A literature review is part of academic writing, covering analysis, narrative summaries, and critical evaluation of information found in the published literature pertaining to a specific topic or research question.
Through literature review, authors can express their thorough understanding and knowledge of theories, evidence, and current research trends of the research topic being investigated. Further, reviews help to identify what research has been done, how it has been researched and the gaps in the current knowledge that is, explored.
The nature of the literature review varies based on its purpose, it can be comprehensive or only cover core work published recently, or at a specific time.
Type of sources: It is also important to categorize articles by type of sources, usually, most of the articles fall under 3 types:
1. Formulate your research question: clearly define the research topic, develop research questions, and decide on key concepts
2. Literature search: identify materials that are most relevant and directly related to the topic being studied. A literature review does not need to be inclusive of all articles, books, and reports acquired during the background search, rather, it should identify key sources reflecting the main trends and gaps of the research topic.
3. Analyze and synthesize information: The analysis comprises of critical evaluation of the ideas, findings, and information made by the author according to a framework, that helps to understand different aspects of the pertinent literature. It is a systematic examination of relevant literature by breaking down its content into integral parts for discussion or interpretation.
Synthesizing the content of analysis connects or links relevant sources to identified themes, trends, and flaws within the larger body of knowledge on the research question. It shows the commonalities or patterns that fit together under a study and maps and overlays information from different sources.
A synthesis matrix can help keep sources organized and identify key themes that correspond to the research. The matrix may identify similarities and variances in methodology and research objectives, and support conclusions and future research recommendations.
Using a synthesis matrix will help organize research by theme and look for patterns in the sources from search results.
4. Organize research results: Different ways to organize and keep track of research sources for literature review include:
Make note of your searches to avoid repetitions and to save successful search results.
Use reference managers to cite sources and keep track of search results.
5. Types of Literature Reviews
Systematic review: Unlike other types of reviews, a systematic review identifies, analyzes, and synthesizes all experiments and evidence from existing relevant literature against a fixed set of standards that answer a set of research questions.
A systematic review is primarily used in health care and biomedical research studies but has started to be applied in social sciences and the engineering disciplines.
Critical review: Critical review is an in-depth analysis of the research correlating to a research question and critically appraises the quality of that research. Rather than just summarizing content, it includes a degree of analysis and conceptual contribution to represent new knowledge or derive a new theory.
So, You Have to Write a Literature Review by
Is a literature review looming in your future? Are you procrastinating on writing a literature review at this very moment? If so, this is the book for you. Writing often causes trepidation and procrastination for engineering students--issues that compound while writing a literature review, a type of academic writing most engineers are never formally taught. Consider this workbook as a "couch-to-5k" program for engineering writers rather than runners: if you complete the activities in this book from beginning to end, you will have a literature review draft ready for revision and content editing by your research advisor. So, You Have to Write a Literature Review presents a dynamic and practical method in which engineering students--typically late-career undergraduates or graduate students--can learn to write literature reviews, and translate genre-based writing instruction into easy-to-follow, bite-sized activities and content. Written in a refreshingly conversational style while acknowledging that writing is quite difficult, Catherine Berdanier and Joshua Lenart leverage their unique disciplinary backgrounds with decades of experience teaching academic engineering writing in this user-friendly workbook.
Literature Reviews by
This book begins by introducing the topic of knowledge in literature, including its scientific foundations. Due to the ever-increasing number of scientific publications, literature reviews are becoming more and more essential to stay updated. Literature Reviews describes an innovative system for creating systematic literature reviews, through reviewing, analyzing, and synthesizing scientific and technological literature. It then discusses systematic literature reviews, content analysis, and literature synthesis separately, before presenting the methodology to combine them in one process. It showcases computational tools to aid in this technique and offers examples of the method in action. Finally, the book takes a new of future developments in the subject. This book is of interest to graduate students, as well as researchers and academics, helping them to deepen insights and improve skills needed to conduct thorough literature reviews.
The Literature Review by
The latest edition features new graphics illustrating the pioneering six-step model, tips for writing in the early stages, and new learning tools and reflection sections.
Telling a Research Story by
This is a handy booklet for researchers/scholars writing literature reviews. ""Telling a Research Story: Writing a Literature Review"" is concerned with the writing of a literature review and is not designed to address any of the preliminary processes leading up to the actual writing of the literature review. This volume represents a revision and expansion of the material on writing literature reviews that appeared in English in ""Today's Research World"". It progresses from general to specific issues in the writing of literature reviews. It opens with some orientations that raise awareness of the issues that surround the telling of a research story. Issues of structure and matters of language, style, and rhetoric are then discussed. Sections on metadiscourse, citation, and paraphrasing and summarizing are included.
Structure of a literature review: A literature review has an introduction, a main body, and a conclusion.
In a stand-alone literature review- which is a part of an assignment or report, an abstract section needs to be included. An abstract covers an overview of the assignment or report, scope of review, precise problem statement or issues, research methods, knowledge gaps, key findings, and conclusions.
Introduction: This conveys a broad framework of the research area and topic, and highlights relevant issues or trends that emerged in the research topic being studied. It briefly describes the importance of the topic, scope, and purpose of the review. It provides signposting for the reader, explaining the sequence of topics covered.
Main body: Supports the analysis of literature under review according to themes or categories, relevant to the research question. The main body should express how each work overlaps/ varies, how the research being investigated would fit into the current research area, and justifications to prove research contribution based on previous works. It should be organized in a logical and coherent way, generally grouped with sub-headings or sections.
Conclusion: Explains how the literature review has answered the research question, highlighting the key points, ambiguities, and gaps within current research. It should show how researchers' novel ideas/ contributions address the knowledge gaps as well as future research recommendations.
