Title: Mastering the Art of Writing a Literature Review

Welcome to our guide on how to write a literature review effectively. Whether you're a seasoned
researcher or just starting your academic journey, crafting a literature review can be a daunting task.
It requires meticulous attention to detail, critical analysis, and a deep understanding of the subject
matter. In this comprehensive guide, we'll walk you through the essential steps to produce a high-
quality literature review that meets academic standards.

Understanding the Purpose of a Literature Review

Before delving into the intricacies of writing a literature review, it's crucial to understand its purpose.
A literature review serves several key functions:

1. Providing context: It situates your research within the broader scholarly conversation,
demonstrating your understanding of existing literature on the topic.
2. Identifying gaps: By critically analyzing existing literature, you can identify gaps in the
research that your study aims to address.
3. Evaluating sources: A literature review requires you to assess the credibility, relevance, and
significance of the sources you cite.
4. Establishing credibility: A well-written literature review showcases your expertise in the field
and establishes your credibility as a researcher.

Key Steps to Writing a Literature Review

1. Define your scope: Clearly define the scope and objectives of your literature review.
Determine the specific research question or problem you aim to address and establish criteria
for selecting relevant sources.
2. Conduct comprehensive research: Thoroughly search academic databases, libraries, and
relevant journals to identify scholarly sources that are pertinent to your topic. Consider both
seminal works and recent publications to provide a comprehensive overview of the literature.
3. Analyze and synthesize sources: Critically evaluate each source, paying attention to its
methodology, findings, and theoretical framework. Identify key themes, debates, and trends
emerging from the literature and synthesize the information to provide a coherent narrative.
4. Organize your literature review: Structure your literature review in a logical and systematic
manner. Consider organizing it chronologically, thematically, or methodologically, depending
on the nature of your research question.
5. Write with clarity and precision: Ensure that your writing is clear, concise, and free of jargon.
Articulate your arguments and insights coherently, providing clear transitions between ideas
and sections.
6. Critically evaluate the literature: Engage critically with the literature by highlighting
strengths, weaknesses, and contradictions in existing research. Discuss the implications of the
findings and suggest avenues for future research.

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Conclusion

Mastering the art of writing a literature review is essential for any researcher or student seeking to
contribute to the academic discourse. By following the steps outlined in this guide and seeking
assistance from ⇒ StudyHub.vip ⇔, you can produce a literature review that is insightful,
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testament to your scholarly prowess.
Academic Research: Create a literature review for your thesis, dissertation, or research paper. The
literature review usually comes near the beginning of your thesis or dissertation. Think of this as if
you used a yellow highlighter to mark the key sentences in the report and then siphoned them all out
onto a separate page and edited them for readability. As you’re working through your treasure chest,
it’s essential that you simultaneously start organising the information. 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. One or two sentences outlining the method, explaining what was
done and how. 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. SciSpace GPT: Choose the
Best GPT for Research Literature Review and Theoretical Framework: Understanding the
Differences Types of Essays in Academic Writing An official website of the United States
government The.gov means it’s official. Analysis: Involves critically evaluating and summarizing key
findings, methodologies, and debates found in. How can I further my research as a result of the
review. Here are a few other sections you might want to consider: Current Situation: Information
necessary to understand the topic or focus of the literature review. For example, you may use a
literature review to develop an argument that: justifies the significance or interest of a research
question demonstrates your professional competence in a field of research critically reviews theory or
methodological approaches weighs evidence to reach a conclusion or recommendation. Clearly-
stated hypotheses: What was your hypothesis. In what ways does it relate to other sources on the
same topic. The equivalent resource for the older APA 6 style can be found here. Sample of Journals'
Author Instructions for Literature Reviews Conducted as Part of Original Research Article a
Common Problem Areas for Reporting Literature Reviews in the Context of Scholarly Articles
Locating and Organizing the Literature Three resources may facilitate identifying relevant literature:
human resources, search tools, and related literature. It is a discussion of previously published
research on the topic. They are familiar with research tools and databases and can often direct you to
sources you may not have found on your own. When writing your review, keep in mind these issues.
Comprehensive knowledge of the literature of the field is essential to most research papers. Doing
Your Literature Review: Traditional and Systematic Techniques. Magazines, on the other hand, are
often only beneficial as a starting point for your study because they contain news or broad
information about discoveries, policies, and other topics that may then be further studied in more
specialized sources. Does it confirm, add to, or challenge established knowledge. In other words,
“Objective,” “Method,” “Results,” and “Conclusions” are presented as labels before their
corresponding sentences in the abstract. Download Word doc Download Google doc Before you
begin searching for literature, you need a clearly defined topic. You can do this by assessing the
citation count of any given article in Google Scholar. While this is useful for demonstrating how
theories evolve, make sure to include your own interpretation of trends, turning points, or
disagreements, demonstrating how they contributed shape where the subject is headed. Any papers
submitted to an APA journal should include three to five keywords. If there is a key article or book
that is of major importance to the development of your own research ideas, it is important to give
extra space to describing and critiquing that piece of literature in more depth.
Your literature review should include all concepts, models, and frameworks associated with the topic
under investigation. After an overview of similar strategic measuring tools in industry (Fitzgerald et
al. It is always good to have a condensed summary that is self-contained and independent of the rest
of your review. We identify and problematize 275 review articles that claim to critically review a
body of literature and find that most to not deliver on this claim. This should be according to the
topic of your study. For example, if you are reviewing literature about women and religion, key
themes can include the role of women in churches and the religious attitude towards women. Was the
research funded by a source that could influence the findings. 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. This structure can (and likely will) evolve as you write, but you need
some sort of outline as a starting point. Sort through other current bibliographies or literature reviews
in the field to get a sense of what your discipline expects. The introduction should clearly establish
the focus and purpose of the literature review. Prevent plagiarism. Run a free check. To begin
organizing your literature review’s argument and structure, be sure you understand the connections
and relationships between the sources you’ve read. Types of reviews 1. Define your research
question 2. I love to know how to do good job Thank you so much Derek for such useful
information on writing up a good literature review. To cite a literature review in APA style, you need
to provide the author's name, the title of the article, and the year of publication. Make sure you
thoroughly go through appropriate reference sources like books, reports, journal articles, government
docs, and web-based resources. There is probably a continuum between mini- and full reviews. This
can be especially helpful for students or scholars getting into a new research area, or for directing an
entire community of scholars toward questions that have not yet been answered. What you include in
each depends on the objective of your literature review. Keeping these notes will help you avoid this
nightmare in the future. It was found that physical structures, such as standardized furniture, heating
that could not be individually regulated, and no possession of a house key for residents limited their
feelings of independence. From the number of articles written by the author and the number of times
the writer has been cited by other authors, a researcher will be able to assume that the particular
author is an expert in the area and, thus, a key resource for consultation in the current research to be
undertaken. You mentioned cataloging references, I would like the template for excel. The
introduction of the main discussion and conclusion should be specified as well. There are a few
guidelines you should follow during the writing stage as well. Table 2 lists the most common
problems that we have encountered as authors, reviewers, and editors. 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. This enables the work to be indexed correctly in
the archive and associated with appropriate scholarly conversations. Follow the organizational
structure you developed above, including the headings and subheadings you constructed. Keywords
in an APA Abstract After the paragraph containing the main elements of your abstract, you can also
include keywords related to your paper.
You can use it to discuss various theories, models, and definitions of key concepts. A few aspects
that you should be aware of while writing a literature review include: Rise to prominence: Theories
and methods that have gained reputation and supporters over time. This keeps the TOC from
becoming long and unwieldy. We’ve written a step-by-step guide that you can follow below. View
all journals Explore content About the journal Publish with us Sign up for alerts CAREER
FEATURE 04 December 2020 Correction 09 December 2020 How to write a superb literature
review Andy Tay is a freelance writer based in Singapore. Review the abstracts of research studies
carefully. Literature review despite being challenging offers a theoretical framework to the target
audience. If there are conflicting studies, why do you think that is. As you’re doing your research,
create an annotated bibliography ( see our page on the this type of document ). If the Method looks
legitimate, the Results appear thorough, and the Discussion does a clear job explaining how it fits
together, then your Conclusion should be well received without extras. For example, if you are
shopping for a new car, the. Again, you can use this to make an argument about gaps in the research.
You need to pack a great deal of relevant content into a short piece. Systematic Reviews in the
Social Sciences: A Practical Guide. In order to increase the probability of finding a simpler and more
appropriate tool. 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. This literature review describes findings from studies on various
employment and training interventions to 1) assist individuals in recovery, 2) provide assistance to
employers preventing opioid use disorder and creating a recovery-friendly workplace, and 3) develop
the health care workforce to address the opioid crisis. You must be careful to cite all of your sources
in your literature review and that your works cited page is accurate. Provide any conclusions or
implications of the study. Give your interpretation of how and why certain developments occurred. I
requested to download the free literature review template, however, your website wouldn’t allow me
to complete the request or complete a download. Here are some of the key aspects of an APA
abstract that might be requested by the publication: Basic problem: Why did this work need to be
done. Stick to the word limit (typically between 150-250 words for an APA abstract) and avoid
unnecessary details. 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. The authors
here recapitulate important features of Hamilton’s study, but then synthesize it by rephrasing the
study’s significance and relating it to their own work. You’ll invariably end up wasting huge
amounts of time re-writing and re-shaping, or you’ll just land up with a disjointed, hard-to-digest
mess. When you’ve finished writing and revising your literature review, don’t forget to proofread
thoroughly before submitting. 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. Remember, the purpose
of the literature review is to build the theoretical foundation that will help you achieve your research
aims and objectives, and answer your research questions. Narrow your topic and select papers
accordingly Consider your specific area of study.
The literature review usually comes near the beginning of your dissertation. In technical reports, an
entire section of your paper may be devoted to a literature review. We’ve written a step-by-step
guide that you can follow below. Understanding the use of balanced scorecard in the context of state
owned ent. It is often useful to review the types of studies that previous researchers have launched as
a means of determining what approaches might be of most benefit in further developing a topic.
Literature Reviews A literature review discusses published information in a particular subject area,
and sometimes information in a particular subject area within a certain time period. Anything that
does not comfortably fit in the main part of the report, but cannot be left out of the report altogether.
Instead, your readers will expect your information to be clear and your ideas to be fluid. It shouldn't
just list and summarise what you've read. Don’t be afraid to do more research if you discover a new
thread as you’re writing. The practice of citing a source that you haven’t read directly is known as
“grandfathering,” and it’s not allowed. In a sense, you are going back to the big picture provided by
your introduction, incorporating your conclusions into that picture. Another key element is whether
your research is based on primary or secondary sources. If you choose to include research in the
introduction, focus on paraphrases or specific statistics—you do not want to bog down your
introduction with heavy quotations or “filler” information. Frodeman, Robert. The Oxford Handbook
of Interdisciplinarity. He then relates his theories on learning organisations back. The more relevant
keywords you include, the more searchable your paper will be. Besides the obvious reason for
students -- because it is assigned! -- a literature review helps you explore the research that has come
before you, to see how your research question has (or has not) already been addressed. This will give
you a clear picture of what a high-quality literature review looks like and hopefully provide some
inspiration for your own. The various findings and arguments from each piece of literature form the
individual puzzle pieces, and you then put these together to develop a picture of the current state of
knowledge. For instance, first you would talk about the British biological studies of the 18th century,
then about Moby Dick, published in 1851, then the book on sperm whales in other art (1968), and
finally the biology articles (1980s) and the recent articles on American whaling of the 19th century.
This is mind blowing, the detailed explanation and simplicity is perfect. For an experimental report,
your abstract should: Identify the problem. Kiziloglu - 2015 - The effect of organizational learning
on firm innovation c. Tables are rows and columns of words and numbers; they are not considered
figures. Also, the first draft should not be considered the final or near-final version. NOTE: Most
often the literature review will incorporate some combination of types. Referring to the different
sources is important in order to prove a point in the literature. Many government agencies and
businesses commission or conduct research. One method is to interpret how or why specific
developments occurred.
Magazines, on the other hand, are often only beneficial as a starting point for your study because
they contain news or broad information about discoveries, policies, and other topics that may then be
further studied in more specialized sources. The extent of which you incorporate this content
depends on the purpose and the audience. This technique will give you a strong indication of which
points were clearly communicated and which weren’t. However, your instructor may ask for fewer
words or provide you with additional guidance. There are multiple approaches to deciding how
many sources to include in a literature review section. With reviews, the usual subdivision of
research papers into introduction, methods, results, and discussion does not work or is rarely used.
Their conclusions should be regarded with greater skepticism than previously published research. In
these cases, the lit review just needs to cover scholarship that is important to the issue you are
writing about; sometimes it will also cover key sources that informed your research methodology.
Thematic: If you have found some recurring central themes that you will continue working with
throughout your piece, you can organize your literature review into subsections that address different
aspects of the topic. The introduction should clearly establish the focus and purpose of the literature
review. You can combine the two lists under the heading, “List of Figures and Tables.”. 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. Look at other abstracts in professional journals for
examples of how to summarize your paper. APA abstract example: Structured format Next up is an
example of a properly formatted APA abstract written in structured format. For the sperm whale
project, one methodological approach would be to look at cultural differences between the portrayal
of whales in American, British, and French art work. You may want to start with a rough draft of the
abstract, which you can use as an outline to guide you when writing your paper. Why would a reader
be interested in the larger work. It is an excellent repository where you can find millions of only
peer-reviewed articles and full-text PDF files. Again thank you. The information in this article is
very useful for students and very interesting I really like your article thanks for sharing this post.
Include any studies contrary to your point of view. Here are some examples: Chronological: The
simplest approach is to trace the development of the topic over time, which helps familiarize the
audience with the topic (for instance if you are introducing something that is not commonly known
in your field). Instead, it focuses on the “methods” of the researcher or writer. This will make it easy
for you to search for titles with certain words, order research by date, or group by author. It is also
helpful to use as a guide is the searches are not finding any useful results. It would help if you
develop your literature review straight out of the dissertation outline so that it flows smoothly and is
consistent. Sort through other current bibliographies or literature reviews in the field to get a sense of
what your discipline expects. Here are the different types of literature reviews: Argumentative review
It is called an argumentative review when you carefully present literature that only supports or
counters a specific argument or premise to establish a viewpoint. It provides an overview of current
knowledge, allowing you to identify relevant theories, methods, and gaps in the existing research.
How to Write a Literature Review in 6 Steps Nouns and Pronouns. Verbs. Parts of speech. The
literature review makes up a large portion of any research paper, so writing it well is a valuable skill.
Lamb, Sandra E. 1998. How to Write It: A Complete Guide to Everything You’ll Ever Write.
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.
Understanding and conforming to this template will help you to organize complex information as
well as meet your reader’s specific needs. Researchers should determine which details are most
important to their study (eg, participants, setting, methods, and outcomes) and generate a strategy
for keeping those details organized and accessible. Check out Scribbr’s professional proofreading
services. It may benefit you to get support from a literature review writing service to obtain a
complete, professional literature review formatted in APA style as a guideline to show you the right
way to review any and all research sources included in it. You will include more extensive research in
the body of the report, so it is not needed here. Mention the number of participants and what
demographic they fit Describe any tools, equipment, or apparatus you used for the experiment. Note
how the first line is not indented like a normal paragraph. They are action-takers in a corporation,
organization, business, or agency. Identifying Gaps: Aims to pinpoint areas where there is a lack of
research or unresolved questions, highlighting opportunities for further investigation. Sometimes,
completing a study on a topic that has already been extensively researched doesn’t make sense.
Evaluate and synthesize the studies' ?ndings and conclusions. If you are uncertain which style to
use, ask your professor. Pivotal publications: are there any influential theories or studies that changed
the direction of the field. Academic Essay for Undergraduate Writing Course Fat women feel
enormous pressure to be thin. Please let me know if it meets your needs.” The submittal letter
explains the context —the events that brought the report about. People who spend their lives
working in academia often struggle to get the notoriety they deserve, despite spending countless
hours working for the betterment of society. Be sure to refer to your assignment instructions to find
out what will be required. For example, if you are shopping for a new car, the. 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 Citation Generator. Last Updated:
Jan 4, 2024 10:52 AM URL: Have a language expert improve your writing Run a free plagiarism
check in 10 minutes, automatically generate references for free. Here is what a set of keywords
might look like for that paper, pulling between 3-5 specific terms from the abstract itself. Prevent
plagiarism. Run a free check. To begin organizing your literature review’s argument and structure, be
sure you understand the connections and relationships between the sources you’ve read. Always
introduce the list so that your audience understands the purpose and context of it. Lamb, Sandra E.
1998. How to Write It: A Complete Guide to Everything You’ll Ever Write. Psychology experiments,
however, may contain distinctive elements. Literature reviews are designed to provide an overview
of sources you have used in researching a particular topic and to demonstrate to your readers how
your research fits within existing scholarship about the topic. Try to analyze patterns, turning points
and key debates that have shaped the direction of the field. Coherent and readable: Your abstract
needs to be as clear as possible. What are the requirements of a set of key performance indicators
(KPIs) that meet.
You might argue for the relevance of a specific theoretical approach, or combine various theoretical
concepts to create a framework for your research. Get real-time explanations, summaries, and
answers to your questions for the paper you're reviewing, making navigating and understanding the
complex literature landscape easier. Here are some examples: Chronological: The simplest approach is
to trace the development of the topic over time, which helps familiarize the audience with the topic
(for instance if you are introducing something that is not commonly known in your field). For
example, you may want to cite a collection of newspaper articles to demonstrate the emergence of a
recent trend. When to review the literature With small-scale writing projects, the literature review is
likely to be done just once; probably before the writing begins. The first approach would be to look
level you are at as a researcher. By doing this, you’ll achieve a comprehensive literature base that is
both well-rooted in tried and tested theory and current. Your employer’s role here is proprietary, i.e.,
the employer should be considered the “owner” of the report’s content. The spacing and margins are
often dictated by the audience and genre. To help you develop a big-picture view and synthesise all
the information, you might find mind mapping software such as Freemind useful. We do not sell
your data and do not resell our papers. Sample papers The sample papers show the format that
authors should use to submit a manuscript for publication in a professional journal and that students
should use to submit a paper to an instructor for a course assignment. Historical literature reviews
focus on examining research throughout a period of time, often starting with the first time an issue,
concept, theory, phenomena emerged in the literature, then tracing its evolution within the
scholarship of a discipline. How to write a literature review Information and services Student support
Study skills and learning advice Study skills and learning advice overview Assignment writing A
literature review critically analyses existing literature to develop an argument. Long story short, this
chapter is a pretty big deal, which is why you want to make sure you get it right. Avoid the following
in an APA abstract: Jargon, acronyms, or abbreviations Citations. While staying accurate and not
overstating your case, boast a bit about why people need to read your paper. In addition, reading
literature reviews can provide people with limited subject knowledge with a quick overview of the
topic and a general understanding of the current research. You can use it to discuss various theories,
models, and definitions of key concepts. The style of your writing matters because audiences are
unlikely to read your work or. Be selective Select only the most important points in each source to
highlight in the review. Briefly, it contains this and that, but does not cover this or that. From
proactively monitoring and fixing your system remotely to enabling you to reset your own system
easily, we have you covered. You can also point out any further research that is needed concerning
this topic. Instead, use the conclusion to explain the most significant findings you made in relation to
your report topic. Literature Review Writing Samples Home Samples of Our Professional Work
Literature Review Writing Samples, sample literature review. There is also a downloadable PDF
version. 5 Questions to Strengthen Your Thesis Statement Follow these five steps to strengthen your
thesis statements. If you create your own data through primary research (conducting your own
interviews or surveys, for example), you do not need to include these on the reference list, but all
secondary sources must be properly cited. (See chapter 4 and 10 for information on citing sources).
With an external report, you will need to not only persuade the reader to accept your conclusions on
the topic, but also establish credibility. All the materials from our website should be used with proper
references.