How to Write a Great Literature Review | Step-by-Step Guide

A literature review is a survey of scholarly articles, books, and other sources relevant to a particular area of research, specific topic, or theory. Thus, it provides a summary, description, and critical evaluation of scholarly sources in relation to a research problem or particular topic. The literature review presents an overview of the existing body of knowledge and demonstrates to readers that you have a broad understanding of previous research related to your chosen topic, how it fits together as a whole, and how your research fits within a larger field of study. In the literature review, one summarizes the key viewpoints or facts as they relate to your topic and identifies gaps in existing research. Hence, the review of literature is used to justify the value of doing your study on the chosen topic by showing what is already known, what is not yet known, and how your research is relevant. Writing a literature review entails finding relevant sources, analyzing them critically, and explaining important findings encountered in your reading as they relate to your research. A good literature review should not simply be descriptive or summary of the sources; rather, it should analyze, synthesize, and critically evaluate the body of work related to your research.

Searching Relevant Literature

A key aspect of the literature review is the sources one selects to include or exclude in the review. The search for literature is now relatively easy because of the Internet and can be done from your computer without having to go to the library. These online sources can be a good starting pointing in finding relevant sources for your literature review. Nevertheless, you should not underestimate the importance of physical libraries and librarians in your literature search. Libraries usually have copies of academic journals and books which are not available online. Also, librarians have extensive experience in the use of search tools and databases and can show you tricks or tips on how to refine your search and quicker ways of finding relevant sources. You can also ask your supervisor, an expert, or practitioner in your field for ideas on where to start with finding appropriate materials and possible search terms.

Develop your Search Terms

Search terms help with finding the right sources for your literature review. Start with making a list of keywords related to your research questions. Include all the variables you are interested in, their synonyms, and related terms. Developing search terms is an ongoing process and you should add new keywords that you discover in your literature search. If you are writing the literature review chapter for your thesis, dissertation, or research paper, you will need to search for literature related to your research problem and questions. For a literature review assignment, you will need to develop a central question to direct and focus your search. Such a question should be answerable based only on the review of existing literature and without collecting data.

Search for Relevant Articles

Use the defined keywords to search for relevant sources. There are many e-libraries/ databases you can use to find relevant journal articles and books such as Google Scholar, EBSCOhost, PubMed, ProQuest, and Web of Science. Boolean operators (AND, OR, NOT) can be used to narrow down the search when the relevant sources found are too many. You will need to read a lot of articles to find the most relevant sources to your study. Use abstracts to determine which sources are worth reading and are relevant to keep. It is important to keep checking your research objectives and questions to establish whether an article is useful. When you find a useful source, go through its bibliography to find other relevant articles to use.

For each article, you will need to identify and note down the important findings for the subject. Read different types of sources such as books, journal articles, dissertations, theses, conference papers, and working papers. In your reading, take note of the references which are cited most or keep appearing in different articles. If the same articles or authors keep recurring in your reading, make sure you check them out as they are probably the most important publications on your topic and should be included in your literature review. You can check how many times an article has been cited using Web of Science, Google Scholar, or any other database. It is not possible to read everything written on your topic and most students question how many sources are enough. A good way to identify whether you have read enough is to establish whether your reading is turning up the same points/findings and you are not learning anything new. Also, check the university guidelines or ask your supervisor about how many sources you need to include in the literature review. You will need to read at least twice this number of sources to find enough articles that are suitable for inclusion.

Selecting Sources

Generally, you should select more recent sources published with the last five or ten years that you will use in the literature review. However, there are some articles, seminal works, or theories that are so important in a particular field that they need to be cited regardless of how long ago they were published. Hence, it is pertinent to balance the publication dates with at least 75% of the sources from the last five or ten years and no more than 25% older than that. Also, grey literature such as books, theses, dissertations, conference papers, white papers, working publications, and other sources that are not scholarly or peer-reviewed should constitute less than 10% of the total number of sources used in the literature review.

Evaluating Sources

It is important to evaluate the sources that you choose to include in your literature review to ensure they are credible and authoritative. For each publication, ask yourself the following questions;

Who is the author? Has he/she written other articles or books?
When and where was the research conducted?
Is it reporting original research conducted by the author or second-hand information?
What is the question or problem being addressed?
What are the findings and conclusions?
What evidence is presented to support the findings made?
Are there errors, inconsistencies, or weaknesses in the way the research was conducted, analysis of data, and presentation of findings?
What are the strengths and limitations of the study?
Is it applicable or significant to my topic and the research I intend to carry out?

Preference should be given to primary research studies and systematic reviews. If possible, avoid using summary articles and secondary sources.

Identifying Themes and Gaps

Writing the literature review is an iterative process. The best way to conducting your literature review is to summarize each source as you read by taking notes that can be later incorporated into your text. It is important to reference each source carefully as you go along to avoid plagiarism. Sometimes, it is better to make an annotated bibliography where you write a summary of each source in one paragraph and compile the full citation. Annotated bibliographies help in remembering what was read and save time while writing the literature review. You will find that themes will develop as you write your summaries or annotated bibliography. You should group your sources by themes as you go along, using headings to store summaries that have relationships or connections until you find enough sources to compare and contrast findings. This helps in drawing out areas where there are conflicting and contradicting views or evidence which provide the basis for further research. Also, it helps in identifying gaps such as something missing in the literature and weaknesses that need to be addressed. Where there are gaps, you should go back and search for more sources in that area. You will use themes identified to organize the literature review into subsections addressing different aspects of your topic. A good literature review should draw together similar views and provide critical analysis of previous research by highlighting important findings and identifying flaws and gaps. Also, it should demonstrate how your study fills the gap or responds to calls for further research. Use these themes and gaps to refine your research questions and hypotheses and developing your research instrument.

Structure of the Literature Review

A literature review consists of an introduction, main body, and a conclusion or summary. The introduction establishes the purpose, scope, and focus of the literature review. You should briefly describe databases used, search terms, and themes that will be discussed. In the main body, you should summarize and synthesize the main points of each source while combining them into a coherent whole. Use topic sentences and transition words to show connections and comparisons between your points. Also, the theoretical framework is often included in this section, either on the first or final part of the literature review, and is used to discuss the key concepts, theories, and models established during the review of the literature. Here, you can discuss a specific theory or combine various theoretical concepts. Finally, the conclusion presents a summary of key findings from the review of the literature and how your research contributes new knowledge or addresses gaps.

Tense and Bibliography

When writing the literature review, it is preferable to use past tense. Also, make sure you cite and build the reference list as you write. This is much easier than adding citations and putting together the bibliography at the end.

Editing and Proofreading

When you are done with writing your literature review, don’t forget to go back and read the whole literature review to check that each section reads sensibly, flows logically, and that the whole thing reads coherently. Check for errors and inconsistencies such as the use of British or American spellings, typos, and double spaces. Reading over your draft and editing helps to improve the quality of writing. You can hire a professional editing and proofreading service or ask someone to read your final draft.