What is a literature review?
A literature review is an objective, concise, critical summary of published research literature relevant to a topic being researched in an article.
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What the literature review does NOT do:
It does NOT reference and list all of the material you have cited in your paper.
Presenting material that is not directly relevant to your study will distract and frustrate the reader and make them lose sight of the purpose of your study.Starting a literature review with “A number of scholars have studied the relationship between X and Y” and simply listing who has studied the topic and what each scholar concluded is not going to strengthen your paper.A good literature review WILL:Present a brief typology that orders articles and books into groups to help readers focus on unresolved debates, inconsistencies, tensions, and new questions about this researchSummarize the most relevant and important aspects of the scientific literature related to your area of researchSynthesize what has been done in this area of research and by whom, highlight what previous research indicates about a topic, and identify potential gaps and areas of disagreement in the fieldGive the reader an understanding of the background of the field and show which studies are important–and perhaps highlight previous studies that contain errors.
Building Your Literature Review Bookshelf
One way to conceive of a literature review is to think about writing it as you would build a bookshelf. You don’t need to cut each piece by yourself from scratch. Rather, you can take the pieces that other researchers have “cut” and put them together to build a framework on which to hang your own “books”—that is, your own study methods, results, and conclusions.
What does a good literature review contain?
The contents of a literature review are determined by many factors, including its precise purpose in the document, the degree of consensus with a given theory or tension between competing theories, the length of the article, the amount of previous studies existing in the given field, etc. The following are some of the most important elements that a literature provides.
Current context in which your research is situated: Discuss central (or peripheral) questions, issues, and debates in the field. Because a field is constantly being updated via new work, you can show where your research fits into this context and explain developments and trends in research.Discussion of relevant theories and concepts that provide the foundation for your research: For example, if you are researching the relationship between the ecological environment and human population in that environment, provide models and theories that focus on specific aspects of this connection to contextualize your study. If your study asks a question concerning sustainability, mention a theory or model that underpins this concept. If it concerns invasive species, choose material that is focused in this direction.Introduce and define relevant terminology: In the natural sciences, the meaning of terms is relatively stable and straightforward. But if you present a term that is obscure or context-specific in a study, you should define the meaning of the term in the Introduction section (if you are introducing a study) or in the summaries of the given literature being reviewed.Describe related research and show how your work expands or challenges this research or works to fill in gaps in the previous work: You can use the literature review as evidence of what works, what doesn’t, and what is missing in the field.
Provide supporting evidence for a practical problem or issue that your research is addressing, showing its importance: Referencing related research establishes your area of research as reputable and shows you are building upon previous work that other researchers have deemed significant.
Types of Literature Reviews
Literature reviews can differ in structure, length, and amount and breadth of content included. They can range from the selective (a very narrow area of research or only a single work) to the comprehensive (a larger amount or range of works). They can also exist as part of a larger work or stand on their own.
A course assignment is an example of a selective, stand-alone work. It focuses on a small segment of the literature on a topic and makes up an entire work on its own.The literature review in a dissertation or thesis is both comprehensive and helps make up a larger work.A majority of journal articles start with a selective literature review to provide context for research reported in the manuscript, which is the broader work for which the literature gives context; the literature review is often included in the introduction.Some literature reviews are both comprehensive and stand as a separate work—the entire article analyzes the literature on a given topic.
Type of Literature Reviews Found in Journals
The two types of literature reviews commonly found in journals are those introducing research articles (studies and surveys) and stand-alone literature analyses. They can differ in their scope, length, and specific purpose.
Literature Reviews Introducing Research Articles
The literature review found at the beginning of a journal article is used to introduce research related to the specific study and is found in the Introduction section, usually near the end. It is shorter than a stand-alone review because it must limit its scope to very specific studies and theories that are directly relevant to this study. Its purpose is to set research precedence and provide support for the study’s theory, methods, results, and/or conclusions. Not all research articles contain an explicit review of the literature, but many do, whether it is a discrete section or indistinguishable from the rest of the Introduction.
The structure of a literature review for an article
When a literature review exists as part of an introduction to a study, it follows the structure of the Introduction itself and moves from the general to the specific—presenting the broadest background information about a topic first and then moving to specific studies that support your study, finally leading to your hypothesis statement. The literature is often indistinguishable from the Introduction itself—the literature is INTRODUCING the background and defining the gaps your study aims to fill.
The Stand-Alone Literature Review
The literature review published as its own article presents and analyzes as many of the important texts in an area of study as possible to provide background information and context for a current area of research or a study. Stand-alone reviews are an excellent resource for researchers when they are first searching for the most relevant information on an area of study.
These literature reviews are generally a bit broader in scope and can extend further back in time. This means that sometimes a scientific literature review can be highly theoretical, in addition to focusing on specific methods and outcomes of previous studies. In addition, all of its sections refer to the literature rather than detailing a current study.
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In addition, this type of literature review is usually much longer than the literature review introducing a study. At the end of the review is a conclusion that once again explicitly ties all of these works together to show how this analysis is itself a contribution to the literature.