the current research lie?

To help you develop a big-picture view and synthesise all the information, you might find mind mapping software such as Freemind useful. Alternatively, if you’re a fan of physical note-taking, investing in a large whiteboard might work for you.

Mind mapping is a useful way to plan your literature review.

Step 3: Outline and write it up!

Once you’re satisfied that you have digested and distilled all the relevant literature in your mind, it’s time to put pen to paper (or rather, fingers to keyboard). There are two steps here – outlining and writing:

3.1 – Draw up your outline

Having spent so much time reading, it might be tempting to just start writing up without a clear structure in mind. However, it’s critically important to decide on your structure and develop a detailed outline before you write anything. Your literature review chapter needs to present a clear, logical and an easy to follow narrative – and that requires some planning. Don’t try to wing it!

Naturally, you won’t always follow the plan to the letter, but without a detailed outline, you’re more than likely going to end up with a disjointed pile of waffle , and then you’re going to spend a far greater amount of time re-writing, hacking and patching. The adage, “measure twice, cut once” is very suitable here.

In terms of structure, the first decision you’ll have to make is whether you’ll lay out your review thematically (into themes) or chronologically (by date/period). The right choice depends on your topic, research objectives and research questions, which we discuss in this article .

Once that’s decided, you need to draw up an outline of your entire chapter in bullet point format. Try to get as detailed as possible, so that you know exactly what you’ll cover where, how each section will connect to the next, and how your entire argument will develop throughout the chapter. Also, at this stage, it’s a good idea to allocate rough word count limits for each section, so that you can identify word count problems before you’ve spent weeks or months writing!

PS – check out our free literature review chapter template…

3.2 – Get writing

With a detailed outline at your side, it’s time to start writing up (finally!). At this stage, it’s common to feel a bit of writer’s block and find yourself procrastinating under the pressure of finally having to put something on paper. To help with this, remember that the objective of the first draft is not perfection – it’s simply to get your thoughts out of your head and onto paper, after which you can refine them. The structure might change a little, the word count allocations might shift and shuffle, and you might add or remove a section – that’s all okay. Don’t worry about all this on your first draft – just get your thoughts down on paper.

start writing

Once you’ve got a full first draft (however rough it may be), step away from it for a day or two (longer if you can) and then come back at it with fresh eyes. Pay particular attention to the flow and narrative – does it fall fit together and flow from one section to another smoothly? Now’s the time to try to improve the linkage from each section to the next, tighten up the writing to be more concise, trim down word count and sand it down into a more digestible read.

Once you’ve done that, give your writing to a friend or colleague who is not a subject matter expert and ask them if they understand the overall discussion. The best way to assess this is to ask them to explain the chapter back to you. This technique will give you a strong indication of which points were clearly communicated and which weren’t. If you’re working with Grad Coach, this is a good time to have your Research Specialist review your chapter.

Finally, tighten it up and send it off to your supervisor for comment. Some might argue that you should be sending your work to your supervisor sooner than this (indeed your university might formally require this), but in my experience, supervisors are extremely short on time (and often patience), so, the more refined your chapter is, the less time they’ll waste on addressing basic issues (which you know about already) and the more time they’ll spend on valuable feedback that will increase your mark-earning potential.

Literature Review Example

In the video below, we unpack an actual literature review so that you can see how all the core components come together in reality.

Let’s Recap

In this post, we’ve covered how to research and write up a high-quality literature review chapter. Let’s do a quick recap of the key takeaways:

  • It is essential to understand the WHY of the literature review before you read or write anything. Make sure you understand the 4 core functions of the process.
  • The first step is to hunt down the relevant literature . You can do this using Google Scholar, your university database, the snowballing technique and by reviewing other dissertations and theses.
  • Next, you need to log all the articles in your reference manager , build your own catalogue of literature and synthesise all the research.
  • Following that, you need to develop a detailed outline of your entire chapter – the more detail the better. Don’t start writing without a clear outline (on paper, not in your head!)
  • Write up your first draft in rough form – don’t aim for perfection. Remember, done beats perfect.
  • Refine your second draft and get a layman’s perspective on it . Then tighten it up and submit it to your supervisor.

Literature Review Course

Psst… there’s more!

This post is an extract from our bestselling Udemy Course, Literature Review Bootcamp . If you want to work smart, you don't want to miss this .

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37 Comments

Phindile Mpetshwa

Thank you very much. This page is an eye opener and easy to comprehend.

Yinka

This is awesome!

I wish I come across GradCoach earlier enough.

But all the same I’ll make use of this opportunity to the fullest.

Thank you for this good job.

Keep it up!

Derek Jansen

You’re welcome, Yinka. Thank you for the kind words. All the best writing your literature review.

Renee Buerger

Thank you for a very useful literature review session. Although I am doing most of the steps…it being my first masters an Mphil is a self study and one not sure you are on the right track. I have an amazing supervisor but one also knows they are super busy. So not wanting to bother on the minutae. Thank you.

You’re most welcome, Renee. Good luck with your literature review 🙂

Sheemal Prasad

This has been really helpful. Will make full use of it. 🙂

Thank you Gradcoach.

Tahir

Really agreed. Admirable effort

Faturoti Toyin

thank you for this beautiful well explained recap.

Tara

Thank you so much for your guide of video and other instructions for the dissertation writing.

It is instrumental. It encouraged me to write a dissertation now.

Lorraine Hall

Thank you the video was great – from someone that knows nothing thankyou

araz agha

an amazing and very constructive way of presetting a topic, very useful, thanks for the effort,

Suilabayuh Ngah

It is timely

It is very good video of guidance for writing a research proposal and a dissertation. Since I have been watching and reading instructions, I have started my research proposal to write. I appreciate to Mr Jansen hugely.

Nancy Geregl

I learn a lot from your videos. Very comprehensive and detailed.

Thank you for sharing your knowledge. As a research student, you learn better with your learning tips in research

Uzma

I was really stuck in reading and gathering information but after watching these things are cleared thanks, it is so helpful.

Xaysukith thorxaitou

Really helpful, Thank you for the effort in showing such information

Sheila Jerome

This is super helpful thank you very much.

Mary

Thank you for this whole literature writing review.You have simplified the process.

Maithe

I’m so glad I found GradCoach. Excellent information, Clear explanation, and Easy to follow, Many thanks Derek!

You’re welcome, Maithe. Good luck writing your literature review 🙂

Anthony

Thank you Coach, you have greatly enriched and improved my knowledge

Eunice

Great piece, so enriching and it is going to help me a great lot in my project and thesis, thanks so much

Stephanie Louw

This is THE BEST site for ANYONE doing a masters or doctorate! Thank you for the sound advice and templates. You rock!

Thanks, Stephanie 🙂

oghenekaro Silas

This is mind blowing, the detailed explanation and simplicity is perfect.

I am doing two papers on my final year thesis, and I must stay I feel very confident to face both headlong after reading this article.

thank you so much.

if anyone is to get a paper done on time and in the best way possible, GRADCOACH is certainly the go to area!

tarandeep singh

This is very good video which is well explained with detailed explanation

uku igeny

Thank you excellent piece of work and great mentoring

Abdul Ahmad Zazay

Thanks, it was useful

Maserialong Dlamini

Thank you very much. the video and the information were very helpful.

Suleiman Abubakar

Good morning scholar. I’m delighted coming to know you even before the commencement of my dissertation which hopefully is expected in not more than six months from now. I would love to engage my study under your guidance from the beginning to the end. I love to know how to do good job

Mthuthuzeli Vongo

Thank you so much Derek for such useful information on writing up a good literature review. I am at a stage where I need to start writing my one. My proposal was accepted late last year but I honestly did not know where to start

SEID YIMAM MOHAMMED (Technic)

Like the name of your YouTube implies you are GRAD (great,resource person, about dissertation). In short you are smart enough in coaching research work.

Richie Buffalo

This is a very well thought out webpage. Very informative and a great read.

Norasyidah Mohd Yusoff

Very comprehensive and eye opener for me as beginner in postgraduate study. Well explained and easy to understand. Appreciate and good reference in guiding me in my research journey. Thank you

Maryellen Elizabeth Hart

Thank you. I requested to download the free literature review template, however, your website wouldn’t allow me to complete the request or complete a download. May I request that you email me the free template? Thank you.

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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.

APA7 Style resources

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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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  • 04 December 2020
  • Correction 09 December 2020

How to write a superb literature review

Andy Tay is a freelance writer based in Singapore.

You can also search for this author in PubMed   Google Scholar

Literature reviews are important resources for scientists. They provide historical context for a field while offering opinions on its future trajectory. Creating them can provide inspiration for one’s own research, as well as some practice in writing. But few scientists are trained in how to write a review — or in what constitutes an excellent one. Even picking the appropriate software to use can be an involved decision (see ‘Tools and techniques’). So Nature asked editors and working scientists with well-cited reviews for their tips.

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doi: https://doi.org/10.1038/d41586-020-03422-x

Interviews have been edited for length and clarity.

Updates & Corrections

Correction 09 December 2020 : An earlier version of the tables in this article included some incorrect details about the programs Zotero, Endnote and Manubot. These have now been corrected.

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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.

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
  • 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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Table of contents

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.

Literature review guide

Prevent plagiarism, run a free check.

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.

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.

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.

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 .

Cite this Scribbr article

If you want to cite this source, you can copy and paste the citation or click the ‘Cite this Scribbr article’ button to automatically add the citation to our free Reference Generator.

McCombes, S. (2022, June 07). What is a Literature Review? | Guide, Template, & Examples. Scribbr. Retrieved 22 February 2024, from https://www.scribbr.co.uk/thesis-dissertation/literature-review/

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Ten Simple Rules for Writing a Literature Review

Marco pautasso.

1 Centre for Functional and Evolutionary Ecology (CEFE), CNRS, Montpellier, France

2 Centre for Biodiversity Synthesis and Analysis (CESAB), FRB, Aix-en-Provence, France

Literature reviews are in great demand in most scientific fields. Their need stems from the ever-increasing output of scientific publications [1] . For example, compared to 1991, in 2008 three, eight, and forty times more papers were indexed in Web of Science on malaria, obesity, and biodiversity, respectively [2] . Given such mountains of papers, scientists cannot be expected to examine in detail every single new paper relevant to their interests [3] . Thus, it is both advantageous and necessary to rely on regular summaries of the recent literature. Although recognition for scientists mainly comes from primary research, timely literature reviews can lead to new synthetic insights and are often widely read [4] . For such summaries to be useful, however, they need to be compiled in a professional way [5] .

When starting from scratch, reviewing the literature can require a titanic amount of work. That is why researchers who have spent their career working on a certain research issue are in a perfect position to review that literature. Some graduate schools are now offering courses in reviewing the literature, given that most research students start their project by producing an overview of what has already been done on their research issue [6] . However, it is likely that most scientists have not thought in detail about how to approach and carry out a literature review.

Reviewing the literature requires the ability to juggle multiple tasks, from finding and evaluating relevant material to synthesising information from various sources, from critical thinking to paraphrasing, evaluating, and citation skills [7] . In this contribution, I share ten simple rules I learned working on about 25 literature reviews as a PhD and postdoctoral student. Ideas and insights also come from discussions with coauthors and colleagues, as well as feedback from reviewers and editors.

Rule 1: Define a Topic and Audience

How to choose which topic to review? There are so many issues in contemporary science that you could spend a lifetime of attending conferences and reading the literature just pondering what to review. On the one hand, if you take several years to choose, several other people may have had the same idea in the meantime. On the other hand, only a well-considered topic is likely to lead to a brilliant literature review [8] . The topic must at least be:

  • interesting to you (ideally, you should have come across a series of recent papers related to your line of work that call for a critical summary),
  • an important aspect of the field (so that many readers will be interested in the review and there will be enough material to write it), and
  • a well-defined issue (otherwise you could potentially include thousands of publications, which would make the review unhelpful).

Ideas for potential reviews may come from papers providing lists of key research questions to be answered [9] , but also from serendipitous moments during desultory reading and discussions. In addition to choosing your topic, you should also select a target audience. In many cases, the topic (e.g., web services in computational biology) will automatically define an audience (e.g., computational biologists), but that same topic may also be of interest to neighbouring fields (e.g., computer science, biology, etc.).

Rule 2: Search and Re-search the Literature

After having chosen your topic and audience, start by checking the literature and downloading relevant papers. Five pieces of advice here:

  • keep track of the search items you use (so that your search can be replicated [10] ),
  • keep a list of papers whose pdfs you cannot access immediately (so as to retrieve them later with alternative strategies),
  • use a paper management system (e.g., Mendeley, Papers, Qiqqa, Sente),
  • define early in the process some criteria for exclusion of irrelevant papers (these criteria can then be described in the review to help define its scope), and
  • do not just look for research papers in the area you wish to review, but also seek previous reviews.

The chances are high that someone will already have published a literature review ( Figure 1 ), if not exactly on the issue you are planning to tackle, at least on a related topic. If there are already a few or several reviews of the literature on your issue, my advice is not to give up, but to carry on with your own literature review,

An external file that holds a picture, illustration, etc.
Object name is pcbi.1003149.g001.jpg

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] .

  • discussing in your review the approaches, limitations, and conclusions of past reviews,
  • trying to find a new angle that has not been covered adequately in the previous reviews, and
  • incorporating new material that has inevitably accumulated since their appearance.

When searching the literature for pertinent papers and reviews, the usual rules apply:

  • be thorough,
  • use different keywords and database sources (e.g., DBLP, Google Scholar, ISI Proceedings, JSTOR Search, Medline, Scopus, Web of Science), and
  • look at who has cited past relevant papers and book chapters.

Rule 3: Take Notes While Reading

If you read the papers first, and only afterwards start writing the review, you will need a very good memory to remember who wrote what, and what your impressions and associations were while reading each single paper. My advice is, while reading, to start writing down interesting pieces of information, insights about how to organize the review, and thoughts on what to write. This way, by the time you have read the literature you selected, you will already have a rough draft of the review.

Of course, this draft will still need much rewriting, restructuring, and rethinking to obtain a text with a coherent argument [11] , but you will have avoided the danger posed by staring at a blank document. Be careful when taking notes to use quotation marks if you are provisionally copying verbatim from the literature. It is advisable then to reformulate such quotes with your own words in the final draft. It is important to be careful in noting the references already at this stage, so as to avoid misattributions. Using referencing software from the very beginning of your endeavour will save you time.

Rule 4: Choose the Type of Review You Wish to Write

After having taken notes while reading the literature, you will have a rough idea of the amount of material available for the review. This is probably a good time to decide whether to go for a mini- or a full review. Some journals are now favouring the publication of rather short reviews focusing on the last few years, with a limit on the number of words and citations. A mini-review is not necessarily a minor review: it may well attract more attention from busy readers, although it will inevitably simplify some issues and leave out some relevant material due to space limitations. A full review will have the advantage of more freedom to cover in detail the complexities of a particular scientific development, but may then be left in the pile of the very important papers “to be read” by readers with little time to spare for major monographs.

There is probably a continuum between mini- and full reviews. The same point applies to the dichotomy of descriptive vs. integrative reviews. While descriptive reviews focus on the methodology, findings, and interpretation of each reviewed study, integrative reviews attempt to find common ideas and concepts from the reviewed material [12] . A similar distinction exists between narrative and systematic reviews: while narrative reviews are qualitative, systematic reviews attempt to test a hypothesis based on the published evidence, which is gathered using a predefined protocol to reduce bias [13] , [14] . When systematic reviews analyse quantitative results in a quantitative way, they become meta-analyses. The choice between different review types will have to be made on a case-by-case basis, depending not just on the nature of the material found and the preferences of the target journal(s), but also on the time available to write the review and the number of coauthors [15] .

Rule 5: Keep the Review Focused, but Make It of Broad Interest

Whether your plan is to write a mini- or a full review, it is good advice to keep it focused 16 , 17 . Including material just for the sake of it can easily lead to reviews that are trying to do too many things at once. The need to keep a review focused can be problematic for interdisciplinary reviews, where the aim is to bridge the gap between fields [18] . If you are writing a review on, for example, how epidemiological approaches are used in modelling the spread of ideas, you may be inclined to include material from both parent fields, epidemiology and the study of cultural diffusion. This may be necessary to some extent, but in this case a focused review would only deal in detail with those studies at the interface between epidemiology and the spread of ideas.

While focus is an important feature of a successful review, this requirement has to be balanced with the need to make the review relevant to a broad audience. This square may be circled by discussing the wider implications of the reviewed topic for other disciplines.

Rule 6: Be Critical and Consistent

Reviewing the literature is not stamp collecting. A good review does not just summarize the literature, but discusses it critically, identifies methodological problems, and points out research gaps [19] . After having read a review of the literature, a reader should have a rough idea of:

  • the major achievements in the reviewed field,
  • the main areas of debate, and
  • the outstanding research questions.

It is challenging to achieve a successful review on all these fronts. A solution can be to involve a set of complementary coauthors: some people are excellent at mapping what has been achieved, some others are very good at identifying dark clouds on the horizon, and some have instead a knack at predicting where solutions are going to come from. If your journal club has exactly this sort of team, then you should definitely write a review of the literature! In addition to critical thinking, a literature review needs consistency, for example in the choice of passive vs. active voice and present vs. past tense.

Rule 7: Find a Logical Structure

Like a well-baked cake, a good review has a number of telling features: it is worth the reader's time, timely, systematic, well written, focused, and critical. It also needs a good structure. With reviews, the usual subdivision of research papers into introduction, methods, results, and discussion does not work or is rarely used. However, a general introduction of the context and, toward the end, a recapitulation of the main points covered and take-home messages make sense also in the case of reviews. For systematic reviews, there is a trend towards including information about how the literature was searched (database, keywords, time limits) [20] .

How can you organize the flow of the main body of the review so that the reader will be drawn into and guided through it? It is generally helpful to draw a conceptual scheme of the review, e.g., with mind-mapping techniques. Such diagrams can help recognize a logical way to order and link the various sections of a review [21] . This is the case not just at the writing stage, but also for readers if the diagram is included in the review as a figure. A careful selection of diagrams and figures relevant to the reviewed topic can be very helpful to structure the text too [22] .

Rule 8: Make Use of Feedback

Reviews of the literature are normally peer-reviewed in the same way as research papers, and rightly so [23] . As a rule, incorporating feedback from reviewers greatly helps improve a review draft. Having read the review with a fresh mind, reviewers may spot inaccuracies, inconsistencies, and ambiguities that had not been noticed by the writers due to rereading the typescript too many times. It is however advisable to reread the draft one more time before submission, as a last-minute correction of typos, leaps, and muddled sentences may enable the reviewers to focus on providing advice on the content rather than the form.

Feedback is vital to writing a good review, and should be sought from a variety of colleagues, so as to obtain a diversity of views on the draft. This may lead in some cases to conflicting views on the merits of the paper, and on how to improve it, but such a situation is better than the absence of feedback. A diversity of feedback perspectives on a literature review can help identify where the consensus view stands in the landscape of the current scientific understanding of an issue [24] .

Rule 9: Include Your Own Relevant Research, but Be Objective

In many cases, reviewers of the literature will have published studies relevant to the review they are writing. This could create a conflict of interest: how can reviewers report objectively on their own work [25] ? Some scientists may be overly enthusiastic about what they have published, and thus risk giving too much importance to their own findings in the review. However, bias could also occur in the other direction: some scientists may be unduly dismissive of their own achievements, so that they will tend to downplay their contribution (if any) to a field when reviewing it.

In general, a review of the literature should neither be a public relations brochure nor an exercise in competitive self-denial. If a reviewer is up to the job of producing a well-organized and methodical review, which flows well and provides a service to the readership, then it should be possible to be objective in reviewing one's own relevant findings. In reviews written by multiple authors, this may be achieved by assigning the review of the results of a coauthor to different coauthors.

Rule 10: Be Up-to-Date, but Do Not Forget Older Studies

Given the progressive acceleration in the publication of scientific papers, today's reviews of the literature need awareness not just of the overall direction and achievements of a field of inquiry, but also of the latest studies, so as not to become out-of-date before they have been published. Ideally, a literature review should not identify as a major research gap an issue that has just been addressed in a series of papers in press (the same applies, of course, to older, overlooked studies (“sleeping beauties” [26] )). This implies that literature reviewers would do well to keep an eye on electronic lists of papers in press, given that it can take months before these appear in scientific databases. Some reviews declare that they have scanned the literature up to a certain point in time, but given that peer review can be a rather lengthy process, a full search for newly appeared literature at the revision stage may be worthwhile. Assessing the contribution of papers that have just appeared is particularly challenging, because there is little perspective with which to gauge their significance and impact on further research and society.

Inevitably, new papers on the reviewed topic (including independently written literature reviews) will appear from all quarters after the review has been published, so that there may soon be the need for an updated review. But this is the nature of science [27] – [32] . I wish everybody good luck with writing a review of the literature.

Acknowledgments

Many thanks to M. Barbosa, K. Dehnen-Schmutz, T. Döring, D. Fontaneto, M. Garbelotto, O. Holdenrieder, M. Jeger, D. Lonsdale, A. MacLeod, P. Mills, M. Moslonka-Lefebvre, G. Stancanelli, P. Weisberg, and X. Xu for insights and discussions, and to P. Bourne, T. Matoni, and D. Smith for helpful comments on a previous draft.

Funding Statement

This work was funded by the French Foundation for Research on Biodiversity (FRB) through its Centre for Synthesis and Analysis of Biodiversity data (CESAB), as part of the NETSEED research project. The funders had no role in the preparation of the manuscript.

The Writing Center • University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill

Literature Reviews

What this handout is about.

This handout will explain what literature reviews are and offer insights into the form and construction of literature reviews in the humanities, social sciences, and sciences.

Introduction

OK. You’ve got to write a literature review. You dust off a novel and a book of poetry, settle down in your chair, and get ready to issue a “thumbs up” or “thumbs down” as you leaf through the pages. “Literature review” done. Right?

Wrong! The “literature” of a literature review refers to any collection of materials on a topic, not necessarily the great literary texts of the world. “Literature” could be anything from a set of government pamphlets on British colonial methods in Africa to scholarly articles on the treatment of a torn ACL. And a review does not necessarily mean that your reader wants you to give your personal opinion on whether or not you liked these sources.

What is a literature review, then?

A literature review discusses published information in a particular subject area, and sometimes information in a particular subject area within a certain time period.

A literature review can be just a simple summary of the sources, but it usually has an organizational pattern and combines both summary and synthesis. A summary is a recap of the important information of the source, but a synthesis is a re-organization, or a reshuffling, of that information. It might give a new interpretation of old material or combine new with old interpretations. Or it might trace the intellectual progression of the field, including major debates. And depending on the situation, the literature review may evaluate the sources and advise the reader on the most pertinent or relevant.

But how is a literature review different from an academic research paper?

The main focus of an academic research paper is to develop a new argument, and a research paper is likely to contain a literature review as one of its parts. In a research paper, you use the literature as a foundation and as support for a new insight that you contribute. The focus of a literature review, however, is to summarize and synthesize the arguments and ideas of others without adding new contributions.

Why do we write literature reviews?

Literature reviews provide you with a handy guide to a particular topic. If you have limited time to conduct research, literature reviews can give you an overview or act as a stepping stone. For professionals, they are useful reports that keep them up to date with what is current in the field. For scholars, the depth and breadth of the literature review emphasizes the credibility of the writer in his or her field. Literature reviews also provide a solid background for a research paper’s investigation. Comprehensive knowledge of the literature of the field is essential to most research papers.

Who writes these things, anyway?

Literature reviews are written occasionally in the humanities, but mostly in the sciences and social sciences; in experiment and lab reports, they constitute a section of the paper. Sometimes a literature review is written as a paper in itself.

Let’s get to it! What should I do before writing the literature review?

If your assignment is not very specific, seek clarification from your instructor:

  • Roughly how many sources should you include?
  • What types of sources (books, journal articles, websites)?
  • Should you summarize, synthesize, or critique your sources by discussing a common theme or issue?
  • Should you evaluate your sources?
  • Should you provide subheadings and other background information, such as definitions and/or a history?

Find models

Look for other literature reviews in your area of interest or in the discipline and read them to get a sense of the types of themes you might want to look for in your own research or ways to organize your final review. You can simply put the word “review” in your search engine along with your other topic terms to find articles of this type on the Internet or in an electronic database. The bibliography or reference section of sources you’ve already read are also excellent entry points into your own research.

Narrow your topic

There are hundreds or even thousands of articles and books on most areas of study. The narrower your topic, the easier it will be to limit the number of sources you need to read in order to get a good survey of the material. Your instructor will probably not expect you to read everything that’s out there on the topic, but you’ll make your job easier if you first limit your scope.

Keep in mind that UNC Libraries have research guides and to databases relevant to many fields of study. You can reach out to the subject librarian for a consultation: https://library.unc.edu/support/consultations/ .

And don’t forget to tap into your professor’s (or other professors’) knowledge in the field. Ask your professor questions such as: “If you had to read only one book from the 90’s on topic X, what would it be?” Questions such as this help you to find and determine quickly the most seminal pieces in the field.

Consider whether your sources are current

Some disciplines require that you use information that is as current as possible. In the sciences, for instance, treatments for medical problems are constantly changing according to the latest studies. Information even two years old could be obsolete. However, if you are writing a review in the humanities, history, or social sciences, a survey of the history of the literature may be what is needed, because what is important is how perspectives have changed through the years or within a certain time period. Try sorting through some other current bibliographies or literature reviews in the field to get a sense of what your discipline expects. You can also use this method to consider what is currently of interest to scholars in this field and what is not.

Strategies for writing the literature review

Find a focus.

A literature review, like a term paper, is usually organized around ideas, not the sources themselves as an annotated bibliography would be organized. This means that you will not just simply list your sources and go into detail about each one of them, one at a time. No. As you read widely but selectively in your topic area, consider instead what themes or issues connect your sources together. Do they present one or different solutions? Is there an aspect of the field that is missing? How well do they present the material and do they portray it according to an appropriate theory? Do they reveal a trend in the field? A raging debate? Pick one of these themes to focus the organization of your review.

Convey it to your reader

A literature review may not have a traditional thesis statement (one that makes an argument), but you do need to tell readers what to expect. Try writing a simple statement that lets the reader know what is your main organizing principle. Here are a couple of examples:

The current trend in treatment for congestive heart failure combines surgery and medicine. More and more cultural studies scholars are accepting popular media as a subject worthy of academic consideration.

Consider organization

You’ve got a focus, and you’ve stated it clearly and directly. Now what is the most effective way of presenting the information? What are the most important topics, subtopics, etc., that your review needs to include? And in what order should you present them? Develop an organization for your review at both a global and local level:

First, cover the basic categories

Just like most academic papers, literature reviews also must contain at least three basic elements: an introduction or background information section; the body of the review containing the discussion of sources; and, finally, a conclusion and/or recommendations section to end the paper. The following provides a brief description of the content of each:

  • Introduction: Gives a quick idea of the topic of the literature review, such as the central theme or organizational pattern.
  • Body: Contains your discussion of sources and is organized either chronologically, thematically, or methodologically (see below for more information on each).
  • Conclusions/Recommendations: Discuss what you have drawn from reviewing literature so far. Where might the discussion proceed?

Organizing the body

Once you have the basic categories in place, then you must consider how you will present the sources themselves within the body of your paper. Create an organizational method to focus this section even further.

To help you come up with an overall organizational framework for your review, consider the following scenario:

You’ve decided to focus your literature review on materials dealing with sperm whales. This is because you’ve just finished reading Moby Dick, and you wonder if that whale’s portrayal is really real. You start with some articles about the physiology of sperm whales in biology journals written in the 1980’s. But these articles refer to some British biological studies performed on whales in the early 18th century. So you check those out. Then you look up a book written in 1968 with information on how sperm whales have been portrayed in other forms of art, such as in Alaskan poetry, in French painting, or on whale bone, as the whale hunters in the late 19th century used to do. This makes you wonder about American whaling methods during the time portrayed in Moby Dick, so you find some academic articles published in the last five years on how accurately Herman Melville portrayed the whaling scene in his novel.

Now consider some typical ways of organizing the sources into a review:

  • Chronological: If your review follows the chronological method, you could write about the materials above according to when they were published. For instance, first you would talk about the British biological studies of the 18th century, then about Moby Dick, published in 1851, then the book on sperm whales in other art (1968), and finally the biology articles (1980s) and the recent articles on American whaling of the 19th century. But there is relatively no continuity among subjects here. And notice that even though the sources on sperm whales in other art and on American whaling are written recently, they are about other subjects/objects that were created much earlier. Thus, the review loses its chronological focus.
  • By publication: Order your sources by publication chronology, then, only if the order demonstrates a more important trend. For instance, you could order a review of literature on biological studies of sperm whales if the progression revealed a change in dissection practices of the researchers who wrote and/or conducted the studies.
  • By trend: A better way to organize the above sources chronologically is to examine the sources under another trend, such as the history of whaling. Then your review would have subsections according to eras within this period. For instance, the review might examine whaling from pre-1600-1699, 1700-1799, and 1800-1899. Under this method, you would combine the recent studies on American whaling in the 19th century with Moby Dick itself in the 1800-1899 category, even though the authors wrote a century apart.
  • Thematic: Thematic reviews of literature are organized around a topic or issue, rather than the progression of time. However, progression of time may still be an important factor in a thematic review. For instance, the sperm whale review could focus on the development of the harpoon for whale hunting. While the study focuses on one topic, harpoon technology, it will still be organized chronologically. The only difference here between a “chronological” and a “thematic” approach is what is emphasized the most: the development of the harpoon or the harpoon technology.But more authentic thematic reviews tend to break away from chronological order. For instance, a thematic review of material on sperm whales might examine how they are portrayed as “evil” in cultural documents. The subsections might include how they are personified, how their proportions are exaggerated, and their behaviors misunderstood. A review organized in this manner would shift between time periods within each section according to the point made.
  • Methodological: A methodological approach differs from the two above in that the focusing factor usually does not have to do with the content of the material. Instead, it focuses on the “methods” of the researcher or writer. For the sperm whale project, one methodological approach would be to look at cultural differences between the portrayal of whales in American, British, and French art work. Or the review might focus on the economic impact of whaling on a community. A methodological scope will influence either the types of documents in the review or the way in which these documents are discussed. Once you’ve decided on the organizational method for the body of the review, the sections you need to include in the paper should be easy to figure out. They should arise out of your organizational strategy. In other words, a chronological review would have subsections for each vital time period. A thematic review would have subtopics based upon factors that relate to the theme or issue.

Sometimes, though, you might need to add additional sections that are necessary for your study, but do not fit in the organizational strategy of the body. What other sections you include in the body is up to you. Put in only what is necessary. Here are a few other sections you might want to consider:

  • Current Situation: Information necessary to understand the topic or focus of the literature review.
  • History: The chronological progression of the field, the literature, or an idea that is necessary to understand the literature review, if the body of the literature review is not already a chronology.
  • Methods and/or Standards: The criteria you used to select the sources in your literature review or the way in which you present your information. For instance, you might explain that your review includes only peer-reviewed articles and journals.

Questions for Further Research: What questions about the field has the review sparked? How will you further your research as a result of the review?

Begin composing

Once you’ve settled on a general pattern of organization, you’re ready to write each section. There are a few guidelines you should follow during the writing stage as well. Here is a sample paragraph from a literature review about sexism and language to illuminate the following discussion:

However, other studies have shown that even gender-neutral antecedents are more likely to produce masculine images than feminine ones (Gastil, 1990). Hamilton (1988) asked students to complete sentences that required them to fill in pronouns that agreed with gender-neutral antecedents such as “writer,” “pedestrian,” and “persons.” The students were asked to describe any image they had when writing the sentence. Hamilton found that people imagined 3.3 men to each woman in the masculine “generic” condition and 1.5 men per woman in the unbiased condition. Thus, while ambient sexism accounted for some of the masculine bias, sexist language amplified the effect. (Source: Erika Falk and Jordan Mills, “Why Sexist Language Affects Persuasion: The Role of Homophily, Intended Audience, and Offense,” Women and Language19:2).

Use evidence

In the example above, the writers refer to several other sources when making their point. A literature review in this sense is just like any other academic research paper. Your interpretation of the available sources must be backed up with evidence to show that what you are saying is valid.

Be selective

Select only the most important points in each source to highlight in the review. The type of information you choose to mention should relate directly to the review’s focus, whether it is thematic, methodological, or chronological.

Use quotes sparingly

Falk and Mills do not use any direct quotes. That is because the survey nature of the literature review does not allow for in-depth discussion or detailed quotes from the text. Some short quotes here and there are okay, though, if you want to emphasize a point, or if what the author said just cannot be rewritten in your own words. Notice that Falk and Mills do quote certain terms that were coined by the author, not common knowledge, or taken directly from the study. But if you find yourself wanting to put in more quotes, check with your instructor.

Summarize and synthesize

Remember to summarize and synthesize your sources within each paragraph as well as throughout the review. The authors here recapitulate important features of Hamilton’s study, but then synthesize it by rephrasing the study’s significance and relating it to their own work.

Keep your own voice

While the literature review presents others’ ideas, your voice (the writer’s) should remain front and center. Notice that Falk and Mills weave references to other sources into their own text, but they still maintain their own voice by starting and ending the paragraph with their own ideas and their own words. The sources support what Falk and Mills are saying.

Use caution when paraphrasing

When paraphrasing a source that is not your own, be sure to represent the author’s information or opinions accurately and in your own words. In the preceding example, Falk and Mills either directly refer in the text to the author of their source, such as Hamilton, or they provide ample notation in the text when the ideas they are mentioning are not their own, for example, Gastil’s. For more information, please see our handout on plagiarism .

Revise, revise, revise

Draft in hand? Now you’re ready to revise. Spending a lot of time revising is a wise idea, because your main objective is to present the material, not the argument. So check over your review again to make sure it follows the assignment and/or your outline. Then, just as you would for most other academic forms of writing, rewrite or rework the language of your review so that you’ve presented your information in the most concise manner possible. Be sure to use terminology familiar to your audience; get rid of unnecessary jargon or slang. Finally, double check that you’ve documented your sources and formatted the review appropriately for your discipline. For tips on the revising and editing process, see our handout on revising drafts .

Works consulted

We consulted these works while writing this handout. This is not a comprehensive list of resources on the handout’s topic, and we encourage you to do your own research to find additional publications. Please do not use this list as a model for the format of your own reference list, as it may not match the citation style you are using. For guidance on formatting citations, please see the UNC Libraries citation tutorial . We revise these tips periodically and welcome feedback.

Anson, Chris M., and Robert A. Schwegler. 2010. The Longman Handbook for Writers and Readers , 6th ed. New York: Longman.

Jones, Robert, Patrick Bizzaro, and Cynthia Selfe. 1997. The Harcourt Brace Guide to Writing in the Disciplines . New York: Harcourt Brace.

Lamb, Sandra E. 1998. How to Write It: A Complete Guide to Everything You’ll Ever Write . Berkeley: Ten Speed Press.

Rosen, Leonard J., and Laurence Behrens. 2003. The Allyn & Bacon Handbook , 5th ed. New York: Longman.

Troyka, Lynn Quittman, and Doug Hesse. 2016. Simon and Schuster Handbook for Writers , 11th ed. London: Pearson.

You may reproduce it for non-commercial use if you use the entire handout and attribute the source: The Writing Center, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill

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Writing Research Papers

  • Writing a Literature Review

When writing a research paper on a specific topic, you will often need to include an overview of any prior research that has been conducted on that topic.  For example, if your research paper is describing an experiment on fear conditioning, then you will probably need to provide an overview of prior research on fear conditioning.  That overview is typically known as a literature review.  

Please note that a full-length literature review article may be suitable for fulfilling the requirements for the Psychology B.S. Degree Research Paper .  For further details, please check with your faculty advisor.

Different Types of Literature Reviews

Literature reviews come in many forms.  They can be part of a research paper, for example as part of the Introduction section.  They can be one chapter of a doctoral dissertation.  Literature reviews can also “stand alone” as separate articles by themselves.  For instance, some journals such as Annual Review of Psychology , Psychological Bulletin , and others typically publish full-length review articles.  Similarly, in courses at UCSD, you may be asked to write a research paper that is itself a literature review (such as, with an instructor’s permission, in fulfillment of the B.S. Degree Research Paper requirement). Alternatively, you may be expected to include a literature review as part of a larger research paper (such as part of an Honors Thesis). 

Literature reviews can be written using a variety of different styles.  These may differ in the way prior research is reviewed as well as the way in which the literature review is organized.  Examples of stylistic variations in literature reviews include: 

  • Summarization of prior work vs. critical evaluation. In some cases, prior research is simply described and summarized; in other cases, the writer compares, contrasts, and may even critique prior research (for example, discusses their strengths and weaknesses).
  • Chronological vs. categorical and other types of organization. In some cases, the literature review begins with the oldest research and advances until it concludes with the latest research.  In other cases, research is discussed by category (such as in groupings of closely related studies) without regard for chronological order.  In yet other cases, research is discussed in terms of opposing views (such as when different research studies or researchers disagree with one another).

Overall, all literature reviews, whether they are written as a part of a larger work or as separate articles unto themselves, have a common feature: they do not present new research; rather, they provide an overview of prior research on a specific topic . 

How to Write a Literature Review

When writing a literature review, it can be helpful to rely on the following steps.  Please note that these procedures are not necessarily only for writing a literature review that becomes part of a larger article; they can also be used for writing a full-length article that is itself a literature review (although such reviews are typically more detailed and exhaustive; for more information please refer to the Further Resources section of this page).

Steps for Writing a Literature Review

1. Identify and define the topic that you will be reviewing.

The topic, which is commonly a research question (or problem) of some kind, needs to be identified and defined as clearly as possible.  You need to have an idea of what you will be reviewing in order to effectively search for references and to write a coherent summary of the research on it.  At this stage it can be helpful to write down a description of the research question, area, or topic that you will be reviewing, as well as to identify any keywords that you will be using to search for relevant research.

2. Conduct a literature search.

Use a range of keywords to search databases such as PsycINFO and any others that may contain relevant articles.  You should focus on peer-reviewed, scholarly articles.  Published books may also be helpful, but keep in mind that peer-reviewed articles are widely considered to be the “gold standard” of scientific research.  Read through titles and abstracts, select and obtain articles (that is, download, copy, or print them out), and save your searches as needed.  For more information about this step, please see the Using Databases and Finding Scholarly References section of this website.

3. Read through the research that you have found and take notes.

Absorb as much information as you can.  Read through the articles and books that you have found, and as you do, take notes.  The notes should include anything that will be helpful in advancing your own thinking about the topic and in helping you write the literature review (such as key points, ideas, or even page numbers that index key information).  Some references may turn out to be more helpful than others; you may notice patterns or striking contrasts between different sources ; and some sources may refer to yet other sources of potential interest.  This is often the most time-consuming part of the review process.  However, it is also where you get to learn about the topic in great detail.  For more details about taking notes, please see the “Reading Sources and Taking Notes” section of the Finding Scholarly References page of this website.

4. Organize your notes and thoughts; create an outline.

At this stage, you are close to writing the review itself.  However, it is often helpful to first reflect on all the reading that you have done.  What patterns stand out?  Do the different sources converge on a consensus?  Or not?  What unresolved questions still remain?  You should look over your notes (it may also be helpful to reorganize them), and as you do, to think about how you will present this research in your literature review.  Are you going to summarize or critically evaluate?  Are you going to use a chronological or other type of organizational structure?  It can also be helpful to create an outline of how your literature review will be structured.

5. Write the literature review itself and edit and revise as needed.

The final stage involves writing.  When writing, keep in mind that literature reviews are generally characterized by a summary style in which prior research is described sufficiently to explain critical findings but does not include a high level of detail (if readers want to learn about all the specific details of a study, then they can look up the references that you cite and read the original articles themselves).  However, the degree of emphasis that is given to individual studies may vary (more or less detail may be warranted depending on how critical or unique a given study was).   After you have written a first draft, you should read it carefully and then edit and revise as needed.  You may need to repeat this process more than once.  It may be helpful to have another person read through your draft(s) and provide feedback.

6. Incorporate the literature review into your research paper draft.

After the literature review is complete, you should incorporate it into your research paper (if you are writing the review as one component of a larger paper).  Depending on the stage at which your paper is at, this may involve merging your literature review into a partially complete Introduction section, writing the rest of the paper around the literature review, or other processes.

Further Tips for Writing a Literature Review

Full-length literature reviews

  • Many full-length literature review articles use a three-part structure: Introduction (where the topic is identified and any trends or major problems in the literature are introduced), Body (where the studies that comprise the literature on that topic are discussed), and Discussion or Conclusion (where major patterns and points are discussed and the general state of what is known about the topic is summarized)

Literature reviews as part of a larger paper

  • An “express method” of writing a literature review for a research paper is as follows: first, write a one paragraph description of each article that you read. Second, choose how you will order all the paragraphs and combine them in one document.  Third, add transitions between the paragraphs, as well as an introductory and concluding paragraph. 1
  • A literature review that is part of a larger research paper typically does not have to be exhaustive. Rather, it should contain most or all of the significant studies about a research topic but not tangential or loosely related ones. 2   Generally, literature reviews should be sufficient for the reader to understand the major issues and key findings about a research topic.  You may however need to confer with your instructor or editor to determine how comprehensive you need to be.

Benefits of Literature Reviews

By summarizing prior research on a topic, literature reviews have multiple benefits.  These include:

  • Literature reviews help readers understand what is known about a topic without having to find and read through multiple sources.
  • Literature reviews help “set the stage” for later reading about new research on a given topic (such as if they are placed in the Introduction of a larger research paper). In other words, they provide helpful background and context.
  • Literature reviews can also help the writer learn about a given topic while in the process of preparing the review itself. In the act of research and writing the literature review, the writer gains expertise on the topic .

Downloadable Resources

  • How to Write APA Style Research Papers (a comprehensive guide) [ PDF ]
  • Tips for Writing APA Style Research Papers (a brief summary) [ PDF ]
  • Example APA Style Research Paper (for B.S. Degree – literature review) [ PDF ]

Further Resources

How-To Videos     

  • Writing Research Paper Videos
  • UCSD Library Psychology Research Guide: Literature Reviews

External Resources

  • Developing and Writing a Literature Review from N Carolina A&T State University
  • Example of a Short Literature Review from York College CUNY
  • How to Write a Review of Literature from UW-Madison
  • Writing a Literature Review from UC Santa Cruz  
  • Pautasso, M. (2013). Ten Simple Rules for Writing a Literature Review. PLoS Computational Biology, 9 (7), e1003149. doi : 1371/journal.pcbi.1003149

1 Ashton, W. Writing a short literature review . [PDF]     

2 carver, l. (2014).  writing the research paper [workshop]. , prepared by s. c. pan for ucsd psychology.

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  • Formatting Research Papers
  • Using Databases and Finding References
  • What Types of References Are Appropriate?
  • Evaluating References and Taking Notes
  • Citing References
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  • Academic Integrity and Avoiding Plagiarism
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How to Make a Literature Review in Research (RRL Example)

how to write a literature review in a research paper

What is an RRL in a research paper?

A relevant review of the literature (RRL) is an objective, concise, critical summary of published research literature relevant to a topic being researched in an article. In an RRL, you discuss knowledge and findings from existing literature relevant to your study topic. If there are conflicts or gaps in existing literature, you can also discuss these in your review, as well as how you will confront these missing elements or resolve these issues in your study.

To complete an RRL, you first need to collect relevant literature; this can include online and offline sources. Save all of your applicable resources as you will need to include them in your paper. When looking through these sources, take notes and identify concepts of each source to describe in the review of the literature.

A good RRL does NOT:

A literature review does not simply reference and list all of the material you have cited in your paper.

  • Presenting material that is not directly relevant to your study will distract and frustrate the reader and make them lose sight of the purpose of your study.
  • Starting a literature review with “A number of scholars have studied the relationship between X and Y” and simply listing who has studied the topic and what each scholar concluded is not going to strengthen your paper.

A good RRL DOES:

  • Present a brief typology that orders articles and books into groups to help readers focus on unresolved debates, inconsistencies, tensions, and new questions about a research topic.
  • Summarize the most relevant and important aspects of the scientific literature related to your area of research
  • Synthesize what has been done in this area of research and by whom, highlight what previous research indicates about a topic, and identify potential gaps and areas of disagreement in the field
  • Give the reader an understanding of the background of the field and show which studies are important—and highlight errors in previous studies

How long is a review of the literature for a research paper?

The length of a review of the literature depends on its purpose and target readership and can vary significantly in scope and depth. In a dissertation, thesis, or standalone review of literature, it is usually a full chapter of the text (at least 20 pages). Whereas, a standard research article or school assignment literature review section could only be a few paragraphs in the Introduction section .

Building Your Literature Review Bookshelf

One way to conceive of a literature review is to think about writing it as you would build a bookshelf. You don’t need to cut each piece by yourself from scratch. Rather, you can take the pieces that other researchers have cut out and put them together to build a framework on which to hang your own “books”—that is, your own study methods, results, and conclusions.

literature review bookshelf

What Makes a Good Literature Review?

The contents of a literature review (RRL) are determined by many factors, including its precise purpose in the article, the degree of consensus with a given theory or tension between competing theories, the length of the article, the number of previous studies existing in the given field, etc. The following are some of the most important elements that a literature review provides.

Historical background for your research

Analyze what has been written about your field of research to highlight what is new and significant in your study—or how the analysis itself contributes to the understanding of this field, even in a small way. Providing a historical background also demonstrates to other researchers and journal editors your competency in discussing theoretical concepts. You should also make sure to understand how to paraphrase scientific literature to avoid plagiarism in your work.

The current context of your research

Discuss central (or peripheral) questions, issues, and debates in the field. Because a field is constantly being updated by new work, you can show where your research fits into this context and explain developments and trends in research.

A discussion of relevant theories and concepts

Theories and concepts should provide the foundation for your research. For example, if you are researching the relationship between ecological environments and human populations, provide models and theories that focus on specific aspects of this connection to contextualize your study. If your study asks a question concerning sustainability, mention a theory or model that underpins this concept. If it concerns invasive species, choose material that is focused in this direction.

Definitions of relevant terminology

In the natural sciences, the meaning of terms is relatively straightforward and consistent. But if you present a term that is obscure or context-specific, you should define the meaning of the term in the Introduction section (if you are introducing a study) or in the summary of the literature being reviewed.

Description of related relevant research

Include a description of related research that shows how your work expands or challenges earlier studies or fills in gaps in previous work. You can use your literature review as evidence of what works, what doesn’t, and what is missing in the field.

Supporting evidence for a practical problem or issue your research is addressing that demonstrates 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.

Types of Literature Reviews

Literature reviews can differ in structure, length, amount, and breadth of content included. They can range from selective (a very narrow area of research or only a single work) to comprehensive (a larger amount or range of works). They can also be part of a larger work or stand on their own.

types of literature reviews

  • A course assignment is an example of a selective, stand-alone 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 the research reported in the study; such a literature review is usually included in the Introduction section (but it can also follow the presentation of the results in the Discussion section ).
  • Some literature reviews are both comprehensive and stand as a separate work—in this case, the entire article analyzes the literature on a given topic.

Literature Reviews Found in Academic Journals

The two types of literature reviews commonly found in journals are those introducing research articles (studies and surveys) and stand-alone literature analyses. They can differ in their scope, length, and specific purpose.

Literature reviews introducing research articles

The literature review found at the beginning of a journal article is used to introduce research related to the specific study and is found in the Introduction section, usually near the end. It is shorter than a stand-alone review because it must be limited to very specific studies and theories that are directly relevant to the current study. Its purpose is to set research precedence and provide support for the study’s theory, methods, results, and/or conclusions. Not all research articles contain an explicit review of the literature, but most do, whether it is a discrete section or indistinguishable from the rest of the Introduction.

How to structure a literature review for an article

When writing a literature review as part of an introduction to a study, simply follow the structure of the Introduction and move from the general to the specific—presenting the broadest background information about a topic first and then moving to specific studies that support your rationale , finally leading to your hypothesis statement. Such a literature review is often indistinguishable from the Introduction itself—the literature is INTRODUCING the background and defining the gaps your study aims to fill.

The stand-alone literature review

The literature review published as a stand-alone article presents and analyzes as many of the important publications in an area of study as possible to provide background information and context for a current area of research or a study. Stand-alone reviews are an excellent resource for researchers when they are first searching for the most relevant information on an area of study.

Such literature reviews are generally a bit broader in scope and can extend further back in time. This means that sometimes a scientific literature review can be highly theoretical, in addition to focusing on specific methods and outcomes of previous studies. In addition, all sections of such a “review article” refer to existing literature rather than describing the results of the authors’ own study.

In addition, this type of literature review is usually much longer than the literature review introducing a study. At the end of the review follows a conclusion that once again explicitly ties all of the cited works together to show how this analysis is itself a contribution to the literature. While not absolutely necessary, such articles often include the terms “Literature Review” or “Review of the Literature” in the title. Whether or not that is necessary or appropriate can also depend on the specific author instructions of the target journal. Have a look at this article for more input on how to compile a stand-alone review article that is insightful and helpful for other researchers in your field.

literature review examples

How to Write a Literature Review in 6 Steps

So how do authors turn a network of articles into a coherent review of relevant literature?

Writing a literature review is not usually a linear process—authors often go back and check the literature while reformulating their ideas or making adjustments to their study. Sometimes new findings are published before a study is completed and need to be incorporated into the current work. This also 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.

Here are some steps that will help you begin and follow through on your literature review.

Step 1: Choose a topic to write about—focus on 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.

Step 2: Research and collect all the scholarly information on the topic that might be pertinent to your study.

This includes scholarly articles, books, conventions, conferences, dissertations, and theses—these and any other academic work related to your area of study is called “the literature.”

Step 3: 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 to your review.

Step 4: Describe and summarize each article—provide the essential information of the article that pertains to your study.

Determine 2-3 important concepts (depending on the length of your article) that are discussed in the literature; take notes about all of the important aspects of this study relevant to the topic being reviewed.

For example, in a given study, perhaps some of the main concepts are X, Y, and Z. Note these concepts and then write a brief summary about how the article incorporates them. In reviews that introduce a study, these can be relatively short. In stand-alone reviews, there may be significantly more texts and more concepts.

Step 5: 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 review intro for an article, this information might include a summary of the results or methods of previous studies that correspond to and/or confirm those sections in your own study. For a stand-alone literature review, this may mean highlighting the concepts in each article and showing how they strengthen a hypothesis or show a pattern.

Discuss unaddressed issues in previous studies. These studies that are missing something you address are important to include in your literature review. In addition, those works whose theories and conclusions directly support your findings will be valuable to review here.

Step 6: Identify relationships in the literature and develop and connect your own ideas to them.

This is essentially the same as step 5 but focused on the connections between the literature and the current study or guiding concepts or arguments of the paper, not only on the connections between the works themselves.

Your hypothesis, argument, or guiding concept is the “golden thread” that will ultimately tie the works together and provide readers with specific insights they didn’t have before reading your literature review. Make sure you know where to put the research question , hypothesis, or statement of the problem in your research paper so that you guide your readers logically and naturally from your introduction of earlier work and evidence to the conclusions you want them to draw from the bigger picture.

Your literature 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.

Literature Review (RRL) Examples

Because creating sample literature reviews would take too long and not properly capture the nuances and detailed information needed for a good review, we have included some links to different types of literature reviews below. You can find links to more literature reviews in these categories by visiting the TUS Library’s website . Sample literature reviews as part of an article, dissertation, or thesis:

  • Critical Thinking and Transferability: A Review of the Literature (Gwendolyn Reece)
  • Building Customer Loyalty: A Customer Experience Based Approach in a Tourism Context (Martina Donnelly)

Sample stand-alone literature reviews

  • Literature Review on Attitudes towards Disability (National Disability Authority)
  • The Effects of Communication Styles on Marital Satisfaction (Hannah Yager)

Additional Literature Review Format Guidelines

In addition to the content guidelines above, authors also need to check which style guidelines to use ( APA , Chicago, MLA, etc.) and what specific rules the target journal might have for how to structure such articles or how many studies to include—such information can usually be found on the journals’ “Guide for Authors” pages. Additionally, use one of the four Wordvice citation generators below, choosing the citation style needed for your paper:

Wordvice Writing and Academic Editing Resources

Finally, after you have finished drafting your literature review, be sure to receive professional proofreading services , including paper editing for your academic work. A competent proofreader who understands academic writing conventions and the specific style guides used by academic journals will ensure that your paper is ready for publication in your target journal.

See our academic resources for further advice on references in your paper , how to write an abstract , how to write a research paper title, how to impress the editor of your target journal with a perfect cover letter , and dozens of other research writing and publication topics.

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A literature review surveys prior research published in books, scholarly articles, and any other sources relevant to a particular issue, area of research, or theory, and by so doing, provides a description, summary, and critical evaluation of these works in relation to the research problem being investigated. Literature reviews are designed to provide an overview of sources you have used in researching a particular topic and to demonstrate to your readers how your research fits within existing scholarship about the topic.

Fink, Arlene. Conducting Research Literature Reviews: From the Internet to Paper . Fourth edition. Thousand Oaks, CA: SAGE, 2014.

Importance of a Good Literature Review

A literature review may consist of simply a summary of key sources, but in the social sciences, a literature review usually has an organizational pattern and combines both summary and synthesis, often within specific conceptual categories . A summary is a recap of the important information of the source, but a synthesis is a re-organization, or a reshuffling, of that information in a way that informs how you are planning to investigate a research problem. The analytical features of a literature review might:

  • Give a new interpretation of old material or combine new with old interpretations,
  • Trace the intellectual progression of the field, including major debates,
  • Depending on the situation, evaluate the sources and advise the reader on the most pertinent or relevant research, or
  • Usually in the conclusion of a literature review, identify where gaps exist in how a problem has been researched to date.

Given this, the purpose of a literature review is to:

  • Place each work in the context of its contribution to understanding the research problem being studied.
  • Describe the relationship of each work to the others under consideration.
  • Identify new ways to interpret prior research.
  • Reveal any gaps that exist in the literature.
  • Resolve conflicts amongst seemingly contradictory previous studies.
  • Identify areas of prior scholarship to prevent duplication of effort.
  • Point the way in fulfilling a need for additional research.
  • Locate your own research within the context of existing literature [very important].

Fink, Arlene. Conducting Research Literature Reviews: From the Internet to Paper. 2nd ed. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage, 2005; Hart, Chris. Doing a Literature Review: Releasing the Social Science Research Imagination . Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage Publications, 1998; Jesson, Jill. Doing Your Literature Review: Traditional and Systematic Techniques . Los Angeles, CA: SAGE, 2011; Knopf, Jeffrey W. "Doing a Literature Review." PS: Political Science and Politics 39 (January 2006): 127-132; Ridley, Diana. The Literature Review: A Step-by-Step Guide for Students . 2nd ed. Los Angeles, CA: SAGE, 2012.

Types of Literature Reviews

It is important to think of knowledge in a given field as consisting of three layers. First, there are the primary studies that researchers conduct and publish. Second are the reviews of those studies that summarize and offer new interpretations built from and often extending beyond the primary studies. Third, there are the perceptions, conclusions, opinion, and interpretations that are shared informally among scholars that become part of the body of epistemological traditions within the field.

In composing a literature review, it is important to note that it is often this third layer of knowledge that is cited as "true" even though it often has only a loose relationship to the primary studies and secondary literature reviews. Given this, while literature reviews are designed to provide an overview and synthesis of pertinent sources you have explored, there are a number of approaches you could adopt depending upon the type of analysis underpinning your study.

Argumentative Review This form examines literature selectively in order to support or refute an argument, deeply embedded assumption, or philosophical problem already established in the literature. The purpose is to develop a body of literature that establishes a contrarian viewpoint. Given the value-laden nature of some social science research [e.g., educational reform; immigration control], argumentative approaches to analyzing the literature can be a legitimate and important form of discourse. However, note that they can also introduce problems of bias when they are used to make summary claims of the sort found in systematic reviews [see below].

Integrative Review Considered a form of research that reviews, critiques, and synthesizes representative literature on a topic in an integrated way such that new frameworks and perspectives on the topic are generated. The body of literature includes all studies that address related or identical hypotheses or research problems. A well-done integrative review meets the same standards as primary research in regard to clarity, rigor, and replication. This is the most common form of review in the social sciences.

Historical Review Few things rest in isolation from historical precedent. Historical literature reviews focus on examining research throughout a period of time, often starting with the first time an issue, concept, theory, phenomena emerged in the literature, then tracing its evolution within the scholarship of a discipline. The purpose is to place research in a historical context to show familiarity with state-of-the-art developments and to identify the likely directions for future research.

Methodological Review A review does not always focus on what someone said [findings], but how they came about saying what they say [method of analysis]. Reviewing methods of analysis provides a framework of understanding at different levels [i.e. those of theory, substantive fields, research approaches, and data collection and analysis techniques], how researchers draw upon a wide variety of knowledge ranging from the conceptual level to practical documents for use in fieldwork in the areas of ontological and epistemological consideration, quantitative and qualitative integration, sampling, interviewing, data collection, and data analysis. This approach helps highlight ethical issues which you should be aware of and consider as you go through your own study.

Systematic Review This form consists of an overview of existing evidence pertinent to a clearly formulated research question, which uses pre-specified and standardized methods to identify and critically appraise relevant research, and to collect, report, and analyze data from the studies that are included in the review. The goal is to deliberately document, critically evaluate, and summarize scientifically all of the research about a clearly defined research problem . Typically it focuses on a very specific empirical question, often posed in a cause-and-effect form, such as "To what extent does A contribute to B?" This type of literature review is primarily applied to examining prior research studies in clinical medicine and allied health fields, but it is increasingly being used in the social sciences.

Theoretical Review The purpose of this form is to examine the corpus of theory that has accumulated in regard to an issue, concept, theory, phenomena. The theoretical literature review helps to establish what theories already exist, the relationships between them, to what degree the existing theories have been investigated, and to develop new hypotheses to be tested. Often this form is used to help establish a lack of appropriate theories or reveal that current theories are inadequate for explaining new or emerging research problems. The unit of analysis can focus on a theoretical concept or a whole theory or framework.

NOTE : Most often the literature review will incorporate some combination of types. For example, a review that examines literature supporting or refuting an argument, assumption, or philosophical problem related to the research problem will also need to include writing supported by sources that establish the history of these arguments in the literature.

Baumeister, Roy F. and Mark R. Leary. "Writing Narrative Literature Reviews."  Review of General Psychology 1 (September 1997): 311-320; Mark R. Fink, Arlene. Conducting Research Literature Reviews: From the Internet to Paper . 2nd ed. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage, 2005; Hart, Chris. Doing a Literature Review: Releasing the Social Science Research Imagination . Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage Publications, 1998; Kennedy, Mary M. "Defining a Literature." Educational Researcher 36 (April 2007): 139-147; Petticrew, Mark and Helen Roberts. Systematic Reviews in the Social Sciences: A Practical Guide . Malden, MA: Blackwell Publishers, 2006; Torracro, Richard. "Writing Integrative Literature Reviews: Guidelines and Examples." Human Resource Development Review 4 (September 2005): 356-367; Rocco, Tonette S. and Maria S. Plakhotnik. "Literature Reviews, Conceptual Frameworks, and Theoretical Frameworks: Terms, Functions, and Distinctions." Human Ressource Development Review 8 (March 2008): 120-130; Sutton, Anthea. Systematic Approaches to a Successful Literature Review . Los Angeles, CA: Sage Publications, 2016.

Structure and Writing Style

I.  Thinking About Your Literature Review

The structure of a literature review should include the following in support of understanding the research problem :

  • An overview of the subject, issue, or theory under consideration, along with the objectives of the literature review,
  • Division of works under review into themes or categories [e.g. works that support a particular position, those against, and those offering alternative approaches entirely],
  • An explanation of how each work is similar to and how it varies from the others,
  • Conclusions as to which pieces are best considered in their argument, are most convincing of their opinions, and make the greatest contribution to the understanding and development of their area of research.

The critical evaluation of each work should consider :

  • Provenance -- what are the author's credentials? Are the author's arguments supported by evidence [e.g. primary historical material, case studies, narratives, statistics, recent scientific findings]?
  • Methodology -- were the techniques used to identify, gather, and analyze the data appropriate to addressing the research problem? Was the sample size appropriate? Were the results effectively interpreted and reported?
  • Objectivity -- is the author's perspective even-handed or prejudicial? Is contrary data considered or is certain pertinent information ignored to prove the author's point?
  • Persuasiveness -- which of the author's theses are most convincing or least convincing?
  • Validity -- are the author's arguments and conclusions convincing? Does the work ultimately contribute in any significant way to an understanding of the subject?

II.  Development of the Literature Review

Four Basic Stages of Writing 1.  Problem formulation -- which topic or field is being examined and what are its component issues? 2.  Literature search -- finding materials relevant to the subject being explored. 3.  Data evaluation -- determining which literature makes a significant contribution to the understanding of the topic. 4.  Analysis and interpretation -- discussing the findings and conclusions of pertinent literature.

Consider the following issues before writing the literature review: Clarify If your assignment is not specific about what form your literature review should take, seek clarification from your professor by asking these questions: 1.  Roughly how many sources would be appropriate to include? 2.  What types of sources should I review (books, journal articles, websites; scholarly versus popular sources)? 3.  Should I summarize, synthesize, or critique sources by discussing a common theme or issue? 4.  Should I evaluate the sources in any way beyond evaluating how they relate to understanding the research problem? 5.  Should I provide subheadings and other background information, such as definitions and/or a history? Find Models Use the exercise of reviewing the literature to examine how authors in your discipline or area of interest have composed their literature review sections. Read them to get a sense of the types of themes you might want to look for in your own research or to identify ways to organize your final review. The bibliography or reference section of sources you've already read, such as required readings in the course syllabus, are also excellent entry points into your own research. Narrow the Topic The narrower your topic, the easier it will be to limit the number of sources you need to read in order to obtain a good survey of relevant resources. Your professor will probably not expect you to read everything that's available about the topic, but you'll make the act of reviewing easier if you first limit scope of the research problem. A good strategy is to begin by searching the USC Libraries Catalog for recent books about the topic and review the table of contents for chapters that focuses on specific issues. You can also review the indexes of books to find references to specific issues that can serve as the focus of your research. For example, a book surveying the history of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict may include a chapter on the role Egypt has played in mediating the conflict, or look in the index for the pages where Egypt is mentioned in the text. Consider Whether Your Sources are Current Some disciplines require that you use information that is as current as possible. This is particularly true in disciplines in medicine and the sciences where research conducted becomes obsolete very quickly as new discoveries are made. However, when writing a review in the social sciences, a survey of the history of the literature may be required. In other words, a complete understanding the research problem requires you to deliberately examine how knowledge and perspectives have changed over time. Sort through other current bibliographies or literature reviews in the field to get a sense of what your discipline expects. You can also use this method to explore what is considered by scholars to be a "hot topic" and what is not.

III.  Ways to Organize Your Literature Review

Chronology of Events If your review follows the chronological method, you could write about the materials according to when they were published. This approach should only be followed if a clear path of research building on previous research can be identified and that these trends follow a clear chronological order of development. For example, a literature review that focuses on continuing research about the emergence of German economic power after the fall of the Soviet Union. By Publication Order your sources by publication chronology, then, only if the order demonstrates a more important trend. For instance, you could order a review of literature on environmental studies of brown fields if the progression revealed, for example, a change in the soil collection practices of the researchers who wrote and/or conducted the studies. Thematic [“conceptual categories”] A thematic literature review is the most common approach to summarizing prior research in the social and behavioral sciences. Thematic reviews are organized around a topic or issue, rather than the progression of time, although the progression of time may still be incorporated into a thematic review. For example, a review of the Internet’s impact on American presidential politics could focus on the development of online political satire. While the study focuses on one topic, the Internet’s impact on American presidential politics, it would still be organized chronologically reflecting technological developments in media. The difference in this example between a "chronological" and a "thematic" approach is what is emphasized the most: themes related to the role of the Internet in presidential politics. Note that more authentic thematic reviews tend to break away from chronological order. A review organized in this manner would shift between time periods within each section according to the point being made. Methodological A methodological approach focuses on the methods utilized by the researcher. For the Internet in American presidential politics project, one methodological approach would be to look at cultural differences between the portrayal of American presidents on American, British, and French websites. Or the review might focus on the fundraising impact of the Internet on a particular political party. A methodological scope will influence either the types of documents in the review or the way in which these documents are discussed.

Other Sections of Your Literature Review Once you've decided on the organizational method for your literature review, the sections you need to include in the paper should be easy to figure out because they arise from your organizational strategy. In other words, a chronological review would have subsections for each vital time period; a thematic review would have subtopics based upon factors that relate to the theme or issue. However, sometimes you may need to add additional sections that are necessary for your study, but do not fit in the organizational strategy of the body. What other sections you include in the body is up to you. However, only include what is necessary for the reader to locate your study within the larger scholarship about the research problem.

Here are examples of other sections, usually in the form of a single paragraph, you may need to include depending on the type of review you write:

  • Current Situation : Information necessary to understand the current topic or focus of the literature review.
  • Sources Used : Describes the methods and resources [e.g., databases] you used to identify the literature you reviewed.
  • History : The chronological progression of the field, the research literature, or an idea that is necessary to understand the literature review, if the body of the literature review is not already a chronology.
  • Selection Methods : Criteria you used to select (and perhaps exclude) sources in your literature review. For instance, you might explain that your review includes only peer-reviewed [i.e., scholarly] sources.
  • Standards : Description of the way in which you present your information.
  • Questions for Further Research : What questions about the field has the review sparked? How will you further your research as a result of the review?

IV.  Writing Your Literature Review

Once you've settled on how to organize your literature review, you're ready to write each section. When writing your review, keep in mind these issues.

Use Evidence A literature review section is, in this sense, just like any other academic research paper. Your interpretation of the available sources must be backed up with evidence [citations] that demonstrates that what you are saying is valid. Be Selective Select only the most important points in each source to highlight in the review. The type of information you choose to mention should relate directly to the research problem, whether it is thematic, methodological, or chronological. Related items that provide additional information, but that are not key to understanding the research problem, can be included in a list of further readings . Use Quotes Sparingly Some short quotes are appropriate if you want to emphasize a point, or if what an author stated cannot be easily paraphrased. Sometimes you may need to quote certain terminology that was coined by the author, is not common knowledge, or taken directly from the study. Do not use extensive quotes as a substitute for using your own words in reviewing the literature. Summarize and Synthesize Remember to summarize and synthesize your sources within each thematic paragraph as well as throughout the review. Recapitulate important features of a research study, but then synthesize it by rephrasing the study's significance and relating it to your own work and the work of others. Keep Your Own Voice While the literature review presents others' ideas, your voice [the writer's] should remain front and center. For example, weave references to other sources into what you are writing but maintain your own voice by starting and ending the paragraph with your own ideas and wording. Use Caution When Paraphrasing When paraphrasing a source that is not your own, be sure to represent the author's information or opinions accurately and in your own words. Even when paraphrasing an author’s work, you still must provide a citation to that work.

V.  Common Mistakes to Avoid

These are the most common mistakes made in reviewing social science research literature.

  • Sources in your literature review do not clearly relate to the research problem;
  • You do not take sufficient time to define and identify the most relevant sources to use in the literature review related to the research problem;
  • Relies exclusively on secondary analytical sources rather than including relevant primary research studies or data;
  • Uncritically accepts another researcher's findings and interpretations as valid, rather than examining critically all aspects of the research design and analysis;
  • Does not describe the search procedures that were used in identifying the literature to review;
  • Reports isolated statistical results rather than synthesizing them in chi-squared or meta-analytic methods; and,
  • Only includes research that validates assumptions and does not consider contrary findings and alternative interpretations found in the literature.

Cook, Kathleen E. and Elise Murowchick. “Do Literature Review Skills Transfer from One Course to Another?” Psychology Learning and Teaching 13 (March 2014): 3-11; Fink, Arlene. Conducting Research Literature Reviews: From the Internet to Paper . 2nd ed. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage, 2005; Hart, Chris. Doing a Literature Review: Releasing the Social Science Research Imagination . Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage Publications, 1998; Jesson, Jill. Doing Your Literature Review: Traditional and Systematic Techniques . London: SAGE, 2011; Literature Review Handout. Online Writing Center. Liberty University; Literature Reviews. The Writing Center. University of North Carolina; Onwuegbuzie, Anthony J. and Rebecca Frels. Seven Steps to a Comprehensive Literature Review: A Multimodal and Cultural Approach . Los Angeles, CA: SAGE, 2016; Ridley, Diana. The Literature Review: A Step-by-Step Guide for Students . 2nd ed. Los Angeles, CA: SAGE, 2012; Randolph, Justus J. “A Guide to Writing the Dissertation Literature Review." Practical Assessment, Research, and Evaluation. vol. 14, June 2009; Sutton, Anthea. Systematic Approaches to a Successful Literature Review . Los Angeles, CA: Sage Publications, 2016; Taylor, Dena. The Literature Review: A Few Tips On Conducting It. University College Writing Centre. University of Toronto; Writing a Literature Review. Academic Skills Centre. University of Canberra.

Writing Tip

Break Out of Your Disciplinary Box!

Thinking interdisciplinarily about a research problem can be a rewarding exercise in applying new ideas, theories, or concepts to an old problem. For example, what might cultural anthropologists say about the continuing conflict in the Middle East? In what ways might geographers view the need for better distribution of social service agencies in large cities than how social workers might study the issue? You don’t want to substitute a thorough review of core research literature in your discipline for studies conducted in other fields of study. However, particularly in the social sciences, thinking about research problems from multiple vectors is a key strategy for finding new solutions to a problem or gaining a new perspective. Consult with a librarian about identifying research databases in other disciplines; almost every field of study has at least one comprehensive database devoted to indexing its research literature.

Frodeman, Robert. The Oxford Handbook of Interdisciplinarity . New York: Oxford University Press, 2010.

Another Writing Tip

Don't Just Review for Content!

While conducting a review of the literature, maximize the time you devote to writing this part of your paper by thinking broadly about what you should be looking for and evaluating. Review not just what scholars are saying, but how are they saying it. Some questions to ask:

  • How are they organizing their ideas?
  • What methods have they used to study the problem?
  • What theories have been used to explain, predict, or understand their research problem?
  • What sources have they cited to support their conclusions?
  • How have they used non-textual elements [e.g., charts, graphs, figures, etc.] to illustrate key points?

When you begin to write your literature review section, you'll be glad you dug deeper into how the research was designed and constructed because it establishes a means for developing more substantial analysis and interpretation of the research problem.

Hart, Chris. Doing a Literature Review: Releasing the Social Science Research Imagination . Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage Publications, 1 998.

Yet Another Writing Tip

When Do I Know I Can Stop Looking and Move On?

Here are several strategies you can utilize to assess whether you've thoroughly reviewed the literature:

  • Look for repeating patterns in the research findings . If the same thing is being said, just by different people, then this likely demonstrates that the research problem has hit a conceptual dead end. At this point consider: Does your study extend current research?  Does it forge a new path? Or, does is merely add more of the same thing being said?
  • Look at sources the authors cite to in their work . If you begin to see the same researchers cited again and again, then this is often an indication that no new ideas have been generated to address the research problem.
  • Search Google Scholar to identify who has subsequently cited leading scholars already identified in your literature review [see next sub-tab]. This is called citation tracking and there are a number of sources that can help you identify who has cited whom, particularly scholars from outside of your discipline. Here again, if the same authors are being cited again and again, this may indicate no new literature has been written on the topic.

Onwuegbuzie, Anthony J. and Rebecca Frels. Seven Steps to a Comprehensive Literature Review: A Multimodal and Cultural Approach . Los Angeles, CA: Sage, 2016; Sutton, Anthea. Systematic Approaches to a Successful Literature Review . Los Angeles, CA: Sage Publications, 2016.

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

literature review

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. 

Table of Contents

  • 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: 
  • How to write a good 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: 
  • 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.

how to write a literature review in a research paper

What is the purpose of literature review?

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

  • 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. 
  • 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. 
  • 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. 
  • 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. 
  • 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. 
  • 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: 

a. Habitat Loss and Species Extinction:

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. 

b. Range Shifts and Phenological Changes:

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. 

c. Ocean Acidification and Coral Reefs:

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. 

d. Adaptive Strategies and Conservation Efforts:

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. 

how to write a literature review in a research paper

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. 

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. 

what is a literature review

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. 

The literature review sample and detailed advice on writing and conducting a review will help you produce a well-structured report. But remember that a literature review is an ongoing process, and it may be necessary to revisit and update it as your research progresses. 

Frequently asked questions

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: 

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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Try it for free or upgrade to  Paperpal Prime , which unlocks unlimited access to premium features like academic translation, paraphrasing, contextual synonyms, consistency checks and more. It’s like always having a professional academic editor by your side! Go beyond limitations and experience the future of academic writing.  Get Paperpal Prime now at just US$19 a month!

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Research Paper Writing Guides

Research Paper Literature Review

Last updated on: Jan 15, 2024

How to Write a Literature Review for a Research Paper | A Complete Guide

By: Donna C.

13 min read

Reviewed By: Barbara P.

Published on: Jan 4, 2024

How To Write A Literature Review

Think about spending hours in front of a screen, surrounded by tons of information, and feeling like the pieces of the research are all over the web. 

There's this pressure to create a literature review that not only meets the academic rules but also sets the stage for your own research idea – and it can be a bit too much.

If you can relate to this situation, just know that you are not alone!

To tackle this universal problem, we're here to help students and researchers. 

We'll give you practical tips on searching and gathering literature along with organizing it. By the end of this blog, you will have a clear understanding of writing a captivating literature review.

Let's get started!

How To Write A Literature Review

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What is a Literature Review? 

A literature review serves as a comprehensive survey and analysis of scholarly works relevant to a particular subject or research topic. 

It's a critical examination of existing scholarly works, such as articles, books, and studies, relevant to your research paper.

Purpose of Literature Review

The purpose of writing a literature review extends beyond just summarizing sources.

  • Understanding the Why: It lays the groundwork for your research by providing context, identifying gaps in existing knowledge, and showcasing the evolution of ideas in your field.
  • Connecting the Dots: It highlights key themes, trends, and debates, helping you connect the dots between different studies and form a solid foundation for your research.
  • Justifying Your Research: It demonstrates that your field of study is not only building upon existing knowledge but also addressing unanswered questions or offering a fresh perspective.

Types of Literature Reviews

Different types of literature reviews have specific purposes, and each adds depth to academic exploration. 

Before learning how to start a literature review, it's crucial to know these types to match research goals.

Narrative Literature Review

  • Overview: This type provides a comprehensive summary of existing literature without a specific methodology.
  • Purpose: It aims to present the strongest view of the topic, offering insights into key concepts and developments.
  • Example: Writing Narrative Literature Reviews

Systematic Literature Review

  • Overview: Conducted with a structured approach, this type follows a systematic and transparent methodology for literature selection and analysis.
  • Purpose: It carefully combines existing knowledge, making sure not to favor any particular viewpoint and enhancing the reliability of findings.
  • Example: How to Write a Systematic Review of the Literature

Meta-Analysis

  • Overview: Integrates statistical methods to analyze and synthesize the quantitative results from multiple studies.
  • Purpose: It provides a quantitative overview, offering a statistical synthesis of research outcomes.
  • Example: Meta-Analysis: Recent Developments in Quantitative Methods for Literature Reviews

Scoping Review

  • Overview: Aims to map the existing literature on a broad topic without strict rules about what to include.
  • Purpose: It identifies gaps in the literature, helping define the scope for further research.
  • Example: What Are Scoping Studies? A Review of the Nursing Literature

Critical Literature Review

  • Overview: Emphasizes a critical evaluation of the strengths and weaknesses of existing literature.
  • Purpose: It offers a critical analysis, highlighting contradictions, methodological issues, and areas requiring further exploration.
  • Example: How to do (or not to do) a Critical Literature Review

Integrative Literature Review

  • Overview: Synthesizes diverse sources, including theoretical and empirical studies, to create a comprehensive understanding of a topic.
  • Purpose: It seeks to integrate findings from different studies to construct a unified perspective.
  • Example: Writing Integrative Literature Reviews: Using the Past and Present to Explore the Future

Now let’s move on to learn how you can craft a perfect literature review section of a research paper! 

How to Write A Literature Review for A Research Paper in 7 Simple Steps

Starting your literature review as part of research might feel overwhelming, but don't worry! We'll walk you through seven easy steps to make it simple for you.

Step 1: Define the Scope

Defining your scope right at the beginning helps you stay focused and ensures your literature review is both comprehensive and manageable.

It means being clear about what you want to explore and what you don't. Here's how to do it:

  • Clarify Your Research Question 

Start by asking yourself, "What exactly am I researching?" Be specific about your topic.

  • Set Boundaries 

Decide the timeframe you're interested in and the types of sources you'll include. 

Are you focusing on recent studies, or do you want historical context? Will you only look at academic journals, or are books and reports also relevant?

Step 2: Search for Relevant Literature

Now that you've defined your scope, it's time to hunt for valuable information. Here's how to search for relevant literature:

  • Utilize Academic Databases

Explore databases like PubMed , JSTOR , or Google Scholar . Use specific keywords related to your research question to find scholarly articles, books, and studies.

  • Check Annotated Bibliographies

Look at the reference section, simply listing the articles you need. This can lead you to other relevant sources that you might have missed during your initial search.

  • Use Search Filters

Many databases have filters to refine your search. You can filter by publication date, study type, or other criteria to ensure you're getting the most relevant results.

Step 3: Evaluate Sources

Now that you've gathered your sources, it's time to make sure they're solid and reliable. Here's how to evaluate them:

  • Check the Author's Credibility

See if the author is an expert in the field. Look at their qualifications and experience. 

For example, someone with a Ph.D. in psychology is likely more credible for a study on mental health.

  • Examine the Publication Source

Where was the study published? Peer-reviewed journals and reputable publishers often ensure higher quality. 

Be cautious with information from personal blogs or non-academic sources.

  • Consider the Publication Date

Is the information up-to-date? Depending on your topic, older sources might still be relevant, but it's essential to know if there are more recent findings.

Step 4:Organize and Summarize

Now, let's make sense of all the information you've collected. 

  • Group your sources based on similar topics or ideas. This makes it easier to see what everyone is saying about specific things.
  • Next, write brief summaries of each source . Focus on the main points, like what the study found or what ideas it talks about. This way, you won't forget what each source is about.
  • Lastly, check if there are things that keep popping up in different sources . Maybe many studies agree on something, or they have different opinions. This helps you understand the main ideas in your field.

Step 5:Identify Themes, Debates, and Gaps

Now that your sources are organized let's dig deeper. Here's how to identify central themes, debates, and gaps in your literature:

  • Find Common Threads

Look for recurring ideas or topics across your sources. These are your themes. It could be something everyone agrees on or an aspect that's widely discussed.

  • Spot Debates or Disagreements

Check if there are differing opinions or debates among the sources. Note where researchers have different viewpoints or conflicting findings.

  • Pinpoint Research Gaps

Identify areas where there's not much information. These are your research gaps. 

Knowing what hasn't been studied or explored thoroughly helps you see where your research can make a valuable contribution.

Step 6: Create an Outline of Your Literature Review 

Now that you understand the themes and debates of literature review in research methodology, let's structure it. 

Here's how to create an outline for your literature review:

Begin with a brief overview of your research problem. State the purpose of your literature review and highlight the key themes or questions you'll explore.

  • Organize by Themes

Use the themes and debates you've identified to structure your main sections. Each section should focus on a specific theme or aspect related to your research.

  • Include Subheadings

Break down each main section into subheadings. This adds further organization and clarity to your review, making it easier for readers to follow.

  • Chronological or Methodological Order

Consider organizing your sections chronologically or by methodology, depending on what best suits your research. This helps create a logical flow in your literature review.

Step 7:Write Your Literature Review

Now that you have a solid outline, let's bring your literature review to life. Here's how to write it:

1. Introduction

  • Overview of Research Topic: Begin by introducing your research topic in a way that captures the reader's interest. Provide a brief background to contextualize your study.
  • Significance: Explain why your research topic is important or relevant. Discuss any gaps or controversies in the existing literature that your research aims to address.
  • Thematic Preview: Give a concise preview of the main themes or questions you'll be exploring in your literature review.
  • Follow Outline: Stick to the outline you created in step 6. Each section of your literature review should correspond to a specific theme or aspect of your research.
  • Summarize Key Findings: For each section, summarize the key findings, arguments, or theories from your selected sources. Provide enough detail to give readers a clear understanding of the literature on that theme.
  • Connect Ideas: In between summarizing sources, connect ideas and highlight relationships between studies. Discuss how each study contributes to the broader understanding of your research topic.

3. Critical Analysis

  • Evaluate Methodologies: Discuss the methodologies used in the studies you've reviewed. Assess the strengths and limitations of these approaches and consider their impact on the validity of the findings.
  • Point Out Biases: Be attentive to any biases in the literature. This could include cultural, methodological, or publication biases. Addressing biases adds depth to your analysis.
  • Strengths and Weaknesses: Critically evaluate the strengths and weaknesses of each source. This analytical approach demonstrates your understanding of the nuances in the existing literature.

4. Address Debates and Gaps

  • Present Differing Viewpoints: Explicitly address debates or differing viewpoints within the literature. Provide a balanced presentation of contrasting ideas and highlight where scholars disagree.
  • Highlight Research Gaps: Discuss areas where the existing literature is lacking or where questions remain unanswered. This sets the stage for explaining how your research will fill these gaps.

5. Conclusion

  • Summarize Main Points: Summarize the key points from each section of your literature review. Revisit the main themes and arguments you've discussed.
  • Emphasize Significance: Reiterate the significance of your research within the context of the existing literature. Clearly state how your study contributes to the academic conversation.
  • Bridge to the Next Steps: Consider briefly mentioning how your literature review sets the stage for the next steps in your research, such as the methodology or specific research questions.

You can also watch this descriptive video about how to write your outstanding literature review!

How To Write A Literature Review For A Research Paper - Examples 

Crafting an effective literature review for your research paper involves more than summarizing articles. 

Learn how to synthesize information, analyze critically, and contribute meaningfully to your field through the following sample literature review pdfs for research papers.

Literature Review For A Research Paper Pdf

Literature Review For A Research Paper - APA

Literature Review For A Research Paper - Sample Pdf

Literature Survey For A Research Paper

Literature Review For A Research Proposal

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Tips For Writing Literature Review Section

Understanding and writing the literature review requires skill. Here are specific tips you can follow to conduct literature research and write an outstanding review: 

  • Connect Ideas: Focus on how different studies relate to each other. Show the links between them instead of just talking about each one separately.
  • Look Deeper into Methods: Explore the research methods used in studies. Instead of just talking about them, discuss how these methods help understand your field of research.
  • Use Different Kinds of Sources: Don't only use articles. Include different types of sources like books, reports, and conference papers to get a complete view.
  • Use Numbers When You Can: If possible, use numbers. Using statistics can make your literature review more precise and convincing.
  • Evaluate Research Questions: Evaluate how clear the research questions are in each source. Discuss how well-defined questions make the literature review more understandable.
  • Connect Different Fields: If it makes sense, connect different fields. Talk about how ideas from other areas make your understanding of the research topic better.
  • Look at Trends Over Time: See how things have changed over time. Discuss how research findings might be different now and how new technology has affected the field.

To sum it up, a literature review isn't just about summarizing. It is important to connect ideas, analyze methodologies critically, and contribute meaningfully. This guide helps you in creating a meaningful and outstanding literature review.

But if you still feel stuck, worry not! Our paper writing service online is your all-rounder solution! 

Our expert paper writers will craft 100% plagiarism-free and customized papers for you in as little as 24 hours! 

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Frequently Asked Questions

What makes a good literature review in a research paper.

A good literature review in a research paper is clear, organized, and connects different studies. It explains what is already known, highlights gaps, and shows the significance of the research. 

How Do You Begin A Literature Review?

To begin a literature review, start broadly by briefly discussing the general topics related to your research. Think of it like an inverted triangle—initially touching on the wide aspects of your subject to show you understand its breadth.

Donna C.

Donna writes on a broad range of topics, but she is mostly passionate about social issues, current events, and human-interest stories. She has received high praise for her writing from both colleagues and readers alike. Donna is known in her field for creating content that is not only professional but also captivating.

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Duke University Libraries

Literature Reviews

  • Getting started

What is a literature review?

Why conduct a literature review, stages of a literature review, lit reviews: an overview (video), check out these books.

  • Types of reviews
  • 1. Define your research question
  • 2. Plan your search
  • 3. Search the literature
  • 4. Organize your results
  • 5. Synthesize your findings
  • 6. Write the review
  • Thompson Writing Studio This link opens in a new window
  • Need to write a systematic review? This link opens in a new window

how to write a literature review in a research paper

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how to write a literature review in a research paper

Definition: A literature review is a systematic examination and synthesis of existing scholarly research on a specific topic or subject.

Purpose: It serves to provide a comprehensive overview of the current state of knowledge within a particular field.

Analysis: Involves critically evaluating and summarizing key findings, methodologies, and debates found in academic literature.

Identifying Gaps: Aims to pinpoint areas where there is a lack of research or unresolved questions, highlighting opportunities for further investigation.

Contextualization: Enables researchers to understand how their work fits into the broader academic conversation and contributes to the existing body of knowledge.

how to write a literature review in a research paper

tl;dr  A literature review critically examines and synthesizes existing scholarly research and publications on a specific topic to provide a comprehensive understanding of the current state of knowledge in the field.

What is a literature review NOT?

❌ An annotated bibliography

❌ Original research

❌ A summary

❌ Something to be conducted at the end of your research

❌ An opinion piece

❌ A chronological compilation of studies

The reason for conducting a literature review is to:

how to write a literature review in a research paper

Literature Reviews: An Overview for Graduate Students

While this 9-minute video from NCSU is geared toward graduate students, it is useful for anyone conducting a literature review.

how to write a literature review in a research paper

Writing the literature review: A practical guide

Available 3rd floor of Perkins

how to write a literature review in a research paper

Writing literature reviews: A guide for students of the social and behavioral sciences

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how to write a literature review in a research paper

So, you have to write a literature review: A guided workbook for engineers

how to write a literature review in a research paper

Telling a research story: Writing a literature review

how to write a literature review in a research paper

The literature review: Six steps to success

how to write a literature review in a research paper

Systematic approaches to a successful literature review

Request from Duke Medical Center Library

how to write a literature review in a research paper

Doing a systematic review: A student's guide

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  • Last Updated: Feb 15, 2024 1:45 PM
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How to Write a Research Paper: Literature Review

  • Anatomy of a Research Paper
  • Developing a Research Focus
  • Background Research Tips
  • Searching Tips
  • Scholarly Journals vs. Popular Journals
  • Thesis Statement
  • Annotated Bibliography
  • Citing Sources
  • Evaluating Sources
  • Literature Review
  • Academic Integrity
  • Scholarship as Conversation
  • Understanding Fake News
  • Data, Information, Knowledge

What Sources Can I Use?

You can use a variety of sources for your literature review:

Use our Central Dakota Library Network to find books available at Welder Library or other regional libraries. You can also search for books through WorldCat. You may request books in WorldCat by using our Interlibrary Loan Service . 

Reference Materials:

Reference Materials such as encyclopedia and dictionaries provide good overall views of topics and provide keyword hints for searching. Many will include lists of sources to consider for your literature review. You can access Welder Library's reference materials in the library or use the electronic resources.  

Journal are a major source of materials for a literature review. With the library's databases, you can located and requested journals through our Interlibrary Loan Service . 

General websites can be a valuable resource for information. However, most websites are largely unregulated. Be sure to review the Evaluating Sources before using a website as a source. 

Government Publications:

The U.S. government produces a wide variety of information sources, from consumer brochures to Congressional reports to large amounts of data to longitudinal studies. For the United States, USA.gov and official state websites are good places to start.

What is a Literature Review?

What is a literature review? 

  • It is more than a summary of sources. 
  • Summary is a recap of the important information of the source.
  • Synthesis is the organization of that information. 
  • It is different from a research paper, because literature reviews focus on the sources.

Why do we write them?

  • They provide a handy guide of resources to a particular topic. 
  • Helps keep professionals up to date with what is current in the field. 
  • For scholars, the depth and breadth of the literature review emphasizes the credibility of the writer in their field. 

Other Helpful Tips

Use evidence:

Your interpretation of the available sources must be backed up with evidence to show that what you are saying is valid. 

Be selective:  

Select only the most important points in each source to highlight in the review. The type of information you choose to mention should relate directly to the review's focus, whether is it thematic, methodological, or chronological. 

Use quotes sparingly:

The nature of a literature review does not allow for in-depth discussion or detailed quotes from the text. Some short quotes are okay, if you want to emphasize a point, or if what the author said just cannot be rewritten in your own words. 

Summarize and Synthesize:

Remember to summarize and synthesize your sources within each paragraph as well as throughout the review. You can synthesize the information by rephrasing the study's significance and relate it to their work. 

Keep Your Own Voice:

While the literature review represent other's ideas, your voice (the writer's) should remain front and center. 

Use Caution when Paraphrasing:

When paraphrasing a source that is not your own, be sure to represent the author's information or opinions accurately and in your own words. 

( "Literature Reviews" from   The Writing Center, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill )

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Literature Review: Conducting & Writing

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how to write a literature review in a research paper

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The violence of literature review and the imperative to ask new questions

Writing the literature review is not a neutral act. In fact, the key central aim of consolidating work in a particular research area is to demonstrate one’s knowledge of this area; that is, one must know the ‘conversations’ concerning the research topic. Literature review becomes violent in the Bourdieusian sense because it imposes particular configurations of privileged knowledge on researchers. Thus, in this paper, we argue that literature review is an enactment of symbolic violence and, in the process, epistemic theft, and central to this practice is the construction of research questions. Literature review, as a site of scholarly conversations, dictates the kinds of questions we ask, thus unwittingly framing our research according to the epistemic demands of past and recent studies. By asking a different set of questions, ‘new’ or different understandings about certain social phenomena may emerge.

1 Introduction

When it comes to the dominant practice of literature review, it is unlikely that ‘autonomous knowledge’ ( Alatas 1979 , 2022 ) is achieved. According to Guillermo (2023) , for example, “[s]ocial scientists in the dependent centres of academic production are obliged to acquaint themselves, if not master, both the classics and the latest theoretical trends emanating from the dominant centres” (p. 4), and this can concretely be observed in literature review.

A researcher, according to Boote and Beile (2005) “cannot perform significant research without first understanding the literature in the field” (p. 3). What this means is that a literature review which is essentially mapping the field of research in order to identify key topics, scholars and controversies, is a prerequisite for producing ‘significant’ research. Literature review in this sense is the demonstration of knowledge of the field. What we want to problematize in this paper is what constitutes knowledge of the field and how the process of consolidating privileged knowledge is a violent process.

Thus, in this paper we argue that literature review as described above is an enactment of symbolic violence and, in the process, epistemic theft, and central to this practice is the construction of research questions. We show this through the design of a research project on attitudes of Filipino professional writers of English towards a named variety of English called ‘Philippine English’. By asking a different set of questions, we discovered that the writers conceptualize their own use of English in ways which radically depart from mainstream conceptualization of ‘Philippine English’. Literature review, as a site of scholarly conversations, dictates the kinds of questions we ask, thus unwittingly framing our research according to the epistemic demands of past and recent studies. By asking a different set of questions, ‘new’ or different understandings about certain social phenomena may emerge.

When we (the authors) conceptualized the research, we thought we had a pretty straightforward project. Based on the recent literature that we explored both on ‘Philippine English’ and, more broadly, on world Englishes, much work centred on investigating people’s attitudes towards these localized varieties of English (e.g., Alieto and Rillo 2018 ; Ambele and Boonsuk 2021 ; Gustilo and Dimaculangan 2018 ). We claimed that there has been substantial work describing the structural features of these varieties, unpacking the political dynamics of their uses and their users, as well as exploring the attitudes of different stakeholders towards these varieties. However less work has been done on professional writers themselves, even with a few scholars enquiring into the same topic ( Buripakdi 2012 ; Gritsenko and Laletina 2016 ).

As we constructed our research design, however, especially with our main research questions, we slowly developed a discomfort over what we aimed to do. Study after study, investigations into language attitudes towards varieties of English not only generate broadly predictable results but, more importantly, there emerged a particular configuration of knowledge circulation which essentially reproduces itself, thus also serving as an ideological anchor point to affirm/confirm researchers’ stand on indigenized Englishes. ‘Predictable results’ here do not point to an objective reality called Philippine English, but a discursive reality described as ‘Philippine English’ but is uninterrogated as such. Attitudes towards localized Englishes are generally conflicted or ambivalent ( Bae 2015 ; Dimaculangan 2022 ; Jeong et al. 2022 ), showing positive attitudes towards them as indexes of local identities and interpersonal relations, but increasingly more negative, unaccepting or even hostile in the formal contexts of teaching and learning, as well as if viewed through the lens of ‘global’ communication ( Jindapitak and Teo 2012 ; Tan and Tan 2008 ). In other words, compared with standard English(es) – it does not matter if they are vaguely defined phenomena – localized varieties of English are generally less favoured by speakers, especially teachers, students and educational policy makers.

Consequently, many studies confirm what we already know: that standard English(es) are preferred in the classroom and other formal workplaces and contexts. Research into language attitudes and ideologies confirms as legitimate the same attitudes and ideologies which circulate in the epistemic community. In short, research reproduces what we already know or what people hold to be true and accurate and validates recommendations based on such research in educational policy and practice. To put it in another way, research in general (see Ahl 2004 ; Herndl 1993 ; Potts and Brown 2015 ) acts as a social practice of legitimizing knowledge which society has also – in fact, already  – validated as legitimate. However, the case of ‘local’ scholars investigating their own indigenized language practices complicates the dynamics of knowledge production even more: the ‘field’ that they legitimize through the practice of literature review becomes complicit with stealing away the complexities of their own indigenous language practices. This is because while we already know what we know, the ‘object’ of such knowledge – ‘Philippine English’ – is explored through the lens of literature review which presupposes and legitimizes its so-called objective reality and, in the process, obscures its discursive constructedness. This explains why in this paper named varieties of English such as ‘Philippine English’ and ‘Thai English’, among many others, are placed in single quotation marks to point to an understanding of these named varieties as epistemic constructs rather than, as mentioned, objective facts generated through ‘scientific’ investigations.

Therefore, we sought to re-view our research questions in the light of their socially legitimizing function. In the same literature we consulted (e.g., Borlongan 2009 ; Tan 2019 ), the approaches to language attitudes towards ‘Philippine English’, or other localized Englishes for that matter, have been through particular direct and indirect enquiries. On the one hand, respondents are usually asked directly what they think of ‘Philippine English’, or ‘Thai English’, or ‘Malaysian English’. On the other hand, matched-guise tests have been used as well, thus indirectly asking respondents about their views of certain varieties of English. In both types of investigation, however, the assumption remains the same: these nationally named Englishes exist. But after completing 12 online interviews with Filipino professionals, we discovered one very important point: they did not refer to their own English as ‘Philippine English’, and in cases where they described their own use of the language in relation to their career trajectories, they defined their own use in ways that were not ‘national’ in nature such as what is assumed by ‘national’ Englishes. We were able to characterize elite use of English in the country in terms of the mobilization of flexible language resources along the lines of formality/informality, access to quality education and cultural capital, by the professional writers to keep themselves useful and marketable within their professional world. Indeed, we were able to put forward the view that ‘Philippine English’ – and ‘world Englishes’ in general – is an academic construction. Varieties of English may exist culturally and linguistically, but they are apprehended differently by people who are positioned differently in society.

Thus, when asking people what they think of ‘Philippine English’, we/researchers as in-group members assume that ‘Philippine English’ is an objective fact, and that it is understood in exactly the same way by everybody. In this way, legitimate knowledge is reproduced and imposed on how we should work with it in the practice of our professional, family, and everyday lives. This is how academic writing – reviewing the literature and constructing research questions – becomes a practice of symbolic violence and epistemic theft. Epistemic practices “are the socially organized and interactionally accomplished ways that members of a group propose, communicate, evaluate, and legitimize knowledge claims” ( Kelly and Licona 2018 , p. 140). Thus, through the mechanism of symbolic violence, they impose worldviews and ways of doing things which make us scholars as members of a social group both instruments and agents in the making of legitimatized but constructed knowledge(s). On the other hand, the mobilization of ‘Philippine English’ constitutes epistemic theft as it becomes complicit with epistemic practices of scholars who take away nuances and diversities of experiences of English language use of Filipino speakers, and then establish such ‘Philippine English’ as legitimate knowledge about all speakers. This does not in any way invalidate the usefulness of literature review, only that we need to be critically aware of what it does to us as we practice it. We must constantly question ‘knowledge’ that we recognize and erase, resist the temptation of yielding to dominant frames of understanding our ‘field’, and (re)imagine alternative tracks in pursuing what constitutes legitimate knowledge in our own research areas. We must engage in what Guillermo (2023) describes in Filipino as ‘pagsasariling-atin’, or engaging in the “process of immersion within a living and evolving dialogical space, what used to belong to only a part of the community can become ‘ours’ in the same way that something which used to be external to the community can also become ‘ours’. But in such a process, the self itself is transformed” (p. 14, italics as original). We take this to mean not only as taking ownership over the content of our research but, more importantly, over the process of producing knowledge itself, including the choice of questions we want to ask. We remain committed to engaging in dialogue with all knowledge sources available.

2 Literature review, symbolic violence, and epistemic theft

Literature review as symbolic violence and academic theft is the main argument of this paper. Literature review and symbolic violence are research topics which have been explored extensively by scholars in a wide range of fields, from the health and medical sciences ( de Caux 2021 ; Kovacs 2017 ) to the social sciences ( Roumbanis 2019 ; Yin and Mu 2022 ), to make sense of the interweaving of academic writing practices and the lives of the academics themselves. Much less extensively but no less importantly, epistemic theft has been discussed in several studies as well ( Steers-McCrum 2020 ). However, these topics have not been explored together yet.

Much of research on reviewing literature is centred on clarifying its role in the whole gamut of academic writing and practice, usually as the practice of demonstrating one’s knowledge of the relevant field of study, being able to make generalizations and articulating future directions of the field, for example through narrating past studies and doing meta-analysis ( Baumeister 2013 ; Paul and Criado 2020 ; Webster and Watson 2002 ). Critical approaches across different disciplines typically discuss literature review in the broader politics of citation practices, and understandably so because the former is deeply embedded in broader mechanisms of power and disempowerment which can be traced to structures of colonialism and neoliberal globalization ( Jackson 2020 ; Smith 1999 ). Aside from the much-studied genres of academic writing ( Hyland 2008 ), scholars have also explored how we as academics have all been socialized into particular practices of writing and thinking collectively described as ‘academic’. Thus, academic writing is a process of becoming a particular kind of person and, more specifically, a particular kind of scholar or academic ( French 2020 ; Hyland 2002 ); the other, but also complementing, side of becoming as taking on privileged identities in the academic world is the unlearning of some scholars’ indigenous or local ways of talking, writing, reading, listening and knowing in order to join the transnational knowledge work of academics ( Jackson 2020 ; Smith 1999 ).

As social practice, academic writing has been characterized as engaged in privileged conversations shaped by unequal power relations, necessitating the learning of new vocabularies and polite/objective/neutral language, and practising particular ways of citing/acknowledging sources in order to be admitted into the inner circles of “knowledge-producing communities” ( Abasi and Graves 2008 ; Kelly and Licona 2018 , p. 161; Lillis 2019 ). Through the lens of geopolitics, academic writing is also framed in terms of unequal exchange of knowledge between so-called theory-builders who are typically sited in Northern centres of knowledge production, and theory consumers who are deemed sited in Southern contexts of research and teaching ( Canagarajah 2002 ; Tupas 2020 ).

However, these socialization processes, identity formation practices and geopolitically shaped knowledge exchanges have rarely been framed or studied in terms of enactments of symbolic violence through the practice of reviewing related literature and formulating research questions. More broadly as ‘English academic discourse’, Bennett (2007) has done so through the lens of epistemicide or “the systematic destruction of rival forms of knowledge” (p. 154). While we take the position that literature review is embedded in broader structures and mechanisms of power, we also acknowledge that there are specific practices associated with the writing of the literature review – for example, constructing research questions and citing so-called classic texts – from which emerge particular configurations of symbolic violence which shape but at the same time “violate[s]” ( Dlamini et al. 2018 , p. 3) scholars’ professional being ( Scanlon 2011 ).

Bourdieu (1991) is typically associated with the notion of symbolic violence which has been deployed in innumerable studies across probably all disciplines in academia. The term refers to “violence which is exercised upon a social agent with his or her complicity” ( Bourdieu and Wacquant 2002 , p. 167). Such violence is symbolic because it is inflicted on the mind and the body through means other than the use of brute and physical force. The receiver of such violence, precisely because it is not perceived or recognized as violence, acts as an agent of complicity or consent, thus enacting symbolic violence as if it is something that benefits them (or at least does not affect them). Symbolic violence, thus, thrives on what Bourdieu ( Bourdieu and Wacquant 2002 ) also refers to as ‘misrecognition’. Academics in general, for example, misrecognize particular institutional demands such as publishing as part of “playing the game” ( Bennett 2007 ; Gordon and Zainuddin 2020 ; Guillermo 2023 ; Kalfa et al. 2018 ), taking it seriously and reorienting their lives towards it. Such demands, in fact, have the “intent to enforce and sustain managerialist practices” ( Kalfa et al. 2018 , p. 276) which, among many things, force staff to compete “against each other” (p. 286). Symbolic violence has been used substantively to make sense of academics’ troubled relationship with the neoliberal infrastructures of their professional workplaces. The aim is generally to show how market-driven agendas of universities in the form of ideologies and practices oriented towards profit-making, resilience and individual responsibilisation enact symbolic violence upon academics as “knowledge workers in the neoliberal university” ( Yin and Mu 2022 , p. 2) who misrecognize such demands and conditions as part of their life as academics ( Gordon and Zainuddin 2020 ; Roumbanis 2019 ).

Our paper follows Dlamini et al.’s (2018) mobilization of symbolic violence specifically as central to understanding the logics of academic research, although we unpack it further in the more specific context of formulating research questions and reviewing related studies through Jackson (2020) and Smith and Smith’s (2018) view of citational practice as one concrete site for the suppression, erasure and/or devaluing of Indigenous, non-western and other local knowledges. Academic writing as embodied in the practice of literature review is participating in a “conversation” which requires knowledge of (White, Northern based) scholars, their work and the important issues which constitute such a conversation ( Guillermo 2023 ). This is akin to what Dlamini et al. (2018) describe as “participating in institutional rituals or ‘behaving’ in accordance with racialised, classed or gendered expectations” (p. 2–3).

Canagarajah (2002) early in his career as a scholar from an academic periphery (Sri Lanka) narrates a personal experience of getting an academic paper published in a top tier journal when an original manuscript written in a personalized way and with “no literature review or explicit creation of a disciplinary niche” (p. 22), was rejected but ultimately accepted when he responded to reviewers’ feedback asking him to acknowledge past work on the topic he was exploring. A comparison between the two versions of the paper did not reveal any substantial change in his argument. However, in the revision, he needed to locate such an argument within recognizable/recognized areas of research in the West (such as contrastive rhetoric) with a pre-determined citation line of studies which demonstrates his ‘knowledge’ of work in these areas. The revised paper also had to be written in an academic language that dispossesses him of ownership over his argument derived from the lived experiences of people in his community. In the most literal sense, the revised paper endeavoured “to begin with a citation” (p. 25) and then “go on a bit of disciplinary niche creation by invoking the field of contrastive rhetoric”.

Notice our reference to ‘force’ and ‘dispossession’ because more than simply a change of identity and joining a conversation, we highlight the symbolic violence wrought upon scholars when they engage in the practice of literature review and formulating research questions. There is no one body of knowledge which applies to all cultures and communities in the world. However, because of the unequal ways the production of knowledge is configured, some ways of knowing and doing, including ways of writing, have been delegitimized and destroyed – Bennett (2007) refers to this process as epistemicide or symbolic genocide – by the combined forces of technologies of power and control linked with colonialism, coloniality and neoliberal capitalism. “The academia that we know today”, remarks Reyes Cruz (2008 , p. 653), “continues to be a site where that knowledge is produced and legitimated, a place where those with access to it can insert themselves in the reproduction of the kind of capital that allows a few to say what counts as valid for the rest of us”. To decolonize ourselves and our work, according to Smith (1999) , does not mean total rejection of Western theories and practices but “it is about centring our concerns and world views and then coming to know and understand theory and research from our own perspectives and for our own purposes” (p. 39). However, in the case of Canagarajah (2002) concerning that particular manuscript at the beginning of his scholarly career, and the case of many of us who attempt to ‘insert’ ourselves in the reproduction of knowledge and capital in order to gain entry into the inner circle of academic publishing, de-centring our own concerns and theorizing and researching through the lens of our own experiences and worldviews is only one part of the story. The other part is that we “consent” ( Dlamini et al. 2018 , p. 3) to being forced to use language and cite studies which silence or delegitimize our own arguments and voices. This is the logic of symbolic violence: it “violates how we think” (p. 2) and how we do things in everyday life because when we are forced to think in particular ways, we are also forced to change how we do things. Ironically, for our writing to be legitimized it “has to be inserted in colonial traditions, one has to identify, claim, locate oneself within legitimized intellectual production or at least, speak like one knows the West and so has the right to challenge it” ( Reyes Cruz 2008 , pp. 655–656).

This is where the notion of epistemic theft complicates the whole dynamics of knowledge (re)production when applied to the complicit work of ‘local’ scholars whose own language practices, cultures and communities are the subject of their own investigation. For Steers-McCrum (2020 , p. 242), epistemic theft refers to the phenomenon of ‘self-appointed speaking for’ which essentially means, in our case, scholars who assign themselves, wittingly or unwittingly, the role of speaking for the causes and agendas of other communities. Ndlovu-Gatsheni (2021) refers to ‘theft of history’ as part of the logics of epistemicides which are operations of refusal and denial of multiple ways people make sense of their own realities, and these are accomplished in sites of theft and destruction such as schools, universities and churches. In the case of our paper, however, we see the blurring of distinction between dominant and dominated communities, or the mobilizers and the receivers of violence. Because literature review commits us politically and ideologically to particular practices of consolidating knowledge in order produce what was earlier referred to as ‘significant’ research ( Boote and Beile 2005 , p. 3), there is always the possibility that we as scholars of our own communities participate in stealing away nuances and diversities of our own cultures, identities and knowledges. We participate in the mobilization of violence inflicted upon us.

3 Literature review as symbolic violence: an example

In this section, we elaborate on our argument that literature review, which includes the formulation of research questions, exacts symbolic violence on the lives of scholars and their communities and, in the process, make some of these scholars complicit with epistemic theft. This happens when scholars – as consenting and (sub)consciously complicit academics – engage in practices of thinking, writing and navigating the academic professional landscape which, on the one hand, they misrecognize as a means of scaffolding their participation in the privileged world of scholarly practice but, on the other hand, are actually hurting or damaging their sense of self, their world and their knowledge of the world. We track instantiations of “the formation and procedure of symbolic violence” ( Nas 2015 ; p. 38) as we engage in some introspective reflection spawned by our collective thinking with and through the process of research design, data collection and data analysis. To put it in another way, the operations of symbolic violence and epistemic theft in our research are slowly exposed throughout the research process as we begin to ‘recognize’ the destructive mechanisms of reviewing related studies.

Let us begin with our interview below with Dennis (not his real name), one of the 12 Filipino professional writers of English we interviewed for our research project on ‘Philippine English’ described earlier in the paper. In all the interviews, we began by asking the interviewees to describe the nature of their work and then pick up cues from their answers to ask about challenges at work which may have to do with their roles as writers in English. As we shared earlier in the paper, the questions we asked aimed at moving away from the kind of questioning that typically appears in the language attitudinal literature on ‘World Englishes’, and specifically ‘Philippine English’. ‘Symbolic violence’ was furthest from our minds, but we knew we needed to steer the interviews towards questions and answers which might generate new information or knowledge about ‘Philippine English’ beyond the predictable ones – that people at best have ambivalent attitudes towards it ( Bautista 2000 ; 2001 ; Martin 2014 ; Tupas 2006 ). Alieto and Rillo (2018) report positive attitudes but a different data set from Torres and Alieto (2019) reports limited acceptance. We knew, also based on our conventional literature review, that views of elite professional writers in English were less studied than other speakers such as teachers, pupils and parents, but we feared that we would simply generate similar patterns of attitudes towards the unexamined ‘Philippine English’. However, as we re-visited our data, especially in relation to the manner by which we generated them, we found that changing the kinds of questions we asked led us to deconstructing our own understanding of the literature review process. We were aware of citational politics and inequities in knowledge production ( Santos 2014 ; Smith 1999 ), but, interestingly, not the specific configurations of the central of role of literature review itself in the enablement of legitimized knowledges and, in the process, in the (self)erasure of other forms of knowledge, especially the ones not accessible to and devalued by Western scholarship.

Before the exchange below, Dennis introduces himself as a digital content creator and director for a well-known fashion magazine brand in the Philippines – Magazine Fashionista (MF, not the real name of the magazine) – who believes that his climb to the top of the corporate ladder was due to his ‘flexible’ way of communicating. The magazine produces different versions or editions which cater to different types of readers from the ‘masa’ crowd (the masses) to the elite crowd, thus requiring different styles of writing. Consequently, when asked to describe his kind of English, he repeatedly describes it as flexible (six times throughout the interview) as he says he is able to switch between different styles when communicating fashion to different communities of readers. There is no reference to his use of English as a Filipino, or English as shaped by Philippine culture(s). Without our prodding, he describes his English when writing for the elite as ‘Westernized’, thus we dig deeper into this point to possibly draw up connections between being flexible, being fluent in English and being westernized. This could also potentially lead us to getting him to talk about ‘Philippine English’ which, of course, did not happen. In the exchange below, [1] one of us, Ruanni, asks if being flexible and westernized had something to do with the quality of English.

R: [with your director or senior], was there a discussion about the quality of English that you have to produce? Like, should it be westernized? For the kind of flexibility that you mentioned, do you have to write in most instances in the westernized way, or Americanized way?
D: There was a specific instruction to be like westernized or American. But this specific instruction was really more on we have to communicate to the elite. So, I guess in a way I assumed it as it should be westernized. Because when we’re talking to the elite, we’re speaking of them getting education abroad. So, in a way din siguro [perhaps], it can be assumed as a westernized way, and somehow, yes, we, actually ano, ah oo nga no parang [we uhm ah it seems like you’re right], our standard or siguro my [perhaps my] standard through writing for MF because I used some words or writing from like, for example elite international magazine like Vogue, Harper’s Bazaar, British Vogue or British GQ. So, it’s kind of like more on yeah, more on westernized. Yeah. Sorry, I just realized that now that you mentioned.

Three related things, to be elaborated on below, can be said about this exchange which we also argue are discernible patterns from our other interviews. The first is the academic construction of an idea referred to as ‘localized’ English, and in the case of our study, ‘Philippine English’. Dennis defies a static view of language in general as can be gleaned through his point that the instruction to be more ‘westernized’ ‘was really more on we have to communicate to the elite’. It must be recalled that MF caters to different sectors of readers so Dennis’ point in the exchange, and in fact the rest of our interview with him, is that his English cannot be boxed into one variety or type of English; it is dynamic because it is deployed flexibly depending on the readers being addressed. Without direct questioning about people’s views of ‘Philippine English’, and instead asking about the nature of interviewees’ work, including key challenges they face in the workplace, and then “follow” ( Spinney 2015 , p. 232) their answers instead of directing them, these less obtrusive questions open up the conceptualization of localization of English in terms which do not align with our academic understanding of it such as use of English mediated by a national culture. Moreover, localized uses tend to respond to contextualized demands of communication, rather than represent internalized cultural identities which then are assumed to dictate the shape of the language variety such as ‘Philippine English’.

Secondly, it reminds us to be sceptical about centring knowledge through our own research practices. Our questions about ‘quality of English’, ‘westernized’ or ‘Americanized’ writing, and ‘flexibility’ emerged from Dennis’ own reflection on his communicative experiences and challenges in the workplace and are not imposed terms or categories from us. Thirdly, it consequently reminds us that the questions we ask generate particular forms and kinds of knowledge, thus we see a case of research where existing knowledge, produced and constrained by literature review, is perpetuated and legitimized. A possible way out of this epistemic trap is to ask a different set of questions, especially ones which allow people as much as possible to talk freely about themselves and their experiences, rather than through the lens of pre-determined (read: constructed) linguistic and social phenomena. This has led Dennis to newer realizations such as when he surmises that quality of English might indeed be linked to his own deep-rooted assumptions about communicating with the elite as communicating in a westernized or Americanized way: “Sorry, I just realized that now that you mentioned.” In our discussion below, we describe these three overlaying ideological knowledge-perpetuating mechanisms of reviewing related studies as instantiations of symbolic violence and, consequently, implicating epistemic theft.

3.1 The violence of an academically constructed phenomenon

One of the most, if not the first, uses of writing a literature review is to carve out a space for one’s own research, but in order to do this one must demonstrate ‘knowledge of the field’ and acknowledge the scholars and their work associated with the particular topic being explored. In the case of our research project, we acknowledged substantive work on attitudes in the area of ‘World Englishes’ ( Boonsuk et al. 2023 ; Lee and Green 2016 ; Rezaei et al. 2019 ; Tan and Tan 2008 ) and, specifically, ‘Philippine English’ (references cited earlier), thus our research emerged from these studies. In fact, in recent years there has been “a concentration of work on languages attitudes” ( Tan 2019 , p. 70), necessitating asking a different set of questions from research in the 1980s until early 2000s during which the main agenda among scholars was to show evidence of the existence of the different national Englishes. Since then, “[r]esearchers have begun to look away from the English varieties, but have started to ask questions about how English speakers view and use the different varieties of English” (p. 70). This could be mainly due to the fact that the desired legitimacy of ‘non-native’ varieties of English remains contested and questioned. Our research thus aimed to ask the same questions in exploring the attitudes of elite Filipino writers of English towards ‘Philippine English’. These questions emerged from our broad and historical understanding of work on the pluralization and globalization of English, associated mainly with the Kachruvian paradigm ( Kachru 1986 ; 1992 ; Smith 1991 ) which takes on a postcolonial perspective on ‘non-native’ speakers’ cultural and political intervention in the global spread of the language through both structural/linguistic and political research. Therefore, in our attempt to demonstrate our deep knowledge of the field through the exercise of literature review, we have been framed to ask the same questions as the recent studies, taking on two related epistemic stances: an epistemic stance affirming the existence of Philippine English, and an epistemic stance legitimizing the centrality of Philippine English in the lives of the speakers. In the process, these stances cancel out all possibilities of complexity and nuance in the nature of English language use as it is localised and pluralized, and gets entangled with the everyday lives of speakers.

For the first stance, it may sound counter-intuitive, but this is what the literature review does – to provide us with pre-set assumptions about the field(s) upon which our research rests ( Denney and Tewksbury 2013 ; Wolgemuth et al. 2017 ). These assumptions are rarely questioned. Sociolinguistically and structurally speaking, many studies have produced empirical evidence and well-reasoned arguments pointing to the existence of localized varieties of English shaped culturally and ideologically by their speakers. However, in what form does ‘Philippine English’ exist? Do ‘Philippine English’ speakers believe ‘Philippine English’ exists? Academic studies give us structural descriptions of the variety, as well as pragmatic functions which are purportedly culturally unique to Filipino speakers of English, which then collectively construct our notion of ‘Philippine English’. More than an objective reality, in other words, a constructed notion of ‘Philippine English’ serves as the epistemic anchor of work on ‘Philippine English’ which, through its ‘data’, provides evidence that ‘it’ exists in some particular shape.

For a number of decades now critical language and discourse scholars have also reminded us that descriptive work is never neutral; it is, in fact, normative and ideological through and through. Our descriptions (and of course, especially our interpretations of language use) are choices we make and are, thus, exclusionary in nature. For our descriptive work to be ‘accurate’, we decide which patterns of language use are legitimate or not, and exclude those which we deem unimportant or insignificant ( Beal et al. 2023 ; Fairclough 1989 ; Ottenhoff 1996 ). Related to this point, our data also limit the things we can say or not about our research topic. For the past few years, a few Filipino scholars have begun to question ‘Philippine English’ as it has been constructed academically through the years, for example by alerting us to the pluralized variety of ‘Philippine English’ – thus, Philippine English es ( Berowa and Regala-Flores 2020 ; Gonzales 2017 ; Martin 2014 ; Tupas 2006 ). Much of ‘Philippine English’ has been produced through research sited either in Manila, where most of the elite universities are, or specific communities of speakers whose linguistic repertoire is constituted by Tagalog and English, rather than constituted by multiple languages/language practices which are more common among speakers outside the political and educational centre, Manila. In the words of Gonzales (2017) , “by generalizing findings based on an unrepresented ‘Philippine English,’ we could be ignoring other minorities and groups affected by other social factors, indirectly advocating elitism” (p. 82). Berowa and Regala-Flores (2020) also highlight that the ‘Philippine English’ mobilized in the literature is “elitist-Manila-centric" (p. 214) which reminds us that our conceptualization of what constitutes the variety is incomplete at best. Many of these studies propagate the same view of description as neutral – “purely descriptive” (p. 214) – but the point here is that ‘Philippine English’ which circulates in the literature and is circulated by scholars themselves is assumed to have an objective existence and the role of scholars is to account for it through research. Therefore, working within the framework of literature review as a demonstration of knowledge of the field and, consequently, as an act of identifying a gap in the studies, scholars take on a particular stance as a starting point of their research – that ‘Philippine English’ exists, and it exists in the manner by which scholars have described it. Thus, working within the same logic of literature review, many of us participate in acts of stealing away crucial knowledges about our own communities and the various ways we envision and shape our language practices.

3.2 The violence of centred knowledge

As a consequence of imposing a particular view of language use through the academic literature which legitimizes its existence, a second epistemic stance in our research which generally remains undetected is the imposition of an assumption which puts the centrality of our topic of choice at the centre of people’s lives. A narrated experience of Tupas (2014) , for example, maps out a particular Indonesian seaside community’s rhythm of everyday life through one of the English teachers he worked with for a Southeast Asian project in curriculum development. On the motorcycle to a seaside school where the English teacher was working part-time, they had a conversation about ‘World Englishes’. According to his Indonesian colleague who, along many others in institutions of higher learning in their region, were attending an academic workshop on curriculum development, he was well aware of ‘World Englishes’ and the phenomenon of English as increasingly being localized, nativized or indigenized. As English teachers, he said, they must be sensitive to such sociolinguistically differentiated use(s) of English both inside and outside the classroom. As they continued to motor to the seaside school, however, it was beginning to be clear what the Indonesian teacher’s argument was about: in a community where the symbolic power of English was tied to pupils being seen and viewed as learning English, not necessarily being fluent in the language, an English teacher’s concern would be to get the pupils to experience learning the language, perhaps construct basic English sentences and listen to its sounds. More than that, what immediate use would fluency of English be for if everyday life draws on survivability which requires literacy in the community language? In other words, there is an a priori assumption in our research as sociolinguists and applied linguists that language, English and, most specifically, a localized English, is central to the speakers’ daily lives (also Tupas 2022 ). In the case of our interview with Dennis and, again, with other interviewees, we also sought to decenter language, specifically ‘Philippine English’, and map out the role of localized English(es) as they emerge from the interviewees’ narration of their own professional working conditions and experiences. In the end, the nature of localized English(es) which emerges from the interviewees’ stories is different from the typically nationally and culturally defined varieties as conceptualized in the dominant literature review.

Indeed, this is what literature review also does: it centres particular kinds and forms of knowledge which scholars then assume to be true when they design their own research. In the case of our research project, we find that the academic construction of ‘Philippine English’ intersects with the legitimizing practice of constructing ‘Philippine English’ as central to people’s (Filipinos’) lives, that as academics we unknowingly submit to this epistemic bias in our work. We argue that this is symbolic violence because it forces us to create knowledge about the rhythm of people’s lives at the centre of which is language or, more specifically in our case, their localized use of English. In the process of creating such knowledge, we take away people’s lived experiences and render them invisible in our writing. We note that this is not a peculiar observation; in fact, much of sociolinguistics, precisely because it foregrounds language in society, also begins with the same apriori assumption about the centrality of language. This is seen, for example, through the kinds of questions we ask, such as ‘How does language mobilize the lives of speakers of (name of a community)?’ which automatically directs us to language as our object of analysis because it is central to the speakers’ lives ( Tupas 2022 ). Our entry into our research sites, in other words, already imposes a particular of view of community life at the centre of which is language. The same critical comment has been put forward by Pennycook (2008) in the area of the sociolinguistics of linguistic landscape where much of the focus, he says, is on what analysts see as important, rather than what is in fact “salient” to ordinary people who walk around the linguistic landscape. In community-driven participatory research, Canieso-Doronila (1996 ; 2001 ) also shows how a focus on the over-all welfare of the community, identifying people’s everyday social problems, clarifies the role of language – and literacy – within the intricate political and cultural matrix of the community. We centre language and literacy in community life, thus teaching people how to read and write. However, one respondent in the Canieso-Doronila (2001) study encapsulates what we hope to argue in this section: “It is not easy to say, ‘This is our land’ when one has no land” (p. 271). Communities have been dispossessed of land and other indigenous resources, and these would seem to take precedence over questions of language and literacy, even if they are in the end also imbedded in people’s daily material struggles.

3.3 The violence of literature review-driven research questions

This brings us to another and related form of violence enacted through the process of reviewing the literature from a modern, Western-Eurocentric perspective. Typically, research questions are processed or generated through our appraisal of the literature. We can call these questions our research interventions in the sense that they are justified in relation to the kinds of questions which have been asked – and have not been asked – thus far. The logic behind this is simple – the significance of our research is drawn from the way we position our research vis-a-vis all other similar research conducted ( Jesson et al. 2011 ; Walker 2015 ). If our questions are not anchored in our understanding of related studies, our research might be viewed with suspicion because it does not participate in established conversations in the field. Indeed, our research will not be deemed ‘significant’. Thus, specifically in relation now to our research project on attitudes of Filipino professional writers of English, the kinds of research questions we initially formulated followed conversations in the area of ‘World Englishes’ and related fields. That is, in investigating language attitudes towards ‘Philippine English’, our primary question was explicitly to ask about the writers’ views of ‘Philippine English’.

We mention earlier in the paper that this takes on two related stances, one legitimizing the existence of Philippine English (or a particular form of it), and another legitimizing its centrality in the speakers’ lives. Other than these two, however, formulating research questions as constitutive of symbolic violence highlights the privileged status of academic knowledge as the generator of legitimate/legitimized questions of inquiry rather than, for example, everyday ground realities as the entry point for scholarly inquiry. Our research questions, in other words, do not typically draw upon “local cultures as sources (not targets ) of knowledge which can only be understood in its own terms” ( Arinto 1996 , p. 13, emphasis as original). In the process, we see how seemingly harmless research questions produce knowledge which invalidates the complex and unique social life of particular groups or communities of speakers. This is referred to as epistemicide ( Bennett 2007 ; Santos 2014 ) or the violent, albeit symbolic, destruction or erasure of local knowledges and experiences because of research questions which mispresent the speakers’ everyday lives and worldviews ( Phyak 2021 ).

As has been argued earlier, a substantial amount of scholarly work on attitudes of ‘Philippine English’ has been overwhelmingly conducted through direct questioning ( Alieto and Rillo 2018 ; Borlongan 2009 ; Gustillo and Dimaculangan 2018 ; Hernandez 2020a ; 2020b ; Torres and Alieto 2019 ). That is, whether through questionnaire surveys or interviews, respondents were asked to rate their attitudes towards ‘Philippine English’. This would be represented by a survey item asking respondents (e.g., parents, teachers, students) to rate their attitudes towards ‘Philippine English’, usually along the clines of favorability and acceptability. Studies then report varied results, from positive to negative attitudes, or from acceptable to unacceptable, especially in relation to teaching and using them in the classroom. Many studies also use indirect elicitation mainly through the matched-guise test which explicitly names to respondents the variety of English being investigated ( Cavallaro et al. 2014 ; Jindapitak and Teo 2012 ; Tan 2019 ). However, while this is indeed ‘indirect’, the assumption is that the variety in question exists, and that it exists in a particular form as evidenced by the kind of language items being tested for acceptability or awareness. In almost all of these direct or indirect studies, the existence of ‘Philippine English’ is assumed, that it is a notable issue that everyone should be concerned with, and that respondents agree to what ‘Philippine English’ is. In many of these studies, in fact, authors either provide or assume their own definition of ‘Philippine English’ as they use it in their work, without alerting the readers to the possibility that the scholars’ definition may not necessarily be what the respondents have in mind ( Borlongan 2009 ; Mendoza 2020 ).

Thus, central to the reformulation of our research questions was not only to avoid asking respondents directly about their views on ‘Philippine English’, but to also avoid making a priori understanding of what constitutes it. Instead, we asked them to narrate their communication experiences in their respective workplaces (including any communication challenges), then planned to “follow” ( Spinney 2015 , p. 232) their answers and stories. It turned out that in asking the writers to narrate their communication and language challenges, ‘Philippine English’ was rarely invoked, and in those times it was mentioned by three interviewees, it was because they encountered the term in graduate school, and they mentioned it in the context of their justification for not subscribing to it in their respective workplaces.

We cannot underestimate the importance of asking new questions in our research to replace those which have been responsible for constructing prevalent and dominant knowledge in the field, but which destroys – or devalues at least – all other possible ways about knowing ‘our world’. Phyak (2021) urges the formulation of new questions to be asked of multilingual communities in the context of policymaking because the usual questions not only violently destroy community experiences and knowledges, but also make scholars complicit in epistemic thief within their own local communities. In the context of multilingual Nepali communities, for example, local populations are asked to choose which among particular languages they want to learn most and based on the results, it would be English while the mother tongue is ‘rejected’. This is, according to Phyak, extremely discriminatory and represents the politics of questioning in research which erases and invisibilizes the multilingual repertoires and epistemologies of the communities. Simply put, these either/or questions “misrecognize what multilingual parents in the periphery actually need for their children’s education” (p. 226) because they are based on a monolingual view of the communities. Consequently, “multilingual speakers’ epistemologies, ideologies, and identities are misrepresented in empirical language policy research" (p. 229). In Phyak’s dialogic interviewing, he asks new questions which recognize the multiple multilingual and multicultural knowledge bases of the communities, such as the following (p. 226):

a. Do you want your children to be proficient in English only?
b. Do you want your children to be proficient in Nepali only?
c. Do you want your children to be taught in mother tongue only?
d. Do you want your children to be proficient in all of these languages?
e. Do you want your children to be proficient in other subjects such as social studies, mathematics, and science?

With these “counter questions” (p. 230), radically different knowledges are foregrounded – in fact, ‘returned’ to multilingual speakers and communities – foremost of which would be parents’ desire for their children to be educated in multiple languages. These questions “recognize the struggles and knowledge of the historically marginalized communities” (p. 230).

4 Conclusions

In the case of our research on ‘Philippine English’ and Filipino professional writers’ views of it, our decision to ask a different set of questions has radically changed our understanding of ‘Philippine English’ – that among our respondents at least, it does not exist in the form and manner assumed in the academic literature, and that the Filipino writers configure their world as privileged speakers of English in ways that have redefined our understanding of such world. They force us to problematize dominant epistemologies which underpin our scholarly work, and generate knowledges about ourselves, our cultures and our worlds which we have known before. It may be argued – and correctly so – that ‘Philippine English’ as an academic construction has on its own been mobilized to demystify Standard English, the native speaker, and ownership of language ( Bautista 2000 ; Tupas 2006 ). The entire World Englishes paradigm, especially its early articulations (e.g., Kachru 1986 ) has had powerful decolonial stances. The notion of linguistic equality was deployed to counter the disparaging mockery and devaluing of ‘non-standard’ Englishes and their speakers ( Tupas 2004 ). The point of this paper is to push the conversations forward by accounting for slippages and erasures in the use of ‘Philippine English’ in order to cut open the term and welcome new (read: stolen or erased) knowledges about the communities and users of ‘Philippine English’. This does not propose an alternative referent point for the objective reality of a Filipino variety of English; in fact, it demonstrates how all understandings of social phenomena are mediated by discourse, power and culture. The manner by which Filipino writers of English in our research talk about their communicative practices framed through own ‘new’ questions is also a discursive construction.

Nevertheless, there is nothing particularly new about our claim that academic writing, specifically the practice of literature review, is a political and ideological undertaking. As has been discussed in the paper, citational politics has been unpacked and exposed as extremely problematic especially in relation to its role in privileging as well as erasing particular bodies of knowledge and the communities within which they are mobilized ( Guillermo 2023 ; Kim 2020 ). A decolonial lens pushes us to question our citation lines and explore alternative sources of knowledge, or what Smith (1999) refers to as our dissent lines. A geopolitical lens ( Canagarajah 2002 ; Tupas 2020 ) highlights the unequal production of academic knowledge, in particular how indeed our citation lines reflect the dominance not only of research from and in the more prosperous academic sites in the North, but also the dominance of Western modes of thinking and doing knowledge work.

Our paper zeroes in on literature review and the formulation of research questions that goes with it not only because they concretely capture the massively political and ideological nature of academic writing, but they also serve as a sufficiently graspable or legible academic phenomenon through which we can map out specific logics of symbolic violence and epistemic thief. Not only are researchers engaged in literature review, but teachers also teach students how to do it. In other words, there is much value in exposing the symbolically violent nature of literature review because almost everyone in the academe is invested in it, even to the point of demonstrating “a method for teaching students some of the key techniques for writing literature reviews” ( Zorn and Campbell 2006 , p. 172). To put it in another way, literature review is a locus of multiple layers of symbolic violence, shaping our own practices of doing academic research, controlling what we know and how we should know the world – and ourselves.

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  2. how to write a literature review for a research paper in 5 simple steps

  3. How to write a research paper and a literature review paper

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  5. Literature Review vs. Research Paper Introduction: Know the Right Amount Literature to Include

  6. LITERATURE REVIEW: Step by Step Guide for Writing an Effective Literature Review

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  1. How to Write a Literature Review

    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 Step 3 Step 4 Step 5

  2. How to write the literature review of your research paper

    A literature review should begin with a thorough literature search using the main keywords in relevant online databases such as Google Scholar, PubMed, etc. Once all the relevant literature has been gathered, it should be organized as follows: Background literature about the broad research topic to introduce the readers to the field of study.

  3. Writing a Literature Review

    Using citation machines responsibly Powered by 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.

  4. How To Write A Literature Review

    Jul 25, 2022 Table of Contents A literature review is much more than just another section in your research paper. It forms the very foundation of your research. It is a formal piece of writing where you analyze the existing theoretical framework, principles, and assumptions and use that as a base to shape your approach to the research question.

  5. How To Write A Literature Review (+ Free Template)

    Step 1: Find the relevant literature Naturally, the first step in the literature review journey is to hunt down the existing research that's relevant to your topic. While you probably already have a decent base of this from your research proposal, you need to expand on this substantially in the dissertation or thesis itself.

  6. Steps in Conducting a Literature Review

    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.

  7. How to Write a Literature Review: Six Steps to Get You from ...

    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 ...

  8. How to write a superb literature review

    Students should also consider editorial deadlines, especially for invited reviews: make sure that the review's scope is not so extensive that it delays the writing. A good review should also...

  9. What is a Literature Review?

    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 Step 3 Step 4 Step 5 Why write a literature review?

  10. PDF How to Write a Literature Review

    1 of 7 How to Write a Literature Review Literature reviews are a vital part of a research project or paper, and they are particularly important during graduate school. This handout will focus on defining what a literature review is, how to organize and synthesize information, and what the different parts of a literature review are.

  11. Ten Simple Rules for Writing a Literature Review

    Rule 1: Define a Topic and Audience How to choose which topic to review? There are so many issues in contemporary science that you could spend a lifetime of attending conferences and reading the literature just pondering what to review.

  12. Literature Reviews

    Introduction OK. You've got to write a literature review. You dust off a novel and a book of poetry, settle down in your chair, and get ready to issue a "thumbs up" or "thumbs down" as you leaf through the pages. "Literature review" done. Right? Wrong!

  13. Writing a Literature Review

    An "express method" of writing a literature review for a research paper is as follows: first, write a one paragraph description of each article that you read. Second, choose how you will order all the paragraphs and combine them in one document. Third, add transitions between the paragraphs, as well as an introductory and concluding ...

  14. How to Make a Literature Review in Research (RRL Example)

    A course assignment is an example of a selective, stand-alone 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 the research reported in the ...

  15. PDF Writing an Effective Literature Review

    Whatever stage you are at in your academic life, you will have to review the literature and write about it. You will be asked to do this as a student when you write essays, dissertations and theses. Later, whenever you write an academic paper, there will usually be some element of literature review in the introduction. And if you have to

  16. Writing a Literature Review Research Paper: A step-by-step approach

    Writing a literature review in the pre or post-qualification, will be required to undertake a literature review, either as part of a course of study, as a key step in the research...

  17. 5. The Literature Review

    Literature reviews are designed to provide an overview of sources you have used in researching a particular topic and to demonstrate to your readers how your research fits within existing scholarship about the topic. Fink, Arlene. Conducting Research Literature Reviews: From the Internet to Paper. Fourth edition. Thousand Oaks, CA: SAGE, 2014.

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

    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: Frequently asked questions What is a literature review?

  19. How To Write A Literature Review

    Use Numbers When You Can: If possible, use numbers. Using statistics can make your literature review more precise and convincing. Evaluate Research Questions: Evaluate how clear the research questions are in each source. Discuss how well-defined questions make the literature review more understandable.

  20. Getting started

    What is a literature review? Definition: A literature review is a systematic examination and synthesis of existing scholarly research on a specific topic or subject. Purpose: It serves to provide a comprehensive overview of the current state of knowledge within a particular field. Analysis: Involves critically evaluating and summarizing key findings, methodologies, and debates found in ...

  21. PDF LITERATURE REVIEWS

    2. MOTIVATE YOUR RESEARCH in addition to providing useful information about your topic, your literature review must tell a story about how your project relates to existing literature. popular literature review narratives include: ¡ plugging a gap / filling a hole within an incomplete literature ¡ building a bridge between two "siloed" literatures, putting literatures "in conversation"

  22. How to Write a Research Paper: Literature Review

    It must have organizational pattern that combines both summary and synthesis. Summary is a recap of the important information of the source. Synthesis is the organization of that information. It is different from a research paper, because literature reviews focus on the sources.

  23. How to Write a Literature Review Paper?

    1. Introduction. Literature review papers (LRPs) are often very helpful for researchers, as the reader gets an up-to-date and well-structured overview of the literature in a specific area, and the review adds value. This added value can, for example, be that the research gaps are made explicit, and this may be very helpful for readers who plan ...

  24. Literature Review: Conducting & Writing

    Steps for Conducting a Lit Review; Finding "The Literature" Organizing/Writing; APA Style; Chicago: Notes Bibliography; MLA Style; Sample Literature Reviews. Sample Lit Reviews from Communication Arts; Have an exemplary literature review? Get Help!

  25. How to Undertake an Impactful Literature Review: Understanding Review

    Important aspects of a systematic literature review (SLR) include a structured method for conducting the study and significant transparency of the approaches used for summarizing the literature (Hiebl, 2023).The inspection of existing scientific literature is a valuable tool for (a) developing best practices and (b) resolving issues or controversies over a single study (Gupta et al., 2018).

  26. The violence of literature review and the imperative to ask new questions

    Writing the literature review is not a neutral act. In fact, the key central aim of consolidating work in a particular research area is to demonstrate one's knowledge of this area; that is, one must know the 'conversations' concerning the research topic. Literature review becomes violent in the Bourdieusian sense because it imposes particular configurations of privileged knowledge on ...

  27. Literature Review AI

    Searches scholarly articles based on a research question or specific topic, then compiles them into high-quality writing with references. HyperWrite's Literature Review AI is an innovative tool that simplifies the process of conducting a literature review. By harnessing the power of advanced AI models, this tool searches millions of scholarly articles related to your research question or topic ...