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Q. How do I write a journal article review using APA format?

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Answered By: Alan Aldrich Last Updated: Jan 05, 2018     Views: 13516

http://owl.english.purdue.edu/owl/resource/560/01/

I pasted the link to the Online Writing Lab (OWL) at Purdue University's section on APA formats. I think your instructor wants you to use APA citation style for the items (articles, books, etc.) that you are reviewing. In other words, you must cite the work in the format (APA) as part of your review. The OWL site will show examples for citing books, journal erticles, etc.

I hope this helps you out and answers your question. The OWL is a great resource for both APA and MLA citation styles.

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Literature Reviews: Write Your Review

Critical analysis.

A critical analysis of your sources is key to creating a quality literature review, and keeping your research question in mind as you read the literature will ensure that you are on track.

• As you read, ask yourself "Why is my topic important?" You must evaluate and interpret the information to discover your own point of view.

Reading and Evaluating Scholarly Literature (Oregon State University)

Evaluating Resources (University of Southern California)

Critically Analyzing Information Sources (Cornell University Library)

Literature Review Model

• What Constitutes a Good Literature Review and Why Does its Quality Matter? A discussion of the state of literature reviews found in scholarly journals. The author discusses the need for clear identification of the "problem domain" or scope of a topic, and the critical need for "identifying and articulating knowledge gaps" in literature reviews. more... less... Maier, H. R. (May 01, 2013). What constitutes a good literature review and why does its quality matter?. Environmental Modelling & Software, 43, 3-4.

Once you identify your topic, check for existing literature reviews in your area of interest that can be used as models.

• Search UW Libraries Catalog using your search terms in conjunction with "literature review" or "methods" or "research" or "bibliography".

What Does a Literature Review Look Like?

This sample literature review from the Purdue University Online Writing Lab (OWL), provides an example in the field of psychology.

Structure of a Literature Review

A literature review has a format similar to other scholarly papers. It contains an introduction, body and conclusion, but is focused exclusively on the research of others.

The Basics of a Literature Review. (2014). Teaching and Learning Center University of Washington Tacoma. Retrieved from  https://www.tacoma.uw.edu/sites/default/files/2021-05/basics-of-lit-review1.pdf 

Guidelines for Writing Your Literature Review

The creation of a literature review involves reading articles , processing the information from the articles, and integrating that information in the larger context of the review

The Basics of a Literature Review. (2014). Teaching and Learning Center University of Washington Tacoma. Retrieved from  https://www.tacoma.uw.edu/sites/default/files/2021-05/basics-of-lit-review1.pdf

Types of Source Materials

Primary Resources - These resources are the basic building blocks for the other types of resources. They include empirical research , firsthand accounts of events and other original materials .

Secondary Resources - These are resources that analyze or interpret primary and other secondary resources .

Tertiary Resources - These include encyclopedias, textbooks, dictionaries, handbooks, and indexes. They provide a summary and definitions of topics and are an effective and efficient way to begin to build your project.

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Literature Reviews

• Defining Literature Reviews
• Choosing a Topic
• Developing Search Strategies
• Finding Sources
• Evaluating Sources
• Staying Organized
• Tracking Citations
• Writing the Literature Review

Writing Support

While you can get help with your research at LSU Libraries, we do not provide writing support. That's where CxC comes in!

LSU's CxC (Communication Across the Curriculum) office provides writing and communication support to the LSU community.

• CXC Writing Support Are you looking for help with your writing? You can stop into a CxC Studio (Coates Hall 151 or Design 215) to connect with a Writing Mentor, or book an appointment online at cxc.lsu.edu/appointment (or by clicking the link above).

Organizing Structure

Once you've found your sources and taken notes, it's time to start writing!

Literature reviews can be structured in many different ways - they could be organized by method, chronology, trend, etc. The important thing is to highlight how these individual pieces of scholarship stand out and how they interconnect in the scholarly conversation on the topic.

Here's a basic checklist for the writing process:

• Review your notes
• Create an outline
• Write your first draft, being mindful of plagiarism by accurately citing your sources
• Compare your draft with your outline - does it match what you planned? Did you include everything you needed to include?
• Have someone review your work and share feedback
• Revise until done

For more suggestions on how to write a literature review, visit the Purdue OWL Literature Reviews page.

Meeting Your Writing Goals

Set writing goals to keep you on track. Small, specific, and frequent goals are often the most realistic and encourage continued progress. Some examples of goals include:

• Writing at least 100 words
• Reading over what you've written so far and adding comments to change for later
• Completing a particular section of the review
• Perfecting citations to your notes

Example Literature Reviews

• Sample 1: Business Sharing economy: A comprehensive literature review
• Sample 2: Social Work Employment Among Current and Former Welfare Recipients: A Literature Review.
• Sample 3: Agriculture Forest pests and wood pellets: A literature review of the opportunities and risks in the United States' northeastern forests.
• Sample 4: Music Education Literature Review of Social Justice in Music Education: Acknowledging Oppression and Privilege

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APA Style Help & Tools

{{page_title}}, best bet: apa's academic writer.

Academic Writer is the only authoritative and complete online environment for teaching, writing, and publishing in APA Style®, now updated to the 7th Edition. Designed to help users develop their writing and professional research skills, Academic Writer combines sophisticated learning and teaching tools, advanced writing and content management technology, and full integration of APA’s best-selling Publication Manual of the American Psychological Association® to create an unparalleled web-based suite of integrated services and tools.

Access Academic Writer anytime with this link:

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Academic Writer Documentation & Tips

The below links lead to more information, tips, and training about the basics of using Academic Writer.

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Academic Writer contains a Writing section where you can create and write a full APA-formatted paper.  You can write the entire paper in Academic Writer or just use it to setup the title page, headings, and references.  Export your work at any time to a Microsoft Word document.  Below are documents from Academic Writer about the essential features of their Writing tools.  

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Basics of APA Style

Learn the basics of APA Style, including how to format a manuscript, understand the form and function of common manuscript parts, organize and express your thoughts clearly and precisely, employ the mechanics of style, use graphic elements effectively, credit sources and acknowledge the contributions of others, and construct a comprehensive and reliable reference list.

Academic Writer

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How to Avoid Plagiarism and Self-Plagiarism

Learn how to avoid plagiarism and self-plagiarism, including how to identify plagiarism, understand its risks and consequences, cite sources properly, and develop sound writing practices.

Learn how to set up the title page of an APA Style paper, including the page header and running head, title, author name and affiliation, and author note.

Paper Template: ("Merenda" Sample Student Paper)

This sample response paper presents a university student's personal reaction to an article about whether medication is prescribed too often to young children to treat psychological disorders. The title page demonstrates the simple default layout for a student paper. The paper has a simple setup with only a title page, body of text, and references. No "running head"! Response papers typically do not include author notes or abstracts, though this may vary by assignment.

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Need writing help?  Visit the Writing Center to contact a tutor, submit your paper for review and feedback, or ask APA Style-related questions, as well as access dozens of writing tutorials, videos, webinars, and other instructional resources.

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PG Writing Center's Top APA Links

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eBook on APA Style 7th Edition

Zotero: Free Reference Management Tool

Zotero [zoh-TAIR-oh] is a free, easy-to-use tool to help you collect, organize, cite, and share your research sources. This tool is especially popular for heavy researchers at the grad level and above.

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Writing Literature Reviews

• Literature Review Overview
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Find your librarian, schedule a research appointment, today's hours : , what is a literature review.

A literature review ought to be a clear, concise synthesis of relevant information. A literature review should introduce the study it precedes and show how that study fits into topically related studies that already exist. Structurally, a literature review ought to be something like a funnel: start by addressing the topic broadly and gradually narrow as the review progresses.

from Literature Reviews by CU Writing Center

Why review the literature?

Reference to prior literature is a defining feature of academic and research writing. Why review the literature?

• To help you understand a research topic
• To establish the importance of a topic
• To help develop your own ideas
• To make sure you are not simply replicating research that others have already successfully completed
• To demonstrate knowledge and show how your current work is situated within, builds on, or departs from earlier publications

from Literature Review Basics from University of La Verne

Tips & Tricks

Before writing your own literature review, take a look at these resources which share helpful tips and tricks:

Lectures & Slides

• Literature Reviews | CU Writing Center
• Writing a Literature Review | CU Writing Center
• Revising a Literature Review | CU Writing Center
• Literature Reviews: How to Find and Do Them
• Literature Reviews: An Overview

How-To Guides

• Literature Reviews | Purdue OWL
• Literature Reviews | University of North Carolina
• Learn How to Write a Review of Literature | University of Wisconsin
• Literature Review: The What, Why and How-to Guide | University of Connecticut
• Literature Reviews | Florida A & M
• Conduct a Literature Review | SUNY
• Literature Review Basics | University of LaVerne

Sample Literature Reviews

• Sample Literature Reviews | University of West Florida
• Sample APA Papers: Literature Review | Purdue OWL
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Scholarly vs. Popular Articles

• Scholarly vs. Popular Worksheet

How can you tell if a source is "scholarly"? Use the worksheet below as a guide.

The Peer Review Process

One major character of scholarly sources is that they are peer-reviewed . Here's how a scholarly source typically go through the process:

• A scholar/author writes an article and submits it to the editor of a journal or book. 
• The editor sends it to other scholars who are at least the academic peers   (equals) of the author in that field.
• The reviewers review or vet (examine) it, then tell the editor whether they think it’s good enough to be published in that journal or what should be changed. 
• The editor tells the author the verdict:

What makes some publications more reliable than others?

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MLA In-Text Citations: The Basics

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MLA (Modern Language Association) style is most commonly used to write papers and cite sources within the liberal arts and humanities. This resource, updated to reflect the MLA Handbook (9 th ed.), offers examples for the general format of MLA research papers, in-text citations, endnotes/footnotes, and the Works Cited page.

Guidelines for referring to the works of others in your text using MLA style are covered throughout the  MLA Handbook  and in chapter 7 of the  MLA Style Manual . Both books provide extensive examples, so it's a good idea to consult them if you want to become even more familiar with MLA guidelines or if you have a particular reference question.

Basic in-text citation rules

In MLA Style, referring to the works of others in your text is done using parenthetical citations . This method involves providing relevant source information in parentheses whenever a sentence uses a quotation or paraphrase. Usually, the simplest way to do this is to put all of the source information in parentheses at the end of the sentence (i.e., just before the period). However, as the examples below will illustrate, there are situations where it makes sense to put the parenthetical elsewhere in the sentence, or even to leave information out.

General Guidelines

• The source information required in a parenthetical citation depends (1) upon the source medium (e.g. print, web, DVD) and (2) upon the source’s entry on the Works Cited page.
• Any source information that you provide in-text must correspond to the source information on the Works Cited page. More specifically, whatever signal word or phrase you provide to your readers in the text must be the first thing that appears on the left-hand margin of the corresponding entry on the Works Cited page.

In-text citations: Author-page style

MLA format follows the author-page method of in-text citation. This means that the author's last name and the page number(s) from which the quotation or paraphrase is taken must appear in the text, and a complete reference should appear on your Works Cited page. The author's name may appear either in the sentence itself or in parentheses following the quotation or paraphrase, but the page number(s) should always appear in the parentheses, not in the text of your sentence. For example:

Both citations in the examples above, (263) and (Wordsworth 263), tell readers that the information in the sentence can be located on page 263 of a work by an author named Wordsworth. If readers want more information about this source, they can turn to the Works Cited page, where, under the name of Wordsworth, they would find the following information:

Wordsworth, William. Lyrical Ballads . Oxford UP, 1967.

In-text citations for print sources with known author

For print sources like books, magazines, scholarly journal articles, and newspapers, provide a signal word or phrase (usually the author’s last name) and a page number. If you provide the signal word/phrase in the sentence, you do not need to include it in the parenthetical citation.

These examples must correspond to an entry that begins with Burke, which will be the first thing that appears on the left-hand margin of an entry on the Works Cited page:

Burke, Kenneth. Language as Symbolic Action: Essays on Life, Literature, and Method . University of California Press, 1966.

In-text citations for print sources by a corporate author

When a source has a corporate author, it is acceptable to use the name of the corporation followed by the page number for the in-text citation. You should also use abbreviations (e.g., nat'l for national) where appropriate, so as to avoid interrupting the flow of reading with overly long parenthetical citations.

In-text citations for sources with non-standard labeling systems

If a source uses a labeling or numbering system other than page numbers, such as a script or poetry, precede the citation with said label. When citing a poem, for instance, the parenthetical would begin with the word “line”, and then the line number or range. For example, the examination of William Blake’s poem “The Tyger” would be cited as such:

The speaker makes an ardent call for the exploration of the connection between the violence of nature and the divinity of creation. “In what distant deeps or skies. / Burnt the fire of thine eyes," they ask in reference to the tiger as they attempt to reconcile their intimidation with their relationship to creationism (lines 5-6).

Longer labels, such as chapters (ch.) and scenes (sc.), should be abbreviated.

In-text citations for print sources with no known author

When a source has no known author, use a shortened title of the work instead of an author name, following these guidelines.

Place the title in quotation marks if it's a short work (such as an article) or italicize it if it's a longer work (e.g. plays, books, television shows, entire Web sites) and provide a page number if it is available.

Titles longer than a standard noun phrase should be shortened into a noun phrase by excluding articles. For example, To the Lighthouse would be shortened to Lighthouse .

If the title cannot be easily shortened into a noun phrase, the title should be cut after the first clause, phrase, or punctuation:

In this example, since the reader does not know the author of the article, an abbreviated title appears in the parenthetical citation, and the full title of the article appears first at the left-hand margin of its respective entry on the Works Cited page. Thus, the writer includes the title in quotation marks as the signal phrase in the parenthetical citation in order to lead the reader directly to the source on the Works Cited page. The Works Cited entry appears as follows:

"The Impact of Global Warming in North America." Global Warming: Early Signs . 1999. www.climatehotmap.org/. Accessed 23 Mar. 2009.

If the title of the work begins with a quotation mark, such as a title that refers to another work, that quote or quoted title can be used as the shortened title. The single quotation marks must be included in the parenthetical, rather than the double quotation.

Parenthetical citations and Works Cited pages, used in conjunction, allow readers to know which sources you consulted in writing your essay, so that they can either verify your interpretation of the sources or use them in their own scholarly work.

Author-page citation for classic and literary works with multiple editions

Page numbers are always required, but additional citation information can help literary scholars, who may have a different edition of a classic work, like Marx and Engels's  The Communist Manifesto . In such cases, give the page number of your edition (making sure the edition is listed in your Works Cited page, of course) followed by a semicolon, and then the appropriate abbreviations for volume (vol.), book (bk.), part (pt.), chapter (ch.), section (sec.), or paragraph (par.). For example:

Author-page citation for works in an anthology, periodical, or collection

When you cite a work that appears inside a larger source (for instance, an article in a periodical or an essay in a collection), cite the author of the  internal source (i.e., the article or essay). For example, to cite Albert Einstein's article "A Brief Outline of the Theory of Relativity," which was published in  Nature  in 1921, you might write something like this:

See also our page on documenting periodicals in the Works Cited .

Citing authors with same last names

Sometimes more information is necessary to identify the source from which a quotation is taken. For instance, if two or more authors have the same last name, provide both authors' first initials (or even the authors' full name if different authors share initials) in your citation. For example:

Citing a work by multiple authors

For a source with two authors, list the authors’ last names in the text or in the parenthetical citation:

Corresponding Works Cited entry:

Best, David, and Sharon Marcus. “Surface Reading: An Introduction.” Representations , vol. 108, no. 1, Fall 2009, pp. 1-21. JSTOR, doi:10.1525/rep.2009.108.1.1

For a source with three or more authors, list only the first author’s last name, and replace the additional names with et al.

Franck, Caroline, et al. “Agricultural Subsidies and the American Obesity Epidemic.” American Journal of Preventative Medicine , vol. 45, no. 3, Sept. 2013, pp. 327-333.

Citing multiple works by the same author

If you cite more than one work by an author, include a shortened title for the particular work from which you are quoting to distinguish it from the others. Put short titles of books in italics and short titles of articles in quotation marks.

Citing two articles by the same author :

Citing two books by the same author :

Additionally, if the author's name is not mentioned in the sentence, format your citation with the author's name followed by a comma, followed by a shortened title of the work, and, when appropriate, the page number(s):

Citing multivolume works

If you cite from different volumes of a multivolume work, always include the volume number followed by a colon. Put a space after the colon, then provide the page number(s). (If you only cite from one volume, provide only the page number in parentheses.)

Citing the Bible

In your first parenthetical citation, you want to make clear which Bible you're using (and underline or italicize the title), as each version varies in its translation, followed by book (do not italicize or underline), chapter, and verse. For example:

If future references employ the same edition of the Bible you’re using, list only the book, chapter, and verse in the parenthetical citation:

John of Patmos echoes this passage when describing his vision (Rev. 4.6-8).

Citing indirect sources

Sometimes you may have to use an indirect source. An indirect source is a source cited within another source. For such indirect quotations, use "qtd. in" to indicate the source you actually consulted. For example:

Note that, in most cases, a responsible researcher will attempt to find the original source, rather than citing an indirect source.

Citing transcripts, plays, or screenplays

Sources that take the form of a dialogue involving two or more participants have special guidelines for their quotation and citation. Each line of dialogue should begin with the speaker's name written in all capitals and indented half an inch. A period follows the name (e.g., JAMES.) . After the period, write the dialogue. Each successive line after the first should receive an additional indentation. When another person begins speaking, start a new line with that person's name indented only half an inch. Repeat this pattern each time the speaker changes. You can include stage directions in the quote if they appear in the original source.

Conclude with a parenthetical that explains where to find the excerpt in the source. Usually, the author and title of the source can be given in a signal phrase before quoting the excerpt, so the concluding parenthetical will often just contain location information like page numbers or act/scene indicators.

Here is an example from O'Neill's  The Iceman Cometh.

WILLIE. (Pleadingly) Give me a drink, Rocky. Harry said it was all right. God, I need a drink.

ROCKY. Den grab it. It's right under your nose.

WILLIE. (Avidly) Thanks. (He takes the bottle with both twitching hands and tilts it to his lips and gulps down the whiskey in big swallows.) (1.1)

Citing non-print or sources from the Internet

With more and more scholarly work published on the Internet, you may have to cite sources you found in digital environments. While many sources on the Internet should not be used for scholarly work (reference the OWL's  Evaluating Sources of Information  resource), some Web sources are perfectly acceptable for research. When creating in-text citations for electronic, film, or Internet sources, remember that your citation must reference the source on your Works Cited page.

Sometimes writers are confused with how to craft parenthetical citations for electronic sources because of the absence of page numbers. However, these sorts of entries often do not require a page number in the parenthetical citation. For electronic and Internet sources, follow the following guidelines:

• Include in the text the first item that appears in the Work Cited entry that corresponds to the citation (e.g. author name, article name, website name, film name).
• Do not provide paragraph numbers or page numbers based on your Web browser’s print preview function.
• Unless you must list the Web site name in the signal phrase in order to get the reader to the appropriate entry, do not include URLs in-text. Only provide partial URLs such as when the name of the site includes, for example, a domain name, like  CNN.com  or  Forbes.com,  as opposed to writing out http://www.cnn.com or http://www.forbes.com.

Miscellaneous non-print sources

Two types of non-print sources you may encounter are films and lectures/presentations:

In the two examples above “Herzog” (a film’s director) and “Yates” (a presentor) lead the reader to the first item in each citation’s respective entry on the Works Cited page:

Herzog, Werner, dir. Fitzcarraldo . Perf. Klaus Kinski. Filmverlag der Autoren, 1982.

Yates, Jane. "Invention in Rhetoric and Composition." Gaps Addressed: Future Work in Rhetoric and Composition, CCCC, Palmer House Hilton, 2002. Address.

Electronic sources

Electronic sources may include web pages and online news or magazine articles:

In the first example (an online magazine article), the writer has chosen not to include the author name in-text; however, two entries from the same author appear in the Works Cited. Thus, the writer includes both the author’s last name and the article title in the parenthetical citation in order to lead the reader to the appropriate entry on the Works Cited page (see below).

In the second example (a web page), a parenthetical citation is not necessary because the page does not list an author, and the title of the article, “MLA Formatting and Style Guide,” is used as a signal phrase within the sentence. If the title of the article was not named in the sentence, an abbreviated version would appear in a parenthetical citation at the end of the sentence. Both corresponding Works Cited entries are as follows:

Taylor, Rumsey. "Fitzcarraldo." Slant , 13 Jun. 2003, www.slantmagazine.com/film/review/fitzcarraldo/. Accessed 29 Sep. 2009. 

"MLA Formatting and Style Guide." The Purdue OWL , 2 Aug. 2016, owl.english.purdue.edu/owl/resource/747/01/. Accessed 2 April 2018.

Multiple citations

To cite multiple sources in the same parenthetical reference, separate the citations by a semi-colon:

Time-based media sources

When creating in-text citations for media that has a runtime, such as a movie or podcast, include the range of hours, minutes and seconds you plan to reference. For example: (00:02:15-00:02:35).

When a citation is not needed

Common sense and ethics should determine your need for documenting sources. You do not need to give sources for familiar proverbs, well-known quotations, or common knowledge (For example, it is expected that U.S. citizens know that George Washington was the first President.). Remember that citing sources is a rhetorical task, and, as such, can vary based on your audience. If you’re writing for an expert audience of a scholarly journal, for example, you may need to deal with expectations of what constitutes “common knowledge” that differ from common norms.

Other Sources

The MLA Handbook describes how to cite many different kinds of authors and content creators. However, you may occasionally encounter a source or author category that the handbook does not describe, making the best way to proceed can be unclear.

In these cases, it's typically acceptable to apply the general principles of MLA citation to the new kind of source in a way that's consistent and sensible. A good way to do this is to simply use the standard MLA directions for a type of source that resembles the source you want to cite.

You may also want to investigate whether a third-party organization has provided directions for how to cite this kind of source. For example, Norquest College provides guidelines for citing Indigenous Elders and Knowledge Keepers⁠ —an author category that does not appear in the MLA Handbook . In cases like this, however, it's a good idea to ask your instructor or supervisor whether using third-party citation guidelines might present problems.

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Writing a References Review

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Copyright ©1995-2018 by The Writing Lab & The OWL at Purdue and Purdue University. See rights reserved. This material may not be published, reproduced, sending, rewritten, or redistributed without admission. Use of this site constitutes approval of our terms and pricing of fair use. How to Review ampere Journal Article | Technical of Illinois Galilee

A literature review is a view or section of a document that collects essential sources set adenine topic and debates those sources include conversion 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 a literature such when novels and plays). When we say “literature review” or refer to “the literature,” were are speaks about the research ( scholarship ) in a given field. You will often discern the terms “the research,” “the scholarship,” and “the literature” used mostly interchangeably.

Places, when, and why would I write a alight rating?

There were a number of different situations where you magisch write a literature review, each with slightly different expectations; different disciplines, too, have field-specific expectations on what a literature review is and does. For instance, in the humanities, authors mag include more overt argumentation and reading of input material in their literature reviews, whereas includes the sciences, authors are more likely to report study designs and results is their literature reviews; these differences reflect are disciplines’ purposes and conventions in scholarship. You should always look at examples off your own discipline and talk to professors other guides in thine field to be sure you understand insert discipline’s conventions, for reading reviews as well how for any other genre. Whereby to Letter an Essay Review - Format, Types & Examples

A writing review canister be a piece of a researching paper or scholarly article, usually falling after the introduction and before the research methods sections. In these cases, and lit review just needs to cover scholarship that are important to the issues you are writing about; sometimes it will including lid key sources that informed your research methodology. Writing a Literature Check - Purdue OWL® - Purdue University

Lit reviews can also are standalone shares, either as assignments in a class or as publications. In ampere class, a flashed review may be assigned to help students familiarize themselves with a topic the with scholarship in their field, retrieve an idea of the other researchers working on the topic they’re interested in, find gaps in actual research stylish order to propose new past, and/or expand a theoretical basic and methods for later research. As one publication, a lit review usually belongs meant to help induce select scholars’ live easier by collecting and summarizing, synthesizing, and analyzing existing research on a choose. This can be especially helpful for students oder scholars geting into a recent research area, conversely for directing an entire community regarding 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 organization; if your lit review is part of a larger report, the introduction and conclusions pieces may be just a few sentences while you focus most of your attention on of body. If your lit review is a standalone piece, the introduction and closure take increase more leeway and give you ampere city to discuss your goals, research methods, and conclusions separately after where you discuss to literature itself.

Introduction:

• An introducing paragraph that explains what your working topic and thesis be
• ADENINE forecast of buttons topics otherwise texts the will appear in the review
• Potentially, adenine description to how you found ressourcen additionally how you analyzed them in inclusion and discussion in to review (more many found in published, standalone literature reviews faster the lit review sections in any article or research paper)
• Summarize and synthesize: Give an overview of one hauptinsel points of each source and connect them into a coherent whole
• Analyze and interpret: Don’t just paraphrase additional researcher – add choose own interpretations where possible, discussing the significance of findings in relation to the literature as an whole How to Write an Article Review: Full Guide with Pointers and Examples
• Critically Evaluate: Refer the strengths and frailty of your data
• Write in well-structured paragraphs: Usage transition words and topic sentence to sketch connections, comparisons, and contrasts.
• Summarize the button findings you have taken from the literature and emphasize their sense
• Connect it back to your primary research question

How ought I manage my lit reviewing?

Lit review can take multitudinous different organizational patterns depending on what you are attempted until accomplish with the review. Here is some examples:

• Temporal : Who simplest approach shall to trace the development of which topic over start, where helps familiarize the audience with the topic (for instance if you are introducing something that will nay commonly known in your field). If you choose this strategies, be careful to avoid easy roster and summarizing sources in order. Try to analyze the patterns, turning scored, and push debates that have shaped this direction regarding the field. Gives your interpretation of how and why certain developments come (as mentioned previously, this may not be appropriate in your discipline — check with adenine teacher or mentor if you’re unsure).
• Thematic : If i have found some recurring essential themes that you bequeath continue working with throughout your piece, you cans organize your literature review into subsections that address different aspects of one topic. For example, if you are reviewing books about women press religion, key themes can include of role of women in churches and the orden attitude towards women.
• Qualitative contra quantitative research
• Empirically facing theoretical scholarship
• Divide the research by sociological, historial, or cultural sources
• Theoretical : With many humanities articles, the literature review is the foundation for the theoretical background. You able use it to discuss various notions, models, and definitions of key theory. You can argue for the relevance of a specific theoretical approach or combine various theorical key to create adenine framework for your research.

What are some strategies or tips I can use while written mysterious lit review?

Any lit review is only as goods as the research it discusses; make sure thine sources what well-chosen plus your research is thorough. Don’t be frightened to do more research while yourself discover a new wrap as you’re writing. More info on the doing process is available the the "Conducting Research" human .

As you’re make your research, create an noted bibliography ( see our page in the these gender of document ). Much of the information used in einem annotated bibliography sack be used also to a bibliography review, so you’ll subsist not only partially drafting your lit review as you research, but or developing your sense of the larger entertain going on among scholars, professionals, and any other stakeholders in your related.

Usually you wishes need to synthesize research rather than just summarizing it. This means paint relations between sources to create a picture of the scholarly conversation on adenine topic over frist. Many college writers battling to fuse because they feel they don’t have almost 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 toward show your primers how you verstehen your research, to help them read the rest of your paper.
• Writing lecturers often say synthesis is like hosting a dinner page: imagine whole owner sources are together into a room, debating thine topic. What are they saying to each other? What is an review article? Study our hot the information up how to write a review article and how they can contribute to and conversation.
• Look at the in-text citations in each paragraph. Exist you quotations straight one source for each edit? This usually indicates summary only. When you have repeatedly sources cite in one paragraph, thee are more likely to be synthesizing them (not always, when too
• Study more about synthesis here.

One most interesting literature reviews am often written as debate (again, like mentioned at that commencement of the page, this is discipline-specific and doesn’t worked since all situations). Often, the letters check is wherever it can establish your research as filling a particular gap or the relevant in one particular way. Thou have more chance to do here in your introductions in an essay, but an literature read section gives a more extended chances to establish the conversation in the way you would like your primers until see i. Yours can elect which intellectual lineage you would likes up be parts of or whose definitions mater most to your thinking (mostly humanities-specific, still this goes for sciences as well). Inbound addressing diesen matters, you argue for your place for the say, which tend in make the lit reviews more compelling less a simple reporting of other sources.

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