how to write a good literature review in economics

Researching and writing for Economics students

4 literature review and citations/references.

Figure 4.1: Literature reviews and references

Your may have done a literature survey as part of your proposal. This will be incorporated into your dissertation, not left as separate stand-alone. Most economics papers include a literature review section, which may be a separate section, or incorporated into the paper’s introduction. (See organising for a standard format.)

Some disambiguation:

A ‘Literature survey’ paper: Some academic papers are called ‘literature surveys’. These try to summarise and discuss the existing work that has been done on a particular topic, and can be very useful. See, for example, works in The Journal of Economic Perspectives, the Journal of Economic Literature, the “Handbook of [XXX] Economics”

Many student projects and undergraduate dissertations are mainly literature surveys.

4.1 What is the point of a literature survey?

Your literature review should explain:

what has been done already to address your topic and related questions, putting your work in perspective, and

what techniques others have used, what are their strengths and weaknesses, and how might they be relevant tools for your own analysis.

Figure 4.2: Take notes on this as you read, and write them up.

4.2 What previous work is relevant?

Focus on literature that is relevant to your topic only.

But do not focus only on articles about your exact topic ! For example, if your paper is about the relative price of cars in the UK, you might cite papers (i) about the global automobile market, (ii) about the theory and evidence on competition in markets with similar features and (iii) using econometric techniques such as “hedonic regression” to estimate “price premia” in other markets and in other countries.

Consider: If you were Colchester a doctor and wanted to know whether a medicine would be effective for your patients, would you only consider medical studies that ran tests on Colchester residents, or would you consider more general national and international investigations?

4.3 What are “good” economics journal articles?

You should aim to read and cite peer-reviewed articles in reputable economics journals. (Journals in other fields such as Finance, Marketing and Political Science may also be useful.) These papers have a certain credibility as they have been checked by several referees and one or more editors before being published. (In fact, the publication process in Economics is extremely lengthy and difficult.)

Which journals are “reputable”? Economists spend a lot of time thinking about how to rank and compare journals (there are so many papers written about this topic that they someone could start a “Journal of Ranking Economics Journals”. For example, “ REPEC ” has one ranking, and SCIMAGO/SCOPUS has another one. You may want to focus on journals ranked in the top 100 or top 200 of these rankings. If you find it very interesting and relevant paper published somewhere that is ranked below this, is okay to cite it, but you may want to be a bit more skeptical of its findings.

Any journal you find on JSTOR is respectable, and if you look in the back of your textbooks, there will be references to articles in journals, most of which are decent.

You may also find unpublished “working papers”; these may also be useful as references. However, it is more difficult to evaluate the credibility of these, as they have not been through a process of peer review. However, if the author has published well and has a good reputation, it might be more likely that these are worth reading and citing.

Unpublished “working papers”

You may also find unpublished “working papers” or ‘mimeos’; these may also be useful as references. In fact, the publication process in Economics is so slow (six years from first working paper to publication is not uncommon) that not consulting working papers often means not being current.

However, it is more difficult to evaluate the credibility of this ‘grey literature’, as they have not been through a process of peer review. However, if the author has published well and has a good reputation, it might be more likely that these are worth reading and citing. Some working paper series are vetted, such as NBER; in terms of credibility, these might be seen as something in between a working paper and a publication.

Which of the following are “peer-reviewed articles in reputable economics journals”? Which of the following may be appropriate to cite in your literature review and in your final project? 8

Klein, G, J. (2011) “Cartel Destabilization and Leniency Programs – Empirical Evidence.” ZEW - Centre for European Economic Research Discussion Paper No. 10-107

Spencer, B. and Brander, J.A. (1983) “International R&D Rivalry and Industrial Strategy”, Review of Economic Studies Vol. 50, 707-722

Troisi, Jordan D., Andrew N. Christopher, and Pam Marek. “Materialism and money spending disposition as predictors of economic and personality variables.” North American Journal of Psychology 8.3 (2006): 421.

The Economist,. ‘Good, Bad And Ugly’. Web. 11 Apr. 2015. [accessed on…]

Mecaj, Arjola, and María Isabel González Bravo. “CSR Actions and Financial Distress: Do Firms Change Their CSR Behavior When Signals of Financial Distress Are Identified?.” Modern Economy 2014 (2014).

Universities, U. K. “Creating Prosperity: the role of higher education in driving the UK’s creative economy.” London Universities UK (2010).

4.4 How to find and access articles

You should be able to find and access all the relevant articles online. Leafing through bound volumes and photocopying should not be neededs. (Having been a student in the late 90’s and 2000’s, I wish I could get those hours back.)

Figure 4.3: The old way!

Good online tools include Jstor (jstor.org) and Google Scholar (scholar.google.co.uk). Your university should have access to Jstor, and Google is accessible to all (although the linked articles may require special access). You will usually have the ‘most access’ when logged into your university or library computing system.If you cannot access a paper, you may want to consult a reference librarian.

It is also ok, if you cannot access the journal article itself, to use the last working paper version (on Google scholar find this in the tab that says “all X versions”, where X is some number, and look for a PDF). However, authors do not always put up the most polished versions, although they should do to promote open-access. As a very last resort, you can e-mail the author and ask him or her to send you the paper.

When looking for references, try to find ones published in respected refereed economics journals (see above ).

4.5 Good starting points: Survey article, course notes, and textbooks

A “survey article” is a good place to start; this is a paper that is largely a categorization and discussion of previous work on a particular topic. You can often find such papers in journals such as

• the Journal of Economic Perspectives,
• the Journal of Economic Surveys,
• and the Journal of Economic Literature.

These will be useful as a “catalog” of papers to read and considers citing. They are also typically very readable and offer a decent introduction to the issue or the field.

It is also helpful to consult module (course) notes and syllabi from the relevant field. Do not only limit yourself to the ones at your own university; many of universities make their course materials publicly accessible online. These will not only typically contain reading lists with well-respected and useful references, they may also contain slides and other material that will help you better understand your topic and the relevant issues.

However, be careful not to take material from course notes without properly citing it. (Better yet, try to find the original paper that the course notes are referring to.)

Textbooks serve as another extremely useful jumping off point. Look through your own textbooks and other textbooks in the right fields. Textbooks draw from, and cite a range of relevant articles and papers. (You may also want to go back to textbooks when you are finding the articles you are reading too difficult. Textbooks may present a simpler version of the material presented in an article, and explain the concepts better.)

4.6 Backwards and forwards with references

When you find a useful paper, look for its “family.” You may want to go back to earlier, more fundamental references, by looking at the articles that this paper cited. See what is listed as “keywords” (these are usually given at the top of the paper), and “JEL codes”. Check what papers this paper cites, and check what other papers cited this paper. On Google scholar you can follow this with a link “Cited by…” below the listed article. “Related articles” is also a useful link.

4.7 Citations

Keep track of all references and citations

You may find it helpful to use software to help you manage your citations

A storage “database” of citations (e.g., Jabref, Zotero, Endnote, Mendeley); these interface well with Google Scholar and Jstor

An automatic “insert citation” and “insert bibliography” in your word processing software

Use a tool like Endnote to manage and insert the bibliographies, or use a bibliography manager software such as Zotero or Jabref,

Further discussion: Citation management tools

List of works cited

Put your list of references in alphabetical order by author’s last name (surname).

Include all articles and works that you cite in your paper; do not include any that you don’t cite.

Avoiding plagiarism and academic offenses**

Here is a definition of plagiarism

The main point is that you need to cite everything that is not your own work. Furthermore, be clear to distinguish what is your own work and your own language and what is from somewhere/someone else.

Why cite? Not just to give credit to others but to make it clear that the remaining uncited content is your own.

Here are some basic rules:

(Rephrased from University of Essex material, as seen in Department of Economics, EC100 Economics for Business Handbook 2017-18, https://www1.essex.ac.uk/economics/documents/EC100-Booklet_2017.pdf accessed on 20 July 2019, pp. 15-16)

Do not submit anything that is not your own work.

Never copy from friends.

Do not copy your own work or previously submitted work. (Caveat: If you are submitting a draft or a ‘literature review and project plan’ at an earlier stage, this can be incorporated into your final submission.

Don’t copy text directly into your work, unless:

• you put all passages in quotation marks: beginning with ’ and ending with ’, or clearly offset from the main text
• you cite the source of this text.

It is not sufficient merely to add a citation for the source of copied material following the copied material (typically the end of a paragraph). You must include the copied material in quotation marks. … Ignorance … is no defence.’ (ibid, pp. 15 )

(‘Ibid’ means ‘same as the previous citation’.)

Your university may use sophisticated plagiarism-detection software. Markers may also report if the paper looks suspect

Before final submission, they may ask you to go over your draft and sign that you understand the contents and you have demonstrated that the work is your own.

Not being in touch with your supervisor may put you under suspicion.

Your university may give a Viva Voce oral exam if your work is under suspicion. It is a cool-sounding word but probably something you want to avoid.

Your university may store your work in its our database, and can pursue disciplinary action, even after you have graduated.

Penalties may be severe, including failure with no opportunity to retake the module (course). You may even risk your degree!

Comprehension questions; answers in footnotes

True or false: “If you do not directly quote a paper you do not need to cite it” 9

You should read and cite a paper (choose all that are correct)… 10

• If it motivates ‘why your question is interesting’ and how it can be modeled economically
• Only if it asks the same question as your paper
• Only if it is dealing with the same country/industry/etc as you are addressing
• If it has any connection to your topic, question, or related matters
• If it answers a similar question as your paper
• If it uses and discusses techniques that inform those you are using

4.8 How to write about previous authors’ analysis and findings

Use the right terminology.

“Johnson et al. (2000) provide an analytical framework that sheds substantial doubt on that belief. When trying to obtain a correlation between institutional efficiency and wealth per capita, they are left with largely inconclusive results.”

They are not trying to “obtain a correlation”; they are trying to measure the relationship and test hypotheses.

“Findings”: Critically examine sources

Don’t take everything that is in print (or written online) as gospel truth. Be skeptical and carefully evaluate the arguments and evidence presented. Try to really survey what has been written, to consider the range of opinions and the preponderance of the evidence. You also need to be careful to distinguish between “real research” and propaganda or press releases.

The returns to higher education in Atlantis are extremely high. For the majority of Atlanian students a university degree has increased their lifetime income by over 50%, as reported in the “Benefits of Higher Education” report put out by the Association of Atlantian Universities (2016).

But don’t be harsh without explanation:

Smith (2014) found a return to education in Atlantis exceeding 50%. This result is unlikely to be true because the study was not a very good one.

“Findings:” “They Proved”

A theoretical economic model can not really prove anything about the real world; they typically rely on strong simplifying assumptions.

Through their economic model, they prove that as long as elites have incentives to invest in de facto power, through lobbying or corruption for example, they will invest as much as possible in order to gain favourable conditions in the future for their businesses.

In their two period model, which assumes \[details of key assumptions here\] , they find that when an elite Agent has an incentive to invest in de facto power, he invests a strictly positive amount, up to the point where marginal benefit equals marginal cost”

Empirical work does not “prove” anything (nor does it claim to).

It relies on statistical inference under specific assumptions, and an intuitive sense that evidence from one situation is likely to apply to other situations.

“As Smith et al (1999) proved using data from the 1910-1920 Scandanavian stock exchange, equity prices always increase in response to reductions in corporate tax rates.”

“Smith et al (199) estimated a VAR regression for a dynamic CAP model using data from the 1910-1920 Scandanavian stock exchange. They found a strongly statistically significant negative coefficient on corporate tax rates. This suggests that such taxes may have a negative effect on publicly traded securities. However, as their data was from a limited period with several simultaneous changes in policy, and their results are not robust to \[something here\] , further evidence is needed on this question.”

Use the language of classical 11 statistics:

Hypothesis testing, statistical significance, robustness checks, magnitudes of effects, confidence intervals.

Note that generalisation outside the data depends on an intuitive sense that evidence from one situation is likely to apply to other situations.

“Findings”: How do you (or the cited paper) claim to identify a causal relationship?

This policy was explained by Smith and Johnson (2002) in their research on subsidies and redistribution in higher education. Their results showed that people with higher degree have higher salaries and so pay higher taxes. Thus subsidizing higher education leads to a large social gain.

The results the student discusses seem to show an association between higher degrees and higher salaries. The student seems to imply that the education itself led to higher salaries. This has not been shown by the cited paper. Perhaps people who were able to get into higher education would earn higher salaries anyway. There are ways economists used to try to identify a “causal effect” (by the way, this widely used term is redundant as all effects must have a cause), but a mere association between two variables is not enough

As inflation was systematically lower during periods of recession, we see that too low a level of inflation increases unemployment.

Economists have long debated the nature of this “Phillips curve” relationship. There is much work trying to determine whether the association (to the extent it exists) is a causal one. We could not rule out reverse causality, or third factor that might cause changes in both variables.

4.9 …Stating empirical results

Don’t write: “I accept the null hypothesis.”

Do write: “The results fail to reject the null hypothesis, in spite of a large sample size and an estimate with small standard errors” (if this is the case)

Note: The question of what to infer from acceptance/rejection of null hypotheses is a complex difficult one in Classical (as opposed to Bayesian) statistics. This difficulty is in part philosophical: classical hypothesis testing is deductive , while inference is necessarily inductive.

4.10 What to report

You need to read this paper more clearly; it is not clear what they conclude nor what their evidence is.

4.11 Organising your literature review

A common marking comment:

These papers seem to be discussed in random order – you need some structure organising these papers thematically, by finding, by technique, or chronologically perhaps.

How should you organise it? In what order?

Thematically (usually better)

By method, by theoretical framework, by results or assumptions, by field

Chronologically (perhaps within themes)

Exercise: Compare how the literature review section is organized in papers you are reading.

Figure 4.4: Organising a set of references

Q: What sort of structure am I using in the above outline?

It may also be helpful to make a ‘table’ of the relevant literature, as in the figure below. This will help you get a sense of the methods and results, and how the papers relate, and how to assess the evidence. You may end up putting this in the actual paper.

Figure 4.5: Organisational table from Reinstein and Riener, 2012b

4.12 What if you have trouble reading and understanding a paper?

Consult a survey paper, textbook, or lecture notes that discuss this paper and this topic

Try to find an easier related paper

Ask your supervisor for help; if he or she can

Try to understand what you can; do not try to “fake it”

4.13 Some literature survey do’s and don’ts

Do not cite irrelevant literature.

Do not merely list all the papers you could find.

Discuss them, and their relevance to your paper.

What are their strengths and weaknesses? What techniques do they use, and what assumptions do they rely on? How do they relate to each other?

Use correct citation formats.

Try to find original sources (don’t just cite a web link).

Don’t just cut and paste from other sources. And make sure to attribute every source and every quote. Be clear: which part of your paper is your own work and what is cited from others? The penalties for plagiarism can be severe!

• Critically examine the sources, arguments, and methods

4.14 Comprehension questions: literature review

How to discuss empirical results: “Causal” estimation, e.g., with Instrumental Variables

Which is the best way to state it? 12

“As I prove in table 2, more lawyers lead to slower growth (as demonstrated by the regression analysis evidence).”

“Table 2 provides evidence that a high share of lawyers in a city’s population leads to slower growth.”

3.“Table 2 shows that a high share of lawyers in a city’s population is correlated with slower growth.”

Which is better? 13

• “However, when a set of observable determinants of city growth (such as Census Region growth) are accounted for, the estimate of this effect becomes less precise.”
• “In the correct regression I control for all determinants of city growth and find that there is no effect of lawyers on growth”

Stating empirical results: descriptive

“Using the US data from 1850-1950, I find that inflation is lower during periods of recession. This is statistically significant in a t-test [or whatever test] at the 99% level, and the difference is economically meaningful. This is consistent with the theory of …, which predicts that lower inflation increases unemployment. However, other explanations are possible, including reverse causality, and unmeasured covarying lags and trends.”

“I find a significantly lower level of inflation during periods of recession, and the difference is economically meaningful. This relationship is statistically significant and the data is accurately measured. Thus I find that inflation increases unemployment.”

Some tips on writing a good paper– relevant to literature reviews

• Answer the question
• Provide clear structure and signposting
• Demonstrate an ability for critical analysis
• Refer to your sources
• Produce a coherent, clear argument
• Take time to proofread for style and expresssion
• Source “Assignment Writing Skills EBS 3rd year 2012”"

Answer: only b is a ‘peer reviewed article in a reputable economics journal’. All of these might be useful to cite, however. ↩

False. You need to cite any content and ideas that are not your own. ↩

Answers: 1, 5, and 6. Note that 2 and 3 are too narrow criteria, and 4 is too broad. ↩

or Bayesian if you like ↩

The second one; if this is really causal evidence. ↩

The first one. There is no ‘correct regression’. It is also not really correct in classical statistics to ‘find no effect’. ↩

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Introduction: Write your research with literature review and citation

What is a literature review, help with writing papers.

At the Library, we offer a collection of guides and resources to help you conduct your literature review, cite your sources (including data), and develop your academic writing skills.

Research, and the literature review in particular, is a cyclical process. There is an art to the sometimes messy, thrilling, and frustrating process of conducting a lit review.

• Read widely but selectively.
• Follow the citation trail -- building on previous research by reviewing bibliographies of articles and books that are close to your interest.
• Synthesize previous research on the topic.
• Focus on ways to have the body of literature tell its own story. Do not add your own interpretations at this point.
• Look for patterns and find ways of tying the pieces together.

Conducting a literature review

• Throw out a wide net and read, read, read. 
• How many sources do you need? What types of sources? Which citation style should you use? What time period should it cover? Is currency important? What do you need to be aware of related to scholarly versus popular materials?
• Explored synonyms and alternative phrases in your searches. You will eventually begin to find the same articles and materials in your searches.

Writing a literature review

• The initial work Identify the organizational structure you want to use: chronologically, thematically, or methodologically
• Start writing: let the literature tell the story, find the best examples, summarize instead of quote, synthesize by rephrasing (but cite!) in the context of your work

Below are a few key resources to get you started:

• Citation by Academic Engagement Last Updated May 24, 2024 36466 views this year
• Citing datasets
• Developing a Thesis for a Research Paper This very helpful guide from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill Writing Center discusses the art of crafting a thesis.
• Improve Your Research Skills This guide discusses some of the basics of doing college level research, including tips for evaluating sources and a glossary of terms with examples.
• Brown University Writing Center "The Writing Center is a satellite office of the Dean of the College. The Center is staffed by graduate students from a variety of academic disciplines. Staff members are experienced writers and teachers who participate in ongoing training in composition and Writing Center theory and practice...Writing Center conferences generally last an hour. Experienced as well as inexperienced writers are encouraged to come to the Center with their writing concerns. Writing Center Associates are prepared to discuss all stages of the writing process, from finding a topic up through revision and editing strategies. Associates can help writers deal with writer's block, audience awareness, argumentation, organization, grammar, research skills, the conventions of academic writing, English as a Second Language, and issues of clarity and style."
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I.  What is a Literature Review? The purpose of a review is to analyze critically a segment of a published body of knowledge through summary, classification, and comparison of prior research studies. It can be a simple summary of the sources, but it usually has an organizational pattern, combining both summary and synthesis.

• Review of the Literature (Wisconsin)
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• Get Lit: the Literature Review Candace Schaefer in the Texas A&M University Writing Center.

III.  What Major Steps and Basic Elements Literature Reviews Require?

• Overview of the subject, issue or theory under consideration, along with the objectives of literature review
• Perform a literature review, finding materials relevant to the subject being explored
• Division of works under review into categories (e.g. those in support of a particular position, those against, etc)
• Explanation of how each work is similar to and how it varies from the others
• Conclusions as to which pieces are best considered in their argument, are most convincing of their opinions, and make the greatest contribution to the understanding and development of their area of research
• Write a Lit Review (UCSC)

IV.    Which Citation Tool Are You Going to Use to Manage the Literature Sources? Choose your citation tool before conducing your literature reviews.  There are a number of choices, including following software supported by the Libraries and the University:

• RefWorks Available at no cost to Texas A&M affiliates.
• EndNote Available for free through a campus-wide site license.

Cited Reference Searching

Cited references are the sources consulted in writing an article or a book, often referred to within the text of the work. A list of cited references may appear as Bibliographic Notes, Footnotes or Endnotes, References, List of Sources Cited or Consulted. In order for an article to be cited, it needs to have been published for a long enough period of time for another published article, citing it to appear.

These listings can be helpful in a number of ways:

• Finding an article on a relevant topic and accumulating similar helpful resources
• Following a specific idea or theory back to its first appearance in the literature
• Finding articles that build on a specific theory or the most recent article on a topic
• Identifying experts or leaders on a specific topic
• Documenting scholarly reputation and impact for tenure and promotion

The cited reference databases are efficient in pulling together many articles on a topic with their references and in identifying which articles on a topic have been cited most frequently.  They can also help identify the “top” journals in a field by impact factor, which may be useful for assessing them.

• Web of Science This link opens in a new window covers the world’s leading scholarly literature in the sciences, social sciences, arts, and humanities and examines proceedings of international conferences, symposia, seminars, colloquia, workshops, and conventions. It also includes cited references and citation mapping functions.

Searches can be done by:

• Title or Topic
•  Author or Editor – The Author Finder tool includes variations on an author’s name
• Journal or Publication Name
• Grant Name or Funding Agency
• Limited by year, Language, Document Type 

The citation of the article  will be retrieved with its references as well as the number of times cited and by whom.

You can refine your search results by subject area, useful when there is more than one author with the same name, or by document type.  You can see the number of articles in your set contributed by particular authors and institutions and can create a citation report to identify which articles in your results have been cited the most.

You can easily export your results to bibliographic software like EndNote or RefWorks.

Articles can be searched by:

• Abstract word or keyword
• Source or journal
• Author (by name or by affiliation)
• Limit by date or document type

The database allows accounts to be set up and can save search alerts and journals lists.  Scopus also provides journal analytics including data and graphs to illustrate the total citations, articles published, trend line and % not cited over time.  It has the ability to exclude self-citations.

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Contact your Economics & Commerce Librarian

What is a literature review.

A literature review is a narrative compilation of selected academic sources related to your topic. Lit reviews describe the research you have studied and develop in your reason for the study, as well as provide criticism of past research. The end result should be a narrative showing the inherent need for your research in the field. Grounding your intended research in the current movements of the field will provide you with evidence of trends on where the field is headed. It also offers you the snapshot of the methodologies used in those studies. You can see what questions are being asked and find answers based on differing approaches to the topic.

An ideal literature review serves two purposes in your study. It strengthens your thesis and justifies your research question. By providing a critical summary of foundational and contemporary research on the topic, a literature review can show readers how your research fills important knowledge gaps. Pinpointing the other work in the field can show the unique perspective your study will provide. It can also offer a thoughtful critique of existing work that shows your full understanding of the opportunities and obstacles in your discipline.

Do not confuse it with:

• an  Annotated Bibliography , which lists citations to books, articles and documents, followed by a brief descriptive and evaluative paragraph,
• a Book Review , or short critical discussion about the merits and weaknesses or a specific works,
• or a Business Report , which provides analysis of a situation, either a real one or from a case study, applyng business principles and theories to identify a range of possible solutions to a problem. 

Why a Literature Review?

To demonstrate that you can:

• effectively use research methods to collect and curate information that is useful in answering significant questions;
• foster the ability to make decisions based on rigorous evidence;
• effectively communicate research results in a written form;
• develop the discipline to work with autonomy;
• understand the value, purpose, and methodologies of insightful research.

Purpose of a literature review from Academic Research Foundations: Quantitative by Rolin Moe

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What is a Literature Review

A literature review is a survey of everything that has been written about a particular topic, theory, or research question. It may provide the background for larger work, or it may stand on its own. Much more than a simple list of sources, an effective literature review analyzes and synthesizes information about key themes or issues.

Why write a literature review?

• To discover what has been written about a topic already.
• To determine what each source contributes to the topic.
• To understand the relationship between the various contributions, identify and (if possible) resolve contradictions, and determine gaps or unanswered questions.
• Printer Friendly: What is a Lit Review?

What's Involved?

Research  to discover what has been written about the topic.

Critical Appraisal  to evaluate the literature, determine the relationship between the sources and ascertain what has been done already and what still needs to be done.

Writing  to explain what you have found.

Focus on Writing

Introduction

The introduction should identify your topic, some discussion of the significance of that topic and a thesis statement that outlines what conclusion you will draw from your analysis and synthesis of the literature. If your literature review is part of a larger work, explain the importance of the review to your research question.

In the body, discuss and assess the research according to specific organizational principles (see examples below), rather than addressing each source separately. Most, if not all, paragraphs should discuss more than one source. Avoid addressing your sources alphabetically as this does not assist in developing the themes or key issues central to your review.

The conclusion should provide a summary of YOUR findings from the literature review. Explain what your analysis of the material leads you to conclude about the overall state of the literature, what it provides and where it is lacking. You can also provide suggestions for future research or explain how your future research will fill the gaps in the existing body of work on that topic.

© Allyson Skene. The Writing Centre, University of Toronto at Scarborough. See terms and conditions for use at http://www.utsc.utoronto.ca/~ctl/twc/terms.htm

Research & Evaluate

Gather sources

• Focus your topic : A literature review aims to cover all of the research on a given topic. If the topic is too large, there will be too much material.
• Read with a purpose : Although you will need to briefly summarize sources, a good literature review requires that you isolate key themes or issues related to your own research interests.

Evaluate sources

For each source, consider: 

• Credentials : Is the author an expert? 
• Argument/Evidence : Does the evidence support the conclusion? Is the argument or evidence complete?

When comparing sources, consider: 

• Conclusions : Does all research arrive at the same conclusion or are there differing opinions? What evidence or reasoning are the differences based on? 
• Gaps or omissions : What questions are raised by the literature?

Ways to Organize your Literature Review

Organize by Theme

Use it when explaining key themes or issues relevant to the topic. This is the most common way to organize literature reviews.

A literature review of 31 relevant articles published between January 1999 and March 2004 identified 12 categories of neighborhood characteristics relevant to maternal and child health: income/wealth, employment, family structure, population composition, housing, mobility, education, occupation, social resources, violence and crime, deviant behavior and physical conditions.

[Example adapted from Rajaratnama, J.K., Burke, J.G. & O’Campo, P. (2006). Maternal and child health and neighborhood context: The selection and construction of area-level variables.  Health and Place, 12 , 547-556.]

Organize by Methodology  (also called a methodology review)

When discussing interdisciplinary approaches to a topic or when discussing a number of studies with a different approach.

In dentistry, fluorescent imaging been used for many applications revealing a variety of information about bonded restorations. This review evaluates the different methods used in this area with the intent of determining if standardized methodologies exist.

[Example   adapted   from   D’ Alpino,   P .H.P.   et   al   (2006).Use   of   fluorescent   compounds in assessing bonded resin-based restorations: A literature review  Journal of Dentistry ,  34  623-634.]

Organize by Chronology

When historical changes are central to explaining the topic.

A literature review is presented on the evolution of water pollution management and its impact on land pollution from 1900 to 2000 within a hypothesis of whether we could have done more, sooner. Stream pollution science in the context of the fundamental sanitary engineering concepts of reasonable use and assimilative capacity is examined in light of evolving regulatory frameworks from the early 1900s, when regulation and standards were mostly lacking, to the zero discharge goals and comprehensive federal command/control regulations of the late 20 th  century.

[Example adapted from Shrifin, N.S. (2005). Pollution Management in the Twentieth Century.  Journal of Environmental Engineering, 131 , 676-691.]

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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 . Revised on September 11, 2023.

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 doesn’t just summarize sources—it analyzes, synthesizes , and critically evaluates to give a clear picture of the state of knowledge on the subject.

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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 review’s structure, step 5 – write your literature review, free lecture slides, other interesting articles, 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.

Prevent plagiarism. Run a free check.

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: “Learners’ 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.

Download Word doc Download Google doc

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 university’s 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 won’t 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.

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To begin organizing your literature review’s argument and structure, be sure you understand the connections and relationships between the sources you’ve 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 Snapchat—this 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: 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 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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If you want to know more about the research process , methodology , research bias , or statistics , make sure to check out some of our other articles with explanations and examples.

• Sampling methods
• Simple random sampling
• Stratified sampling
• Cluster sampling
• Likert scales
• Reproducibility

 Statistics

• Null hypothesis
• Statistical power
• Probability distribution
• Effect size
• Poisson distribution

Research bias

• Optimism bias
• Cognitive bias
• Implicit bias
• Hawthorne effect
• Anchoring bias
• Explicit bias

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 .  

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Trick #1: Find review/survey articles

Step A: Use the JEL subject classification system and the EconLit Thesaurus to identify subject terms. Perform a search in EconLit for these as descriptors. Step B: Use the Index of Journal Titles in EconLit to perform a search for Journal of Economic Perpsectives OR Journal of Economic Literature. Step C: Use the History search in EconLit to combine the first two searches. Step D: Browse the results for relevant review/survey articles.

Trick #2: Mine bibliographies

With review articles, or theoretical or empirical articles you've already found, search the Social Sciences Citation Index for other articles that cite them. Pay close attention, also, to possible data sources.

Trick #3: Use the articles you've already found to search more effectively in bibliographic databases and research web sites.

When you search for articles, don't rely strictly on keyword searches. Authors: After identifying important articles in your area, search for more articles by those authors. Descriptors: Also, search in databases like EconLit for an articles you've already read. Look at the descriptors used by the database to describe it. Perform new searches based on those descriptors. Organizations: Organizations publish reports, too. If you identify a relevant organization, like the Mediamark (a company that surveys the public), for example, search for that organization as an author.

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• Literature Review

A literature review establishes where your dissertation ‘fits in’ to the existing body of knowledge.

However, many academic papers have very brief literature reviews, and sometimes they are confined to the introduction rather than being a separate section in their own right.

You may want to follow this route – or you may decide to omit the literature review entirely. But many students normally spend some time making a separate section in which they discuss the existing literature.

Why do one?

Because a literature review allows you to demonstrate, in essay format, that you understand and can analyse the existing literature. The literature review allows you to answer the implicit question ‘What is the existing state of knowledge on this topic?’, and answer it in such a way that introduces any other work that you are doing.

The other key reason for doing a literature review is that it forces you to organise your thoughts. This can often make any theoretical or empirical work you do in other sections clearer, as you understand the topic more thoroughly.

How do I do one?

When researching your dissertation, it is not uncommon to read 20-30 journal articles. These will form the basis of discussion in any literature review. As you will probably have to read some articles anyway, the reading burden is not excessive.

Identifying which articles are important is a stumbling block. Asking members of your department or supervisors for key readings can get you started. Remember that your university library will likely have many electronic journals and databases in which you can search for papers. Databases such as Econlit are helpful, although they might miss some important contributions as they depend on how you phrase your search. Once you have a few recent papers you can normally use the bibliography to steer you towards further readings.

Of course, as well as reading the articles, you need to demonstrate that you understand them. The section ‘ Effective Reading ‘ can help – in particular, many students waste time trying to understand overly complex and irrelevant journal articles. Being selective, and understanding what is important, can save huge amounts of time and angst.

The next step is planning what you are going to write. As discussed in the ‘ Essay Writing ‘ section you might want to organise the section thematically.

Themes (sub-sections) might be different theories which try to explain a phenomenon, or they might discuss how the debate has evolved.

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The Young Economist’s Short Guide to Writing Economic Research

Attributes of writing economics.

• The discourse is often mathematical, with lots of formulas, lemmas, and proofs.
• Writing styles vary widely. Some authors are very dry and technical while a few are quite eloquent.

Economics writing is different from many other types of writing. It is essentially technical, and the primary goal is to achieve clarity. A clear presentation will allow the strength of your underlying analysis and the quality of your research to shine through.

Unlike prose writing in other disciplines, economics research takes time. Successful papers are not cranked out the night before a due date.

General Guidelines for Quality Research

Getting started.

The hardest part of any writing assignment is starting. Economics research usually begins with a strong understanding of literature, and papers require a section that summarizes and applies previous literature to what the paper at hand. This is the best way to start.

Your writing will demonstrate that you understand the findings that relate to the topic.

Economists use the first few paragraphs to set up research questions and the model and data they use to think about it. Sure, it can be dry, but this format ensures the write and reader have strong grasp on the subject and structure of the work that follows.

Clear and Concise Work

Clarity is hard to achieve, but revising and reworking a paper ensures it is easy to read

• Organize your ideas into an argument with the help of an outline.
• Define the important terms you will use
• State your hypothesis and proceed deductively to reach your conclusions
• Avoid excess verbiage
• Edit yourself, remove what is not needed, and keep revising until you get down to a simple, efficient way of communicating
• Use the active voice
• Put statements in positive form
• Omit needless words (concise writing is clear writing)
• In summaries, generally stick to one tense

Time Management

Poor time management can wreck the best-planned papers. Deadlines are key to successful research papers.

• Start the project by finding your topic
• Begin your research
• Start and outline
• Write a draft
• Revise and polish

The Language of Economic Analysis

Economic theory has become very mathematical. Most PhD students are mathematicians, not simply economics majors. This means most quality economic research requires a strong use of mathematical language. Economic analysis is characterized by the use of models, simplified representations of how economic phenomena work. A model’s predictions about the future or the past are essentially empirical hypotheses. Since economics is not easily tested in controlled experiments, research requires data from the real world (census reports, balance sheets), and statistical methods (regressions and econometrics) to test the predictive power of models and hypotheses based on those models.

The Writing Process

Finding a topic.

There are a million ways to find a topic. It may be that you are writing for a specific subfield of economics, so topics are limited and thus easier to pick. However, must research starts organically, from passive reading or striking news articles. Make sure to find something that interests you. Be sure to find a niche and make a contribution to the subfield.

You will also need a project that can be done within the parameters of the assignment (length, due date, access to research materials). A profoundly interesting topic may not be manageable given the time and other constraints you face. The key is to just be practical.

Be sure to start your research as soon as possible. Your topic will evolve along the way, and the question you begin with may become less interesting as new information draws you in other directions. It is perfectly fine to shape your topic based on available data, but don’t get caught up in endlessly revising topics.

Finding and Using Sources

There are two types of economic sources: empirical data (information that is or can be easily translated into numerical form), and academic literature (books and articles that help you organize your ideas).

Economic data is compiled into a number of useful secondary sources:

• Economic Report of the President
• Statistical Abstract of the United States
• National Longitudinal Survey
• Census data
• Academic journals

The Outline

A good outline acts as an agenda for the things you want to accomplish:

• Introduction: Pose an interesting question or problem
• Literature Review: Survey the literature on your topic
• Methods/Data: Formulate your hypothesis and describe your data
• Results: Present your results with the help of graphs and charts
• Discussion: Critique your method and/or discuss any policy implications
• Conclusions: Summarize what you have done; pose questions for further research

Writing a Literature Review

The literature review demonstrates your familiarity with scholarly work on your topic and lays the foundations for your paper. The particular issues you intent to raise, the terms you will employ, and the approach you will take should be defined with reference to previous scholarly works.

Presenting a Hypothesis

Formulate a question, problem or conjecture, and describe the approach you will take to answer, solve, or test it. In presenting your hypothesis, you need to discuss the data set you are using and the type of regression you will run. You should say where you found the data, and use a table, graph, or simple statistics to summarize them. In term papers, it may not be possible to reach conclusive results. Don’t be afraid to state this clearly and accurately. It is okay to have an inconclusive paper, but it is not okay to make overly broad and unsupported statements.

Presenting Results

There are essentially two decisions to make: (1) How many empirical results should be presented, and (2) How should these results be described in the text?

• Focus only on what is important and be as clear as possible. Both smart and dumb readers will appreciate you pointing things out directly and clearly.
• Less is usually more: Reporting a small group of relevant results is better than covering every possible statistical analysis that could be made on the data.
• Clearly and precisely describe your tables, graphs, and figures in the text of your results section. The first and last sentence in a paragraph describing a result should be “big picture” statements, describing how the results in the table, graph or figure fit into the overall theme of the paper.

Discussing Results

The key to discussing results is to stay clear of making value judgments, and rely instead on economic facts and analyses. It is not the job of an economist to draw policy conclusions, even if the research supports strong evidence in a particular direction.

Referencing Sources

As with any research paper, source referencing depends on the will of a professor a discourse community. However, economists generally use soft references in the literature review section and then cite sources in conventional formats at the end of papers.

This guide was made possible by the excellent work of Robert Neugeboren and Mireille Jacobson of Harvard University and Paul Dudenhefer of Duke University.

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Definition of Literature Reviews

A literature review surveys books, scholarly articles, and any other sources relevant to your research topic or thesis statement. It should provide a theoretical summary or critical evaluation of these scholarly works. You will need to analyze, evaluate , and s ynthesize the research that you’ve found on your topic. A literature review should give context to your thesis and, if possible, reveal any gaps in current literature. 

5 Steps for completing your Literature Review

• Look at other literature reviews
• Choose a topic that interests you
• This is important to do otherwise the literature you find will be too massive 
• You can look for books using the Library Search
• ​Preferably in EconLit
• Find sources from the reference papers that relate to your topic
• Search for those items by typing in the titles in the University Libraries “ Find It ” box
• I recommend keeping notes with Evernote because it is Open Source and once you create an account you can access it from any device
• I recommend Zotero , again it is Open Source and accessible from anywhere
• Once you've collected, read, noted, and saved your citations and resources you should begin to see patterns
• ​​Skim your notes to sort out themes (methodologies, data, results, etc.) 
• Does a topic develop over time 
• Do authors agree with each other or disagree on methodology or conclusions
• What strengths or weaknesses did you find in the literature
• Don't forget that you're trying to relate this literature to the story you wish to tell and you may find some of your articles fall out of your scope--make note of that to determine whether to mention them or not--talk to your professor about out of scope titles
• Make an outline or structural form of your review
• Remember your audience when writing
• Avoid too much jargon
• ​Be concise; don't go off on tangents; stay focused on your thesis statement
• Your purpose for writing the review
• Overview of the problem
• What is the scope of your review
• Talk about the amount of literature you found
• Chronological order
• Advancements of theories 
• Questions related to topic
• Summarize your findings
• Expose gaps in knowledge
• Provide a rationale for future research
• References in APA style

What is in a Literature Review?

A literature review may consist of simply a summary of key sources, but i t usually has an organizational pattern and combines both summary and synthesis , often within specific conceptual categories. 

• A summary is a recap of the important information of the source
• A synthesis is a re-organization, or a reshuffling, of that information in a way that informs how you are planning to investigate a research problem.

What is the purpose of a literature review?

• To demonstrate to your readers what you know about your topic
• To bring your readers up-to-date and fill them in on what has been published on your topic
• To allow you a better understanding of your topic

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Literature Reviews

• What is a Literature Review?
• Steps for Creating a Literature Review
• Providing Evidence / Critical Analysis
• Challenges when writing a Literature Review
• Systematic Literature Reviews

Structuring Literature Reviews

Structuring/writing a literature review.

There are several common approaches when structuring a literature review:

• Chronological: This approach traces the development of the topic over time, analyzing patterns and key debates that have shaped the field.
• Thematic: Organizing the review around recurring central themes or aspects of the topic. For example, a review on migrant health outcomes might be divided into subsections on healthcare policy, language barriers, cultural attitudes, etc..
• Methodological: This structure compares results and conclusions from different research approaches, such as qualitative vs. quantitative studies or empirical vs. theoretical scholarship.
• Theoretical : This approach discusses various theories, models, and definitions of key concepts related to the topic.
• Funnel approach: Moving from broad to specific, this structure starts with the wider context and gradually narrows down to the specific focus of your research.

Regardless of the chosen structure, a literature review typically includes:

• An introduction that outlines the purpose and scope of the review.
• A main body that presents, analyzes, and synthesizes the existing research.
• A conclusion that summarizes key findings and identifies gaps or areas for future research.

When grouping literature into subsections or themes, it's important to:

• Identify patterns and connections between different sources.
• Critically evaluate the strengths and weaknesses of existing research.
• Highlight controversies or debates within the field.
• Show how your research relates to or addresses gaps in the existing literature.

The best structure depends on your specific topic and goals. Generally, you want to group related studies together and present information in a logical flow, moving from broad to narrow focus. Use clear topic sentences and transitions between sections to guide the reader. It's important to synthesize findings across studies rather than just summarizing each one. Critically analyze the literature to identify key themes, debates, and gaps. Your own voice and analysis should come through as you evaluate the existing research. Remember to keep the focus on how the literature relates to your research questions or objectives. The structure should help tell the "story" of the current state of knowledge and how your work fits in.

Academics often use an "hour-glass structure" to describe the relationship between a literature review and a discussion section, with the review beginning broad, then focusing on the influence of previous research.

In your literature review, focus on relevant research that helps you understand your own investigation. Avoid referencing everything in the same depth, and prioritize recent studies. Older, dated studies should be highlighted briefly before discussing more accurate methods. This helps refine your understanding of wider issues and identify relevant research for your investigation.

Brown University Library (2024) Organizing and creating information . Available at: https://libguides.brown.edu/organize/litreview (Accessed: 31 July 2024).

Newcastle University (2024) Structuring the literature review . Available at: https://www.ncl.ac.uk/mediav8/academic-skills-kit/file-downloads/Structuring%20a%20literature%20review.pdf (Accessed: 31 July 2024).

Royal Literary Fund (2024)  The structure of a literature review. Available at:  https://www.rlf.org.uk/resources/the-structure-of-a-literature-review/ (Accessed 23 July 2024).

University of Westminster (2024) Literature reviews: structure . Available at: https://libguides.westminster.ac.uk/literature-reviews/structure (Accessed: 31 July 2024).

Further Reading:

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What is a literature review

The term "literature review" can mean different things in different contexts.  All share in common the idea of examining the scholarly literature on a topic.  It is the end result that differs:

An Annotated Bibliography is " a bibliography that includes brief explanations or notes for each reference" (from Dictionary.com )  The notes may be evaluative or simply a summary.

A literature review can be free-standing article. "A review article or review of the literature article considers the state and progress of current literature on a given topic or problem by organizing, integrating, and evaluating previously published books and articles. In short, a review article is a critical evaluation of material that has already been published." ( Writing Literature Reviews )  "The purpose is to offer an overview of significant literature published on a topic." (Write a Literature Review )

A literature review is a vital part of research papers including theses and dissertations.  "Surveying the literature is necessary because scholarship is cumulative -- no matter what you write, you are standing on someone else's shoulders. Scholars must say something new while connecting what they say to what has already been said." ( Writing Literature Reviews );

Below are some useful links for writing a literature review.

Literature Review: A Few Tips on Conducting It - University of Toronto

Online Articles & Chapters on Lit Reviews

• Conducting a Literature Review — The Example of Sustainability in Supply Chains Dr. Stefan Seuring et al. Research Methodologies in Supply Chain Management 2005, pp 91-106. [Chapter]
• Writing a Literature Review by Roy F. Baumeister. The Portable Mentor, 2013, pp 119-132. [Chapter]
• Literature Reviews: Analysis, Planning, and Query Techniques. by Wilhelm, William J. and Kaunelis, Davis. Delta Pi Epsilon Journal; Spring / Summer 2005, Vol. 47 Issue 2, p91-106, 16p more... less... This article presents proper techniques for planning, organizing and conducting a reliable literature search using electronic databases that index business education scholarly publications.
• A Critical Realist Guide to Developing Theory with Systematic Literature Reviews. Okoli, Chitu. Rochester: Social Science Research Network, 2012. [Working Paper]
• Doing a Literature Review Knopf, Jeffrey W. PS, Political Science & Politics 39.1 (2006): 127-32. [Article]

• Literature Review / Richard Race Source: The Sage Encyclopedia of Qualitative Research Methods / Lisa M. Given (2008). Database: Sage Research Methods

Related interest

• Research Writing Teams as a Form of Mentoring for Graduate Students by Fanni L. Coward, Stacy A. Jacob . Dimensions in Mentoring, 2012, pp 167-179 [Chapter]
• Practical recommendations to help students bridge the research-implementation gap and promote conservation. Pietri, D. M., et al. (2013). Conservation Biology, 27(5), 958-967.

Video Summarizing the Literature Review Process

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Courtesy of the University of North Carolina State University Libraries

Ebooks on lit reviews

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How to Write a Literature Review

A literature review is a critical summary and synthesis of the existing research on a particular topic. It serves as a foundational element in academic writing, helping to contextualize new research, identify gaps, and demonstrate an understanding of the scholarly conversation surrounding a subject. This guide will walk you through the essential steps and considerations for writing an effective literature review, ensuring your work is both comprehensive and compelling.

Introduction to Literature Reviews

A literature review is not merely a summary of articles, books, and other scholarly materials. It involves a careful examination of these sources, evaluating their contributions, identifying trends, and forming a cohesive narrative that situates your research within the broader field. The purpose of a literature review can vary, but it typically aims to:

Provide Context : Setting the stage for your research by outlining what is already known.

Highlight Gaps : Identifying areas where further research is needed.

Establish Frameworks : Demonstrate how your research fits within the existing body of knowledge.

Critically Evaluate : Assessing the strengths and weaknesses of previous studies.

Examples of Literature Reviews

To better understand the process and structure of a literature review, it can be helpful to look at a few examples. These examples highlight different approaches and techniques used in successful literature reviews.

Narrative Literature Review Example : In this type of review, the author provides a comprehensive overview of the topic, summarizing and synthesizing the key findings from various sources. The narrative review often identifies major themes and trends in the research, discusses the theoretical frameworks employed, and highlights significant gaps in the literature. For instance, a narrative review on the impact of social media on mental health might examine studies on different age groups, types of social media platforms, and various mental health outcomes, weaving these findings into a coherent narrative.

Systematic Literature Review Example : A systematic review follows a structured methodology to ensure all relevant studies on a specific topic are included and critically appraised. This type of review often includes detailed inclusion and exclusion criteria, a thorough search strategy, and a methodical approach to data extraction and synthesis. For example, a systematic review on the effectiveness of cognitive-behavioral therapy for anxiety disorders would involve a comprehensive search of multiple databases, rigorous screening of studies, and a detailed analysis of the results, leading to evidence-based conclusions.

Meta-Analysis Example : In a meta-analysis, the author combines the results of several studies to determine overall trends and patterns. This approach uses statistical techniques to quantify the effect sizes from individual studies and produce a summary estimate. For example, a meta-analysis on the relationship between physical activity and cardiovascular health might aggregate data from numerous studies, calculating the overall effect of exercise on heart disease risk, and exploring potential moderators such as age, gender, and exercise intensity.

Practical Tips for Conducting a Literature Review

Here are some additional practical tips to help you conduct an effective literature review:

Use a Reference Management Tool : Tools like EndNote, Zotero, or Mendeley can help you organize your sources, generate citations, and keep track of your references. This can save time and reduce errors in your literature review.

Take Detailed Notes : As you read through your sources, take detailed notes on key findings, methodologies, and theoretical frameworks. This will make it easier to synthesize the information and write your review.

Be Mindful of Bias : Be aware of potential biases in the studies you review, as well as your own biases. Strive for a balanced and objective analysis, and acknowledge any limitations in your review.

Seek Feedback : Before finalizing your literature review, seek feedback from peers, mentors, or advisors. They can provide valuable insights and help you identify any gaps or weaknesses in your analysis.

Stay Current : Research is always evolving, so make sure to include the most recent studies in your literature review. Regularly update your review as new research is published.

Synthesize Creatively : Don’t be afraid to combine findings from different studies in novel ways. Highlight unique perspectives and identify innovative approaches that could inspire future research.

The Role of Literature Reviews in Different Fields

Literature reviews are essential in various academic disciplines, each with its own conventions and expectations. Here’s a brief overview of how literature reviews are used in different fields:

Social Sciences : In the social sciences, literature reviews often explore theories, methodologies, and empirical findings related to social phenomena. They help to identify gaps in knowledge, highlight methodological issues, and propose new research directions.

Humanities : Literature reviews in the humanities typically focus on the analysis and interpretation of texts, artworks, or historical events. They may examine the evolution of scholarly debates, the influence of cultural and historical contexts, and the contributions of key theorists.

Sciences : In the natural and physical sciences, literature reviews are often used to summarize current knowledge, evaluate the validity of research methods, and identify areas for further investigation. They may also highlight technological advancements and their implications for the field.

Medicine and Health Sciences : Literature reviews in the medical and health sciences are critical for evidence-based practice. They assess the effectiveness of treatments, identify risk factors, and provide recommendations for clinical practice and policy.

Engineering and Technology : In engineering and technology, literature reviews often focus on the development and application of new technologies, evaluating their performance, safety, and potential impact. They may also identify challenges and opportunities for innovation.

Advanced Strategies for Literature Review

For those looking to take their literature review to the next level, consider these advanced strategies:

Thematic Synthesis : Go beyond basic synthesis by organizing your review around key themes or concepts. This can help you draw connections between studies and provide a more nuanced analysis.

Conceptual Frameworks : Develop a conceptual framework that integrates findings from multiple studies. This can help to clarify relationships between variables and provide a structured approach to your analysis.

Critical Appraisal Tools : Use critical appraisal tools and checklists to systematically evaluate the quality of the studies you review. This can enhance the rigor and credibility of your literature review.

Interdisciplinary Approaches : Consider incorporating perspectives from different disciplines to enrich your analysis. This can provide a more comprehensive understanding of your research topic and highlight innovative approaches.

Visual Summaries : Use visual tools such as mind maps, concept maps, or flowcharts to summarize and organize your findings. This can help to clarify complex relationships and enhance the readability of your review.

Types of Literature Reviews

There are several types of literature reviews, each serving a different purpose. Understanding these can help you choose the most appropriate approach for your work:

Narrative Literature Review : Provides a broad overview of the topic, summarizing and synthesizing key findings from a variety of sources. This type of review is often used in dissertations, theses, and introductory chapters of research papers.

Systematic Literature Review : Involves a detailed and comprehensive plan to search, appraise, and synthesize all relevant studies on a specific topic. It follows a strict methodological approach to ensure rigor and transparency.

Scoping Review : Maps the key concepts, types of evidence, and gaps in research related to a defined area. It is useful for identifying the scope and nature of available research.

Meta-Analysis : A statistical technique that combines the results of multiple studies to determine the overall effect size and identify patterns or discrepancies.

Theoretical Review : Focuses on the theoretical frameworks and models that have been developed in a particular field, analyzing their evolution and impact.

Steps to Conducting a Literature Review

Conducting a literature review involves several stages, each requiring careful planning and execution. The following steps outline a structured approach to creating a thorough and well-organized review.

Define Your Research Question : Clearly articulate the question or problem your literature review will address. This will guide your search for relevant sources and help you stay focused.

Search for Relevant Literature : Use academic databases, library catalogs, and other resources to find scholarly articles, books, and other materials related to your topic. Keywords, Boolean operators, and citation tracking can enhance your search strategy.

Evaluate and Select Sources : Critically assess the quality and relevance of the sources you find. Consider the authors' credentials, the publication date, the research methodology, and the findings.

Organize the Literature : Group your sources by themes, trends, or methodological approaches. This will help you create a structured narrative and identify connections between studies.

Analyze and Synthesize : Examine the main findings, methodologies, and theoretical frameworks of your sources. Identify patterns, contradictions, and gaps in the research. Synthesize this information to form a coherent narrative.

Write the Review : Structure your literature review with a clear introduction, body, and conclusion. Use headings and subheadings to organize your content and ensure logical flow.

Revise and Edit : Review your literature review for clarity, coherence, and conciseness. Check for proper citation and adherence to formatting guidelines.

Structuring Your Literature Review

A well-structured literature review enhances readability and ensures that your analysis is logical and coherent. Here is a suggested structure:

Introduction : Introduce the topic, explain the importance of the literature review, and outline your research question or objectives.

Thematic or Chronological Organization : Depending on your approach, organize your review thematically (by themes or topics) or chronologically (by time period).

Synthesis of Literature : Present a critical synthesis of the literature, highlighting key findings, methodological approaches, and theoretical frameworks. Discuss the relationships between studies, identifying agreements, contradictions, and gaps.

Conclusion : Summarize the main findings of your literature review, discuss their implications for your research, and suggest areas for future study.

References : List all the sources you have cited in your review, following the appropriate citation style.

Tips for Writing an Effective Literature Review

Writing a literature review can be challenging, but these tips can help you create a compelling and thorough analysis:

Stay Focused : Keep your research question or objectives in mind throughout the process. This will help you maintain focus and avoid including irrelevant information.

Be Critical : Evaluate the strengths and weaknesses of the studies you review. Consider the quality of the research design, data analysis, and conclusions.

Synthesize, Don't Summarize : Aim to integrate the findings of your sources, creating a narrative that highlights the connections between studies.

Use Clear and Concise Language : Write clearly and concisely, avoiding jargon and overly complex sentences. This will make your review more accessible to readers.

Follow a Logical Structure : Organize your review in a way that makes sense for your topic and approach. Use headings and subheadings to guide the reader through your analysis.

Cite Appropriately : Ensure you properly cite all the sources you use in your literature review. This not only gives credit to the original authors but also strengthens the credibility of your work.

Revise and Proofread : Take the time to revise and proofread your literature review. Check for clarity, coherence, and consistency, and ensure that your citations are correct.

Common Pitfalls to Avoid

While writing a literature review, it is important to be aware of common pitfalls that can undermine the quality of your work. Avoiding these will help you create a more effective and credible review.

Lack of Focus : Straying from your research question or objectives can lead to a disjointed and unfocused review. Stay on track by continually referring back to your research goals.

Over-reliance on Direct Quotes : While it is sometimes necessary to quote directly from sources, over-reliance on quotes can make your review feel fragmented. Aim to paraphrase and synthesize information whenever possible.

Inadequate Evaluation : Failing to critically evaluate the sources you review can weaken your analysis. Be sure to assess the quality and relevance of each study, considering factors such as methodology and findings.

Poor Organization : A poorly organized literature review can be difficult to follow and understand. Use a clear and logical structure, with headings and subheadings to guide the reader.

Neglecting to Update the Review : Research is constantly evolving, and it is important to include the most recent studies in your literature review. Make sure your review is up-to-date and reflects the current state of the field.

Utilizing Technology in Literature Reviews

In the digital age, technology has significantly enhanced the process of conducting literature reviews. Utilizing various technological tools can streamline your workflow, improve accuracy, and enable more comprehensive analyses. Here are some ways technology can assist you in crafting an exceptional literature review:

Reference Management Software : Tools such as EndNote, Mendeley, and Zotero not only help organize your sources but also facilitate the generation of citations and bibliographies. These tools allow you to store, categorize, and annotate your references, making it easier to access and manage your literature.

Academic Databases and Search Engines : Databases like PubMed, JSTOR, Google Scholar, and Scopus provide extensive access to scholarly articles, books, and conference papers. Utilizing advanced search techniques, such as Boolean operators and filters, can help you find the most relevant and high-quality sources.

Text Mining and Data Extraction Tools : Tools like NVivo and MAXQDA allow you to analyze large volumes of text, identifying patterns, themes, and relationships. These tools can be particularly useful in systematic reviews and meta-analyses, where thorough and systematic data extraction is required.

Collaborative Platforms : Platforms like Overleaf and Google Docs enable real-time collaboration with co-authors, advisors, or peers. These tools support version control, comment features, and collaborative editing, ensuring a more efficient and coordinated review process.

Visualization Software : Tools like VOSviewer and Gephi help create visual representations of bibliometric data, such as citation networks and co-authorship networks. These visualizations can reveal the structure of research fields and highlight influential studies and authors.

Addressing Common Challenges in Literature Reviews

Conducting a literature review is not without its challenges. Here are some common issues researchers face and strategies to overcome them:

Information Overload : The sheer volume of available research can be overwhelming. To manage this, develop a clear research question to guide your search, use specific keywords, and set inclusion and exclusion criteria to filter the most relevant studies.

Maintaining Objectivity : It can be challenging to remain unbiased, especially if you have strong opinions about the topic. Aim to present a balanced view by including studies that support various perspectives and critically appraising the quality of all sources.

Synthesizing Diverse Findings : Different studies may use various methodologies and report conflicting results. Focus on identifying common themes and trends, and discuss how differing methodologies might account for variations in findings.

Ensuring Comprehensiveness : Missing key studies can weaken your review. Conduct a thorough and systematic search using multiple databases, check reference lists of relevant articles, and consider consulting experts in the field to ensure no important studies are overlooked.

Writing Coherently : Organizing a large body of information into a coherent narrative can be difficult. Use clear headings and subheadings to structure your review, and ensure each section logically flows into the next. Summarize key points at the end of each section to reinforce the main findings.

Ethical Considerations in Literature Reviews

Ethics play a crucial role in literature reviews, ensuring the integrity and credibility of your work. Here are some key ethical considerations to keep in mind:

Plagiarism : Always credit the original authors for their work. Use proper citations and avoid presenting others’ ideas as your own. Utilize plagiarism detection software to check your work before submission.

Bias and Fair Representation : Aim to present a balanced view of the literature, including studies that offer differing perspectives. Avoid cherry-picking studies that only support your hypothesis.

Transparency : Clearly outline your methodology, including how you searched for literature, your inclusion and exclusion criteria, and how you analyzed the data. This transparency allows others to replicate or build upon your work.

Conflicts of Interest : Disclose any potential conflicts of interest that might bias your review. This includes financial interests, personal relationships, or professional affiliations that could influence your analysis.

Respect for Authors’ Work : Treat the studies you review with respect. Provide a fair and honest evaluation, acknowledging the strengths and limitations of each work.

Final Thoughts: Crafting an Impactful Literature Review

Writing a comprehensive and engaging literature review is an essential skill for researchers. It requires careful planning, critical thinking, and a methodical approach. By understanding the purpose and structure of a literature review, utilizing technology, addressing common challenges, and adhering to ethical standards, you can create a literature review that significantly contributes to your field.

Remember, a literature review is not just a summary of existing research but an opportunity to synthesize and critically evaluate the body of knowledge on your topic. It sets the stage for your research by identifying gaps, highlighting key findings, and providing a framework for your study.

Approach your literature review as a scholarly conversation, where you engage with existing research, identify trends, and contribute new insights. With dedication and attention to detail, your literature review can be a valuable resource for other researchers and a strong foundation for your own academic work.

If you need further details or additional sections to reach the desired word count, feel free to request more information or specific elaboration.

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How To Write A Literature Review - A Complete Guide

Table of Contents

A literature review is much more than just another section in your research paper. It forms the very foundation of your research. It is a formal piece of writing where you analyze the existing theoretical framework, principles, and assumptions and use that as a base to shape your approach to the research question.

Curating and drafting a solid literature review section not only lends more credibility to your research paper but also makes your research tighter and better focused. But, writing literature reviews is a difficult task. It requires extensive reading, plus you have to consider market trends and technological and political changes, which tend to change in the blink of an eye.

Now streamline your literature review process with the help of SciSpace Copilot. With this AI research assistant, you can efficiently synthesize and analyze a vast amount of information, identify key themes and trends, and uncover gaps in the existing research. Get real-time explanations, summaries, and answers to your questions for the paper you're reviewing, making navigating and understanding the complex literature landscape easier.

In this comprehensive guide, we will explore everything from the definition of a literature review, its appropriate length, various types of literature reviews, and how to write one.

What is a literature review?

A literature review is a collation of survey, research, critical evaluation, and assessment of the existing literature in a preferred domain.

Eminent researcher and academic Arlene Fink, in her book Conducting Research Literature Reviews , defines it as the following:

“A literature review surveys books, scholarly articles, and any other sources relevant to a particular issue, area of research, or theory, and by so doing, provides a description, summary, and critical evaluation of these works in relation to the research problem being investigated.

Literature reviews are designed to provide an overview of sources you have explored while researching a particular topic, and to demonstrate to your readers how your research fits within a larger field of study.”

Simply put, a literature review can be defined as a critical discussion of relevant pre-existing research around your research question and carving out a definitive place for your study in the existing body of knowledge. Literature reviews can be presented in multiple ways: a section of an article, the whole research paper itself, or a chapter of your thesis.

A literature review does function as a summary of sources, but it also allows you to analyze further, interpret, and examine the stated theories, methods, viewpoints, and, of course, the gaps in the existing content.

As an author, you can discuss and interpret the research question and its various aspects and debate your adopted methods to support the claim.

What is the purpose of a literature review?

A literature review is meant to help your readers understand the relevance of your research question and where it fits within the existing body of knowledge. As a researcher, you should use it to set the context, build your argument, and establish the need for your study.

What is the importance of a literature review?

The literature review is a critical part of research papers because it helps you:

• Gain an in-depth understanding of your research question and the surrounding area
• Convey that you have a thorough understanding of your research area and are up-to-date with the latest changes and advancements
• Establish how your research is connected or builds on the existing body of knowledge and how it could contribute to further research
• Elaborate on the validity and suitability of your theoretical framework and research methodology
• Identify and highlight gaps and shortcomings in the existing body of knowledge and how things need to change
• Convey to readers how your study is different or how it contributes to the research area

How long should a literature review be?

Ideally, the literature review should take up 15%-40% of the total length of your manuscript. So, if you have a 10,000-word research paper, the minimum word count could be 1500.

Your literature review format depends heavily on the kind of manuscript you are writing — an entire chapter in case of doctoral theses, a part of the introductory section in a research article, to a full-fledged review article that examines the previously published research on a topic.

Another determining factor is the type of research you are doing. The literature review section tends to be longer for secondary research projects than primary research projects.

What are the different types of literature reviews?

All literature reviews are not the same. There are a variety of possible approaches that you can take. It all depends on the type of research you are pursuing.

Here are the different types of literature reviews:

Argumentative review

It is called an argumentative review when you carefully present literature that only supports or counters a specific argument or premise to establish a viewpoint.

Integrative review

It is a type of literature review focused on building a comprehensive understanding of a topic by combining available theoretical frameworks and empirical evidence.

Methodological review

This approach delves into the ''how'' and the ''what" of the research question —  you cannot look at the outcome in isolation; you should also review the methodology used.

Systematic review

This form consists of an overview of existing evidence pertinent to a clearly formulated research question, which uses pre-specified and standardized methods to identify and critically appraise relevant research and collect, report, and analyze data from the studies included in the review.

Meta-analysis review

Meta-analysis uses statistical methods to summarize the results of independent studies. By combining information from all relevant studies, meta-analysis can provide more precise estimates of the effects than those derived from the individual studies included within a review.

Historical review

Historical literature reviews focus on examining research throughout a period, often starting with the first time an issue, concept, theory, or phenomenon emerged in the literature, then tracing its evolution within the scholarship of a discipline. The purpose is to place research in a historical context to show familiarity with state-of-the-art developments and identify future research's likely directions.

Theoretical Review

This form aims to examine the corpus of theory accumulated regarding an issue, concept, theory, and phenomenon. The theoretical literature review helps to establish what theories exist, the relationships between them, the degree the existing approaches have been investigated, and to develop new hypotheses to be tested.

Scoping Review

The Scoping Review is often used at the beginning of an article, dissertation, or research proposal. It is conducted before the research to highlight gaps in the existing body of knowledge and explains why the project should be greenlit.

State-of-the-Art Review

The State-of-the-Art review is conducted periodically, focusing on the most recent research. It describes what is currently known, understood, or agreed upon regarding the research topic and highlights where there are still disagreements.

Can you use the first person in a literature review?

When writing literature reviews, you should avoid the usage of first-person pronouns. It means that instead of "I argue that" or "we argue that," the appropriate expression would be "this research paper argues that."

Do you need an abstract for a literature review?

Ideally, yes. It is always good to have a condensed summary that is self-contained and independent of the rest of your review. As for how to draft one, you can follow the same fundamental idea when preparing an abstract for a literature review. It should also include:

• The research topic and your motivation behind selecting it
• A one-sentence thesis statement
• An explanation of the kinds of literature featured in the review
• Summary of what you've learned
• Conclusions you drew from the literature you reviewed
• Potential implications and future scope for research

Here's an example of the abstract of a literature review

Is a literature review written in the past tense?

Yes, the literature review should ideally be written in the past tense. You should not use the present or future tense when writing one. The exceptions are when you have statements describing events that happened earlier than the literature you are reviewing or events that are currently occurring; then, you can use the past perfect or present perfect tenses.

How many sources for a literature review?

There are multiple approaches to deciding how many sources to include in a literature review section. The first approach would be to look level you are at as a researcher. For instance, a doctoral thesis might need 60+ sources. In contrast, you might only need to refer to 5-15 sources at the undergraduate level.

The second approach is based on the kind of literature review you are doing — whether it is merely a chapter of your paper or if it is a self-contained paper in itself. When it is just a chapter, sources should equal the total number of pages in your article's body. In the second scenario, you need at least three times as many sources as there are pages in your work.

Quick tips on how to write a literature review

To know how to write a literature review, you must clearly understand its impact and role in establishing your work as substantive research material.

You need to follow the below-mentioned steps, to write a literature review:

• Outline the purpose behind the literature review
• Search relevant literature
• Examine and assess the relevant resources
• Discover connections by drawing deep insights from the resources
• Structure planning to write a good literature review

1. Outline and identify the purpose of  a literature review

As a first step on how to write a literature review, you must know what the research question or topic is and what shape you want your literature review to take. Ensure you understand the research topic inside out, or else seek clarifications. You must be able to the answer below questions before you start:

• How many sources do I need to include?
• What kind of sources should I analyze?
• How much should I critically evaluate each source?
• Should I summarize, synthesize or offer a critique of the sources?
• Do I need to include any background information or definitions?

Additionally, you should know that the narrower your research topic is, the swifter it will be for you to restrict the number of sources to be analyzed.

2. Search relevant literature

Dig deeper into search engines to discover what has already been published around your chosen topic. Make sure you thoroughly go through appropriate reference sources like books, reports, journal articles, government docs, and web-based resources.

You must prepare a list of keywords and their different variations. You can start your search from any library’s catalog, provided you are an active member of that institution. The exact keywords can be extended to widen your research over other databases and academic search engines like:

• Google Scholar
• Microsoft Academic
• Science.gov

Besides, it is not advisable to go through every resource word by word. Alternatively, what you can do is you can start by reading the abstract and then decide whether that source is relevant to your research or not.

Additionally, you must spend surplus time assessing the quality and relevance of resources. It would help if you tried preparing a list of citations to ensure that there lies no repetition of authors, publications, or articles in the literature review.

3. Examine and assess the sources

It is nearly impossible for you to go through every detail in the research article. So rather than trying to fetch every detail, you have to analyze and decide which research sources resemble closest and appear relevant to your chosen domain.

While analyzing the sources, you should look to find out answers to questions like:

• What question or problem has the author been describing and debating?
• What is the definition of critical aspects?
• How well the theories, approach, and methodology have been explained?
• Whether the research theory used some conventional or new innovative approach?
• How relevant are the key findings of the work?
• In what ways does it relate to other sources on the same topic?
• What challenges does this research paper pose to the existing theory
• What are the possible contributions or benefits it adds to the subject domain?

Be always mindful that you refer only to credible and authentic resources. It would be best if you always take references from different publications to validate your theory.

Always keep track of important information or data you can present in your literature review right from the beginning. It will help steer your path from any threats of plagiarism and also make it easier to curate an annotated bibliography or reference section.

4. Discover connections

At this stage, you must start deciding on the argument and structure of your literature review. To accomplish this, you must discover and identify the relations and connections between various resources while drafting your abstract.

A few aspects that you should be aware of while writing a literature review include:

• Rise to prominence: Theories and methods that have gained reputation and supporters over time.
• Constant scrutiny: Concepts or theories that repeatedly went under examination.
• Contradictions and conflicts: Theories, both the supporting and the contradictory ones, for the research topic.
• Knowledge gaps: What exactly does it fail to address, and how to bridge them with further research?
• Influential resources: Significant research projects available that have been upheld as milestones or perhaps, something that can modify the current trends

Once you join the dots between various past research works, it will be easier for you to draw a conclusion and identify your contribution to the existing knowledge base.

5. Structure planning to write a good literature review

There exist different ways towards planning and executing the structure of a literature review. The format of a literature review varies and depends upon the length of the research.

Like any other research paper, the literature review format must contain three sections: introduction, body, and conclusion. The goals and objectives of the research question determine what goes inside these three sections.

Nevertheless, a good literature review can be structured according to the chronological, thematic, methodological, or theoretical framework approach.

Literature review samples

1. Standalone

2. As a section of a research paper

How SciSpace Discover makes literature review a breeze?

SciSpace Discover is a one-stop solution to do an effective literature search and get barrier-free access to scientific knowledge. It is an excellent repository where you can find millions of only peer-reviewed articles and full-text PDF files. Here’s more on how you can use it:

Find the right information

Find what you want quickly and easily with comprehensive search filters that let you narrow down papers according to PDF availability, year of publishing, document type, and affiliated institution. Moreover, you can sort the results based on the publishing date, citation count, and relevance.

Assess credibility of papers quickly

When doing the literature review, it is critical to establish the quality of your sources. They form the foundation of your research. 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 Discover’s personalized suggestion engine helps you stay on course and get the complete picture of 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 what’s trending, who are the top authors, and who are the leading publishers on a topic.

Make referring sources super easy

To ensure you don't lose track of your sources, you must start noting down your references when doing the literature review. 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've to do is copy-paste it into your manuscript.

Final tips on how to write a literature review

A massive chunk of time and effort is required to write a good literature review. But, if you go about it systematically, you'll be able to save a ton of time and build a solid foundation for your research.

We hope this guide has helped you answer several key questions you have about writing literature reviews.

Would you like to explore SciSpace Discover and kick off your literature search right away? You can get started here .

Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs)

1. how to start a literature review.

• What questions do you want to answer?

• What sources do you need to answer these questions?

• What information do these sources contain?

• How can you use this information to answer your questions?

2. What to include in a literature review?

• A brief background of the problem or issue

• What has previously been done to address the problem or issue

• A description of what you will do in your project

• How this study will contribute to research on the subject

3. Why literature review is important?

The literature review is an important part of any research project because it allows the writer to look at previous studies on a topic and determine existing gaps in the literature, as well as what has already been done. It will also help them to choose the most appropriate method for their own study.

4. How to cite a literature review in APA format?

To cite a literature review in APA style, you need to provide the author's name, the title of the article, and the year of publication. For example: Patel, A. B., & Stokes, G. S. (2012). The relationship between personality and intelligence: A meta-analysis of longitudinal research. Personality and Individual Differences, 53(1), 16-21

5. What are the components of a literature review?

• A brief introduction to the topic, including its background and context. The introduction should also include a rationale for why the study is being conducted and what it will accomplish.

• A description of the methodologies used in the study. This can include information about data collection methods, sample size, and statistical analyses.

• A presentation of the findings in an organized format that helps readers follow along with the author's conclusions.

6. What are common errors in writing literature review?

• Not spending enough time to critically evaluate the relevance of resources, observations and conclusions.

• Totally relying on secondary data while ignoring primary data.

• Letting your personal bias seep into your interpretation of existing literature.

• No detailed explanation of the procedure to discover and identify an appropriate literature review.

7. What are the 5 C's of writing literature review?

• Cite - the sources you utilized and referenced in your research.

• Compare - existing arguments, hypotheses, methodologies, and conclusions found in the knowledge base.

• Contrast - the arguments, topics, methodologies, approaches, and disputes that may be found in the literature.

• Critique - the literature and describe the ideas and opinions you find more convincing and why.

• Connect - the various studies you reviewed in your research.

8. How many sources should a literature review have?

When it is just a chapter, sources should equal the total number of pages in your article's body. if it is a self-contained paper in itself, you need at least three times as many sources as there are pages in your work.

9. Can literature review have diagrams?

• To represent an abstract idea or concept

• To explain the steps of a process or procedure

• To help readers understand the relationships between different concepts

10. How old should sources be in a literature review?

Sources for a literature review should be as current as possible or not older than ten years. The only exception to this rule is if you are reviewing a historical topic and need to use older sources.

11. What are the types of literature review?

• Argumentative review

• Integrative review

• Methodological review

• Systematic review

• Meta-analysis review

• Historical review

• Theoretical review

• Scoping review

• State-of-the-Art review

12. Is a 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.

But before you go,

• Six Online Tools for Easy Literature Review
• Evaluating literature review: systematic vs. scoping reviews
• Systematic Approaches to a Successful Literature Review
• Writing Integrative Literature Reviews: Guidelines and Examples

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Consensus GPT vs. SciSpace GPT: Choose the Best GPT for Research

Literature Review and Theoretical Framework: Understanding the Differences

Types of Essays in Academic Writing - Quick Guide (2024)

How to Use AI for Literature Review Writing 

Making a literature review is a complicated and time-consuming process. But what if you need to prepare one quickly or are too overwhelmed with other tasks?

Consider using AI for literature review writing. It can speed up your work, making it more effective. In this guide, we prepared tips to help you use ChatGPT and other instruments for your next lit. review in an ethical way.

📖 What Is a Literature Review?

• 💡 How to Use AI for Literature Review
• 🤖 9 Best Tools
• 🎁 Bonus: ChatGPT Prompts
• 🔗 References

A literature review lays the foundation for further research. While working on it, students examine books, articles, studies, and journal entries. This process requires careful selection and meticulous work with various credible sources .

The first goal is to gather all existing knowledge and insights on a particular topic. Then, you summarize, organize the selected data, and critically analyze it. Such a review provides an evaluation of the main arguments, strengths, weaknesses, methods, and findings you’ve highlighted in the sources. This way, you will demonstrate that you have read and understood how every work relates to a broader research question.

Features of a Good Literature Review

A literature review’s quality depends on the merit of your research and gathered evidence. While different institutions offer various guidelines for the composition and format of these texts, they should always contain several key elements.

To achieve the perfect outcome, you should:

• Analyze the ideas in the assessed literature instead of describing its findings.
• Explain the importance of the research topic.
• Find similarities and differences in evidence, data, and opinions from different sources.
• Identify the limits of research methods and controversial areas.
• Offer opinions and personal responses to different works.
• Organize ideas by themes instead of sources.
• Provide citations, a reference list, or a bibliography in the required academic style. You can use our free citation maker to do it effectively.

Main Types of Literature Reviews

Currently, college students and academics use six types of literary reviews. Their choice depends on the research design and approach required for a particular study.

📌 Systematic. In this type, students and academics synthesize literature in a particular topic. A systematic review follows a structured plan to establish, evaluate, and critique relevant research to minimize bias.

📌 Scoping. Scoping reviews examine the entire field, highlighting gaps and underscoring the need for further research. Their main goal is to identify the size and scope of available literature on a particular topic.

📌 Argumentative. This type of paper examines literature to support or refute an argument, assumption, or philosophical idea in related works. Argumentative reviews are known for their potential bias and ethical research problems .

📌 Theoretical. This type of review focuses on the conceptual side of issues, ideas, and phenomena. Theoretical evaluations establish relationships between theories and examine how they have been tested.

📌 Critical. Critical reviews evaluate and critique the strengths and weaknesses of academic works, aiming to challenge existing ideas and theories.

📌 Narrative. This type of paper offers a comprehensive view of a topic without a strict selection or methodology.

💡 How to Use AI for Literature Review: 7 Simple Steps

Every student knows that AI tools can improve academic writing , but not all of them know how to use AI to write a literature review. This can be due to a lack of practice or unfamiliarity with this technology.

However, it’s actually very easy! Just follow the steps listed below:

• Select a search engine . Google Scholar, SciSpace, and other engines use artificial intelligence to find the most relevant papers. Such tools understand the context of search requests and provide results even without the exact keywords.
• Explore AI tools . Check out different tools like Consensus, Elicit, and Scite. They help locate relevant literature for your study. Each platform covers different bodies of work, so research their content and focus areas before choosing a literature source. We will cover the most popular tools in the next section.
• Analyze the results . Once you obtain the search results, review them to ensure they are relevant to your topic. Many AI tools offer summaries of academic works, making it easier to identify key points. Advanced tools also assist researchers in finding crucial information across multiple papers.
• Organize your findings . At the start of your research process, organize the sources you’ll be working with. You can do it faster with AI tools and reference managers that generate citations automatically.
• Extract data . After you’ve found and organized the list of references, extract relevant information and seek patterns in the research. Elicit and other tools can assist you in this process and help you analyze crucial data.
• Create a draft . While AI tools can help outline your paper, it is important to write the literature review outline yourself. This demonstrates your understanding and ensures that you did the research independently. Read our article on how to avoid getting caught using ChatGPT and other AI chatbots to learn more.
• Write a literature review . Once the groundwork is over, begin writing your literature review. Tools like paraphrasers will assist you a lot. The end result should be original and tailored to your way of thinking and conducting arguments. After you finish writing, proofread the review and revise with grammar checkers and AI text finders.

🤖 9 Best Artificial Intelligence Literature Review Tools

Finally, let’s see how to find the best artificial intelligence tool for your literature review. We will cover each solution’s advantages and disadvantages to help you select the most suitable AI assistant. Every instrument has unique terms of use and features that make them perfect for different work formats and research fields.

Semantic Scholar

Semantic Scholar was developed by experts from the Allen Institute and launched in November 2015. It’s free to use for students and Gmail users.

This AI tool utilizes natural language processing to aid researchers and students. Since September 2022, the search engine has gained access to more than 200 million publications in different areas of scientific research.

Semantic Scholar Capabilities

✅ AI-generated summaries . Semantic Scholar offers concise summaries of scientific works.

✅ Research recommendations . This artificial intelligence literature review tool understands what researchers are interested in and suggests works based on this information.

✅ Semantic reader. It is a free interactive interface that allows students to access in-line citation cards showing quotes and summaries. Also, this built-in tool will help you quickly navigate sections and save documents to your library.

Semantic Scholar Limitations

❌ Limited number of pages . AI algorithms in the search engine can only process 500-page papers per request.

❌ Confusing author identification . Semantic Scholar demonstrates only last names and initials, making it possible to confuse one writer with another.

❌ Few paper formats . The search engine only supports file sharing in the PDF format, which leads to poor accessibility for smart devices and static content.

Elicit was founded in 2017. Since then, it’s been helping researchers worldwide. It uses advanced AI for literature reviews to find, condense, and combine information from various academic sources.

The platform enjoys an audience of more than 800,000 researchers. You can gain access to less mainstream papers in domains such as machine learning or biomedicine. This AI tool has three pricing models: Basic (Free), Plus ($10), and Enterprise (Custom).

Elicit Capabilities

✅ Automated search . Elicit automatically searches different databases for relevant works based on the requests and keywords.

✅ AI-powered summaries . Students and academics use the platform to get summaries of selected texts, saving time and effort.

✅ Citation . With Elicit, it’s possible to track and manage quotes, which makes it easier to refer to sources in the paper.

✅ Thematic analysis . Using this expert system helps identify common subjects and themes across different works.

✅ Collaboration tools . Elicit lets students and researchers work on joint projects, improving teamwork capabilities.

Elicit Limitations

❌ Limited database access . The platform has limited access to journals and databases, which can potentially restrict the use of relevant materials.

❌ Additional costs. While the Basic version of Elicit is free, it has its limitations. Students won’t be able to access the tool’s full capabilities without extra cost.

❌ Requires technical expertise . Students might require additional technical knowledge to use the tool and understand its output effectively.

OpenAI’s platform ChatGPT is one of the most versatile tools for literature reviews available. Anyone interested in research can use its vast datasets to explore different scientific areas. Since its launch in 2022, ChatGPT has gained over 180 million users who work with the chatbot using various prompts . The platform has a free and a Plus version for $20 a month.

ChatGPT Capabilities

✅ Customization opportunities . ChatGPT can be adjusted and fine-tuned to perform tasks in specific areas.

✅ Contextual understanding . The powerful algorithms fueling ChatGPT allow it to comprehend the context of conversations.

✅ Multilingual options . People worldwide use the platform for research thanks to its support of French, German, Arabic, Chinese, and other languages.

ChatGPT Limitations

❌ Data limitations . The data ChatGPT-3.5 works with is limited to February 2022, and ChatGPT-4 is limited to April 2023. So, neither version provides the latest research data.

❌ Hallucinations . The platform sometimes fails to provide accurate results, so you get nonsensical content.

❌ Risk of plagiarism . Researchers who are too reliant on this tool can be accused of academic dishonesty , as the platform doesn’t always provide proper academic credit.

❌ Fake citations . Students and researchers use this tool to generate research information for their papers, but ChatGPT can’t give the actual sources from which the information was taken.

If you wish to know more about ChatGPT limitations, check this article on the pros and cons of the chatbot for students .

Researchers often apply this AI-based literature review platform in their work. Iris.ai uses a keyword search to create a detailed map of relevant articles. The brainchild of Anita Schjøll Brede, Iris.ai, has been available since 2015. With its help, researchers find connections between papers for free or by paying a monthly subscription of €75.

Iris.ai Capabilities

✅ Content research . This tool provides a system of recommendations that delves into interdisciplinary areas. It can utilize your literature search query and go beyond your core keywords.

✅ Context filters . Users can narrow down search results to follow particular criteria.

✅ Information filters . With Iris.ai, researchers can use filters to extract specific data such as information points, particular entries, and date ranges.

✅ Data systematization . You can extract and organize information from the necessary texts and insert them into various table layouts of your own design automatically.

Iris.ai Limitations

❌ Limited data . Iris.ai works with a limited pool of scientific alliteration.

❌ Dependence on tools . The platform relies on other tools to produce cohesive literature reviews.

❌ Lack of efficiency . Ultimately, the search engine can’t answer every question under the sun.

Research Rabbit

Another tool that uses AI for literature reviews, Research Rabbit , simplifies locating various academic articles. The platform built by Krishnan Chandra, Ben Slater, and Mike Ma became publicly available in 2021. This tool is free for personal use. Research Rabbit offers paid services like custom market research studies for $5,900.

Research Rabbit Capabilities

✅ Visualization . With this platform, researchers create interactive graphs that visualize articles and show author networks.

✅ Literature mapping . This solution has a mapping tool that identifies articles connected to a particular subject.

✅ Personalized recommendations . Research Rabbit offers personal summaries of recent articles based on the user’s previous searches.

✅ Citation management . This solution makes it easier to manage and download citations.

Research Rabbit Limitations

❌ Technical barriers . Users should have experience using similar research tools. You will need time to familiarize yourself with the proper operation and functionality.

❌ Data sources limitations . This tool may not cover all academic publications because it relies heavily on materials from Microsoft Academic Graph. This platform contains a large amount of scientific data, but since 2021 , the data replenishment has been discontinued. Such dependence leads to gaps in literature discovery.

❌ Integration limitations. You may have problems implementing research support tools. Also, Research Rabbit does not allow integration of third-party databases.

Consensus is an AI-based search engine that helps users establish scientific consensus on various topics. The platform offers free access and a premium subscription for $6.99 per month. The tool was launched by Eric Olson in 2022 with the aim to make it easier to conduct research. Consensus works with the Center for Open Science and OpenAI.

Consensus Capabilities

✅ Sources overview . The platforms offer a comprehensive view of scientific evidence, allowing researchers to assess the consensus across different sources.

✅ AI-powered summaries . The platform provides scientific summaries using the GPT-4 LLM, making it easier to understand research findings.

✅ Combination with Semantic Scholar . Consensus works with the Semantic Scholar tool to download research papers.

Consensus Limitations

❌ Limited data scope . The platform doesn’t cover all research fields or comprehensively analyze niche and complex topics. You’ll only be able to use 150 million articles.

❌ Possibility of irrelevant results. This research model may misclassify research output due to complex or confusing requests. The developers claim they are working on a solution to the tool’s understanding. However, it is currently observed that inappropriate studies are issued 10% of the time.

ChatPDF is a free AI-based tool that allows students and researchers to explore literature. But there’s a catch: the number of interactions is limited to 2 per day, with each file having to be 120 pages or fewer. The Berlin-based platform launched in 2023. It enjoys a steady audience of students and researchers, with over 7 million monthly visits.

ChatPDF Capabilities

✅ Language options . The tool automatically recognizes the language of the document. ChatPDF supports many languages, letting users across the globe access this platform and gain valuable insights.

✅ Simple data extraction . Users can quickly get critical data points and short summaries by sending studies in PDF format immediately after uploading the file or pasting the document URL.

✅ Data extraction . Once you have finished your chat with ChatPDF, you can save and export your entire conversation in TXT format. So, you will easily be able to use all the information you found in future research.

ChatPDF Limitations

❌ Format dependency . ChatPDF only works with PDF files, with no support for other document formats.

❌ No illustrations and images . The platform can’t extract information from images and illustrations such as charts and graphs.

❌ Limited prompts complexity . This tool works poorly with more nuanced and complex requests while handling more straightforward questions better.

This AI tool for literature reviews offers an innovative approach to evaluating and exploring scientific articles. The Scite platform, founded by Josh Nicholson and Yuri Lazebnik, received funding from healthcare institutions such as the National Science Foundation (NSF) and the National Institute on Drug Abuse. It offers access to over 187 million articles and 1.2 billion citation statements for $20/month. It boasts favorable reviews from G2 (4.1 out of 5 stars) and Capterra (4.5 out of 5 stars).

Scite Capabilities

✅ Citation capabilities . Scite categorizes citations based on context, which allows researchers quickly find supportive or contradicting evidence.

✅ Literature evaluation . With this platform, users can discover all literature relevant to their subject matter.

Scite Limitations

❌ Limited scope of articles . The tool can only cover a few publications in each field, potentially leading to citation gaps.

❌ Manual analysis . Researchers must analyze and interpret provided citations and come to their conclusions.

Researchers and students use this platform to streamline their literature review process. Rayyan was founded in 2020 by Robert Aya. Currently, the platform enjoys over 250,000 users each month. It holds over 500 million reference articles.

Rayyan offers access plans, ranging from free to student ($4/month) and professional ($8/month).

Rayyan Capabilities

✅ Collaborative work . Researchers use the platform to work on reviews together with other people worldwide.

✅ Reference import . Rayyan allows users to extract and download references in various file formats.

✅ Blind mode . This feature turns off notes and labels in articles, reducing the risk of bias and letting researchers come to more accurate conclusions.

✅ Sources ranking . The platform uses historical data on user choices and provides a ranking on the relevance of other articles, allowing researchers to read the most promising ones.

Rayyan Limitations

❌ Specificity and sensitivity . Rayyan ranks high on sensitivity levels and moderately on specificity when locating records for full-text assessment.

❌ Terminology limitations . The platform doesn’t have consistent terminology, which may lead to confusion and mess with search results.

❌ No guarantee of source reliability . This tool isn’t very good at finding eligible studies since the developers believe that the primary function of the platform is to search for information, not to analyze it.

🎁 Bonus: ChatGPT Prompts for Literature Review Writing

Working with ChatGPT differs from using specialized AI-powered tools. The chatbot requires researchers to use correct prompts . If you happen to write a bad query for your task, the chatbot will give you nonsense. Here, we’ve gathered examples that can be used based on required tasks and the steps of writing literature reviews.

Research topic review:

Comparative examination:

Overview of findings:

Prospects for future research:

Methodical breakdown:

Theoretical development:

Changes in research trends:

Core discussions:

Historical development:

Paper-specific analysis:

Thank you for reading this article!

Artificial intelligence can optimize the research process and improve the quality of a scientific paper. Choose the most suitable AI research helpers and remember to use them ethically . We wish you luck with literature reviews and recommend you to check out our article about writing an essay with ChatGPT !

📎 References

• Artificial Intelligence Tools for Detection, Research and Writing – Brian Quinn and Erin Burns, Texas Tech University
• Learn How to Write a Review of Literature. – Board of Regents of the University of Wisconsin System
• Searching for Scholarly Articles. – University of Calgary
• Artificial Intelligence – Use at CCSU: AI Tools for Research & Learning. – Central Connecticut State University
• Research Guides. – University of Southern California
• Writing a Literature Review. – University of Arizona Global Campus, UAGC
• Steps in the Literature Review Process. – The University of Texas at Austin
• How to Write a Literature Review. – Wesleyan University
• Best AI Tools for Students. – Kobi Cohen, IU International University of Applied Sciences
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