A literature review calls for extensive reading and analysis. While writing a research paper, most students consider this section to be the most challenging and time-consuming. In addition, you can be asked to compose it independently.
In research, it is common practice to begin with a well-written literature review. It’s a great tool for assessing the quality of previous studies and for explaining to your professor how your own work fits into the bigger picture. In addition, it outlines the fresh perspectives that your research will add to the discipline.
As a result, it is imperative that writers be familiar with and comfortable using a wide variety of academic resources. The summarization and synthesis of the prior material require an organizational strategy.
Keep reading this comprehensive guide to master how to write a literature review paper.
What is a literature review?
What constitutes a literature review is the reading and analysis of published works on the subject at hand. It comprises a literature review that serves as a summary of the current state of research and the state of the art in terms of data and knowledge.
Books, scholarly journals, and mainstream media all exist and may be useful in answering your research query.
Even more, it does more than just provide a synopsis of the literature. The literature review also provides an interpretation and evaluation of the pertinent ideas, methodologies, perspectives, and gaps in the current literature.
A literature review does not, however, rely solely on prior research. The author elaborates on the study’s relevance and explores the research subject from multiple angles.
Difference between a literature review and an annotated bibliography
Dissertations, theses, and research papers frequently include a section called “literature review,” which is an overview of relevant academic works on the subject. Overviews of the relevant theories and methods, as well as any gaps in the available research, can be found in literature reviews. Literature reviews, like other academic writing, consist of an introduction, main body, and conclusion.
An annotated bibliography is a reference list that also includes a brief summary (an annotation) of each cited work. It’s a common homework requirement for papers that require extensive research.
What is the purpose of a literature review?
Consider including the following in your research paper, thesis, or dissertation:
That the writer has read and understood the appropriate literature review purpose.
Building a theory and technique for your study is a good first step
It sets the author’s work in context with those of other researchers and academics.
By doing so, you can find a hole in the existing body of knowledge and work toward filling it.
It clears up inconsistencies that have been present in prior research.
A literature review’s length is often proportional to the total time spent on the research effort. Say, for instance, you’re tasked with producing a 10-page research report. Five or six sources are required for the literature review.
However, the best method to avoid any last-minute problems is to confer with the professor ahead of time about the correct criteria.
Write a literature review: Formats for literature reviews
So what are the basics of writing a literature review if you want your research paper to get a good grade, you need to make sure you follow the steps to writing a literature review
1. Explore the related readings
The first stage in writing a review is deciding on a specific focus.
Finding relevant sources of information is essential to writing a comprehensive literature review. It ought to be directly related to the issue and questions you’re investigating. In a similar vein, you can utilize the keywords to look through other resources.
Use the following academic databases to locate the appropriate publications and articles:
- However, if you are required to write a review in addition to other coursework, you should create a research topic to guide your investigation.
- Answering such a query requires doing so without generating any new information. To get the answer, you should instead look over the already-existing literature.
- In addition, you should make a list of terms that are relevant to the subject and the research question. The best places to look for credible information are in reputable articles and their reference lists.
- It’s unlikely that you’ll be able to learn everything there is to know about your topic of choice. To determine if the paper is useful, start by reading the abstract.
- Make sure you give yourself enough time to carefully consider the credibility of your sources. Create a list of references and check to see that no authors, articles, or books are used more than once in the literature review.
2. Determine the reliability of your sources
It would be impossible to read everything published on a study topic. If you want to go somewhere with your research, you need to focus instead on evaluating the sources that are most pertinent to your hypotheses.
- Respond to the following inquiries as you examine each source.
- Which issue or question has the author been addressing?
- To what extent do the basic ideas in this field have clear definitions?
- Which perspectives, strategies, and techniques are discussed?
- The validity of the study hinges on whether or not it used a tried-and-true method or a fresh one.
- In other words, what are the major conclusions drawn from the study?
- Which other works does this literature link to?
- Does the research raise any questions that have not been answered before?
- Can anything new be added to the body of knowledge in this area?
- Key arguments need to be discussed.
- Assess the merits and shortcomings of the study in detail.
- Be sure your sources are reliable and legitimate. The best way to back up your claim is to study relevant books, journals, and papers.
The topic and field of study also heavily influence the length of the literature review. Students in the sciences, for instance, typically write reviews of just recently published works. Humanities majors, however, must also familiarize themselves with the background knowledge and viewpoints on the subject.
Get started with the research and reading that will inform your writing. Take notes that you can later incorporate into the review’s body text.
When doing research, it is important to provide credit to your sources to avoid accusations of plagiarism. Aside from that, it can facilitate the creation of an annotated bibliography.
3. Find the links
Get a head start on your literature review by outlining its argument and structure. To do this, it is necessary to establish a link between the many sources cited in the abstract.
Depending on your assessment, you may want to check for:
- What kinds of ideas and approaches tend to rise and fall in popularity throughout time?
- What recurrent ideas are there?
- Contention and disagreement: what disagreements do the sources have?
- Deficiencies: what hasn’t been covered or what needs more attention in the existing literature?
- Is there any groundbreaking literature that could alter the course of study in this area?
- Using these criteria, you may pinpoint your unique addition to the body of knowledge.
4. Make a decision on the layout.
The literature review could be structured in a number of ways. You can organize it in chronological, thematic, methodological, or theoretical fashion, depending on how much time you have to devote to it.
Here, we’ll go over the various methods for structuring a review in further depth.
- Chronological
In terms of literature reviews, this is the simplest format to follow. However, you shouldn’t stop at a mere synopsis and citation of the literature. Examine instead the major discussions, studies, and trends that have influenced development in the subject. Talk about how you think the events transpired.
- Thematic
This method is useful since it allows the review to be broken down into manageable chunks. The selected topic will be broken down into discrete sections, each of which will focus on a particular subset of that topic.
- Methodological
It’s useful for contrasting the results of data collection from various studies. Perhaps analyzed will be:
- The qualitative strategy proved more fruitful than the quantitative one.
- Extensive discussion of the subject, including both empirical data and theoretical frameworks.
- Separation of the books into two categories: historical and cultural.
Theoretical
Many different theories and central ideas can be discussed in the context of a literature review. You can defend a certain theoretical strategy using this manner. Similarly, you can create a new theoretical framework by combining existing ones.
5. Write a literature review outline
A literature review, like any other academic work, should consist of an introduction, main body, and conclusion. Your literature review’s goals and objectives will determine the specific content that should go into each area.
- The introduction literature review
This review’s goals and scope are stated in the very first paragraph.
Restate the research question if your literature review is for a thesis or dissertation. In a similar vein, it is important to briefly recap the entire setting by pointing out the holes in the relevant literature.
For a stand-alone literature study, it is important to establish context. Talk about your study aims and the breadth of existing literature. Don’t leave out the literature’s contributions to your findings, though.
- The body literature review
Create sub-sections in the main body for each topic or research strategy. Consider these guidelines as you compose the meat of your literature review.
Summarize the most important information from each source and weave it together in a logical way.
Instead than merely restating the findings of others’ studies, try to draw your own conclusions.
Provide some context for how your findings add to the body of knowledge you’ve accumulated.
Discuss the benefits and drawbacks of the sources used.
If you want your body paragraphs to read smoothly, employ transitions and topic sentences.
- Conclusion literature review
In the final paragraph, restate your main points and stress why they are important.
Show the research gaps and how your work fills them in the conclusion of your dissertation or thesis. Talk about the ideas and approaches that you used to build your research framework.
A literature review that stands on its own, however, will wrap up with a discussion of the study’s broader implications and recommendations for future work in the field.
6. Correcting and revising
Once you’ve finished writing, it’s important to go back and fix any mistakes you may have made. You can use this to check for typos and make sure all the facts are included in your report.
How to write a research paper’s literature review and examples
The aforementioned instructions will be of great assistance to you as you work to define a literature review and craft your own. For help with the specifics of the review’s format, here are a few examples and samples.
If you want to write a flawless literature review, make sure to avoid these pitfalls.
Many students spend too little time researching and defining key terms.
- The literature you consulted is unrelated to the issue at hand.
- Over use of secondary resources without verifying them with primary sources.
- Taking the results of previous studies at face value without questioning their methods or analysis.
- Failure to provide details regarding the methods used to locate the literature study.
- Not incorporating chi-squared or meta-analytic techniques and instead accepting only statistical results as valid.
FAQs
What is the minimum number of references for a literature review?
A minimum of ten literature reviews are required to complete a single paper. If you want to have 100 pages of actual content (the body of the paper), then you need to use at least 100 different sources.
Where do you begin when writing a literature review’s introduction?
The purpose of a literature review in the introduction is to introduce the topic, justify the study’s relevance, provide a summary of relevant literature to place the study in perspective, and point out any gaps in our understanding of the topic. Using previous research, it will also show how it adds to our knowledge of the subject at hand.
In a nutshell
Writing a literature review is a time-consuming and labor-intensive task. You’ll be expected to do this challenging schoolwork at the university, college, or high school level.some pupils simply don’t have the talent for writing, while others view it as a tedious chore. They realize the difficulty of the task and decide to seek outside assistance.
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