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How to Write a Literature Review: In Four Steps

Updated: Nov 17

The literature review is a crucial component of your scientific article or scientific paper. Its purpose is to demonstrate your knowledge of the field, and it also provides you the opportunity to identify or explain the research gap when writing your research paper


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It can be one of the most difficult parts of your thesis, scientific article, or research paper in academic writing. It involves remaining current on the most up-to-date knowledge or state of affairs of the problem or topic you are writing about.


The Literature Review can be seen as being part of the introduction of your research paper. However, in some journals or theses, it can be its separate section either standing alone or as a subheading under the teh Introduction.


What is a literature review?


A literature review is a written evaluation of existing knowledge on a specific subject. There are two types of literature reviews. There are literature reviews that are sections of a larger research paper or scientific paper. Other literature reviews are stand-alone works that can be seen as research papers in their own right. Literature reviews are crucial in demonstrating your knowledge of a research topic.


Steps to writing a good literature review


There are obvious and basic steps to writing a literature review for a scientific paper or scientific article. As with most academic writing, it begins with reading credible sources consistently and preparing an appropriate template. 


The steps can be summed up as 1) Search and refine your sources; 2) Record important trends and themes in the literature; 3) Create an outline; and 4) Write your literature review. 



1. Search and refine your sources 


This means searching credible databases to find relevant literature. These include the following sites:


  • Google Scholar

  • Scopus

  • PubMed

  • JSTOR

  • Web of Science 


It is not enough to get paper from these databases. You should be able to tell apart a credible source from a non-credible one. This would help in improving the quality of your research. 


For example, a paper published in a peer-reviewed journal has higher value and credibility than a paper that exists in the form of a PDF published in a conference. Often, you have no choice but to go for these gray sources, but as much as possible, go for papers published in peer-reviewed journals. 


2. Take note of important trends and themes in the topic


After finding key papers associated with the topic that you are writing on, you have to carefully read them and determine relevant themes. These themes could include:


  • Disagreements among researchers

  • Gaps in the literature

  • Controversial issues

  • The main theories associated with studying the topic


It is important that you take your time to fully digest and understand these themes and trends. This would allow you to synthesize them to make new contributions with your own research. 


3. Create an outline


After doing the relevant reading, you need to create a well-defined outline. The outline should have clear subheadings. And these subheadings should have bullet points of the ideas you want to write about. 


The outline can be written in your Google Document or Word document — whatever software you are comfortable with using. You could even choose to draft an outline on paper or a notebook and later transfer it to your Word file.


The main thing to be aware of is to make sure that the outline is solid and easy to follow. It would help enormously to familiarize yourself with "model" papers on the topic. By model papers, I mean book chapters, published journal articles, or papers from past students that do a good job of following the rubric of your assignment or research paper.


By carefully reading, understanding, and imitating good examples, you can create an outline that could result in you also producing A+ work.


4. Write your review


Of course, the last step involves writing. When writing, focus on a consistent flow of ideas. Don't worry about writing perfect paragraphs. Proofreading and refining are for after you have completed the literature review section.


A literature review requires alot of mental effort. It includes reading vast amounts of literature. This literature then needs to be digested, Summarized, and then critiqued. It doesn't stop there.


You may also have to locate the Literature Gap and synthesize new information to come up with relevant hypotheses and research statements or novel insights. See the section labeled: The role of summarizing in the Literature Review.


With all the work that is required in a Literature Review, you need to make time. It would not be advisable to attempt to write your entire Literature Review in one sitting. That would be impossible. It would not even be wise to attempt to do so in one week.


Instead, you should plan, schedule, and map out a process of reading, taking notes, and writing over a reasonably lengthy period to make sure you produce work that you can take pride in.


 
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Elements of a good literature review


The literature review begins the heavy lifting of giving credibility to your work as a researcher. Most journals require a well-thought-out and well-written literature review that tells a story of what you know about the field. 


Other expectations from a literature review include expressing knowledge of a particular problem and the gaps in the literature. A good literature review should do these three things:


  1. Demonstrate the breadth and depth of your knowledge of the field

  2. Summarize the current state of affairs of a topic

  3. Identify the literature gap


Let's look at each in turn.


1. Demonstrate the breadth and depth of your knowledge


The literature review is supposed to prove your breadth and depth of knowledge of the topic. It is typically located in the introduction of your paper. The point of the introduction is to provide background to the problem being discussed.


In the case of the literature review, this background would be related to how others have covered or investigated the problem. Breadth of knowledge refers to the number of papers you are familiar with, whereas depth refers to how thorough you are in understanding the content of these papers. 

For example:


  • Do you know these papers well enough to identify the research gap?

  • Do you know a paper well enough to identify its flaws or shortcomings?

  • Do you know these papers well enough to synthesize new theories or knowledge?


Why demonstrate breadth and depth of knowledge? 


a. It proves your expertise. One of the main functions of the literature review is to show that you are well-versed on the topic that you are researching. As a researcher, you are supposed to be an "expert" in your field. 


b. It boosts your credibility. You won't be taken seriously as someone capable of making a vital contribution if you're unable to show how knowledgeable you are about the general topic you are writing on and the specific niche topic or subfield you are focusing on in regard to your particular experiment or research.


Demonstrating breadth and depth of knowledge means familiarizing yourself with a wide range of literature. This includes more traditional publications, such as papers in scientific journals. It also includes gray literature, such as conference papers, theses, books, book chapters, and other semi-official publications.


2. Summarize the current state of affairs


Apart from demonstrating your breadth and depth of knowledge of a subtopic or field, a literature review needs to be current. That means providing knowledge that is both relevant and up-to-date. Here are steps to follow to summarize the current state of affairs in your literature review: 


a. Include studies published in the past three to five years. Now, this is something that should not be overdone. Relevant studies are not like milk and don't expire within a brief time after being published.

They only become less relevant after new research has proven them wrong in certain aspects or proven them to be outdated or flawed. Your ability to discern what is current or outdated will set you apart as a researcher. 


This is where "depth of knowledge" becomes important. Your reading of the literature should be thorough and adept enough to identify "old" literature that remains relevant and "new" literature that lacks credibility. 


b. Target high-end journals. Try to locate papers from journals with high rankings and reputation. A peer-reviewed journal with a good reputation and presumably a proper peer-review process will not allow poorly researched papers that lack credibility to be published. So, such a journal should be prioritized. 


c. Make smart use of gray literature. Gray literature refers to unofficial or semi-official documents that can be used for research. They include documents such as theses, dissertations, book chapters, white papers, reports by development organizations, and so on. They can provide interesting and new ideas for your writing but should be used for caution.


3. Identify the literature gap


The literature gap is essential for your research. It more or less justifies the whole point of your research. Most journals will not be interested in publishing topics that have been done to death. 


A thorough literature review can help you identify exactly what is missing that you can focus on. Perhaps you can focus on a population that has been neglected or you could focus on a new context that has not been examined before.


Systematic literature reviews


A systematic literature review is a stand-alone literature review that provides a state-of-the-art summary of the most relevant and up-to-date knowledge of a specific topic or sub-field.

A list of things to know about a systematic literature review: 


1. It is often used as a test for graduate students to practice their analytical and writing skills. Graduate students as part of their graduate work are often encouraged or mandated to write systematic reviews of the literature. This makes them familiar with the topic and gives them writing practice. 


2. It follows PRISMA. PRISMA stands for "Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Reviews and Meta-Analyses". PRISMA is often represented by a flow diagram featuring a checklist to ensure proper transparency and methodology for conducting systematic literature reviews and meta-analyses. 


The papers selected for PRISMA should be of the highest quality. You should have a set of criteria in place to justify what studies are selected and which ones are left out. 


Approaches to reviewing a study


Literature reviews can be hard to write because they can be quite dense. Often, several citations are included in a single sentence to support a single claim.  Research writers, especially students, are often lost about how to write a literature review. 


There are so many papers to write about. How do you organize all this information? Several approaches can be taken. This includes:


1. The chronological approach. This is the simplest approach and tracks the development and growth of the topic over time. When using this approach be careful to highlight key debates and milestones that have significantly affected the field.


2. The thematic approach. This involves organizing your literature review according to central themes that recur continuously while you research the topic. Each section of the literature review can be named after a specific theme.


3. The methodological approach. This is appropriate if your research relies on literature that employs diverse research methods, such as qualitative versus quantitative research.


4. The theoretical approach. This describes when a literature review is used as a building block for 1) establishing, 2) developing, or 3) synthesizing a theoretical framework. In this approach, you may discuss the strengths and weaknesses of various theories and describe how a synthesis of a new model based on existing theories could work for your study. 


The role of summarizing in the literature review


A proper literature review relies on several summaries of individual papers to tell a story about the history of trying to solve the problem that you're tackling in your research or report. Bearing this in mind, it would be useful to see how an individual paper could be summarized and critiqued.


Here is one convenient format that can be observed from the review of an individual paper. An effective approach to reviewing an individual paper includes the following:


  • Briefly describe the method of the paper

  • Concisely describe the results

  • Point out the flaws and shortcomings of the paper


An example of the approach is illustrated below: 


Summary. Stock (2007) carried out a sociological study on a small network of family farms in the Midwest, investigating the concept of organic producers as reflexive good farmers. In that study, he examined organic farmers as reflexive producers, that is, producers who adopt organic farming in reaction to concerns about chemical use, protecting soils, and consumer health.
Concise description of results. He determined that concerns for health, education, family history, and stewardship were all major characteristics of these organic farmers. 
Pointing out the flaws of the paper. However, the study was small with a sample of only 11 farmers, and it failed to reflect a representative cross-section of farmers in the US or Midwest. Furthermore, the study relied only on content analysis and did not apply statistical methods, which makes applying its results to populations beyond the small sample of farmers interviewed problematic.

If applied throughout the literature review, such a method can result in an effective and thorough demonstration of your knowledge of the topic. The point of reviewing individual papers, and by extension the broad topic, in this manner, includes the following: 


1. You demonstrate a thorough knowledge of the topic 

2. You provide wider context in terms of previous research on the topic

3. You can recognize various research gaps

4. You are provided with fodder to formulate your hypotheses

5. You can develop or synthesize a research or theoretical framework for your research


Analyzing the literature should then be followed by summarizing common themes, issues, gaps in the literature, and hypotheses justified by these gaps and synthesized knowledge. The diagram below illustrates these steps. 


In addition to summarizing, you should also focus on properly quoting and paraphrasing. You can check out this article to learn more: How to Paraphrase, Summarize, and Quote.


Final thoughts on writing your literature review


The literature review is where you demonstrate your expertise as a researcher in your research paper or scientific paper. It provides you with the chance to show both your breadth and depth of knowledge of the field of study that you are investigating or writing about.


You should be methodical in your literature review. Curate an exhaustive list of papers. Then, you should use your discernment to make qualified judgments on their arguments, methods, or results before choosing the appropriate ones. 


Besides, the main advantage of 1) identifying the gaps in the literature, a literature review will 2) justify your hypotheses; and 3) provide material for a richer discussion in your research paper


 

Cite this EminentEdit article

Antoine, M. (2024, August 1). How to Write a Literature Review: In Four Steps. https://www.eminentediting.com/post/how-to-write-a-literature-review-in-four-steps


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