How to Tell if an Article Is a Literature Review
What is a Literature Review
A literature review is an objective, concise, critical summary of published research literature relevant to a topic being researched in an article.
A literature review does NOT:
A literature review does not just reference and list all of the textile yous accept cited in your paper.
- Presenting material that is not directly relevant to your written report will distract and frustrate the reader and make them lose sight of the purpose of your study.
- Starting a literature review with "A number of scholars have studied the human relationship betwixt X and Y" and simply list who has studied the topic and what each scholar concluded is not going to strengthen your paper.
A good literature review DOES:
- Present a brief typology that orders articles and books into groups to help readers focus on unresolved debates, inconsistencies, tensions, and new questions about a enquiry topic.
- Summarize the about relevant and important aspects of the scientific literature related to your area of enquiry
- Synthesize what has been done in this area of research and by whom, highlight what previous research indicates about a topic, and identify potential gaps and areas of disagreement in the field
- Give the reader an understanding of the background of the field and show which studies are of import—and highlight errors in previous studies
Building Your Literature Review Bookshelf
Ane fashion to excogitate of a literature review is to think about writing it as you would build a bookshelf. You don't need to cut each slice past yourself from scratch. Rather, you can take the pieces that other researchers have cut out and put them together to build a framework on which to hang your ain "books"—that is, your own report methods, results, and conclusions.
What Makes a Good Literature Review?
The contents of a literature review are determined by many factors, including its precise purpose in the article, the caste of consensus with a given theory or tension between competing theories, the length of the article, the number of previous studies existing in the given field, etc. The following are some of the most important elements that a literature review provides.
- A historical groundwork for your enquiry: Clarify what has been written virtually your field of research to highlight what is new and meaning in your study—or how the analysis itself contributes to the understanding of this field, even in a minor way. Providing a historical groundwork likewise demonstrates to other researchers and journal editors your competency in discussing theoretical concepts. Yous should also make sure to empathise how to paraphrase scientific literature to avoid plagiarism in your work.
- The current context in which your research is situated: Discuss central (or peripheral) questions, bug, and debates in the field. Because a field is constantly beingness updated past new piece of work, you lot tin can testify where your inquiry fits into this context and explain developments and trends in research.
- A discussion of relevant theories and concepts that provide the foundation for your research: For example, if y'all are researching the relationship between ecological environments and man populations, provide models and theories that focus on specific aspects of this connection to contextualize your study. If your written report asks a question concerning sustainability, mention a theory or model that underpins this concept. If it concerns invasive species, choose cloth that is focused in this direction.
- A definition of the relevant terminology: In the natural sciences, the meaning of terms is relatively straightforward and consistent. But if y'all present a term that is obscure or context-specific, y'all should define the meaning of the term in the Introduction section (if you are introducing a report) or in the summary of the literature existence reviewed.
- A description of related research that shows how your work expands or challenges earlier studies or fills in gaps in previous piece of work: You can use your literature review equally show of what works, what doesn't, and what is missing in the field.
- Supporting prove for a applied problem or issue your inquiry is addressing that demonstrates its importance: Referencing related research establishes your expanse of inquiry as reputable and shows you are building upon previous work that other researchers take accounted significant.
Types of Literature Reviews
Literature reviews can differ in structure, length, and corporeality and breadth of content included. They can range from the selective (a very narrow area of research or just a single work) to the comprehensive (a larger amount or range of works). They can also exist part of a larger work or stand on their own.
- A course consignment is an example of a selective, stand-alone piece of work. It focuses on a small segment of the literature on a topic and makes upward an unabridged piece of work on its own.
- The literature review in a dissertation or thesis is both comprehensive and helps make up a larger work.
- A majority of journal articles start with a selective literature review to provide context for the inquiry reported in the study; such a literature review is ordinarily included in the Introduction section (just it can likewise follow the presentation of the results in the Discussion department).
- Some literature reviews are both comprehensive and stand up as a separate work—in this example, the entire commodity analyzes the literature on a given topic.
Type of Literature Reviews Constitute in Journals
The two types of literature reviews commonly found in journals are those introducing research articles (studies and surveys) and stand-alone literature analyses. They tin differ in their telescopic, length, and specific purpose.
Literature reviews introducing research articles
The literature review found at the offset of a journal article is used to introduce research related to the specific study and is establish in the Introduction department, usually near the cease. Information technology is shorter than a stand-alone review because it must exist limited to very specific studies and theories that are directly relevant to the current study. Its purpose is to ready research precedence and provide support for the study'due south theory, methods, results, and/or conclusions. Non all research articles incorporate an explicit review of the literature, only most exercise, whether it is a discrete section or indistinguishable from the rest of the Introduction.
How to construction a literature review for an article
When writing a literature review as function of an introduction to a study, simply follow the construction of the Introduction and move from the general to the specific—presenting the broadest background data about a topic first and and so moving to specific studies that support your rationale, finally leading to your hypothesis statement. Such a literature review is often indistinguishable from the Introduction itself—the literature is INTRODUCING the groundwork and defining the gaps your study aims to fill.
The stand-solitary literature review
The literature review published as a stand-alone article presents and analyzes as many of the important publications in an area of report every bit possible to provide background information and context for a electric current area of research or a study. Stand-alone reviews are an excellent resource for researchers when they are first searching for the about relevant data on an expanse of report.
Such literature reviews are more often than not a bit broader in telescopic and can extend further back in fourth dimension. This means that sometimes a scientific literature review can be highly theoretical, in addition to focusing on specific methods and outcomes of previous studies. In improver, all sections of such a "review article" refer to existing literature rather than describing the results of the authors' own report.
In addition, this type of literature review is usually much longer than the literature review introducing a written report. At the finish of the review follows a conclusion that once once again explicitly ties all of the cited works together to show how this analysis is itself a contribution to the literature. While not absolutely necessary, such articles often include the terms "Literature Review" or "Review of the Literature" in the title. Whether or not that is necessary or appropriate can also depend on the specific author instructions of the target periodical. Accept a await at this article for more input on how to compile a stand-alone review article that is insightful and helpful for other researchers in your field.
Writing a Literature Review in 6 Steps
So how do authors plough a network of manufactures into a coherent review of relevant literature?
Writing a literature review is not usually a linear process—authors oftentimes go back and cheque the literature while reformulating their ideas or making adjustments to their study. Sometimes new findings are published earlier a study is completed and demand to be incorporated into the current work. This also means you will non be writing the literature review at whatever ane time, but constantly working on it before, during, and later your study is complete.
Hither are some steps that will help yous begin and follow through on your literature review.
Step 1: Choose a topic to write most—focus on and explore this topic.
Choose a topic that you are familiar with and highly interested in analyzing; a topic your intended readers and researchers will find interesting and useful; and a topic that is current, well-established in the field, and about which there has been sufficient enquiry conducted for a review. This volition help yous find the "sweet spot" for what to focus on.
Stride 2: Research and collect all the scholarly information on the topic that might be pertinent to your study.
This includes scholarly articles, books, conventions, conferences, dissertations and theses—these and any other academic piece of work related to your area of study is called "the literature."
Step 3: Clarify the network of information that extends or responds to the major works in your area; select the material that is near useful.
Apply thought maps and charts to identify intersections in the enquiry and to outline important categories; select the material that will be most useful to you review.
Step 4: Draw and summarize each article—provide the essential information of the article that pertains to your study.
Determine ii-3 important concepts (depending on the length of your article) that are discussed in the literature; have notes about all of the important aspects of this report relevant to your topic beingness reviewed.
For example, in a given written report, perhaps some of the main concepts are X, Y, and Z. Note these concepts and then write a brief summary about how the article incorporates them. In reviews that introduce a study, these can exist relatively curt. In stand up-alone reviews, there may exist significantly more texts and more concepts.
Step 5: Demonstrate how these concepts in the literature relate to what you discovered in your study or how the literature connects the concepts or topics being discussed.
In a literature review intro for an article, this information might include a summary of the results or methods of previous studies that correspond and/or confirm to those sections in your own written report. For a stand-alone literature review, this may mean highlighting the concepts in each commodity and showing how they strengthen a hypothesis or show a design.
Discuss unaddressed bug in previous studies. These studies that are missing something you accost are important to include in your literature review. In add-on, those works whose theories and conclusions straight back up your findings volition be valuable to review here.
Step half dozen: Identify relationships in the literature and develop and connect your ain ideas to them.
This is substantially the same as step 5, but focused on the connections between the literature and the current study or guiding concepts or arguments of the paper, not merely on the connections between the works themselves.
Your hypothesis, argument, or guiding concept is the "aureate thread" that will ultimately tie the works together and provide readers with specific insights they didn't have earlier reading your literature review. Make sure you know where to put the research question, hypothesis, or statement of the problem in your research paper so that you guide your readers logically and naturally from your introduction of earlier work and prove to the conclusions you desire them to draw from the bigger picture.
Your review volition not merely cover publications on your topics simply will include your own ideas and contributions. By post-obit these steps you lot volition be telling the specific story that sets the background and shows the significance of your enquiry and you can turn a network of related works into a focused review of the literature.
In addition to these guidelines, authors also demand to check which fashion guidelines to employ (APA, AMA, MLA, etc.) and what specific rules the target periodical might have for how to structure such articles or how many studies to include—such information can ordinarily be constitute on the journals' "Guide for Authors" pages.
Finally, after you lot have finished drafting your literature review, exist sure to receive proofreading and language editing for your academic work. A competent proofreader who understands academic writing conventions and the specific style guides used by academic journals will ensure that your paper is gear up for publication in your target periodical.
Wordvice Resources
If you need more advice on how many references to include in your newspaper, how to write the abstract or title for your manuscript, or how to impress the editor of your target journal with a perfect cover letter, then head over to the Wordvice academic resources website.
Source: https://blog.wordvice.com/how-to-write-a-literature-review/
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