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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.

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See an example

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.

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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What is a literature review?

A literature review is an integrated analysis -- not just a summary-- of scholarly writings and other relevant evidence related directly to your research question.  That is, it represents a synthesis of the evidence that provides background information on your topic and shows a association between the evidence and your research question.

A literature review may be a stand alone work or the introduction to a larger research paper, depending on the assignment.  Rely heavily on the guidelines your instructor has given you.

Why is it important?

A literature review is important because it:

• Explains the background of research on a topic.
• Demonstrates why a topic is significant to a subject area.
• Discovers relationships between research studies/ideas.
• Identifies major themes, concepts, and researchers on a topic.
• Identifies critical gaps and points of disagreement.
• Discusses further research questions that logically come out of the previous studies.

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1. Choose a topic. Define your research question.

Your literature review should be guided by your central research question.  The literature represents background and research developments related to a specific research question, interpreted and analyzed by you in a synthesized way.

• Make sure your research question is not too broad or too narrow.  Is it manageable?
• Begin writing down terms that are related to your question. These will be useful for searches later.
• If you have the opportunity, discuss your topic with your professor and your class mates.

2. Decide on the scope of your review

How many studies do you need to look at? How comprehensive should it be? How many years should it cover? 

• This may depend on your assignment.  How many sources does the assignment require?

3. Select the databases you will use to conduct your searches.

Make a list of the databases you will search. 

Where to find databases:

• use the tabs on this guide
• Find other databases in the Nursing Information Resources web page
• More on the Medical Library web page
• ... and more on the Yale University Library web page

4. Conduct your searches to find the evidence. Keep track of your searches.

• Use the key words in your question, as well as synonyms for those words, as terms in your search. Use the database tutorials for help.
• Save the searches in the databases. This saves time when you want to redo, or modify, the searches. It is also helpful to use as a guide is the searches are not finding any useful results.
• Review the abstracts of research studies carefully. This will save you time.
• Use the bibliographies and references of research studies you find to locate others.
• Check with your professor, or a subject expert in the field, if you are missing any key works in the field.
• Ask your librarian for help at any time.
• Use a citation manager, such as EndNote as the repository for your citations. See the EndNote tutorials for help.

Review the literature

Some questions to help you analyze the research:

• What was the research question of the study you are reviewing? What were the authors trying to discover?
• Was the research funded by a source that could influence the findings?
• What were the research methodologies? Analyze its literature review, the samples and variables used, the results, and the conclusions.
• Does the research seem to be complete? Could it have been conducted more soundly? What further questions does it raise?
• If there are conflicting studies, why do you think that is?
• How are the authors viewed in the field? Has this study been cited? If so, how has it been analyzed?

Tips: 

• Review the abstracts carefully.  
• Keep careful notes so that you may track your thought processes during the research process.
• Create a matrix of the studies for easy analysis, and synthesis, across all of the studies.
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What is a literature review?

The term “literature review” has two related meanings..

• A literature review is a process that gathers information on a topic from numerous sources related to that topic.
• A literature review is a piece of writing (article, chapter, section of a term paper) that describes, synthesizes, organizes, and/or summarizes information about a topic.

A written literature review can be a stand-alone work.

For instance, some journal articles are literature reviews that summarize or synthesize large bodies of literature on a certain topic.

• Depression and Pain Comorbidity: A Literature Review
• Proximity and Inter-Organizational Collaboration: A Literature Review

A written literature review can be part of a larger work.

It can be a section of an article or term paper, or a chapter or section of a thesis, dissertation, or book.

• Chapter 2 of this dissertation is the literature review: Mathematical Learning Difficulties in Grade 1: The Role and Interrelatedness of Cognitive Processing, Perceptual Skills, and Numerical Abilities . Note that Chapter 2 is the literature review.
• This article contains a literature review section on pages 558 - 561. “ Dealing with Data: Science Librarians’ Participation in Data Management at Association of Research Libraries’ Institutions .”

Before you start your literature review project, you will likely find it help to look at examples of similar literature reviews in your discipline.

Literature Reviews

• Getting started

What is a literature review?

Why conduct a literature review, stages of a literature review, lit reviews: an overview (video), check out these books.

• Types of reviews
• 1. Define your research question
• 2. Plan your search
• 3. Search the literature
• 4. Organize your results
• 5. Synthesize your findings
• 6. Write the review
• Artificial intelligence (AI) tools
• Thompson Writing Studio This link opens in a new window
• Need to write a systematic review? This link opens in a new window

Guide Owner

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Definition: A literature review is a systematic examination and synthesis of existing scholarly research on a specific topic or subject.

Purpose: It serves to provide a comprehensive overview of the current state of knowledge within a particular field.

Analysis: Involves critically evaluating and summarizing key findings, methodologies, and debates found in academic literature.

Identifying Gaps: Aims to pinpoint areas where there is a lack of research or unresolved questions, highlighting opportunities for further investigation.

Contextualization: Enables researchers to understand how their work fits into the broader academic conversation and contributes to the existing body of knowledge.

tl;dr  A literature review critically examines and synthesizes existing scholarly research and publications on a specific topic to provide a comprehensive understanding of the current state of knowledge in the field.

What is a literature review NOT?

❌ An annotated bibliography

❌ Original research

❌ A summary

❌ Something to be conducted at the end of your research

❌ An opinion piece

❌ A chronological compilation of studies

The reason for conducting a literature review is to:

Literature Reviews: An Overview for Graduate Students

While this 9-minute video from NCSU is geared toward graduate students, it is useful for anyone conducting a literature review.

Writing the literature review: A practical guide

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Writing literature reviews: A guide for students of the social and behavioral sciences

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How to Do Your Literature Review

• Gary Thomas - University of Birmingham
• Description

This book will walk you through every step of crafting an excellent literature review. It will show you where to find sources, how to assess their quality, and how to combine and integrate these sources into the best possible literature review. From scoping the field to searching the literature to synthesising your findings, this book hits all the spots.

Presenting a clear and detailed roadmap to ensure you don’t miss a step, the book includes:

· Advice on the best ways to scan and search the literature.

· All the latest information and advice on using AI tools for searching literature.

· Case studies and real-life examples from a range of disciplines so you can learn from other researchers who have been in your shoes.

· DIY activities so you can practice your skills and get to grips with key concepts.

· Guidance on how to analyse and synthesise the findings from your literature searches.

· Advice and guidance on organising your writing.

For tutors, each chapter is accompanied by a PowerPoint presentation that will map onto a 10 or 11 week module.

Written in Gary’s signature easy-to-read style, this book is an essential companion for anyone conducting a literature review in the applied social sciences.

See what’s new to this edition by selecting the Features tab on this page. Should you need additional information or have questions regarding the HEOA information provided for this title, including what is new to this edition, please email [email protected] . Please include your name, contact information, and the name of the title for which you would like more information. For information on the HEOA, please go to http://ed.gov/policy/highered/leg/hea08/index.html .

For assistance with your order: Please email us at [email protected] or connect with your SAGE representative.

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Literature Review: A Self-Guided Tutorial

• Getting Started
• Literature Reviews: A Recap
• Peer Review
• Reading the Literature
• Using Concept Maps
• Developing Research Questions
• Considering Strong Opinions
• 2. Review discipline styles
• Super Searching
• Finding the Full Text
• Citation Searching This link opens in a new window
• When to stop searching
• Citation Management
• Annotating Articles Tip
• 5. Critically analyze and evaluate
• How to Review the Literature
• Using a Synthesis Matrix
• 7. Write literature review

What's a Literature Review?

A literature review (or lit review, for short) is an in-depth critical analysis of published scholarly research related to a specific topic. Published scholarly research (the "literature") may include journal articles, books, book chapters, dissertations and thesis, or conference proceedings. 

A solid lit review must:

• be organized around and related directly to the thesis or research question you're developing
• synthesize results into a summary of what is and is not known
• identify areas of controversy in the literature
• formulate questions that need further research

View the video below for a brief explanation of lit reviews. (It's not just for grad students!)

What is a Literature Review?

Credit: NCSU Libraries. Video 1 of Literature Reviews: An Overview for Graduate Students . Run Time: 3:12

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Introduction

The aim of this guide is to help you with useful tips on how to write a literature review and provide you with information on things you should and should not do.

Remember, always ask your professor about format related issues!

To navigate through the guide use the tabs on the left-hand side. 

What is a Literature Review?

A literature review provides your reader with an account of what has been published on a specific topic or subject by experts, scholars and researchers in the field/discipline. You might be asked to write a literature review as a separate assignment, but in most cases it functions as a part of the introduction to an essay, research report or thesis.

When writing a literature review, your aim is to inform the reader about what knowledge and ideas have been established on a topic or subject and what their strengths and weaknesses are. The literature review must be defined by a guiding concept (e.g., your research objective, the problem or issue you are discussing, or your argumentative thesis).

Remember! It is NOT just a descriptive list of the resources available, or a set of summaries.

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This section covers:

• What a literature review is
• How to structure a literature review
• Where you can go to within the university for further help

What is a Literature Review?

A literature review is an overview of the scholarly literature on a given topic, sometimes to answer defined questions. Within a piece of academic writing, it situates your research or work within the field of research available on the topic.

Literature Review Tutorial

The tutorial below will walk you through:

• Steps to creating one
• Where you can go to within the university for further help.

Please note: We recommend clicking to view full screen using the arrows and box icon in the top right.  The tutorial can be made more accessible by selecting the three dots option in the top right and selecting accessibility view. You can change vertical or horizontal layout using the settings/cog button. There is also a page of contents in the bottom right.  Open the tutorial in a new page by clicking here .

You can also access a PDF version of the tutorial with the file below.  

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Conducting a Literature Review

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A literature review brings together a range of relevant works on a topic, and is intended to:

• explore compelling questions, problems, concepts, or issues that you would like to address
• discover relationships between ideas
• connect your ideas to existing literature on your research topic(s) 
• demonstrate your knowledge of a topic
• demonstrate your ability to critique and synthesize various strands of the conversation(s) taking place around your topic
• identify research gaps, areas for further consideration, and/or disagreements in the literature

The literature review forms the core of your project, serving as the foundation on which you will build your position or thesis, situate your own ideas or findings within a larger context, and develop your contribution to the scholarly conversation around your topic. 

A literature review tells a story, but the research process that goes into that storytelling is nonlinear. There are likely many lines of study/angles/perspectives on your topic. In this vein, a literature review is iterative and ongoing. You may do any or all of the following as you prepare literature reviews for projects, papers, and presentations.

A. You will likely conduct an initial literature review to:

• explore and better understand the existing research on your topic
• develop your own perspective on an issue or problem
• demonstrate what you know about your topic.

You may have an initial thesis or hypothesis that, once you become more informed on your topic, you revise (sometimes multiple times).

B. As you further refine your research questions or interests, a more focused literature review will help you flesh out your ideas and focus on the concepts that are important to your particular area of inquiry.

C. As you conduct your experiment, ethnography, textual analysis, or field experience, other questions may arise, and further literature searching may become important. 

D. Once you've completed your experiment, ethnography, textual analysis, or field experience, you will want to situate your findings in the literature. This may come, in part, from previous research you conducted, and in part from new approaches or themes that emerged during the course of your study that you want to further understand or expand upon.

As you begin:

1. Discuss your research with your advisor, colleagues, classmates, and librarian(s) to figure out which resources might be a good fit, or to identify research strategies you may want to use. Consider a  wide range of resources that may be useful to you, and the various scholarly perspectives it would be important to include.

2. Look at other literature reviews to get a sense of the realm of options that exist. You may want to use one or two as a model, or to stimulate ideas around the organization or thematic approach to your work.

3. Critique each resource you select for your literature review, considering issues of authority, currency, research methodology, novelty, supporting evidence, and perspective/bias.

4. As you read, note major concepts that are important to your research. Abstracts and section headings can help you quickly grasp the primary themes of an article and help you decide how/if the article fits with your research question(s). 

5. I dentify how the resources you have selected relate to concepts you are exploring or have already discovered (some may apply to many or one concept) and/or how they diverge or present new perspectives. An annotated bibliography can help you organize your thoughts and begin to synthesize the literature (note that, ultimately, your literature review will be a coherent synthesis of these concepts rather than a list of items with summary descriptions).

6. Categorize your resources in meaningful ways that help you to organize your thoughts around your topic. Examples include major concepts or themes that emerge in the literature you collect, theoretical approaches, methodological approaches, chronology, or trends. Depending on the complexity of your topic, or how you organize your thoughts, you may want to map your research concepts in order to visualize your topic. One tool you could use is  https://bubbl.us/mindmap .

The following books have sections on literature reviews, some with advice for presenting your research.

Additionally, check out this article  by a professor of creative writing ("7 Ways That List-Making Helps You Produce Scholarly Work") on key approaches to the scholarly writing process.

• Conducting Your Literature Review: A Step-by-Step Guide by Susanne Hempel
• The Portable Dissertation Advisor by Miles T. Bryant Call Number: LB1742 .B79 2004 ISBN: 0761946950
• Presenting Your Research by Lucinda Becker
• Systematic Approaches to a Successful Literature Review by Andrew Booth; Anthea Sutton; Mark Clowes; Marrissa Martyn-St James Call Number: Reference: LB1047.3 .B66 2022
• Writing for Scholars by Lynn Nygaard Call Number: P301.5.A27 N94 2015 ISBN: 9781446282540
• Writing the Successful Thesis and Dissertation by Irene L. Clark Call Number: LB2369 .C52 2007 ISBN: 9780131735330
• Writing Your Journal Article in Twelve Weeks by Wendy Laura Belcher Call Number: Reference: PN146 .B45 2019
• Where Research Begins: Choosing a Research Project That Matters to You (and the World) by Thomas S. Mullaney; Christopher Rea Call Number: AZ105 .M85 2022
• University of Maine Writing Center The Writing Center offers one-on-one consultations in writing, public speaking, and document design.
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Literature Reviews: Literature Review - A Guide

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• Research Strategy Worksheet

Literature Review Resources

• Literature Review - A Self-Guided Tutorial (IUPUI) This tutorial from IUPUI will walk you through the process of writing a Literature Review from start to finish. Please note that there may be more steps in this or other sample resources than is being asked for by your professor. Always consult your class syllabus or your professor for their final word on your assignment's content.

Recipe for Literature Reviews

HELP! What is a Literature Review?

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Graphic from Literature Review (2009) by Machi and McEvoy. 

Order of (Research) Operations

Research Refresh

• Boolean Machine - Rockwell Shrock Struggling to remember what AND, OR, and NOT each do for your searches? Check out this tool that helps explain the difference!

Assignment for Dr. Bartzen's Fall 2020 Main Campus Class

• Research Paper Assignments Contains instructions for this course's research paper, to include an introduction & literature review.

Recommended Databases

Article Databases:

• APA PsychArticles & APA PsychINFO This link opens in a new window

• Psychology Database This link opens in a new window
• Social Science Database This link opens in a new window

Statistical Databases and Websites:

• Statista This link opens in a new window
• US Census Bureau: Explore Census Data

Locating Database Permalinks

Need APA Style Help?

• APA Style Citation Help Need some help with APA Citation Style? In addition to your style manual, the links and resources listed on this page will help you answer many questions you may have about APA!
• Last Updated: Jun 6, 2022 9:51 PM
• URL: https://library.arbor.edu/litreview

• UConn Library
• Literature Review: The What, Why and How-to Guide
• Introduction

Literature Review: The What, Why and How-to Guide — Introduction

• Getting Started
• How to Pick a Topic
• Strategies to Find Sources
• Evaluating Sources & Lit. Reviews
• Tips for Writing Literature Reviews
• Writing Literature Review: Useful Sites
• Citation Resources
• Other Academic Writings

What are Literature Reviews?

So, what is a literature review? "A literature review is an account of what has been published on a topic by accredited scholars and researchers. In writing the literature review, your purpose is to convey to your reader what knowledge and ideas have been established on a topic, and what their strengths and weaknesses are. As a piece of writing, the literature review must be defined by a guiding concept (e.g., your research objective, the problem or issue you are discussing, or your argumentative thesis). It is not just a descriptive list of the material available, or a set of summaries." Taylor, D.  The literature review: A few tips on conducting it . University of Toronto Health Sciences Writing Centre.

Goals of Literature Reviews

What are the goals of creating a Literature Review?  A literature could be written to accomplish different aims:

• To develop a theory or evaluate an existing theory
• To summarize the historical or existing state of a research topic
• Identify a problem in a field of research 

Baumeister, R. F., & Leary, M. R. (1997). Writing narrative literature reviews .  Review of General Psychology , 1 (3), 311-320.

What kinds of sources require a Literature Review?

• A research paper assigned in a course
• A thesis or dissertation
• A grant proposal
• An article intended for publication in a journal

All these instances require you to collect what has been written about your research topic so that you can demonstrate how your own research sheds new light on the topic.

Types of Literature Reviews

What kinds of literature reviews are written?

Narrative review: The purpose of this type of review is to describe the current state of the research on a specific topic/research and to offer a critical analysis of the literature reviewed. Studies are grouped by research/theoretical categories, and themes and trends, strengths and weakness, and gaps are identified. The review ends with a conclusion section which summarizes the findings regarding the state of the research of the specific study, the gaps identify and if applicable, explains how the author's research will address gaps identify in the review and expand the knowledge on the topic reviewed.

• Example : Predictors and Outcomes of U.S. Quality Maternity Leave: A Review and Conceptual Framework:  10.1177/08948453211037398  

Systematic review : "The authors of a systematic review use a specific procedure to search the research literature, select the studies to include in their review, and critically evaluate the studies they find." (p. 139). Nelson, L. K. (2013). Research in Communication Sciences and Disorders . Plural Publishing.

• Example : The effect of leave policies on increasing fertility: a systematic review:  10.1057/s41599-022-01270-w

Meta-analysis : "Meta-analysis is a method of reviewing research findings in a quantitative fashion by transforming the data from individual studies into what is called an effect size and then pooling and analyzing this information. The basic goal in meta-analysis is to explain why different outcomes have occurred in different studies." (p. 197). Roberts, M. C., & Ilardi, S. S. (2003). Handbook of Research Methods in Clinical Psychology . Blackwell Publishing.

• Example : Employment Instability and Fertility in Europe: A Meta-Analysis:  10.1215/00703370-9164737

Meta-synthesis : "Qualitative meta-synthesis is a type of qualitative study that uses as data the findings from other qualitative studies linked by the same or related topic." (p.312). Zimmer, L. (2006). Qualitative meta-synthesis: A question of dialoguing with texts .  Journal of Advanced Nursing , 53 (3), 311-318.

• Example : Women’s perspectives on career successes and barriers: A qualitative meta-synthesis:  10.1177/05390184221113735

Literature Reviews in the Health Sciences

• UConn Health subject guide on systematic reviews Explanation of the different review types used in health sciences literature as well as tools to help you find the right review type
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Skills for Learning : Dissertations & Literature Reviews

Literature reviews can be individual assignments or chapters in a larger project (such as a dissertation or research  report ). They examine a large body of information relevant to a topic and position your research in relation to what has come before it. They provide an overview of the research that has led you to your topic. In a literature review, you must analyse, pass judgment on, and compare / contrast previous studies. When included in a larger project, literature reviews highlight gaps or limitations, and justify further research.

We run interactive workshops to help you prepare for writing literature reviews. Find out more on the  Skills for Learning Workshops  page.

We have online academic skills modules within MyBeckett for all levels of university study. These modules will help your academic development and support your success at LBU. You can work through the modules at your own pace, revisiting them as required. Find out more from our FAQ  What academic skills modules are available?

Six steps to writing a literature review

• Select a topic
• Develop the tools for argument
• Search the literature
• Survey the literature
• Critique the literature
• Write the review

You might be starting from scratch and have to find a research topic. Make sure you select a topic which you find interesting and that you're passionate about. You'll spend a long time completing this project. It will help if you're interested in it. Begin with a scoping search of the literature to assess whether there is enough material on your topic.

Once you have selected your topic, you need to make it appropriate for academic study. This might mean changing your original wording to a thesis statement using academic language. For example, you might be interested in researching refugees, but this is not specific enough. There are also certain elements which could be defined further:

• Which aspect would you like to focus on?
• Is there a particular period of time that has contextual importance?
• Will you look at a particular demographic?

It is important to define your key ideas and any limitations to your study at this early stage. This will help you frame your research interest and give it a clearer focus. 

It is also useful to explore your chosen academic field and become familiar with any specialist terminology and vocabulary.

Top tip! Think about what your research interest is and try turning it into a thesis statement. You can read more about developing a thesis statement on the   Essay Writing web page.

The Literature Review Planning Worksheet can help you shape your research interest and formulate a research question. 

• Literature Review Planning Worksheet

Once you have your selected topic, you need to develop an understanding of exactly how arguments are constructed. A good literature review builds a well-argued case using logically framed arguments. These arguments are typically made up of claims, evidence and warrants.

A  claim  is a statement used to convince your reader of a particular argument. They are contestable and so require evidence to support them. 

Claim: Cycling to work is better for the environment than driving a car. 

We might back up this up with a piece of  evidence  which states that if more people are cycling to work, there are fewer cars on the road, which leads to fewer emissions. 

Making strong claims and using solid evidence to support them up will make your academic writing more persuasive and convincing. A good argument proves its claims by using credible evidence to validate each assertion. All sides of a question should be presented before coming to a justified conclusion. 

The  warrant  forms a connection between your claim and your evidence. It helps explain why or how that piece of evidence supports the particular claim being made. It is important to think about what your warrant is, since you might have a piece of evidence which is completely true but that lends no credence to the claim.

To connect our claim and our evidence, we might warrant that more car emissions are worse for the environment. 

We can then come to the logical conclusion that cycling to work is better for the environment than driving a car, and we have the evidence to support it, along with a warrant as to why that is the case. 

Top tip! Think about what claims you are making in your literature review. What evidence do you need to find which will help support your claims? How does that evidence support the claim? What is the connection?

For your literature review, your evidence will be made up largely of different pieces of literature which back up your thesis statement. 

Don't worry if your topic alters and shifts at this point. You are reading literature which influences and shapes your ideas around the subject. Your knowledge on the topic will increase and you may find your thesis statement becoming narrower and more concrete. You can then continue to refine your topic based on the evidence you have found. 

You can find techniques and strategies about literature searching on the  Finding Information & Reading pages . 

Top tip! Look at the   Library Subject Guides   for your course. These have information on finding high quality resources for your literature review.

Once you have found the sources you want to use, assemble and organise them in a way that works for you. This might include adding tags or subjects, organising by author, themes or chronology. 

You should then review the quality and strength of the sources you have found and consider how well they support your argument. 

It might also be helpful at this stage to analyse any patterns you find within the literature as these could be a key focus for your literature review and can help you gain an understanding of what is currently known about the research topic. 

Top tip! Using reference management software like Zotero and EndNote can help you to organise your literature and provide tags and subjects for each source. See the  Reference Management pages  to help you get started. 

Now you have surveyed the existing knowledge on your chosen topic, you can begin to draw your own logical conclusions based on the findings within the literature. Critiquing involves interpreting the current understanding of the research topic and logically determining how this knowledge answers your research question or supports your thesis statement. Think about the strengths and weaknesses of each piece of literature and evaluate the author's claims, making comparisons with other pieces of literature. You should spend some time ensuring you really understand your literature before you critique it. 

Download the Critical Analysis Questions and Evidence Matrix Worksheets to help you with this process. 

• Critical Analysis Questions Worksheet
• Evidence Matrix Worksheet

Once you have compiled your literature and you have a good idea as to which evidence supports which claim, you can then start writing your literature review. It can be helpful to write a plan for your literature review before you begin the writing process. Think about what needs to be written and how best to convey it to your audience. 

Typically your literature review will be comprised of an introduction, main body and a conclusion. You should refer back to your module handbook for any specific stylistic guidance. See the headings below for guidance on what to include in each section. 

Literature review structure

• Introduction

Always include an introduction, even if your literature review is part of a dissertation or larger project.

Your introduction will:

• Outline the importance of the topic
• Introduce the key ideas, focus and perspective.

You might also provide some context and highlight any significance your review has within the field. Tell your reader why there needs to be a focus on this subject. Why now? Define major trends, gaps or changes in the topic. You should also introduce your thesis statement and inform your reader how you plan to structure your literature review.

The main body forms the central part of the literature review. This is where you bring together all the evidence you have found to support your thesis statement. Start with the broad context, examining the background to your topic. Finish with the more specific details of your research area. You should paraphrase or summarise others’ ideas, writing concisely and clearly. Focus on the key ideas in the literature, explaining their significance in relation to your topic. 

You might provide some background to the key pieces of literature here and also analyse, interpret and critique your sources, considering the strengths and weaknesses of different works and what this means for your argument, as well as any gaps in the literature. Avoid simply listing or describing sources. Remember to continue referring back to your thesis statement and explain how the content helps answer the main research question. Your literature review should be an argument for this statement, so make sure you don't include anything which is irrelevant.

The way you structure your main body will be informed by the nature of your academic discipline and any patterns you've recognised within the literature. Think about some of the important elements you considered when surveying the literature and what the most logical structure would be for your piece of work. Would it be best to organise the literature by themes or in a more chronological manner? 

The Paraphrasing and Summarising Information Worksheet provides guidance on how you can write some of the content of the sources you find in your own words. This will help with developing your academic voice, as well as ensuring you avoid plagiarising content. 

• Paraphrasing and Summarising Information

Synthesising information from different sources improves the criticality of your academic writing. Download our Synthesising Sources in Writing worksheet which explains how to do this. 

• Synthesising Sources in Writing Worksheet

This is where you pull together the key themes and ideas you have explored and summarise your thesis argument, based on the literature you have read. You can acknowledge any gaps, weaknesses or significant issues in your topic and include recommendations for future research. You can also remind your reader about the importance of your research, in light of everything you have found. You should not introduce any new information at this stage but rather use it as a stepping stone for getting started on your own research. Finish by summarising your review. If the literature review is a dissertation chapter, explain how the information links to your project.

Top tip! Remember to draft, edit and proofread your work. This will ensure your work flows and reads fluently and it can also be useful for developing your academic voice. Try reading your work out loud to hear how it sounds. Find out more from our Editing and Proofreading pages. 

Literature review style and language

You should paraphrase or summarise others’ ideas, writing concisely and clearly. Focus on the key ideas in the literature, explaining their significance in relation to your topic.

Top tips!  For help with literature searching, visit our pages on  Finding Information . For advice on paraphrasing and referencing correctly, take a look at the  Academic Integrity module in MyBeckett  and our Paraphrasing and Summarising Information worksheet. For ideas about using reporting verbs to explain and analyse sources, download our Reporting Verbs Worksheet. The Synthesising Sources in Writing Worksheet will help you compare ideas from different sources. 

• Reporting Verbs Worksheet

Artificial intelligence tools

Before using any generative artificial intelligence or paraphrasing tools in your assessments, you should check if this is permitted on your course.

If their use is permitted on your course, you must  acknowledge any use of generative artificial intelligence tools  such as ChatGPT or paraphrasing tools (e.g., Grammarly, Quillbot, etc.), even if you have only used them to generate ideas for your assignment or for proofreading.

Annotated bibliographies

Annotated bibliographies contain a list of citations, each followed by one or two descriptive and analytical paragraphs. These paragraphs summarise the content and the main argument of the source. They also evaluate the usefulness of the source within the context of the research. 

The Annotated Bibliographies Worksheet provides a step-by-step guide on exactly how to tackle this assignment, as well as how to organise and critique your sources. 

• Annotated Bibliographies Worksheet

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Library Research Guides - University of Wisconsin Ebling Library

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Nursing Resources : Conducting a Literature Review

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What is a Literature Review?

A literature review is an essay that surveys, summarizes, links together, and assesses research in a given field. It surveys the literature by reviewing a large body of work on a subject; it summarizes by noting the main conclusions and findings of the research; it links together works in the literature by showing how the information fits into the overall academic discussion and how the information relates to one another; it assesses the literature by noting areas of weakness, expansion, and contention. This is the essentials of literature review construction by discussing the major sectional elements, their purpose, how they are constructed, and how they all fit together.

All literature reviews have major sections:

• Introduction: that indicates the general state of the literature on a given topic;
• Methodology: an overview of how, where, and what subject terms used to conducted your search so it may be reproducable
• Findings: a summary of the major findings in that field;
• Discussion: a general progression from wider studies to smaller, more specifically-focused studies;
• Conclusion: for each major section that again notes the overall state of the research, albeit with a focus on the major synthesized conclusions, problems in the research, and even possible avenues of further research.

In Literature Reviews, it is Not Appropriate to:

• State your own opinions on the subject (unless you have evidence to support such claims).  
• State what you think nurses should do (unless you have evidence to support such claims).
• Provide long descriptive accounts of your subject with no reference to research studies.
• Provide numerous definitions, signs/symptoms, treatment and complications of a particular illness without focusing on research studies to provide evidence and the primary purpose of the literature review.
• Discuss research studies in isolation from each other.

Remember, a literature review is not a book report. A literature review is focus, succinct, organized, and is free of personal beliefs or unsubstantiated tidbits.

• Types of Literature Reviews A detailed explanation of the different types of reviews and required citation retrieval numbers

Outline of a Literture Review

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Doing a Literature Review

• Scholarly Sources
• News & Primary Sources
• Policy & Government Info
• Country & political risk
• US economic
• Company Info
• International trade & FDI
• Using US census data
• Industry & Market Information
• Business Risk Data & Indicators
• White Papers & Grey Lit
• Reference Sources
• Health Economics
• Cryptocurrency & Bitcoin
• Context Matters: Doing an Environmental Scan
• Author Profile

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)
• Systematic Literature Review vs Narrative Reviews
• 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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LGS-SOAR Humanities and Social Science Research Methods

• Getting Started
• Choosing and Developing a Topic

Find Out What's Already Been Done

Searching comprehensively, understanding citations and finding sources.

• Collecting and Analyzing Data
• Software and Equipment
• Additional Resources

Begin your literature review as soon as possible. Ideally, you already started doing some research while refining and adjusting your topic idea.

What is a literature review?

A literature review provides an overview of the scholarly literature (e.g. books, articles, dissertations, proceedings) relevant to an area of research or theory. The review typically will include a summary of the major questions in a area and critical evaluations of work that has already been done. Literature reviews are also helpful for their comprehensive bibliographies. This webpage by the UC Santa Cruz Library does a good job of explaining lit reviews.

Literature reviews typically include these components:

• An overview of the subject
• Organization of relevant publications into subtopics, theoretical areas, or key debates
• An analysis and discussion of how various works relate to one another the the relevant questions
• A discussion of unresolved questions or future directions
• Some will also include discussions of key data collection and analysis methodologies

The following two resources are great places to start when compiling a comprehensive bibliography.

• Annual Reviews Online This is a great place to start your research. The literature reviews include extensive bibliographies that can lead you to related articles/books. This database covers the social sciences, sciences, and biomedicine.
• Oxford Bibliographies Online. Anthropology This link opens in a new window Guide to scholarly literature in the field of Anthropology. This link also provides access to bibliographies for a variety of subjects in the social sciences.

Also consult reference works, encyclopedias, and handbooks to identify relevant terminology.

Create a Search Strategy

• Try different keywords and search terms using different databases and catalogs. Every database is different so some keywords and search terms work for one database but not for another.
• Keep a record of which search terms worked and in which databases. This can keep you from repeating your steps.
• Include synonyms and plural/singular forms of keywords. Separate synonyms by OR . Separate the synonyms from the rest of the words by using parentheses.
• Use truncation symbols (or wildcard symbols) to include variations of your search terms (e.g. scien$ will search for sciences, scientific, scientifically, etc.).
• Combining different concepts/search terms with AND
• Use the limit functions of the database. These are often located on the left side of the results page, or look in the database's Help menu to discover the limit functions it offers. Possibilities include limiting by date, language, type of article, etc.
• Did you find an article you really like? Then, pay close attention to the cited references (a.k.a. bibliography, end notes, footnotes) to find similar articles. This can bias your project by focusing on only one side of an issue so use caution with this method.
• Ask for help. Ask a librarian for search tips. Also, use the help screens in the databases for instructions and tips.

Search Databases and Catalogs

The library catalog and these databases are good places to start for most social science projects:

• Scopus or Web of Science - Two interdisciplinary databases that cover science, technology, medicine, social sciences, and arts and humanities.
• JSTOR - Access to a wide variety of journal articles in the humanities, social sciences, and area studies.
• Academic Search Complete - Access broad ranging resources that include full-text journals, monographs, reports, conference proceedings, and video content from the Associate Press.

For more options, such as area studies databases and other specialized resources or indexes, look for a Research Guide relevant to your subject (e.g. Anthropology Research Guide ) or search/browse  Databases @ Emory .

Contact a Subject Librarian .

How do you know if Emory Libraries provides access to the item you need?

1. Determine the type of item (e.g. a book, book chapter, journal article). There are clues in the citation that will help you verify the type of item.

The style of a citation (i.e., italics, bold, parentheses) are not always an indication of the information you’re looking at.  For example, just because something is italicized does not automatically mean you are looking at a journal title.

• A journal article citation will include author(s), 2 titles (one for the article; one for the journal), volume and page numbers, publication date, and possibly a DOI or other information.

Oliver, Mary Beth and Stephen Green. “ Development of gender differences in children's responses to animated entertainment.”  Sex Roles 45, no.1-2 (Jul 2001): 67-88.

• A book chapter citation will contain author(s) of the chapter, editor(s) of the book, 2 titles (one for the chapter; the other for the entire book), publisher information (publication place and publishing company), a publication date, and page numbers of the chapter. E-book chapters can also have a DOI so don't let that fool you into thinking it's a journal article.

Turow, Joseph. “Family Boundaries, Commercialism, and the Internet: A Framework for Research.”  Children in the Digital Age: Influences of Electronic Media on Development . Eds. Sandra L. Calvert and Amy B. Jordan. Westport, CT: Praeger Publishers/Greenwood Publishing Group, Inc., 2002. 215-230.

• A book citation will contain the author(s), one title, publisher information (publication place and publishing company), and the publication date.

O'Barr, William M. Culture and the Ad: Exploring Otherness in the World of Advertising .  Boulder, CO: Westview Press, 1994.

2. Now that you know what kind of material you are looking for, you have an idea of where to look.

• If you have a book or chapter citation , search the Emory library catalog. The chapter title may be too specific for a catalog search.
• If you have a journal article citation , search the either the library catalog or ejournals for the title of the journal. The article title will be too specific. Ejournals only searches for electronic content so use the catalog to also find volumes that we have on paper.

3. Can you think of a shorter way of doing this?

• Hint: Look at the options in the configuring your computer section.
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Doctor of Nursing Practice (DNP): Conducting a Literature Review

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Selected Literature Review Books

Tips for Literature Reviews

• Search the nursing/healthcare literature to find studies relevant to your topic or PICOT question.
• Appraise your findings
• Summarize research studies
• Compare and contrast studies
• Synthesize the key concepts of your readings

Selected Online Resources

• DOI Help: Digital Object Identifiers (DOIs) How to find an article's Digital Object Identifier, or DOI.
• Evaluating Research Literature A guide from Kennesaw State University on how to assess and evaluate research studies.
• Literature Review: A Self-Guided Tutorial A step-by-step guide to conducting a literature review.
• Literature Reviews This guide provides detailed information about conducting a literature review
• Literature Reviews This guide from NYU gives details about various types of literature reviews and a roadmap for evidence synthesis.
• Literature Reviews & Research Methods This JSU subject guide offers advice on doing literature reviews and types of research methods
• RefWorks: Analysis & Synthesis How to use RefWorks to help with the synthesis of articles for a literature review. Part of a comprehensive subject guide from Kennesaw State University.
• What is a Literature Review? This page offers information on literature reviews

Welcome to the Houston Cole Library Guide pages! The Conducting a Literature Review Guide gives you links to key resources to help you get started finding and organizing your resources. Information is also available at Houston Cole Library's How to Conduct a Literature Review page.

Finding Information and Keeping Track of References

Selected databases to search for literature are listed below. RefWorks is a reference manager designed to keep track of the references cited in your papers, and to create bibliographies.

Don't Fear the Literature Review

• Literature Review Tutorial This short tutorial breaks down the aspects of a literature review and how to perform one with emphasis on tips to take the anxiety out of the process.

Literature Reviews: An Overview for Graduate Students

Health and Sciences Librarian

Other Useful Subject Guides

• Basic Academic Research by John Upchurch Last Updated Jul 13, 2023 9 views this year
• Evidence Based Practice in Nursing by Paula Barnett-Ellis Last Updated May 14, 2024 323 views this year
• How to Conduct a Literature Review by Karlie Johnson Last Updated Jun 30, 2023 163 views this year
• Medicine, Health, and Nursing by Paula Barnett-Ellis Last Updated May 14, 2024 496 views this year
• RefWorks by Karlie Johnson Last Updated Jun 30, 2023 12 views this year
• Scholarly Writing and Publishing by Paula Barnett-Ellis Last Updated Oct 27, 2023 43 views this year
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Public Health: Literature reviews

Created by health science librarians.

• Sciwheel & Citation managers
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Section Objective

What is a literature review, clearly stated research question, search terms, searching worksheets, boolean and / or.

• Systematic reviews
• Biostatistics
• Environmental Sciences and Engineering
• Epidemiology
• Health Behavior
• Health Policy and Management
• Maternal and Child Health
• Public Health Leadership

The content in the Literature Review section defines the literature review purpose and process, explains using the PICO format to ask a clear research question, and demonstrates how to evaluate and modify search results to improve the accuracy of the retrieval.

A literature review seeks to identify, analyze and summarize the published research literature about a specific topic.  Literature reviews are assigned as course projects; included as the introductory part of master's and PhD theses; and are conducted before undertaking any new scientific research project.

The purpose of a literature review is to establish what is currently known about a specific topic and to evaluate the strength of the evidence upon which that knowledge is based. A review of a clinical topic may identify implications for clinical practice. Literature reviews also identify areas of a topic that need further research.

A systematic review is a literature review that follows a rigorous process to find all of the research conducted on a topic and then critically appraises the research methods of the highest quality reports. These reviews track and report their search and appraisal methods in addition to providing a summary of the knowledge established by the appraised research.

The UNC Writing Center provides a nice summary of what to consider when writing a literature review for a class assignment. The online book, Doing a literature review in health and social care : a practical guide (2010), is a good resource for more information on this topic.

Obviously, the quality of the search process will determine the quality of all literature reviews. Anyone undertaking a literature review on a new topic would benefit from meeting with a librarian to discuss search strategies. A consultaiton with a librarian is strongly recommended for anyone undertaking a systematic review.

Use the email form on our Ask a Librarian page to arrange a meeting with a librarian.

The first step to a successful literature review search is to state your research question as clearly as possible.

It is important to:

• be as specific as possible
• include all aspects of your question

Clinical and social science questions often have these aspects (PICO):

• People/population/problem  (What are the characteristics of the population?  What is the condition or disease?)
• Intervention (What do you want to do with this patient?  i.e. treat, diagnose)
• Comparisons [not always included]  (What is the alternative to this intervention?  i.e. placebo, different drug, surgery)
• Outcomes  (What are the relevant outcomes?  i.e. morbidity, death, complications)

If the PICO model does not fit your question, try to use other ways to help be sure to articulate all parts of your question. Perhaps asking yourself Who, What, Why, How will help.  

Example Question:  Is acupuncture as effective of a therapy as triptans in the treament of adult migraine?

Note that this question fits the PICO model.

• Population: Adults with migraines
• Intervention: Acupuncture
• Comparison: Triptans/tryptamines
• Outcome: Fewer Headache days, Fewer migraines

A literature review search is an iterative process. Your goal is to find all of the articles that are pertinent to your subject. Successful searching requires you to think about the complexity of language. You need to match the words you use in your search to the words used by article authors and database indexers. A thorough PubMed search must identify the author words likely to be in the title and abstract or the indexer's selected MeSH (Medical Subject Heading) Terms.

Start by doing a preliminary search using the words from the key parts of your research question.

Step #1: Initial Search

Enter the key concepts from your research question combined with the Boolean operator AND. PubMed does automatically combine your terms with AND. However, it can be easier to modify your search if you start by including the Boolean operators.

migraine AND acupuncture AND tryptamines

The search retrieves a number of relevant article records, but probably not everything on the topic.

Step #2: Evaluate Results

Use the Display Settings drop down in the upper left hand corner of the results page to change to Abstract display.

Review the results and move articles that are directly related to your topic to the Clipboard .

Go to the Clipboard to examine the language in the articles that are directly related to your topic.

• look for words in the titles and abstracts of these pertinent articles that differ from the words you used
• look for relevant MeSH terms in the list linked at the bottom of each article

The following two articles were selected from the search results and placed on the Clipboard.

Here are word differences to consider:

• Initial search used acupuncture. MeSH Terms use Acupuncture therapy.
• Initial search used migraine.  Related word from MeSH Terms is Migraine without Aura and Migraine Disorders.
• Initial search used tryptamines. Article title uses sumatriptan. Related word from MeSH is Sumatriptan or Tryptamines.

With this knowledge you can reformulate your search to expand your retrieval, adding synonyms for all concepts except for manual and plaque.

#3 Revise Search

Use the Boolean OR operator to group synonyms together and use parentheses around the OR groups so they will be searched properly. See the image below to review the difference between Boolean OR / Boolean AND.

Here is what the new search looks like:

(migraine OR migraine disorders) AND (acupuncture OR acupuncture therapy) AND (tryptamines OR sumatriptan)

• Search Worksheet Example: Acupuncture vs. Triptans for Migraine
• Search Worksheet

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• Last Updated: May 14, 2024 1:21 PM
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• What is a Literature Review? | Guide, Template, & Examples

What is a Literature Review? | Guide, Template, & Examples

Published on 22 February 2022 by Shona McCombes . Revised on 7 June 2022.

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.

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 summarise sources – it analyses, synthesises, and critically evaluates to give a clear picture of the state of knowledge on the subject.

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Table of contents

Why write 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, frequently asked questions about literature reviews, introduction.

• Quick Run-through
• Step 1 & 2

When you write a dissertation or thesis, you will 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 scholarly context
• Develop a theoretical framework and methodology for your research
• Position yourself in relation to other researchers and theorists
• Show how your dissertation addresses a gap or contributes to a debate

You might also have to write a literature review as a stand-alone assignment. In this case, the purpose is to evaluate the current state of research and demonstrate your knowledge of scholarly debates around a topic.

The content will look slightly different in each case, but the process of conducting a literature review follows the same steps. We’ve written a step-by-step guide that you can follow below.

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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 objectives and questions .

If you are writing a literature review as a stand-alone assignment, you will have to choose a focus and develop a central question to direct your search. Unlike a dissertation research question, this question has to be answerable without collecting original data. You should be able to answer it based only on a review of existing publications.

Make a list of keywords

Start by creating a list of keywords related to your research topic. 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 if 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 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 use boolean operators to help narrow down your search:

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.

To identify the most important publications on your topic, take note of recurring citations. If the same authors, books or articles keep appearing in your reading, make sure to seek them out.

You probably won’t be able to read absolutely everything that has been written on the topic – you’ll have to evaluate which sources are most relevant to your questions.

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?
• How does the publication contribute to your understanding of the topic? What are its key insights and arguments?
• 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 find out how many times an article has been cited on Google Scholar – a high citation count means the article has been influential in the field, and should certainly be included in your literature review.

The scope of your review will depend on your topic and discipline: in the sciences you usually only review recent literature, but in the humanities you might take a long historical perspective (for example, to trace how a concept has changed in meaning over time).

Remember that you can use our template to summarise and evaluate sources you’re thinking about using!

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’s important to keep track of your sources with references to avoid plagiarism . It can be helpful to make an annotated bibliography, where you compile full reference 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.

You can use our free APA Reference Generator for quick, correct, consistent citations.

Prevent plagiarism, run a free check.

To begin organising your literature review’s argument and structure, you need to 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 organising the body of a literature review. You should have a rough idea of your strategy before you start writing.

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 summarising sources in order.

Try to analyse 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 organise 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.

If you are writing the literature review as part of your dissertation or thesis, reiterate your central problem or research question and give a brief summary of the scholarly context. You can emphasise the timeliness of the topic (“many recent studies have focused on the problem of x”) or highlight a gap in the literature (“while there has been much research on x, few researchers have taken y into consideration”).

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, make sure to follow these tips:

• Summarise and synthesise: give an overview of the main points of each source and combine them into a coherent whole.
• Analyse and interpret: don’t just paraphrase other researchers – add your own interpretations, 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 transitions and topic sentences to draw connections, comparisons and contrasts.

In the conclusion, you should summarise the key findings you have taken from the literature and emphasise their significance.

If the literature review is part of your dissertation or thesis, reiterate how your research addresses gaps and contributes new knowledge, or discuss how you have drawn on existing theories and methods to build a framework for your research. This can lead directly into your methodology section.

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 dissertation , thesis, research paper , or proposal .

There are several reasons to conduct a literature review at the beginning of a research project:

• To familiarise 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  dissertation . After the introduction , it grounds your research in a scholarly field and leads directly to your theoretical framework or methodology .

Cite this Scribbr article

If you want to cite this source, you can copy and paste the citation or click the ‘Cite this Scribbr article’ button to automatically add the citation to our free Reference Generator.

McCombes, S. (2022, June 07). What is a Literature Review? | Guide, Template, & Examples. Scribbr. Retrieved 9 June 2024, from https://www.scribbr.co.uk/thesis-dissertation/literature-review/

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Getting Started With Library Research: Literature Review

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What is a Literature Review?

A  literature review  is a comprehensive study and interpretation of literature that addresses a specific topic.

Literature reviews are generally conducted in one of two ways:

1) As a preliminary review before a larger study in order to critically evaluate the current literature and justify why further study and research is required.

2) As a project in itself that provides a comprehensive survey of the works published in a particular discipline or area of research over a specified period of time.  

Why conduct a literature review? They provide you with a handy guide to a particular topic. If you have limited time to conduct research, literature reviews can give you an overview or act as a stepping stone.

More:   different types of literature reviews  on how to conduct a literature review.

Literature Review Links

• PhD on Track: Types of Reviews Narrative & Systematic
• Purdue Owl: Literature Reviews
• Purdue OWL: Writing a Literature Review

How to Develop a Literature Review

How to develop a literature review from Academic Research Foundations: Quantitative by Rolin Moe

What is the Difference Between a Systematic Review and a Meta-analysis?

Dr. Singh discusses the difference between a systematic review and a meta-analysis.

Purpose of a Literature Review

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

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How to write a literature review in 6 steps

What is a literature review?

How to write a literature review, 1. determine the purpose of your literature review, 2. do an extensive search, 3. evaluate and select literature, 4. analyze the literature, 5. plan the structure of your literature review, 6. write your literature review, other resources to help you write a successful literature review, frequently asked questions about writing a literature review, related articles.

A literature review is an assessment of the sources in a chosen topic of research.

A good literature review does not just summarize sources. It analyzes the state of the field on a given topic and creates a scholarly foundation for you to make your own intervention. It demonstrates to your readers how your research fits within a larger field of study.

In a thesis, a literature review is part of the introduction, but it can also be a separate section. In research papers, a literature review may have its own section or it may be integrated into the introduction, depending on the field.

➡️ Our guide on what is a literature review covers additional basics about literature reviews.

• Identify the main purpose of the literature review.
• Do extensive research.
• Evaluate and select relevant sources.
• Analyze the sources.
• Plan a structure.
• Write the review.

In this section, we review each step of the process of creating a literature review.

In the first step, make sure you know specifically what the assignment is and what form your literature review should take. Read your assignment carefully and seek clarification from your professor or instructor if needed. You should be able to answer the following questions:

• How many sources do I need to include?
• What types of sources should I review?
• Should I evaluate the sources?
• Should I summarize, synthesize or critique sources?
• Do I need to provide any definitions or background information?

In addition to that, be aware that the narrower your topic, the easier it will be to limit the number of sources you need to read in order to get a good overview of the topic.

Now you need to find out what has been written on the topic and search for literature related to your research topic. Make sure to select appropriate source material, which means using academic or scholarly sources , including books, reports, journal articles , government documents and web resources.

➡️ If you’re unsure about how to tell if a source is scholarly, take a look at our guide on how to identify a scholarly source .

Come up with a list of relevant keywords and then start your search with your institution's library catalog, and extend it to other useful databases and academic search engines like:

• Google Scholar
• Science.gov

➡️ Our guide on how to collect data for your thesis might be helpful at this stage of your research as well as the top list of academic search engines .

Once you find a useful article, check out the reference list. It should provide you with even more relevant sources. Also, keep a note of the:

• authors' names
• page numbers

Keeping track of the bibliographic information for each source will save you time when you’re ready to create citations. You could also use a reference manager like Paperpile to automatically save, manage, and cite your references.

Read the literature. You will most likely not be able to read absolutely everything that is out there on the topic. Therefore, read the abstract first to determine whether the rest of the source is worth your time. If the source is relevant for your topic:

• Read it critically.
• Look for the main arguments.
• Take notes as you read.
• Organize your notes using a table, mind map, or other technique.

Now you are ready to analyze the literature you have gathered. While your are working on your analysis, you should ask the following questions:

• What are the key terms, concepts and problems addressed by the author?
• How is this source relevant for my specific topic?
• How is the article structured? What are the major trends and findings?
• What are the conclusions of the study?
• How are the results presented? Is the source credible?
• When comparing different sources, how do they relate to each other? What are the similarities, what are the differences?
• Does the study help me understand the topic better?
• Are there any gaps in the research that need to be filled? How can I further my research as a result of the review?

Tip: Decide on the structure of your literature review before you start writing.

There are various ways to organize your literature review:

• Chronological method : Writing in the chronological method means you are presenting the materials according to when they were published. Follow this approach only if a clear path of research can be identified.
• Thematic review : A thematic review of literature is organized around a topic or issue, rather than the progression of time.
• Publication-based : You can order your sources by publication, if the way you present the order of your sources demonstrates a more important trend. This is the case when a progression revealed from study to study and the practices of researchers have changed and adapted due to the new revelations.
• Methodological approach : A methodological approach focuses on the methods used by the researcher. If you have used sources from different disciplines that use a variety of research methods, you might want to compare the results in light of the different methods and discuss how the topic has been approached from different sides.

Regardless of the structure you chose, a review should always include the following three sections:

• An introduction, which should give the reader an outline of why you are writing the review and explain the relevance of the topic.
• A body, which divides your literature review into different sections. Write in well-structured paragraphs, use transitions and topic sentences and critically analyze each source for how it contributes to the themes you are researching.
• A conclusion , which summarizes the key findings, the main agreements and disagreements in the literature, your overall perspective, and any gaps or areas for further research.

➡️ If your literature review is part of a longer paper, visit our guide on what is a research paper for additional tips.

➡️ UNC writing center: Literature reviews

➡️ How to write a literature review in 3 steps

➡️ How to write a literature review in 30 minutes or less

The goal of a literature review is to asses the state of the field on a given topic in preparation for making an intervention.

A literature review should have its own independent section. You should indicate clearly in the table of contents where it can be found, and address this section as “Literature Review.”

There is no set amount of words for a literature review; the length depends on the research. If you are working with a large amount of sources, then it will be long. If your paper does not depend entirely on references, then it will be short.

Most research papers include a literature review. By assessing the available sources in your field of research, you will be able to make a more confident argument about the topic.

Literature reviews are most commonly found in theses and dissertations. However, you find them in research papers as well.

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Ten Simple Rules for Writing a Literature Review

Marco pautasso.

1 Centre for Functional and Evolutionary Ecology (CEFE), CNRS, Montpellier, France

2 Centre for Biodiversity Synthesis and Analysis (CESAB), FRB, Aix-en-Provence, France

Literature reviews are in great demand in most scientific fields. Their need stems from the ever-increasing output of scientific publications [1] . For example, compared to 1991, in 2008 three, eight, and forty times more papers were indexed in Web of Science on malaria, obesity, and biodiversity, respectively [2] . Given such mountains of papers, scientists cannot be expected to examine in detail every single new paper relevant to their interests [3] . Thus, it is both advantageous and necessary to rely on regular summaries of the recent literature. Although recognition for scientists mainly comes from primary research, timely literature reviews can lead to new synthetic insights and are often widely read [4] . For such summaries to be useful, however, they need to be compiled in a professional way [5] .

When starting from scratch, reviewing the literature can require a titanic amount of work. That is why researchers who have spent their career working on a certain research issue are in a perfect position to review that literature. Some graduate schools are now offering courses in reviewing the literature, given that most research students start their project by producing an overview of what has already been done on their research issue [6] . However, it is likely that most scientists have not thought in detail about how to approach and carry out a literature review.

Reviewing the literature requires the ability to juggle multiple tasks, from finding and evaluating relevant material to synthesising information from various sources, from critical thinking to paraphrasing, evaluating, and citation skills [7] . In this contribution, I share ten simple rules I learned working on about 25 literature reviews as a PhD and postdoctoral student. Ideas and insights also come from discussions with coauthors and colleagues, as well as feedback from reviewers and editors.

Rule 1: Define a Topic and Audience

How to choose which topic to review? There are so many issues in contemporary science that you could spend a lifetime of attending conferences and reading the literature just pondering what to review. On the one hand, if you take several years to choose, several other people may have had the same idea in the meantime. On the other hand, only a well-considered topic is likely to lead to a brilliant literature review [8] . The topic must at least be:

• interesting to you (ideally, you should have come across a series of recent papers related to your line of work that call for a critical summary),
• an important aspect of the field (so that many readers will be interested in the review and there will be enough material to write it), and
• a well-defined issue (otherwise you could potentially include thousands of publications, which would make the review unhelpful).

Ideas for potential reviews may come from papers providing lists of key research questions to be answered [9] , but also from serendipitous moments during desultory reading and discussions. In addition to choosing your topic, you should also select a target audience. In many cases, the topic (e.g., web services in computational biology) will automatically define an audience (e.g., computational biologists), but that same topic may also be of interest to neighbouring fields (e.g., computer science, biology, etc.).

Rule 2: Search and Re-search the Literature

After having chosen your topic and audience, start by checking the literature and downloading relevant papers. Five pieces of advice here:

• keep track of the search items you use (so that your search can be replicated [10] ),
• keep a list of papers whose pdfs you cannot access immediately (so as to retrieve them later with alternative strategies),
• use a paper management system (e.g., Mendeley, Papers, Qiqqa, Sente),
• define early in the process some criteria for exclusion of irrelevant papers (these criteria can then be described in the review to help define its scope), and
• do not just look for research papers in the area you wish to review, but also seek previous reviews.

The chances are high that someone will already have published a literature review ( Figure 1 ), if not exactly on the issue you are planning to tackle, at least on a related topic. If there are already a few or several reviews of the literature on your issue, my advice is not to give up, but to carry on with your own literature review,

The bottom-right situation (many literature reviews but few research papers) is not just a theoretical situation; it applies, for example, to the study of the impacts of climate change on plant diseases, where there appear to be more literature reviews than research studies [33] .

• discussing in your review the approaches, limitations, and conclusions of past reviews,
• trying to find a new angle that has not been covered adequately in the previous reviews, and
• incorporating new material that has inevitably accumulated since their appearance.

When searching the literature for pertinent papers and reviews, the usual rules apply:

• be thorough,
• use different keywords and database sources (e.g., DBLP, Google Scholar, ISI Proceedings, JSTOR Search, Medline, Scopus, Web of Science), and
• look at who has cited past relevant papers and book chapters.

Rule 3: Take Notes While Reading

If you read the papers first, and only afterwards start writing the review, you will need a very good memory to remember who wrote what, and what your impressions and associations were while reading each single paper. My advice is, while reading, to start writing down interesting pieces of information, insights about how to organize the review, and thoughts on what to write. This way, by the time you have read the literature you selected, you will already have a rough draft of the review.

Of course, this draft will still need much rewriting, restructuring, and rethinking to obtain a text with a coherent argument [11] , but you will have avoided the danger posed by staring at a blank document. Be careful when taking notes to use quotation marks if you are provisionally copying verbatim from the literature. It is advisable then to reformulate such quotes with your own words in the final draft. It is important to be careful in noting the references already at this stage, so as to avoid misattributions. Using referencing software from the very beginning of your endeavour will save you time.

Rule 4: Choose the Type of Review You Wish to Write

After having taken notes while reading the literature, you will have a rough idea of the amount of material available for the review. This is probably a good time to decide whether to go for a mini- or a full review. Some journals are now favouring the publication of rather short reviews focusing on the last few years, with a limit on the number of words and citations. A mini-review is not necessarily a minor review: it may well attract more attention from busy readers, although it will inevitably simplify some issues and leave out some relevant material due to space limitations. A full review will have the advantage of more freedom to cover in detail the complexities of a particular scientific development, but may then be left in the pile of the very important papers “to be read” by readers with little time to spare for major monographs.

There is probably a continuum between mini- and full reviews. The same point applies to the dichotomy of descriptive vs. integrative reviews. While descriptive reviews focus on the methodology, findings, and interpretation of each reviewed study, integrative reviews attempt to find common ideas and concepts from the reviewed material [12] . A similar distinction exists between narrative and systematic reviews: while narrative reviews are qualitative, systematic reviews attempt to test a hypothesis based on the published evidence, which is gathered using a predefined protocol to reduce bias [13] , [14] . When systematic reviews analyse quantitative results in a quantitative way, they become meta-analyses. The choice between different review types will have to be made on a case-by-case basis, depending not just on the nature of the material found and the preferences of the target journal(s), but also on the time available to write the review and the number of coauthors [15] .

Rule 5: Keep the Review Focused, but Make It of Broad Interest

Whether your plan is to write a mini- or a full review, it is good advice to keep it focused 16 , 17 . Including material just for the sake of it can easily lead to reviews that are trying to do too many things at once. The need to keep a review focused can be problematic for interdisciplinary reviews, where the aim is to bridge the gap between fields [18] . If you are writing a review on, for example, how epidemiological approaches are used in modelling the spread of ideas, you may be inclined to include material from both parent fields, epidemiology and the study of cultural diffusion. This may be necessary to some extent, but in this case a focused review would only deal in detail with those studies at the interface between epidemiology and the spread of ideas.

While focus is an important feature of a successful review, this requirement has to be balanced with the need to make the review relevant to a broad audience. This square may be circled by discussing the wider implications of the reviewed topic for other disciplines.

Rule 6: Be Critical and Consistent

Reviewing the literature is not stamp collecting. A good review does not just summarize the literature, but discusses it critically, identifies methodological problems, and points out research gaps [19] . After having read a review of the literature, a reader should have a rough idea of:

• the major achievements in the reviewed field,
• the main areas of debate, and
• the outstanding research questions.

It is challenging to achieve a successful review on all these fronts. A solution can be to involve a set of complementary coauthors: some people are excellent at mapping what has been achieved, some others are very good at identifying dark clouds on the horizon, and some have instead a knack at predicting where solutions are going to come from. If your journal club has exactly this sort of team, then you should definitely write a review of the literature! In addition to critical thinking, a literature review needs consistency, for example in the choice of passive vs. active voice and present vs. past tense.

Rule 7: Find a Logical Structure

Like a well-baked cake, a good review has a number of telling features: it is worth the reader's time, timely, systematic, well written, focused, and critical. It also needs a good structure. With reviews, the usual subdivision of research papers into introduction, methods, results, and discussion does not work or is rarely used. However, a general introduction of the context and, toward the end, a recapitulation of the main points covered and take-home messages make sense also in the case of reviews. For systematic reviews, there is a trend towards including information about how the literature was searched (database, keywords, time limits) [20] .

How can you organize the flow of the main body of the review so that the reader will be drawn into and guided through it? It is generally helpful to draw a conceptual scheme of the review, e.g., with mind-mapping techniques. Such diagrams can help recognize a logical way to order and link the various sections of a review [21] . This is the case not just at the writing stage, but also for readers if the diagram is included in the review as a figure. A careful selection of diagrams and figures relevant to the reviewed topic can be very helpful to structure the text too [22] .

Rule 8: Make Use of Feedback

Reviews of the literature are normally peer-reviewed in the same way as research papers, and rightly so [23] . As a rule, incorporating feedback from reviewers greatly helps improve a review draft. Having read the review with a fresh mind, reviewers may spot inaccuracies, inconsistencies, and ambiguities that had not been noticed by the writers due to rereading the typescript too many times. It is however advisable to reread the draft one more time before submission, as a last-minute correction of typos, leaps, and muddled sentences may enable the reviewers to focus on providing advice on the content rather than the form.

Feedback is vital to writing a good review, and should be sought from a variety of colleagues, so as to obtain a diversity of views on the draft. This may lead in some cases to conflicting views on the merits of the paper, and on how to improve it, but such a situation is better than the absence of feedback. A diversity of feedback perspectives on a literature review can help identify where the consensus view stands in the landscape of the current scientific understanding of an issue [24] .

Rule 9: Include Your Own Relevant Research, but Be Objective

In many cases, reviewers of the literature will have published studies relevant to the review they are writing. This could create a conflict of interest: how can reviewers report objectively on their own work [25] ? Some scientists may be overly enthusiastic about what they have published, and thus risk giving too much importance to their own findings in the review. However, bias could also occur in the other direction: some scientists may be unduly dismissive of their own achievements, so that they will tend to downplay their contribution (if any) to a field when reviewing it.

In general, a review of the literature should neither be a public relations brochure nor an exercise in competitive self-denial. If a reviewer is up to the job of producing a well-organized and methodical review, which flows well and provides a service to the readership, then it should be possible to be objective in reviewing one's own relevant findings. In reviews written by multiple authors, this may be achieved by assigning the review of the results of a coauthor to different coauthors.

Rule 10: Be Up-to-Date, but Do Not Forget Older Studies

Given the progressive acceleration in the publication of scientific papers, today's reviews of the literature need awareness not just of the overall direction and achievements of a field of inquiry, but also of the latest studies, so as not to become out-of-date before they have been published. Ideally, a literature review should not identify as a major research gap an issue that has just been addressed in a series of papers in press (the same applies, of course, to older, overlooked studies (“sleeping beauties” [26] )). This implies that literature reviewers would do well to keep an eye on electronic lists of papers in press, given that it can take months before these appear in scientific databases. Some reviews declare that they have scanned the literature up to a certain point in time, but given that peer review can be a rather lengthy process, a full search for newly appeared literature at the revision stage may be worthwhile. Assessing the contribution of papers that have just appeared is particularly challenging, because there is little perspective with which to gauge their significance and impact on further research and society.

Inevitably, new papers on the reviewed topic (including independently written literature reviews) will appear from all quarters after the review has been published, so that there may soon be the need for an updated review. But this is the nature of science [27] – [32] . I wish everybody good luck with writing a review of the literature.

Acknowledgments

Many thanks to M. Barbosa, K. Dehnen-Schmutz, T. Döring, D. Fontaneto, M. Garbelotto, O. Holdenrieder, M. Jeger, D. Lonsdale, A. MacLeod, P. Mills, M. Moslonka-Lefebvre, G. Stancanelli, P. Weisberg, and X. Xu for insights and discussions, and to P. Bourne, T. Matoni, and D. Smith for helpful comments on a previous draft.

Funding Statement

This work was funded by the French Foundation for Research on Biodiversity (FRB) through its Centre for Synthesis and Analysis of Biodiversity data (CESAB), as part of the NETSEED research project. The funders had no role in the preparation of the manuscript.