Literature Review Tips

Search for Articles BEFORE You Write About Them

• I’ve seen so many people make the mistake of picking a topic, then finding 3/6 articles
they need, writing about them, then realizing when they go to look for more that there’s
not much left to be found.
• ALWAYS search for your articles and save them to your desktop FIRST, before you start
writing about them. That way, if you find out there’s not much research on the topic, you
can scratch the idea and look for another topic.

Scan the Articles Quickly, but Efficiently

• When deciding whether your article is good to use or not, it’s best to decide that before
you save it to your desktop/print it.
• Briefly scan the abstract, research question, and discussion section to see if it covers what
you are intending to write about in your review. Sometimes, the title seems like the
articles will work, but it actually doesn’t.
• So make sure your articles are all useable before you save them and move on to searching
for the next one!

Legend
• I ALWAYS use a colour legend when I read my articles.
Yellow = General info (ex. the information in the introduction [can be very useful for
your own introduction, introductory sentences, etc.])
Pink = Research question/hypothesis
Blue = Methods
Orange = Results
• Usually when you write literature reviews, you’re asked to discuss all of these things.
When you have each topic covered in its own colour, it’s really easy to quickly find what
you’re looking for in each article.

Summary Sticky Note

• After you read and highlight each article, write a very brief summary on what the article
researched and their main results.
• This way, when you go to write your review, you can read the post-it note of each article
to refresh your brain.

Read it, Write it

• I have found that reading an article and then writing about it immediately has the best
effect, as it’s fresh in your brain.
• So, read an article, write the paragraph about it. Read another article, then write a
paragraph about that one.

1
SKIP THE DATA ANALYSIS SECTION
• Unless your professor specifically asks to discuss the data analysis (I’m in third-year and
I’ve still never had that happen though), skip that section.
• The first time I wrote a literature review, I sat at my kitchen table crying for hours
because that section had all of these numbers and formulas and craziness, and I had
absolutely zero idea what any of it meant. THAT’S OKAY. You’re not supposed to
understand that yet.
• Pay attention to the method section and try your hardest to understand that, but the data
analysis stuff normally isn’t necessary for first-year literature reviews.

Page/Word Maximum
• A literature review I was assigned this year was the first one I’ve ever been assigned that
didn’t have a page/word limit.
• I’m sure you’ll soon discover that one of the biggest challenges of writing lit reviews is
the maximums assigned.
• The best way to write a paper with a maximum is to first, write as you normally would.
Don’t pay attention to the word/page limits as you’re writing, because it won’t come out
as well as it would if you weren’t stressing about using too many words.
• Then, at the end of your paper, condense it.
• I know, sometimes you’re like 300 words over and it seems impossible, but it’s not.
• Take out unnecessary words, shorten sentences, reword sentences, sometimes there’s
things you don’t think are relevant anymore and you can delete them, etc.
• It also helps to have a family member/friend help you out, as they have a fresh set of
eyes.

NO FIRST-PERSON
• Do not EVER use first person (ex. I, me, we, etc.) in a literature review.

NO “PROVE”
• You can never say that something is proved in psychology. You can say that it’s
suggested, highly correlated, etc. But do not ever say, “this proves that.”

NO QUOTATIONS
• I didn’t know that this was a rule when I wrote my first lit review.
• APA is NOT a fan of quoting what authors say.
• Instead, paraphrase what they say (write it in your own words) and then cite it.

Write Your Introduction Last

• I find that it’s easiest to write the introduction of your paper last. Why?
• At the end of writing your paper, you’ll have so much more knowledge and
understanding of the topic than when you first started writing.
• So take all that information you learned and write your introduction at the end!

2
APA EDITION 7
• APA has just recently switched over to the 7th edition, so make sure that if you’re looking
for an answer regarding APA format, it’s the 7th edition information.