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

How to Write a Literature Review | Guide, Examples, & Templates
Published on January 2, 2023 by Shona McCombes .
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 doesnât just summarize sourcesâit analyzes, synthesizes , and critically evaluates to give a clear picture of the state of knowledge on the subject.
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 reviewâs structure, step 5 – write your literature review, free lecture slides, 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.

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: “Learnersâ 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.
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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 universityâs 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 wonât 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.
To begin organizing your literature reviewâs argument and structure, be sure you understand the connections and relationships between the sources youâve 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 Snapchatâthis 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: donât just paraphrase other researchers â 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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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 . Â
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5 Tools for Easy Literature Review (With 2 Bonus Tools)

Context matters. It matters when youâre watching a movie, when youâre part of a conversation, and it certainly matters when youâre presenting a research paper. Leaving it out of your article can be not only confusing but also disingenuous to your audience.
Thatâs where a literature review comes into play. And weâre here to discuss what is a literature review and how you can have an easier time writing it.
What is a literature review?
Your literature review is the lore behind your research paper. It comes in two forms, systematic and scoping , both serving the purpose of rounding up previously published works in your research area that led you to write and finish your own. A literature review is vital as it provides the reader with a critical overview of the existing body of knowledge, your methodology, and an opportunity for research applications.

Some steps to follow while writing your review:
- Pick an accessible topic for your paper
- Do thorough research and gather evidence surrounding your topic
- Read and take notes diligently
- Create a rough structure for your review
- Synthesis your notes and write the first draft
- Edit and proofread your literature review
Tools to streamline your literature review
A literature review is one of the most critical yet tedious stages in composing a research paper. Many students find it an uphill task since it requires extensive reading and careful organization .
Using the tools listed here, you can make your life easier by overcoming some of the existing challenges in literature reviews. From collecting and classifying to analyzing and publishing research outputs, these improve your productivity without additional effort or expenses.
1. SciSpace
SciSpace is a one-stop solution for an effective literature search and barrier-free access to scientific knowledge. It is a massive repository where you can find millions of peer-reviewed articles and full-text PDF files. You can use the platform in various ways to optimize your workflow.
Find the right information
The comprehensive search filter, teamed with the ' Trace ' does a quick and easy job of finding what you want. You can narrow down on papers based on PDF availability, year of publishing, document type, and affiliated institution. Then, once you find the right paper, you can use the Trace feature to find related papers, authors, topics, and more.
Find instant explanations for papers and their abstracts
SciSpace has an AI assistant called SciSpace Copilot . Its primary function is to explain papers in simple terms. You can highlight text, clip maths and tables, and ask any question you're curious about. Copilot will give you an instant answer. While you're conducting a literature review, you can use Copilot to get a better clarity on the abstract and decide how relevant the paper is to your project.
Assess credibility of papers
Since a literature review forms the foundation of your research, it should come from credible and peer-reviewed origins. Sometimes even grey literature. 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 Discoverâs personalized suggestion engine helps you stay on course and get all the information related to 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 whatâs trending, who are the top authors, and the leading publishers on a topic.
Conveniently refer sources
âTo ensure you don't lose track of your sources, itâs best to make notes while doing your research. 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 have to do is copy-paste it into your manuscript.
2. Mendeley
Mendeley Citation Manager is a free web and desktop application. It helps simplify your citation management workflow significantly. Here are some ways you can speed up your referencing game with Mendeley.
Generate citations and bibliographies
Easily add references from your Mendeley library to your Word document, change your citation style, and create a bibliography, all without leaving your document.
Retrieve references
It allows you to access your references quickly. Search for a term, and it will return results by referencing the year, author, or source.
Add sources to your Mendeley library by dragging PDF to Mendeley Reference Manager. Mendeley will automatically remove the PDF(s) metadata and create a library entry.â
Read and annotate documents
It helps you highlight and comment across multiple PDFs while keep them all in one place using Mendeley Notebook . Notebook pages are not tied to a reference and let you quote from many PDFs.
Zotero is a free, open-source tool for managing citations that works as a plug-in on your browser. It helps you gather the information you need, cite your sources, lets you attach PDFs, notes, and images to your citations, and create bibliographies.
Import research articles to your database
Search for research articles on a keyword, and add relevant results to your database. Then, select the articles you are most interested in, and import them into Zotero.
Add bibliography in a variety of formats
With Zotero, you donât have to scramble for different bibliography formats. Simply use the Zotero-Word plug-in to insert in-text citations and generate a bibliography.
Share your research
You can save a paper and sync it with an online library to easily share your research for group projects. Zotero can be used to create your database and decrease the time you spend formatting citations.
Sysrev facilitates screening, collaboration, and data extraction from academic publications, abstracts, and PDF documents using machine learning. The platform is free and supports public and Open Access projects only.
Some of the features of Sysrev include:
Group labels
Group labels can be a powerful concept for creating database tables from documents. When exported and re-imported, each group label creates a new table. To make labels for a project, go into the manage -> labels section of the project.
Group labels enable project managers to pull table information from documents. It makes it easier to communicate review results for specific articles.
Track reviewer performance
Sysrev's label counting tool provides filtering and visualization options for keeping track of the distribution of labels throughout the project's progress. Project managers can check their projects at any point to track progress and the reviewer's performance.
Tool for concordance
The Sysrev tool for concordance allows project administrators and reviewers to perform analysis on their labels. Concordance is measured by calculating the number of times users agree on the labels they have extracted.
Colandr is a free, open-source, internet-based analysis and screening software based on machine learning. It was designed to ease collaboration across various stages of the systematic review procedure. The tool can be a little complex to use. So, here are the steps involved in working with Colandr.
Create a review
The first step to using Colandr is setting up an organized review project. This is helpful to librarians who are assisting researchers with systematic reviews.
The planning stage is setting the review's objectives along with research queries. Any reviewer can review the details of the planning stage. However, they can only be modified by the author for the review.
Citation screening/import
In this phase, users can upload their results from database searches. Colandr also offers an automated deduplication system.
Full-text screening
The system in Colandr will discover the combination of terms and expressions that are most useful for the reader. If an article is selected, it will be moved to the final step.
Data extraction/export
Colandr data extraction is more efficient than the manual method. It creates the form fields for data extraction during the planning stage of the review procedure. Users can decide to revisit or modify the form for data extraction after completing the initial screening.
Bonus Tools
SRDR+ is a web-based tool for extracting and managing systematic review or meta-analysis data. It is open and has a searchable archive of systematic reviews and their data.
7. Plot Digitizer
Plot Digitizer is an efficient tool for extracting information from graphs and images, equipped with many features that facilitate data extraction. The program comes with a free online application, which is adequate to extract data quickly.
Writing a literature review is not easy. Itâs a time-consuming process, which can become tiring at times. The softwares mentioned in this blog do an excellent job of maximizing your efforts and helping you write literature reviews much more efficiently. With them, you can breathe a sigh of relief and give more time to your research.
Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs)
1. what is rrl in research.
RRL stands for Review of Related Literature and sometimes interchanged with âLiterature Review.â RRL is a body of studies relevant to the topic being researched. These studies may be in the form of journal articles, books, reports, and other similar documents. Review of related literature is used to support an argument or theory being made by the researcher, as well as to provide information on how others have approached the same topic.
2. What are few softwares and tools available for literature review?
• SciSpace Discover
• Mendeley
• Zotero
• Sysrev
• Colandr
• SRDR+
3. How to generate an online literature review?
The Scispace Discover tool, which offers an excellent repository of millions of peer-reviewed articles and resources, will help you generate or create a literature review easily. You may find relevant information by utilizing the filter option, checking its credibility, tracing related topics and articles, and citing in widely accepted formats with a single click.
4. What does it mean to synthesize literature?
To synthesize literature is to take the main points and ideas from a number of sources and present them in a new way. The goal is to create a new piece of writing that pulls together the most important elements of all the sources you read. Make recommendations based on them, and connect them to the research.
5. Should we write abstract for literature review?
Abstracts, particularly for the literature review section, are not required. However, an abstract for the research paper, on the whole, is useful for summarizing the paper and letting readers know what to expect from it. It can also be used to summarize the main points of the paper so that readers have a better understanding of the paper's content before they read it.
6. How do you evaluate the quality of a literature review?
• Whether it is clear and well-written.
• Whether Information is current and up to date.
• Does it cover all of the relevant sources on the topic.
• Does it provide enough evidence to support its conclusions.
7. Is 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.
8. What are the sources for a literature review?
• Reports
• Theses
• Conference proceedings
• Company reports
• Some government publications
• Journals
• Books
• Newspapers
• Articles by professional associations
• Indexes
• Databases
• Catalogues
• Encyclopaedias
• Dictionaries
• Bibliographies
• Citation indexes
• Statistical data from government websites
9. What is the difference between a systematic review and a literature review?
A systematic review is a form of research that uses a rigorous method to generate knowledge from both published and unpublished data. A literature review, on the other hand, is a critical summary of an area of research within the context of what has already been published.
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The following tool will help you learn how to conduct a solid review of literature. To do so, you will have to answer the questions posed in the form you will find on the lower left side, while checking the resources provided on the right side.
Positionality is the notion that identity , paradigmatic views , and location in time and space influence how one understands the world. Consequently, it is essential to take into account positionality before engaging in research, including research synthesis. Learn more about identity, approaches or paradigmatic views such as positivism, interpretivism, constructivism, and others here
The second step in the generation of the literature review design is setting purposes and objectives that will drive the review process.  Your searching strategies, the literature analysis, and even a review structure depend on the purposes of a review, the same way as the goals and research questions in a research study shape its design. Learn more about the purposes and objectives of a traditional literature "nested" in a research study and a research synthesis.
There are key things to think about before you start searching for literature or conduct research synthesis. You should define and narrow your topic. Since each disciplinary domain has its own thesaurus, index, and databases, contemplate in which disciplines or areas of study your research synthesis will be conducted. Formulate the initial research question that you will develop further during the search for the literature and the design step. Learn more here.
The conceptual & theoretical framework of your study is the system of concepts, assumptions, expectations, beliefs, and theories that supports and informs your research. It is a formulation of what you think is going on with what you are studyingâa tentative theory of what is happening and why. Read more about "concepts" and how to search for and clarify them, how to find a relevant theory, Â here .
Secondary data analysis and review of literature involve collecting and analyzing a vast array of information and sources. To help you stay focused, your first step should be to develop a research design or a step-by-step plan or a protocol that guides data collection and analysis. Get familiar with different types if the research designs on this page .
As with any research study, the basic purpose of data collection is to create a systematically organized set of materials that will be analyzed or interpreted. Any type of reviews, not only a systematic review,  benefit from applying relatively systematic methods of searching and collecting secondary data. In this part of the guide , I describe sampling methods, instruments (or searching techniques), and organization of sources.
The seventh step regards the selection and definition of the data analysis strategies that will be used in your study, depending on the research approach followed. You can find here resources that might be of help to better understand the way data analysis work.Â
After analyzing studies or literature in a depth and the systematic way one should move to the iterative process of exploring, commonalities and contradictions across relevant studies, emergent themes in order to build a theory, frame future research, or creating a final integrated presentation of finding. Find out more here.
Ethical considerations of conducting literature reviews and the issues of quality are not widely discussed in the literature. Consult t his guide where you will find references to work on ethics of conducting systematic reviews, checklists for quality of meta-analysis and research synthesis.

Use this Recommendation System to search for previous research in your field of study that might be helpful to better support the relevance of your research topic and the need to conduct the study that you are proposing.

Educational resources and simple solutions for your research journey

How to write review of related literature (RRL) in research

A review of related literature is a comprehensive review of the existing literature pertaining to a specific topic or research question. An effective review provides the reader with an organized analysis and synthesis of the existing knowledge about a subject. With the increasing amount of new information being disseminated every day, conducting a review of related literature is becoming more difficult and the purpose of review of related literature is clearer than ever. Â
All new knowledge is necessarily based on previously known information, and every new scientific study must be conducted and reported in the context of previous studies. This makes a review of related literature essential for research, and although it may be tedious work at times, most researchers will complete many such reviews of varying depths during their career. So, why exactly is a review of related literature important? Â Â
Why a review of related literature in research is important Â
Before thinking how to do reviews of related literature , it is necessary to understand its importance. Although the purpose of a review of related literature varies depending on the discipline and how it will be used, its importance is never in question. Here are some ways in which a review can be crucial. Â
- Identify gaps in the knowledge â This is the primary purpose of a review of related literature (often called RRL in research ). To create new knowledge, you must first determine what knowledge may be missing. This also helps to identify the scope of your study. Â
- Avoid duplication of research efforts â Not only will a review of related literature indicate gaps in the existing research, but it will also lead you away from duplicating research that has already been done and thus save precious resources. Â
- Provide an overview of disparate and interdisciplinary research areas â Researchers cannot possibly know everything related to their disciplines. Therefore, it is very helpful to have access to a review of related literature already written and published. Â
- Highlight researcherâs familiarity with their topic 1 Â â A strong review of related literature in a study strengthens readersâ confidence in that study and that researcher.

Tips on how to write a review of related literature in research
Given that you will probably need to produce a number of these at some point, here are a few general tips on how to write an effective review of related literature 2 .
- Define your topic, audience, and purpose: You will be spending a lot of time with this review, so choose a topic that is interesting to you. While deciding what to write in a review of related literature , think about who you expect to read the review â researchers in your discipline, other scientists, the general public â and tailor the language to the audience. Also, think about the purpose of your review of related literature . Â
- Conduct a comprehensive literature search: While writing your review of related literature , emphasize more recent works but donât forget to include some older publications as well. Cast a wide net, as you may find some interesting and relevant literature in unexpected databases or library corners. Donât forget to search for recent conference papers.
- Review the identified articles and take notes: It is a good idea to take notes in a way such that individual items in your notes can be moved around when you organize them. For example, index cards are great tools for this. Write each individual idea on a separate card along with the source. The cards can then be easily grouped and organized. Â
- Determine how to organize your review: A review of related literature should not be merely a listing of descriptions. It should be organized by some criterion, such as chronologically or thematically. Â
- Be critical and objective: Donât just report the findings of other studies in your review of related literature . Challenge the methodology, find errors in the analysis, question the conclusions. Use what you find to improve your research. However, do not insert your opinions into the review of related literature. Remain objective and open-minded. Â
- Structure your review logically: Guide the reader through the information. The structure will depend on the function of the review of related literature. Creating an outline prior to writing the RRL in research is a good way to ensure the presented information flows well. Â
As you read more extensively in your discipline, you will notice that the review of related literature appears in various forms in different places. For example, when you read an article about an experimental study, you will typically see a literature review or a RRL in research , in the introduction that includes brief descriptions of similar studies. In longer research studies and dissertations, especially in the social sciences, the review of related literature will typically be a separate chapter and include more information on methodologies and theory building. In addition, stand-alone review articles will be published that are extremely useful to researchers. Â
The review of relevant literature or often abbreviated as, RRL in research , is an important communication tool that can be used in many forms for many purposes. It is a tool that all researchers should befriend. Â
- University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill Writing Center. Literature Reviews. https://writingcenter.unc.edu/tips-and-tools/literature-reviews/  [Accessed September 8, 2022]
- Pautasso M. Ten simple rules for writing a literature review. PLoS Comput Biol. 2013, 9. doi: 10.1371/journal.pcbi.1003149.
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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.
How to Make a Review of Related Literature
Do not you know how to make a review of related literature ? No panic! Make use of our guide and you are sure to create a qualitative review of related literature.
What is a Review of Related Literature?
A review of related literature is an integral part of theses or dissertations. It may also be a required part of proposals. The main purpose of a review of related literature is to analyze scientific works by other researchers that you used for investigation critically.
How to Write the Introduction of a Review of Related Literature
In order to make the Introduction elaborately, take the following steps:
- Identify the general topic of the sources under discussion. Thus, you will provide the context of your review of related literature;
- Discuss what was already presented about the topic of your paper: conflicts in a theory, conclusions, gaps in research and scholarship, etc.
- Explain why the literature used is worth reviewing.
How to Write the Body of a Review of Related Literature
When writing the Body, do the following:
- Group the sources according to their common dominators (approaches, objectives or any specific chronologies);
- Give the examples of how to sort out these groups. Use quotations, evidences, data, etc. They will make your review of related literature more valid.
How to Write the Conclusion of a Review of Related Literature
To make the Conclusion, do the following:
- Summarize the contributions of the literature sources made to the area of study you investigate. Maintain the central focus in the Introduction;
- Give a kind of insight into the relationship between the topic of your review and a larger study area (e.g. a discipline, a scientific endeavor, etc.)
How to Write an Animal Testing Essay: Tips for Argumentative & Persuasive Papers
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MAXQDA The All-in-one Literature Review Software
MAXQDA is the best choice for a comprehensive literature review. It works with a wide range of data types and offers powerful tools for literature review , such as reference management, qualitative, vocabulary, text analysis tools, and more.
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As your all-in-one literature review software, MAXQDA can be used to manage your entire research project. Easily import data from texts, interviews, focus groups, PDFs, web pages, spreadsheets, articles, e-books, and even social media data. Connect the reference management system of your choice with MAXQDA to easily import bibliographic data. Organize your data in groups, link relevant quotes to each other, keep track of your literature summaries, and share and compare work with your team members. Your project file stays flexible and you can expand and refine your category system as you go to suit your research.
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Having used several qualitative data analysis software programs, there is no doubt in my mind that MAXQDA has advantages over all the others. In addition to its remarkable analytical features for harnessing data, MAXQDA’s stellar customer service, online tutorials, and global learning community make it a user friendly and top-notch product.
Sally S. Cohen – NYU Rory Meyers College of Nursing
Advanced literature review software for Windows and Mac

Easily import your literature review data
With a literature review software like MAXQDA, you can easily import bibliographic data from reference management programs for your literature review. MAXQDA can work with all reference management programs that can export their databases in RIS-format which is a standard format for bibliographic information. Like MAXQDA, these reference managers use project files, containing all collected bibliographic information, such as author, title, links to websites, keywords, abstracts, and other information. In addition, you can easily import the corresponding full texts. Upon import, all documents will be automatically pre-coded to facilitate your literature review at a later stage.
Capture your ideas while analyzing your literature
Great ideas will often occur to you while youâre doing your literature review. Using MAXQDA as your literature review software, you can create memos to store your ideas, such as research questions and objectives, or you can use memos for paraphrasing passages into your own words. By attaching memos like post-it notes to text passages, texts, document groups, images, audio/video clips, and of course codes, you can easily retrieve them at a later stage. Particularly useful for literature reviews are free memos written during the course of work from which passages can be copied and inserted into the final text.

Find concepts important to your literature review
When conducting a literature review you might need to analyze a large amount of text. Luckily MAXQDA as the #1 literature review software offers Text Search tools that allow you to explore your documents without reading or coding them first. Automatically search for keywords (or dictionaries of keywords), such as important concepts for your literature review, and automatically code them with just a few clicks. Document variables that were automatically created during the import of your bibliographic information can be used for searching and retrieving certain text segments. MAXQDAâs powerful Coding Query allows you to analyze the combination of activated codes in different ways.
Aggregate your literature review
When conducting a literature review you can easily get lost. But with MAXQDA as your literature review software, you will never lose track of the bigger picture. Among other tools, MAXQDAâs overview and summary tables are especially useful for aggregating your literature review results. MAXQDA offers overview tables for almost everything, codes, memos, coded segments, links, and so on. With MAXQDA literature review tools you can create compressed summaries of sources that can be effectively compared and represented, and with just one click you can easily export your overview and summary tables and integrate them into your literature review report.

Powerful and easy-to-use literature review tools
Quantitative aspects can also be relevant when conducting a literature review analysis. Using MAXQDA as your literature review software enables you to employ a vast range of procedures for the quantitative evaluation of your material. You can sort sources according to document variables, compare amounts with frequency tables and charts, and much more. Make sure you donât miss the word frequency tools of MAXQDAâs add-on module for quantitative content analysis. Included are tools for visual text exploration, content analysis, vocabulary analysis, dictionary-based analysis, and more that facilitate the quantitative analysis of terms and their semantic contexts.
Visualize your literature review
As an all-in-one literature review software, MAXQDA offers a variety of visual tools that are tailor-made for qualitative research and literature reviews. Create stunning visualizations to analyze your material. Of course, you can export your visualizations in various formats to enrich your literature review analysis report. Work with word clouds to explore the central themes of a text and key terms that are used, create charts to easily compare the occurrences of concepts and important keywords, or make use of the graphical representation possibilities of MAXMaps, which in particular permit the creation of concept maps. Thanks to the interactive connection between your visualizations with your MAXQDA data, youâll never lose sight of the big picture.

Collect relevant insights and develop new theories
MAXQDA 2022 introduces a brand new and innovative workspace to gather important visualization, notes, segments, and other analytics results! The perfect tool to organize your thoughts and data. Create a separate worksheet for your topics and research questions, fill it with associated analysis elements from MAXQDA, and add your conclusions, theories, and insights as you go. The new Questions-Themes-Theories tool will support you during the analysis phase after coding and is perfectly suited to help you finalize your literature review reports. Thatâs why MAXQDA is the kind of Literature Review Software that enables you to focus on your research, not on the software.
Share your literature review
Your literature review is just waiting to be shared with the world! Export parts of your project, single documents, search results, visualizations, charts, or the whole project into easily readable file formats, like Excel, or Word. You can also export complete projects into a clear and understandable folder structure to archive your analysis or reuse your project in the future. Because MAXQDA is a literature review software developed by and for researchers, it supports researchers working on collaborative research projects. By following the REFI-QDA standard, MAXQDA allows you to export and import data from other QDA software packages.

Work with any Language in MAXQDA
MAXQDA offers a variety of possibilities to work with different languages. Not only is the User Interface available in numerous languages, but you can also conduct your literature review in every single language of the world. The fact that MAXQDA supports Unicode makes it possible to import and analyze documents in any script and language. If you are new to MAXQDA you can learn how to use MAXQDA in your preferred language with our Getting Started Guides and video tutorials. Additionally, our international Professional Trainer Network provides the opportunity to participate in multilingual MAXQDA Workshops.
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Scholarcy is used by students around the world to read and analyse research papers in less time. Upload your articles to Scholarcy to:
- Cut your reading time in half and feel more in control
- Identify the papers that matter in less time
- Jump straight to the most important information
- Compare a collection of articles more easily
With Scholarcy Library, you can import all your papers and search results, and quickly screen them with the automatically generated âkey takeawayâ headline.

Take the stress out of your literature review
While there are lots of tools that help you discover articles for your research, how do you analyse and synthesise the information from all of those papers?
3 easy ways to import articles
Scholarcy lets you quickly import your articles for screening and analysing.
Import papers in PDF, Word, HTML and LaTeX format
Import search results from PubMed or any service that provides results in RIS or BibTeX format
Import publisher RSS feeds
Build your literature matrix in minutes
Our Excel export feature generates a literature synthesis matrix for you, so you can
Compare papers side by side for their study sizes, key contributions, limitations, and more.
Export literature-review ready data in Excel, Word, RIS or Markdown format
Integrates with your reference manager and âsecond brainâ tools such as Roam, Notion and Obsidian
Carrying out a systematic review?
Scholarcy breaks papers down into our unique summary flashcard format.
The Study subjects and analysis tab shows you study population, intervention, outcome, and statistical analyses from the paper.
And the Excel synthesis matrix generated shows the key methods and quantitative findings of each paper, side by side.
Build a knowledge graph from your papers
If youâre a fan of the latest generation of knowledge management tools such as Roam  or Obsidian , youâll love our Markdown  export.
This creates a knowledge graph of all the papers in your library by connecting them via key terms, methods, and shared citations.
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Before you set down your task to write a literature review for you, the writers should thoroughly comprehend the topic matter. It may be unique research, and you typically have to shovel a lot of material before getting at least a few paragraphs. You may download the work from the Internet, but this will be detected by the anti-plagiarism system and will do more damage than good. Our essay writing service is glad to put your ideas on academic papers or articles. The literature review is an analytical task requiring much responsibility and effort. If the literature preferences do not comply with the requested literature review, it may take a lot of time, and we are here to save you time and skip all these difficult stages on your way to the perfect result.
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The reason to prepare a literature review is always the need to convey one's reaction to what has been read. It is an effort to explain one's impressions created by the work, but based on fundamental knowledge in literary theory, a complete study of the work. With our literature review writing service , you can get help doing a literature review. The quality of the analysis is determined by the reviewer's theoretical and professional expertise, depth of grasp of the issue, and capacity to evaluate objectively. The writers' highquality literature review clearly impacts the reader intellectually, logically, and emotionally. As a result, the reviewer employs linguistic techniques that combine the tasks of identifying and rating books and vernacular terms and structures. Criticism does not study literature; instead, it assesses it to shape the reader's and society's attitudes toward specific writers and actively affect the creative process.
What you should keep in mind while writing a literature review dissertation is as follows:
- A lengthy recounting decreases the value of the review for two reasons: first, the essay itself will be dull to read; second, substituting the text's analysis and interpretation with its retelling is a characteristic that differs from a professional literature review.
- Every book starts with a title, which you interpret and unwrap as you read. An excellent work's title is always ambiguous. It is a type of symbol, a metaphor.
- The composed research structure will help with comprehension and interpretation of the text. Reflecting on the compositional strategies utilized in the research will assist the critic in understanding the author's goal.
- It is necessary to do the literature review using APA style to evaluate the writer's style and originality, examine the pictures and creative approaches he employs, and construct a logically competent work.
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7 open source tools to make literature reviews easy

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A good literature review is critical for academic research in any field, whether it is for a research article, a critical review for coursework, or a dissertation. In a recent article, I presented detailed steps for doing a literature review using open source software .
The following is a brief summary of seven free and open source software tools described in that article that will make your next literature review much easier.
1. GNU Linux
Most literature reviews are accomplished by graduate students working in research labs in universities. For absurd reasons, graduate students often have the worst computers on campus. They are often old, slow, and clunky Windows machines that have been discarded and recycled from the undergraduate computer labs. Installing a flavor of GNU Linux will breathe new life into these outdated PCs. There are more than 100 distributions , all of which can be downloaded and installed for free on computers. Most popular Linux distributions come with a "try-before-you-buy" feature. For example, with Ubuntu you can make a bootable USB stick that allows you to test-run the Ubuntu desktop experience without interfering in any way with your PC configuration. If you like the experience, you can use the stick to install Ubuntu on your machine permanently.
Linux distributions generally come with a free web browser, and the most popular is Firefox . Two Firefox plugins that are particularly useful for literature reviews are Unpaywall and Zotero. Keep reading to learn why.
3. Unpaywall
Often one of the hardest parts of a literature review is gaining access to the papers you want to read for your review. The unintended consequence of copyright restrictions and paywalls is it has narrowed access to the peer-reviewed literature to the point that even Harvard University is challenged to pay for it. Fortunately, there are a lot of open access articlesâabout a third of the literature is free (and the percentage is growing). Unpaywall is a Firefox plugin that enables researchers to click a green tab on the side of the browser and skip the paywall on millions of peer-reviewed journal articles. This makes finding accessible copies of articles much faster that searching each database individually. Unpaywall is fast, free, and legal, as it accesses many of the open access sites that I covered in my paper on using open source in lit reviews .
Formatting references is the most tedious of academic tasks. Zotero can save you from ever doing it again. It operates as an Android app, desktop program, and a Firefox plugin (which I recommend). It is a free, easy-to-use tool to help you collect, organize, cite, and share research. It replaces the functionality of proprietary packages such as RefWorks, Endnote, and Papers for zero cost. Zotero can auto-add bibliographic information directly from websites. In addition, it can scrape bibliographic data from PDF files. Notes can be easily added on each reference. Finally, and most importantly, it can import and export the bibliography databases in all publishers' various formats. With this feature, you can export bibliographic information to paste into a document editor for a paper or thesisâor even to a wiki for dynamic collaborative literature reviews (see tool #7 for more on the value of wikis in lit reviews).
5. LibreOffice
Your thesis or academic article can be written conventionally with the free office suite LibreOffice , which operates similarly to Microsoft's Office products but respects your freedom. Zotero has a word processor plugin to integrate directly with LibreOffice. LibreOffice is more than adequate for the vast majority of academic paper writing.
If LibreOffice is not enough for your layout needs, you can take your paper writing one step further with LaTeX , a high-quality typesetting system specifically designed for producing technical and scientific documentation. LaTeX is particularly useful if your writing has a lot of equations in it. Also, Zotero libraries can be directly exported to BibTeX files for use with LaTeX.
7. MediaWiki
If you want to leverage the open source way to get help with your literature review, you can facilitate a dynamic collaborative literature review . A wiki is a website that allows anyone to add, delete, or revise content directly using a web browser. MediaWiki is free software that enables you to set up your own wikis.
Researchers can (in decreasing order of complexity): 1) set up their own research group wiki with MediaWiki, 2) utilize wikis already established at their universities (e.g., Aalto University ), or 3) use wikis dedicated to areas that they research. For example, several university research groups that focus on sustainability (including mine ) use Appropedia , which is set up for collaborative solutions on sustainability, appropriate technology, poverty reduction, and permaculture.
Using a wiki makes it easy for anyone in the group to keep track of the status of and update literature reviews (both current and older or from other researchers). It also enables multiple members of the group to easily collaborate on a literature review asynchronously. Most importantly, it enables people outside the research group to help make a literature review more complete, accurate, and up-to-date.
Wrapping up
Free and open source software can cover the entire lit review toolchain, meaning there's no need for anyone to use proprietary solutions. Do you use other libre tools for making literature reviews or other academic work easier? Please let us know your favorites in the comments.

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What is a Review of Related Literature (RRL)?
Research in everyday usage is different from its strict sense. We often say that we are conducting research in the library or in the Internet. Although grammatically correct, these phrases denote a misconception of what research is. The correct term is that we are conducting a literature review.
What is the value of related literature?
A good research is designed to build on and use existing knowledge. Once a research topic is already determined and well-thought of, the researcher must look for academic and research journals, books, and other similar documents that contain reports of previous research studies about a topic related to the present research. This is called literature review or review of related literature . It involves a process of identifying, locating, organizing, and analyzing information about a research topic. Conducting a literature review is essential because it prevents duplication of studies and helps avoid problems that others have encountered. It would be wasteful for a researcher to begin working on a study without knowing what others have already done. Literature review also provides valuable information about how to measure the research variables involved and what research designs will be most useful. A thorough literature review before the implementation of the study reflects the depth of discussion, analysis, and interpretation of findings.
Literature serves the following functions in the research process:
- It provides information about past research studies related to the intended investigation, preventing the duplication of research undertakings.
- It presents gaps in the field of study. Gaps may either be areas in the body of knowledge that are not explored yet or parts where research studies yielded inconclusive results.
- It affords confidence and authority to the researchers since reviewing the literature can provide them all possible constructs and perspectives of the present study.
- It gives information about the methods used in similar studies, including the characteristics of the samples, the sampling techniques or the process of selecting the research participants, the variables considered, the kinds of data gathered, and the type of analysis and interpretation done on the collected data.
- It enumerates findings from previous studies that may support those of the present study.
- It provides ideas on how implications may be drawn out of the analysis and interpretation of data.
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Q: How to write the review of related literature in research?

Asked by Antonio Luces on 10 Mar, 2019
A literature review is a critical analysis of existing literature in a research field. It evaluates the contribution made by other researchers in that field and highlights gaps in knowledge that need to be addressed.Â
To begin with, you can read a lot of articles, books, and other published works on the topics of your interest. Reading books and articles related to your topic will familiarize you with the research area and help you form an opinion on the existing literature. Note down all the questions and comments that you may have. Once you have gathered enough resources, you can start writing the literature review.
A literature review can be written either as part of the introduction of an original article or as a standalone article. If you wish to know how to write the literature review as part of your research paper, this article will help you:
- How to write the literature review of your research paper
If however, you wish to know how to write a literature review as a standalone article, here are some resources that you will find useful:
- A young researcher's guide to writing a literature review
- 5 Tips to write a great literature review
A standalone literature review article typically has five sections, namely, Introduction, Methods, Body, Discussion and conclusion, and Reference list. In the Introduction section, you can provide information about the field of study, the relevance of the chosen topic within the field, and the focus of the literature review. In the methods section you can discuss your approach or the criteria used for selection of the sources used. In the Body, you can speak about the major themes and topics in your research area. You can summarize your findings, highlight their significance, and identify gaps in literature in the discussion and conclusion section. The reference list will contain details of all the sources you have referred in your review.
Related reading:
- How to write a literature review
- Conducting a systematic literature review

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- http://orcid.org/0000-0003-0157-5319 Ahtisham Younas 1 , 2 ,
- http://orcid.org/0000-0002-7839-8130 Parveen Ali 3 , 4
- 1 Memorial University of Newfoundland , St John's , Newfoundland , Canada
- 2 Swat College of Nursing , Pakistan
- 3 School of Nursing and Midwifery , University of Sheffield , Sheffield , South Yorkshire , UK
- 4 Sheffield University Interpersonal Violence Research Group , Sheffield University , Sheffield , UK
- Correspondence to Ahtisham Younas, Memorial University of Newfoundland, St John's, NL A1C 5C4, Canada; ay6133{at}mun.ca
http://dx.doi.org/10.1136/ebnurs-2021-103417
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Introduction
Literature reviews offer a critical synthesis of empirical and theoretical literature to assess the strength of evidence, develop guidelines for practice and policymaking, and identify areas for future research. 1 It is often essential and usually the first task in any research endeavour, particularly in masters or doctoral level education. For effective data extraction and rigorous synthesis in reviews, the use of literature summary tables is of utmost importance. A literature summary table provides a synopsis of an included article. It succinctly presents its purpose, methods, findings and other relevant information pertinent to the review. The aim of developing these literature summary tables is to provide the reader with the information at one glance. Since there are multiple types of reviews (eg, systematic, integrative, scoping, critical and mixed methods) with distinct purposes and techniques, 2 there could be various approaches for developing literature summary tables making it a complex task specialty for the novice researchers or reviewers. Here, we offer five tips for authors of the review articles, relevant to all types of reviews, for creating useful and relevant literature summary tables. We also provide examples from our published reviews to illustrate how useful literature summary tables can be developed and what sort of information should be provided.
Tip 1: provide detailed information about frameworks and methods
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Tabular literature summaries from a scoping review. Source: Rasheed et al . 3
The provision of information about conceptual and theoretical frameworks and methods is useful for several reasons. First, in quantitative (reviews synthesising the results of quantitative studies) and mixed reviews (reviews synthesising the results of both qualitative and quantitative studies to address a mixed review question), it allows the readers to assess the congruence of the core findings and methods with the adapted framework and tested assumptions. In qualitative reviews (reviews synthesising results of qualitative studies), this information is beneficial for readers to recognise the underlying philosophical and paradigmatic stance of the authors of the included articles. For example, imagine the authors of an article, included in a review, used phenomenological inquiry for their research. In that case, the review authors and the readers of the review need to know what kind of (transcendental or hermeneutic) philosophical stance guided the inquiry. Review authors should, therefore, include the philosophical stance in their literature summary for the particular article. Second, information about frameworks and methods enables review authors and readers to judge the quality of the research, which allows for discerning the strengths and limitations of the article. For example, if authors of an included article intended to develop a new scale and test its psychometric properties. To achieve this aim, they used a convenience sample of 150 participants and performed exploratory (EFA) and confirmatory factor analysis (CFA) on the same sample. Such an approach would indicate a flawed methodology because EFA and CFA should not be conducted on the same sample. The review authors must include this information in their summary table. Omitting this information from a summary could lead to the inclusion of a flawed article in the review, thereby jeopardising the reviewâs rigour.
Tip 2: include strengths and limitations for each article
Critical appraisal of individual articles included in a review is crucial for increasing the rigour of the review. Despite using various templates for critical appraisal, authors often do not provide detailed information about each reviewed articleâs strengths and limitations. Merely noting the quality score based on standardised critical appraisal templates is not adequate because the readers should be able to identify the reasons for assigning a weak or moderate rating. Many recent critical appraisal checklists (eg, Mixed Methods Appraisal Tool) discourage review authors from assigning a quality score and recommend noting the main strengths and limitations of included studies. It is also vital that methodological and conceptual limitations and strengths of the articles included in the review are provided because not all review articles include empirical research papers. Rather some review synthesises the theoretical aspects of articles. Providing information about conceptual limitations is also important for readers to judge the quality of foundations of the research. For example, if you included a mixed-methods study in the review, reporting the methodological and conceptual limitations about âintegrationâ is critical for evaluating the studyâs strength. Suppose the authors only collected qualitative and quantitative data and did not state the intent and timing of integration. In that case, the strength of the study is weak. Integration only occurred at the levels of data collection. However, integration may not have occurred at the analysis, interpretation and reporting levels.
Tip 3: write conceptual contribution of each reviewed article
While reading and evaluating review papers, we have observed that many review authors only provide core results of the article included in a review and do not explain the conceptual contribution offered by the included article. We refer to conceptual contribution as a description of how the articleâs key results contribute towards the development of potential codes, themes or subthemes, or emerging patterns that are reported as the review findings. For example, the authors of a review article noted that one of the research articles included in their review demonstrated the usefulness of case studies and reflective logs as strategies for fostering compassion in nursing students. The conceptual contribution of this research article could be that experiential learning is one way to teach compassion to nursing students, as supported by case studies and reflective logs. This conceptual contribution of the article should be mentioned in the literature summary table. Delineating each reviewed articleâs conceptual contribution is particularly beneficial in qualitative reviews, mixed-methods reviews, and critical reviews that often focus on developing models and describing or explaining various phenomena. Figure 2 offers an example of a literature summary table. 4
Tabular literature summaries from a critical review. Source: Younas and Maddigan. 4
Tip 4: compose potential themes from each article during summary writing
While developing literature summary tables, many authors use themes or subthemes reported in the given articles as the key results of their own review. Such an approach prevents the review authors from understanding the articleâs conceptual contribution, developing rigorous synthesis and drawing reasonable interpretations of results from an individual article. Ultimately, it affects the generation of novel review findings. For example, one of the articles about womenâs healthcare-seeking behaviours in developing countries reported a theme âsocial-cultural determinants of health as precursors of delaysâ. Instead of using this theme as one of the review findings, the reviewers should read and interpret beyond the given description in an article, compare and contrast themes, findings from one article with findings and themes from another article to find similarities and differences and to understand and explain bigger picture for their readers. Therefore, while developing literature summary tables, think twice before using the predeveloped themes. Including your themes in the summary tables (see figure 1 ) demonstrates to the readers that a robust method of data extraction and synthesis has been followed.
Tip 5: create your personalised template for literature summaries
Often templates are available for data extraction and development of literature summary tables. The available templates may be in the form of a table, chart or a structured framework that extracts some essential information about every article. The commonly used information may include authors, purpose, methods, key results and quality scores. While extracting all relevant information is important, such templates should be tailored to meet the needs of the individualsâ review. For example, for a review about the effectiveness of healthcare interventions, a literature summary table must include information about the intervention, its type, content timing, duration, setting, effectiveness, negative consequences, and receivers and implementersâ experiences of its usage. Similarly, literature summary tables for articles included in a meta-synthesis must include information about the participantsâ characteristics, research context and conceptual contribution of each reviewed article so as to help the reader make an informed decision about the usefulness or lack of usefulness of the individual article in the review and the whole review.
In conclusion, narrative or systematic reviews are almost always conducted as a part of any educational project (thesis or dissertation) or academic or clinical research. Literature reviews are the foundation of research on a given topic. Robust and high-quality reviews play an instrumental role in guiding research, practice and policymaking. However, the quality of reviews is also contingent on rigorous data extraction and synthesis, which require developing literature summaries. We have outlined five tips that could enhance the quality of the data extraction and synthesis process by developing useful literature summaries.
- Aromataris E ,
- Rasheed SP ,
Twitter @Ahtisham04, @parveenazamali
Funding The authors have not declared a specific grant for this research from any funding agency in the public, commercial or not-for-profit sectors.
Competing interests None declared.
Patient consent for publication Not required.
Provenance and peer review Not commissioned; externally peer reviewed.
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How to Make Review of Related Literature
The Review of Related Literature The review of related literature is an essay that should show why your research needs to be carried out, how you came to choose certain methodologies and theories to work with, and how your work adds to the research already carried out by others. Divide your review into two main parts: 1. Introduction This is where you define or identify the general topic, issue, or area of concern, and let the reader understand the context of your research. Point out overall trends in what has been published about the topic.
These include conflicts in theory; gaps in research; and new perspectives of immediate interest. Discuss also the major findings of other researchers who did a similar study. Explain the general flow of your research and more importantly, discuss the significance of your research (the motivation for the doing the project). The introduction should answer the following questions: A. What is the research all about? B. What are the main concepts involved in the topic? C. Are there previous studies on the topic? If so, what do these studies show? D.
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Are there recent studies similar to this research? What do these studies show? E. What is the motivation for your research? What is its significance? What are the possible applications of the study? F. What is the general flow of the research (e. g. how it was conducted, what variables were observed)? Why was this method chosen? What are the limitations of your research? 2. Theory In this part, organize your review according to a specific criterion to make the flow of your discussion coherent. Discuss in detail the theoretical background of your research.
Make sure that all the major theoretical information on your research is covered. Format: Times New Roman font size 12 Double-spaced 1. 5â margin on the left, 1â margin on ALL sides REVIEW OF RELATED LITERATURE Introduction Balloon powered car racers are driven by air coming from a deflating balloon. Instead of using electricity, these cars make use of the Law of Action and Reaction. The car is propelled forward, as a result of the air coming from an inflated balloon. As a reaction to the force produced by the escaping air, a force acts towards the opposite direction thereby pushing the car racer forward.
Although balloon powered car racers have been around for quite a while, studies are still being made to maximize the distance and the speed with which these cars can travel. The designs are still being optimized so that the cars will be lightweight and durable. In 1998, NASAâs Jet Propulsion Laboratory held its first annual balloon powered car race. In that event, the cars were propelled by either inflation of elastic methods [1]. A lot of designs came up. The entries were judged according to factors like the distance covered, the speed and the creativity of the design.
Other schools use balloon powered cars to show how Newtonâs Laws work. Some even require the students to use recycled materials [2]. All these are geared towards a concrete demonstration of both Newtonâs Laws and caring for the environment. In this day and age of constant threat to our environment, various ways of reducing air pollution and energy consumption are being explored. Cars whose emissions are part of the factors that contribute to air pollution, are being modified to be more environment-friendly. For more than 10 years now, researches on hybrid cars have been made, with Japan, US and some European countries as the spearheads.
The National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL) is constantly looking for ways to improve this new technology [3]. However, these cars are expensive to produce. Majority of the population, especially here in the Philippines, cannot afford a highly energy efficient and environment friendly vehicle. Also, problems like the disposal of tons of electric car batteries will arise. This research aims to address this problem by investigating the parameters that affect the efficiency of balloon powered car racers. Theory Motion occurs when an object changes its location in space.
It is defined as the continuous change in position [4]. The distance traveled by a moving object is the length of the path covered by the object. The rate of motion is usually referred to as speed. It describes how far an object travels in a given period of time. Objects move the way they do because they obey the laws of motion. Sir Isaac Newton formulated the three laws of motion: the Law of Inertia, the Law of Mass and Acceleration, and the Law of Action and reaction [5]. Inertia is the tendency of matter to resist a change in its state of motion.
It is the property of matter that keeps an object in motion if it is moving, or at rest if it is not moving, unless acted upon by an external force [6]. Inertia serves as a measurement of how difficult it is to change the state of motion of an object [7]. It is dependent upon the mass of an object. The greater the mass of a body, the greater is the inertia, and the greater its tendency to resist a change in its state of motion. The law of mass and acceleration describes how an object changes its motion when a force is applied to it.
The acceleration of an object is directly proportional to the magnitude of the force applied on the object and inversely proportional to the objectâs mass. The law of Action and Reaction states that for every action, there is an equal and opposite reaction. The action and reaction are acting on two different bodies and they do not cancel each other. Forces always come in pairs: an action and reaction. You cannot push unless you are being pushed. You cannot touch without being touched [6]. REFERENCES [1] Oisboid, Debbie. âInflatable Technology at its Finest? [2] âBalloon Powered Carâ. Questacon Science Activities (2007) [3] Hybrid Electric & Fuel Cell Vehicles [4] Beiser, Arthur. Modern Technical Physics. USA: Addison-Wesley Publishing Company, 1992. [5] Murphy, James T. and Smooth, C. Robert. Physics: Principles and Problems. Ohio: Charles E. Merril Publishing Co. , 1982. [6] Hewitt, Paul G. Conceptual Physics: A New Introduction to Your Environment. USA: Little Brown and Co. , Inc. , 1974. [7] Zitzewitz, Paul W. et. al. Glencoe Physics : Principles and Problems : USA : The McGraw-Hill Companies Inc. , 1999. Criteria |Points | |Answered the guide questions completely and correctly |14 | |Theoretical information is correct and complete |10 | |Correct bibliographical entries |2 | |Followed proper format |2 | |Neatness |2 | |TOTAL |30 points |
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Write a Literature Review
1. narrow your topic and select papers accordingly, 2. search for literature, 3. read the selected articles thoroughly and evaluate them, 4. organize the selected papers by looking for patterns and by developing subtopics, 5. develop a thesis or purpose statement, 6. write the paper, 7. review your work.
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Consider your specific area of study. Think about what interests you and what interests other researchers in your field.
Talk to your professor, brainstorm, and read lecture notes and recent issues of periodicals in the ïŹeld.
Limit your scope to a smaller topic area (ie. focusing on France's role in WWII instead of focusing on WWII in general).
- Four Steps to Narrow Your Research Topic (Video) This 3-minute video provides instructions on how to narrow the focus of your research topic.
- Developing a Research Question + Worksheet Use this worksheet to develop, assess, and refine your research questions. There is also a downloadable PDF version.
Define your source selection criteria (ie. articles published between a specific date range, focusing on a specific geographic region, or using a specific methodology).
Using keywords, search a library database.
Reference lists of recent articles and reviews can lead to other useful papers.
Include any studies contrary to your point of view.
Evaluate and synthesize the studies' ïŹndings and conclusions.
Note the following:
- Assumptions some or most researchers seem to make
- Methodologies, testing procedures, subjects, material tested researchers use
- Experts in the ïŹeld: names/labs that are frequently referenced
- Conflicting theories, results, methodologies
- Popularity of theories and how this has/has not changed over time
- Findings that are common/contested
- Important trends in the research
- The most influential theories
Tip: If your literature review is extensive, ïŹnd a large table surface, and on it place post-it notes or ïŹling cards to organize all your ïŹndings into categories.
- Move them around if you decide that (a) they ïŹt better under different headings, or (b) you need to establish new topic headings.
- Develop headings/subheadings that reflect the major themes and patterns you detected
Write a one or two sentence statement summarizing the conclusion you have reached about the major trends and developments you see in the research that has been conducted on your subject.
- Templates for Writing Thesis Statements This template provides a two-step guide for writing thesis statements. There is also a downloadable PDF version.
- 5 Types of Thesis Statements Learn about five different types of thesis statements to help you choose the best type for your research. There is also a downloadable PDF version.
- 5 Questions to Strengthen Your Thesis Statement Follow these five steps to strengthen your thesis statements. There is also a downloadable PDF version.
Follow the organizational structure you developed above, including the headings and subheadings you constructed.
Make certain that each section links logically to the one before and after.
Structure your sections by themes or subtopics, not by individual theorists or researchers.
- Tip: If you ïŹnd that each paragraph begins with a researcher's name, it might indicate that, instead of evaluating and comparing the research literature from an analytical point of view, you have simply described what research has been done.
Prioritize analysis over description.
- For example, look at the following two passages and note that Student A merely describes the literature, whereas Student B takes a more analytical and evaluative approach by comparing and contrasting. You can also see that this evaluative approach is well signaled by linguistic markers indicating logical connections (words such as "however," "moreover") and phrases such as "substantiates the claim that," which indicate supporting evidence and Student B's ability to synthesize knowledge.
Student A: Smith (2000) concludes that personal privacy in their living quarters is the most important factor in nursing home residents' perception of their autonomy. He suggests that the physical environment in the more public spaces of the building did not have much impact on their perceptions. Neither the layout of the building nor the activities available seem to make much difference. Jones and Johnstone make the claim that the need to control one's environment is a fundamental need of life (2001), and suggest that the approach of most institutions, which is to provide total care, may be as bad as no care at all. If people have no choices or think that they have none, they become depressed.
Student B: After studying residents and staff from two intermediate care facilities in Calgary, Alberta, Smith (2000) came to the conclusion that except for the amount of personal privacy available to residents, the physical environment of these institutions had minimal if any effect on their perceptions of control (autonomy). However, French (1998) and Haroon (2000) found that availability of private areas is not the only aspect of the physical environment that determines residents' autonomy. Haroon interviewed 115 residents from 32 different nursing homes known to have different levels of autonomy (2000). It was found that physical structures, such as standardized furniture, heating that could not be individually regulated, and no possession of a house key for residents limited their feelings of independence. Moreover, Hope (2002), who interviewed 225 residents from various nursing homes, substantiates the claim that characteristics of the institutional environment such as the extent of resources in the facility, as well as its location, are features which residents have indicated as being of great importance to their independence.
- How to Integrate Critical Voice into Your Literature Review (Video)
- Look at the topic sentences of each paragraph. If you were to read only these sentences, would you ïŹnd that your paper presented a clear position, logically developed, from beginning to end? The topic sentences of each paragraph should indicate the main points of your literature review.
- Make an outline of each section of the paper and decide whether you need to add information, to delete irrelevant information, or to re-structure sections.
- Read your work out loud. That way you will be better able to identify where you need punctuation marks to signal pauses or divisions within sentences, where you have made grammatical errors, or where your sentences are unclear.
- Since the purpose of a literature review is to demonstrate that the writer is familiar with the important professional literature on the chosen subject, check to make certain that you have covered all of the important, up-to-date, and pertinent texts. In the sciences and some of the social sciences it is important that your literature be quite recent; this is not so important in the humanities.
- Make certain that all of the citations and references are correct and that you are referencing in the appropriate style for your discipline. If you are uncertain which style to use, ask your professor.
- Check to make sure that you have not plagiarized either by failing to cite a source of information, or by using words quoted directly from a source. (Usually if you take three or more words directly from another source, you should put those words within quotation marks, and cite the page.)
- Text should be written in a clear and concise academic style; it should not be descriptive in nature or use the language of everyday speech.
- There should be no grammatical or spelling errors.
- Sentences should ïŹow smoothly and logically.
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What is a Literature Review?
Description.
A literature review, also called a review article or review of literature, surveys the existing research on a topic. The term "literature" in this context refers to published research or scholarship in a particular discipline, rather than "fiction" (like American Literature) or an individual work of literature. In general, literature reviews are most common in the sciences and social sciences.
Literature reviews may be written as standalone works, or as part of a scholarly article or research paper. In either case, the purpose of the review is to summarize and synthesize the key scholarly work that has already been done on the topic at hand. The literature review may also include some analysis and interpretation. A literature review is not a summary of every piece of scholarly research on a topic.
Why are literature reviews useful?
Literature reviews can be very helpful for newer researchers or those unfamiliar with a field by synthesizing the existing research on a given topic, providing the reader with connections and relationships among previous scholarship. Reviews can also be useful to veteran researchers by identifying potentials gaps in the research or steering future research questions toward unexplored areas. If a literature review is part of a scholarly article, it should include an explanation of how the current article adds to the conversation. (From: https://researchguides.drake.edu/englit/criticism)
How is a literature review different from a research article?
Research articles: "are empirical articles that describe one or several related studies on a specific, quantitative, testable research question....they are typically organized into four text sections: Introduction, Methods, Results, Discussion." Source: https://psych.uw.edu/storage/writing_center/litrev.pdf)
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 . In SuperSearch and most databases, you may find it helpful to select the Advanced Search mode and include "literature review" or "review of the literature" in addition to your other search terms. 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. Most of the databases you will need are linked to from the Cowles Library Psychology Research guide .
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. You may want to use a Citation Manager to help you keep track of the citations you have found.
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. (note: this step is only if you are using the literature review to write a research paper. Many times the literature review is an end unto itself).
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.
These steps were taken from: https://psychology.ucsd.edu/undergraduate-program/undergraduate-resources/academic-writing-resources/writing-research-papers/writing-lit-review.html#6.-Incorporate-the-literature-r
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How to Write a Literature Review

As every student knows, writing informative essay and research papers is an integral part of the educational program. You create a thesis, support it using valid sources, and formulate systematic ideas surrounding it. However, not all students know that they will also have to face another type of paper known as a Literature Review in college. Let's take a closer look at this with our custom essay writer .
Literature Review Definition
As this is a less common academic writing type, students often ask: "What is a literature review?" According to the definition, a literature review is a body of work that explores various publications within a specific subject area and sometimes within a set timeframe.
This type of writing requires you to read and analyze various sources that relate to the main subject and present each unique comprehension of the publications. Lastly, a literature review should combine a summary with a synthesis of the documents used. A summary is a brief overview of the important information in the publication; a synthesis is a re-organization of the information that gives the writing a new and unique meaning.
Typically, a literature review is a part of a larger paper, such as a thesis or dissertation. However, you may also be given it as a stand-alone assignment.
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The Purpose
The main purpose of a literature review is to summarize and synthesize the ideas created by previous authors without implementing personal opinions or other additional information.
However, a literature review objective is not just to list summaries of sources; rather, it is to notice a central trend or principle in all of the publications. Just like a research paper has a thesis that guides it on rails, a literature review has the main organizing principle (MOP). The goal of this type of academic writing is to identify the MOP and show how it exists in all of your supporting documents.
Why is a literature review important? The value of such work is explained by the following goals it pursues:
- Highlights the significance of the main topic within a specific subject area.
- Demonstrates and explains the background of research for a particular subject matter.
- Helps to find out the key themes, principles, concepts, and researchers that exist within a topic.
- Helps to reveal relationships between existing ideas/studies on a topic.
- Reveals the main points of controversy and gaps within a topic.
- Suggests questions to drive primary research based on previous studies.
Here are some example topics for writing literature reviews:
- Exploring racism in "To Kill a Mockingbird," "The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn," and "Uncle Tom's Cabin."
- Isolationism in "The Catcher in the Rye," "Frankenstein," and "1984"
- Understanding Moral Dilemmas in "Crime and Punishment," "The Scarlet Letter," and "The Lifeboat"
- Corruption of Power in "Macbeth," "All the King's Men," and "Animal Farm"
- Emotional and Physical survival in "Lord of the Flies," "Hatchet," and "Congo."
How Long Is a Literature Review?
When facing the need to write a literature review, students tend to wonder, "how long should a literature review be?" In some cases, the length of your paper's body may be determined by your instructor. Be sure to read the guidelines carefully to learn what is expected from you.
Keeping your literature review around 15-30% of your entire paper is recommended if you haven't been provided with specific guidelines. To give you a rough idea, that is about 2-3 pages for a 15-page paper. In case you are writing a literature review as a stand-alone assignment, its length should be specified in the instructions provided.
Literature Review Format: APA, MLA, and Chicago
The essay format you use should adhere to the citation style preferred by your instructor. Seek clarification from your instructor for several other components as well to establish a desired literature review format:
- How many sources should you review, and what kind of sources should they be (published materials, journal articles, or websites)?
- What format should you use to cite the sources?
- How long should the review be?
- Should your review consist of a summary, synthesis, or a personal critique?
- Should your review include subheadings or background information for your sources?
If you want to format your paper in APA style, then follow these rules:
- Use 1-inch page margins.
- Unless provided with other instructions, use double-spacing throughout the whole text.
- Make sure you choose a readable font. The preferred font for APA papers is Times New Roman set to 12-point size.
- Include a header at the top of every page (in capital letters). The page header must be a shortened version of your essay title and limited to 50 characters, including spacing and punctuation.
- Put page numbers in the upper right corner of every page.
- When shaping your literature review outline in APA, don't forget to include a title page. This page should include the paper's name, the author's name, and the institutional affiliation. Your title must be typed with upper and lowercase letters and centered in the upper part of the page; use no more than 12 words, and avoid using abbreviations and useless words.
For MLA style text, apply the following guidelines:
- Double your spacing across the entire paper.
- Set œ-inch indents for each new paragraph.
- The preferred font for MLA papers is Times New Roman set to 12-point size.
- Include a header at the top of your paper's first page or on the title page (note that MLA style does not require you to have a title page, but you are allowed to decide to include one). A header in this format should include your full name; the name of your instructor; the name of the class, course, or section number; and the due date of the assignment.
- Include a running head in the top right corner of each page in your paper. Place it one inch from the page's right margin and half an inch from the top margin. Only include your last name and the page number separated by a space in the running head. Do not put the abbreviation p. before page numbers.
Finally, if you are required to write a literature review in Chicago style, here are the key rules to follow:
- Set page margins to no less than 1 inch.
- Use double spacing across the entire text, except when it comes to table titles, figure captions, notes, blockquotes, and entries within the bibliography or References.
- Do not put spaces between paragraphs.
- Make sure you choose a clear and easily-readable font. The preferred fonts for Chicago papers are Times New Roman and Courier, set to no less than 10-point size, but preferably to 12-point size.
- A cover (title) page should include your full name, class information, and the date. Center the cover page and place it one-third below the top of the page.
- Place page numbers in the upper right corner of each page, including the cover page.
Read also about harvard format - popular style used in papers.
Structure of a Literature Review
How to structure a literature review: Like many other types of academic writing, a literature review follows a typical intro-body-conclusion style with 5 paragraphs overall. Now, letâs look at each component of the basic literature review structure in detail:
- Introduction
You should direct your reader(s) towards the MOP (main organizing principle). This means that your information must start from a broad perspective and gradually narrow down until it reaches your focal point.
Start by presenting your general concept (Corruption, for example). After the initial presentation, narrow your introduction's focus towards the MOP by mentioning the criteria you used to select the literature sources you have chosen (Macbeth, All the King's Men, and Animal Farm). Finally, the introduction will end with the presentation of your MOP that should directly link it to all three literature sources.
Body Paragraphs
Generally, each body paragraph will focus on a specific source of literature laid out in the essay's introduction. As each source has its own frame of reference for the MOP, it is crucial to structure the review in the most logically consistent way possible. This means the writing should be structured chronologically, thematically or methodologically.
Chronologically
Breaking down your sources based on their publication date is a solid way to keep a correct historical timeline. If applied properly, it can present the development of a certain concept over time and provide examples in the form of literature. However, sometimes there are better alternatives we can use to structure the body.
Thematically
Instead of taking the "timeline approach," another option can be looking at the link between your MOP and your sources. Sometimes, the main idea will just glare from a piece of literature. Other times, the author may have to seek examples to prove their point. An experienced writer will usually present their sources by order of strength. For example, in "To Kill A Mockingbird," the entire novel was centralized around racism; in "The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn," racism was one of many themes.
Methodologically
As made obvious by the terminology, this type of structuring focuses on the methods used to present the central concept. For example, in "1984", George Orwell uses the law-and-order approach and shows the dangers of a dystopia for a social species.
In "Frankenstein," Mary Shelley exposes the character's physical traits as repulsive and horrifying, forcing him to suffer in an isolated environment. By showcasing the various methods used to portray the MOP, the writer can compare them based on things like severity, ethicality, and overall impact.
After presenting your key findings in the body paragraphs, there are 3 final objectives to complete in the essay's conclusion. First, the author should summarize the findings they have made or found, in other words, and briefly answer the question: "What have you learned?"
After discussing that information, the next step is to present the significance of the information about our current world today. In other words, how can the reader take the information and apply it to today's society? From that point, we finish off with a breadcrumb trail.
As the author, you want to leave the readers' trail of thought within the actual essay topic. This provides them with a means of further investigationâmeaning that the reader may consider where the discussion will go next.
Writing an Outline for a Literature Review
Students often underestimate the importance of planning the structure of their papers in advance. However, this is not a wise approach. Having a rough APA literature review outline (or other style outlines) will not only help you follow the right format and structure but will also make the writing process simpler and help ensure that you include all of the important information without missing anything.
How to write a literature review outline: As you already know from the Structure section of this guide, every part of your literature review performs its own important role. Therefore, you should create your outline while keeping the general introduction-body-conclusion structure in mind and ensuring that each section meets its own objectives. However, it is important to remember that a literature review outline is slightly different from outlines of other types of essays because it does not provide new information. Instead, it focuses on existing studies relevant to the main topic. â
Here is a literature review outline example on the subject of the Ebola virus to help you get it right:
- Introduce the general topic. Provide background information on the Ebola virus: genome, pathogenesis, transmission, epidemiology, treatment, etc.
- Shape the main research question: What is the potential role of arthropods (mechanical or biological vectors) in the distribution of the Ebola virus?
- Methodology: For example, the information was searched through X databases to find relevant research articles about the Ebola virus and arthropods' role in its spreading. The data was extracted using a standardized form.
- Expected outcomes
- Overall trends in the literature on this topic: While the natural reservoir of the virus is still not known with certainty, many researchers believe that arthropods (and fruit bats, in particular) pay a significant role in the distribution of the virus.
- Subject 1: A brief overview of the particular piece of literature in general terms; an analysis of the key aspects of the study; a review of the research questions, methods, procedures, and outcomes; and an overview of the strong and weak points, gaps, and contradictions.
- Subject 2: A brief overview of the particular piece of literature in general terms; an analysis of the key aspects of the study; a review of the research questions, methods, procedures, and outcomes; and an overview of the strong and weak points, gaps, and contradictions.
- Subject 3: A brief overview of the particular piece of literature in general terms; an analysis of the key aspects of the study; a review of the research questions, methods, procedures, and outcomes; and an overview of the strong and weak points, gaps, and contradictions.
- Indicate the relationships between the pieces of literature discussed. Emphasize key themes, common patterns, and trends. Talk about the pros and cons of the different approaches taken by the authors/researchers.
- State which studies seem to be the most influential.
- Emphasize the major contradictions and points of disagreement. Define the gaps still to be covered (if any).
- If applicable: define how your own study will contribute to further disclosure of the topic.
Hopefully, this sample outline will help you to structure your own paper. However, if you feel like you need some more advice on how to organize your review, donât hesitate to search for more literature review outline examples in APA or other styles on the Web, or simply ask our writers to get a dissertation help .
How to Write a Good Literature Review
Whether you are writing a literature review within the framework of a large research project (e.g. thesis, dissertation, or other) or as a stand-alone assignment, the approach you should take to writing generally remains the same.

Whether you are writing a literature review within the framework of a large research project (e.g., thesis, dissertation, or other) or as a stand-alone assignment, the approach you should take to writing generally remains the same.
Now, as you know about the general rules and have a basic literature review outline template, let's define the steps to take to handle this task right with our service:
Step 1: Identifying the Topic
This is probably the only matter you may approach differently depending on whether your literature review comes within a research paper or a separate assignment altogether. If you are creating a literature review as a part of another work, you need to search for literature related to your main research questions and problems. Respectively, if you are writing it as a stand-alone task, you will have to pick a relevant topic and central question upon which you will collect the literature. Earlier in this guide, we suggested some engaging topics to guide your search.
Step 2: Conducting Research
When you have a clearly defined topic, it is time to start collecting literature for your review. We recommend starting by compiling a list of relevant keywords related to your central questionâto make the entire research process much simpler and help you find relevant publications faster.
When you have a list of keywords, use them to search for valid and relevant sources. At this point, be sure to use only trusted sources, such as ones from university libraries, online scientific databases, etc.
Once you have found some sources, be sure to define whether or not they are actually relevant to your topic and research question. To save time, you can read abstracts to get general ideas of what the papers are about instead of the whole thing.
Pro Tip: When you finally find a few valid publications, take a look at their bibliographies to discover other relevant sources as well.
Step 3: Assess and Prioritize Sources
Throughout your research, you will likely find plenty of relevant literature to include in your literature review. At this point, students often make the mistake of trying to fit all the collected sources into their reviews. Instead, we suggest looking at what you've collected once more, evaluating the available sources, and selecting the most relevant ones. You most likely won't be able to read everything you find on a given topic and then be able to synthesize all of the sources into a single literature review. That's why prioritizing them is important.
To evaluate which sources are worth including in your review, keep in mind the following criteria:
- Credibility;
- Innovation;
- Key insights;
Furthermore, as you read the sources, donât forget to take notes on everything you can incorporate into the review later. And be sure to get your citations in place early on. If you cite the selected sources at the initial stage, you will find it easier to create your annotated bibliography later on.
Step 4: Identify Relationships, Key Ideas, and Gaps
Before you can move on to outlining and writing your literature review, the final step is determining the relationships between the studies that already exist. Identifying the relationships will help you organize the existing knowledge, build a solid literature outline, and (if necessary) indicate your own research contribution to a specific field.
Some of the key points to keep an eye out for are:
- Main themes;
- Contradictions and debates;
- Influential studies or theories;
- Trends and patterns;
Here are a few examples: Common trends may include a focus on specific groups of people across different studies. Most researchers may have increased interest in certain aspects of the topic regarding key themes. Contradictions may include some disagreement concerning the theories and outcomes of a study. And finally, gaps most often refer to a lack of research on certain aspects of a topic.
Step 5: Make an Outline
Although students tend to neglect this stage, outlining is one of the most important steps in writing every academic paper. This is the easiest way to organize the body of your text and ensure that you haven't missed anything important. Besides, having a rough idea of what you will write about in the paper will help you get it right faster and more easily. Earlier in this guide, we already discussed the basic structure of a literature review and gave you an example of a good outline. At this workflow stage, you can use all of the knowledge you've gained from us to build your own outline.
Step 6: Move on to Writing
Having found and created all of your sources, notes, citations, and a detailed outline, you can finally get to the writing part of the process. At this stage, all you need to do is follow the plan you've created and keep in mind the overall structure and format defined in your professor's instructions.
Step 7: Adding the Final Touches
Most students make a common mistake and skip the final stage of the process, which includes proofreading and editing. We recommend taking enough time for these steps to ensure that your work will be worth the highest score. Do not underestimate the importance of proofreading and editing, and allocate enough time for these steps.
Pro Tip: Before moving on to proofreading and editing, be sure to set your literature review aside for a day or two. This will give you a chance to take your mind off it and then get back to proofreading with a fresh perspective. This tip will ensure that you won't miss out on any gaps or errors that might be present in your text.
These steps will help you create a top-notch literature review with ease! Want to get more advice on how to handle this body of work? Here are the top 3 tips you need to keep in mind when writing a literature review:
1. Good Sources
When working on a literature review, the most important thing any writer should remember is to find the best possible sources for their MOP. This means that you should select and filter through about 5-10 different options while doing initial research.
The stronger a piece of literature showcases the central point, the better the quality of the entire review.
2. Synthesize The Literature
Make sure to structure the review in the most effective way possible, whether it be chronologically, thematically, or methodologically. Understand what exactly you would like to say, and structure the source comparison accordingly.
3. Avoid Generalizations
Remember that each piece of literature will approach the MOP from a different angle. As the author, make sure to present the contrasts in approaches clearly and don't include general statements that offer no value.
Literature Review Examples
You can find two well-written literature reviews by the EssayPro writing team below. They will help you understand what the final product of a literature review should ideally look like.
The first literature review compares monolingual and bilingual language acquisition skills and uses various sources to prove its point:
The second literature review compares the impact of fear and pain on a protagonistâs overall development in various settings:
Both reviews will help you sharpen your skills and provide good guidelines for writing high-quality papers.
Get Help from an Essay Writer
Still arenât sure whether you can handle literature review writing on your own? No worries because you can pay for essay writing and our service has got you covered! By choosing EssayPro, you will acquire a reliable friend who can help you handle any kind of literature review or other academic assignments of any level and topic. All you need to do to get help from the best academic writers now and boost your grades is to place an order in a few quick clicks and we will satisfy your write my paper request.
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- DOI: 10.3390/su15021255
- Corpus ID: 255626765
A Review of the Global Climate Finance Literature
- Roy Kouwenberg , Chenglong Zheng
- Published 9 January 2023
- Sustainability
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The climate financialization trap: claiming for public action.
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Financial stability, stranded assets and the lowâcarbon transition â A critical review of the theoretical and applied literatures
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International Journal of Production Research
Application of artificial intelligence for resilient and sustainable healthcare system: systematic literature review and future research directions.
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Recent years have witnessed increased pressure across the global healthcare system during the COVID-19 pandemic. The COVID-19 pandemic shattered existing healthcare operations and taught us the importance of a resilient and sustainable healthcare system. Digitisation, specifically adoption of Artificial Intelligence (AI) has positively contributed to developing a resilient healthcare system in recent past. To understand how AI contributes to building a resilient and sustainable healthcare system, this study based on systematic literature review of 89 articles extracted from Scopus and Web of Science databases is conducted. The study is organised around several key themes such as applications, benefits, and challenges of using AI technology in healthcare sector. It is observed that AI has wide applications in radiology, surgery, medical, research, and development of healthcare sector. Based on the analysis, a research framework is proposed using an extended Antecedents, Practices, and Outcomes (APO) framework. This framework comprises AI applicationsâ antecedents, practices, and outcomes for building a resilient and sustainable healthcare system. Consequently, three propositions are drawn in this study. Furthermore, our study has adopted the theory, context and methodology (TCM) framework to provide future research directions, which can be used as a reference point for future studies.
- Artificial intelligence
- sustainability
- systematic literature review
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No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).
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Data related with this paper is available with authors and will be available whenever required.
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Authors express sincere thanks to the editor and reviewers for providing exhaustive review comments to improve the quality and content of the paper.
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ChatGPTâs getting an upgrade, but it still canât pass AP English class
Openai unveiled its most advanced ai model yet: gpt-4. it can compose songs, pen screenplays and process images â and is now available to subscribers of chatgpt plus..

On Tuesday, OpenAI, creator of the viral chatbot ChatGPT , unveiled its most advanced artificial intelligence model yet, named GPT-4. But despite all its prowess, it still has one major weakness: AP English exams.
Compared to GPT-3.5, which currently powers the base version of ChatGPT, the newest version received a boost to its creative power, is capable of analyzing images and can process over 25,000 words — allowing for long-form content creation.
ChatGPT is an AI-powered chatbot capable of natural-sounding conversation. Given the right prompts, it could produce detailed answers to queries, write sonnets, code software and much more.
According to a press release , GPT-4’s new creative upgrades enable it to “generate, edit and iterate with users” on various different writing projects. This can include composing songs, penning screenplays or mimicking a user’s writing style, the company said.
Meanwhile, its visual capabilities allow users to input images for the bot and have it churn out captions and analyses. For example, you could send GPT-4 a meme and ask it why people find the image funny — and it will likely give an accurate answer.
For now, GPT-4 is only accessible on ChatGPT Plus, the $20-per-month paid subscription model of the chatbot. The upgrade will also be released as an Application programing Interface (API) for developers to build their own applications from the technology.
An OpenAI spokesperson said no one was available to comment before publication, but directed the Star to the company’s press release and research paper.
According to OpenAI’s GPT-4 research paper , the AI model was tested on a diverse set of benchmarks including exams designed for humans like the SAT or bar exam.
Despite receiving no specific training beforehand, GPT-4 vastly outperformed its predecessor and many humans in a majority of these tests. It scored around the 90th percentile for the Bar and various different SAT components, and was even placed in the 99th percentile for the Biology Olympiad.
That said, GPT-4 performed far worse in AP English Literature, placing in the 8th to 22nd percentile — about the same as GPT-3. It did similarly poorly in AP English Language, landing in the 14th to 44th percentile.
The new version can also handle far more nuanced instructions than its predecessor and provides more reliable answers. For example, GPT-4 is 40 per cent more likely to produce factual information than GPT-3, and is 82 per cent less likely to respond to requests for barred content.
That being said, the researchers noted GPT-4 still has a lot of the issues of its predecessor — it’s still subject to biases, can suffer from “hallucinations” leading to nonfactual information, has only a limited window for context and it can’t learn from experience.
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“Care should be taken when using the outputs of GPT-4, particularly in contexts where reliability is important,” reads OpenAI’s research paper.
The model’s capabilities also leave it vulnerable to new methods of misuse. For example, one could ask GPT-4 how to build a bomb at home, using store-bought ingredients and kitchen supplies. Earlier versions of GPT-4 would then provide accurate instructions to do just that.
After consulting with 50 different experts, OpenAI has since trained the bot to refuse such requests. But it’s possible some avenues of misuse slipped through the cracks.
Perhaps OpenAI said it best in its release : “GPT-4 and successor models have the potential to significantly influence society in both beneficial and harmful ways.”
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‘Flamin’ Hot’ Review: Eva Longoria’s Portrait of a Snack Food Creator Barely Satisfies
Sxsw: the story of snack food and marketing genius richard montañez is tasty enough, but it's hardly a meal..

Kate Erbland
Mar 11, 2023 6:00 pm
@katerbland
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“Flamin’ Hot”
We’ll get the liberties out of the way: The subject of Eva Longoria ’s narrative feature directorial debut (she directed the doc “La Guerra Civil” ) is businessman and entrepreneur Richard Montañez. He has lived an extraordinary life that saw him rise from a childhood in a migrant labor camp to becoming a PepsiCo executive and an in-demand motivational speaker. However, he did not actually invent Flamin’ Hot Cheetos. So yes, it’s unfortunate that Longoria’s energetic and loving feature is, well, all about Richard Montañez inventing Flamin’ Hot Cheetos.
It’s an inspiring story that Montañez told for years — he even wrote a book about it — and which has now gotten the biopic treatment, care of the aptly titled “Flamin’ Hot.” But any biopic engenders scrutiny and in May 2021, the Los Angeles Times published an expose about how Montañez didn’t actually do the one thing he’s long said he did. Throughout Longoria’s film, written by Linda Yvette Chávez and Lewis Colick, Montañez’s Flamin’ Hot origin story is told, along with a slew of other lightly buffed-over truths. It’s entertaining enough, but this is a story that doesn’t feel real, mostly because it isn’t.
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That’s perhaps why Longoria’s film often falls into the expected tropes of the inspiring biopic (factory floor-set inspirational speeches, the lights buzzing off in the family home when money gets tight) and leans on a series of mostly misbegotten fantasy sequences to fluff up the proceedings. The stuff that is good about “Flamin’ Hot,” including star Jesse Garcia, dedication to uplifting the Mexican-American community, and compulsively watchable sequences of junk food being made ( seriously ) is very good indeed. Longoria has the eye and heart for crowd-pleasing movie-making.
The Montañez of Longoria’s film is a striver, a hard worker who’s proud of his heritage and eager to make a name for himself while being realistic about some of his foibles. We follow Richard through his younger years as Garcia’s energy and charisma almost make us forget the 40-year-old actor is playing way younger — as he and long-time love Judy (the delightful Annie Gonzalez) attempt to make a life. Richard’s early forays into drug dealing are addressed and then glossed over in favor of portraying him as a smart dude who needs a break. Sometimes, he gets them — like when a judge doesn’t lock him over his latest charge — but just as often, things get tough again.

When Judy gets pregnant, Richard knows he has to step up. But it’s not that easy — a fact of life that Longoria’s film embraces — and with a criminal record and no high school diploma, finding a good job is its own occupation. Eventually, Richard lands at Frito-Lay as a janitor and he vows to excel. That he does, for nearly a decade. (Another fact-check pause: “Flamin’ Hot” makes a major subplot out of Frito-Lay’s resistance to promoting Richard, the real Richard was allegedly promoted within his first year at the Rancho Cucamonga site.)
Richard wants to be the best he can be. In the world of “Flamin’ Hot,” that involves not only kicking ass as a janitor, but seeking out mentorship from whiz engineer Clarence (Dennis Haysbert). But is hard work enough? As Richard faces all sorts of roadblocks, from the racism he’s dealt with his entire life to a crumbling economy, even his bootstrap mentality doesn’t ensure success. But you know what does? Actual innovation.
As “Flamin’ Hot” piles on the worries — from Reagan-era economic concerns to a fractious relationship with his father that’s barely explored — Richard realizes he needs to do something big. Enter: Flamin’ Hot Cheetos. (One more fact-check pause: The film does mention that another subset of Frito-Lay execs was working on a spicy chip, but enjoying “Flamin’ Hot” means being wholly vested in Richard’s quest.) If there’s one thing Richard — real and movie — knows, it’s that Mexican-Americans have money to spend and they’ve got taste buds that need tickling, something the rest of the snack-food industry wasn’t hip to before Richard came along.
That Montañez’s story ultimately led him to a place where that message could be delivered, both in a glossy film and in his career, is worth celebrating. Those underdog elements that really happened ring most true in an otherwise predictable film. Real life is messy and not always built for the movies, but when “Flamin’ Hot” leans too far into the only-in-Hollywood, we lose something far more satisfying than the spice-dusted cheese puffs.
“Flamin’ Hot” premiered at the 2023 SXSW Film Festival. It will start streaming on Hulu on Friday, June 9.
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This Article is related to: Film , Reviews and tagged Eva Longoria , Flamin' Hot , Reviews , SXSW


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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 Frequently asked questions Introduction Quick Run-through Step 1 & 2 Step 3 Step 4
A review of related literature (RRL) is a detailed review of existing literature related to the topic of a thesis or dissertation. In an RRL, you talk about knowledge and findings from existing literature relevant to your topic.
Some steps to follow while writing your review: Pick an accessible topic for your paper Do thorough research and gather evidence surrounding your topic Read and take notes diligently Create a rough structure for your review Synthesis your notes and write the first draft Edit and proofread your literature review
Step 1: Positionality Step 2: Purposes & Objectives of LR Step 3: Topic, Areas of Study, & Initial Research Question Step 4: Theoretical & Conceptual Framework Step 5: Literature Review Design Step 6: Secondary Data Collection Step 7: Secondary Data Analysis Step 8: Synthesis Step 9: Quality & Ethics of LR
A review of related literature is a comprehensive review of the existing literature pertaining to a specific topic or research question. An effective review provides the reader with an organized analysis and synthesis of the existing knowledge about a subject.
One of the greatest virtues of RAX as a personal research assistant is its constant endeavour to curate research content in the best possible way. It understands the cognitive pathways of research practice and delivers content necessary for the researcher at different stages of the project - from the exploration of a theme , to critically ...
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).
A review of related literature is an integral part of theses or dissertations. It may also be a required part of proposals. The main purpose of a review of related literature is to analyze scientific works by other researchers that you used for investigation critically. How to Write the Introduction of a Review of Related Literature
The All-in-one Literature Review Software MAXQDA is the best choice for a comprehensive literature review. It works with a wide range of data types and offers powerful tools for literature review, such as reference management, qualitative, vocabulary, text analysis tools, and more. All-in-one Literature Review Software
In fact, review of related literature is required in every chapter of the thesis. It helps in defining your problem, identifying variables, framing objectives and hypotheses, linking it with...
Build your literature matrix in minutes Our Excel export feature generates a literature synthesis matrix for you, so you can Compare papers side by side for their study sizes, key contributions, limitations, and more. Export literature-review ready data in Excel, Word, RIS or Markdown format
4.8 81 Reviews Literature review writers PapersOwl expert writers are online and available for hire. Read through their profiles, and sample assignments to find your perfect match. slide 4 to 5 of 10 Dr.Success Completed orders: 541 4.9 (342) What is Human Trafficking? Paper Type: Essay (Any Type) Subject: Sociology Style: APA Sources: 1
The following is a brief summary of seven free and open source software tools described in that article that will make your next literature review much easier. 1. GNU Linux Most literature reviews are accomplished by graduate students working in research labs in universities.
It involves a process of identifying, locating, organizing, and analyzing information about a research topic. Conducting a literature review is essential because it prevents duplication of studies and helps avoid problems that others have encountered. It would be wasteful for a researcher to begin working on a study without knowing what others ...
A literature review is a critical analysis of existing literature in a research field. It evaluates the contribution made by other researchers in that field and highlights gaps in knowledge that need to be addressed. To begin with, you can read a lot of articles, books, and other published works on the topics of your interest.
Include References/Works Cited List. As you are writing the literature review you will mention the author names and the publication years in your text, but you will still need to compile comprehensive citations for each entry at the end of your review. Follow APA, MLA, or Chicago style guidelines, as your course requires.
Literature reviews offer a critical synthesis of empirical and theoretical literature to assess the strength of evidence, develop guidelines for practice and policymaking, and identify areas for future research.1 It is often essential and usually the first task in any research endeavour, particularly in masters or doctoral level education. For effective data extraction and rigorous synthesis ...
Divide your review into two main parts: 1. Introduction This is where you define or identify the general topic, issue, or area of concern, and let the reader understand the context of your research. Point out overall trends in what has been published about the topic. These include conflicts in theory; gaps in research; and new perspectives of ...
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Since the purpose of a literature review is to demonstrate that the writer is familiar with the important professional literature on the chosen subject, check to make certain that you have covered all of the important, up-to-date, and pertinent texts. In the sciences and some of the social sciences it is important that your literature be quite ...
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 ...
The main purpose of a literature review is to summarize and synthesize the ideas created by previous authors without implementing personal opinions or other additional information. However, a literature review objective is not just to list summaries of sources; rather, it is to notice a central trend or principle in all of the publications.
Despite ever increasing cries for greater diversity, equity, and inclusion in science, the peer reviewed literature remains largely dominated by a handful of groups such as male authors from the ...
This study conducts a bibliometric analysis and literature review of studies on climate finance. Since the Paris Agreement was adopted in December 2015, the academic community has paid closer attention to this emerging topic, as witnessed by a sharp increase in the number of publications. Our review lists this field's most influential publications, authors, and journals, based on citations.
For the last two decades, an extensive transition in automotive X-in-the-loop activities from isolated electronic control units to real-time related, geographically distributed validation tasks has occurred. Benefits are strengthening frontloading, enabling concurrent engineering and reducing prototypes and testing efforts. As a downside, comprehensive system understanding and adequate ...
Rajesh Kr Singh is Professor in Operations Management Area at Management Development Institute (MDI), Gurgaon, India. His areas of interest include Supply chain management, Industry 4.0 and Circular Economy. Currently he is serving as Associate Editor to International Journal of Consumer Studies (ABDC- 'A' category journal, Wiley publication), International Journal of Global Business and ...
ChatGPT's getting an upgrade, but it still can't pass AP English class. OpenAI unveiled its most advanced AI model yet: GPT-4. It can compose songs, pen screenplays and process images â and ...
It's an inspiring story that Montañez told for years â he even wrote a book about it â and which has now gotten the biopic treatment, care of the aptly titled "Flamin' Hot.". But any ...