Intro

When you’re conducting academic research, a literature review is a survey of

the scholarly sources you’ve consulted in your research. Typically, literature

reviews are only necessary when you’re doing a significant academic project,

such as a dissertation, research paper, or a thesis. For shorter pieces of

academic writing, including essays, your works cited page is sufficient.

 When would I write a literature review?

As we mentioned above, writing a literature review is part of writing an

academic paper. The purpose of writing a literature review is to present
the sources you’ve used in your research to your work’s readers. By doing
this, you’re communicating several things:

 Research methodology: In other words, you’re explaining the type of

research you conducted, how you conducted your research and collected your
data, your reasons for choosing the sources you chose, and how you
analyzed the data you collected.

 Theoretical framework you established: This is essentially a map of

your research showing where you started, which concepts you chose to dive
into deeply, and where following those concepts brought you. Generally, these
concepts are theories and models established by academics in your field. 
 Where your work fits into the bigger picture: Here, you explain how
your findings connect to the existing body of research on your topic. This
means how it relates to other pieces of research, any existing gaps it fills, any
debates to which it contributes, and where you fit in among others in your
field. 

Writing a literature review is no small undertaking! But then again, neither is

writing your thesis, dissertation, or even a lengthy, comprehensive research
paper. 

In many cases, you’re required to write a literature review and submit it to your
academic supervisor before getting started on your paper. This gives your
supervisor the opportunity to see what you’re researching, how you’re
conducting that research, and, if necessary, provide feedback and
suggestions to make your research stronger. This could mean suggesting
alternative sources or redirecting your research’s scope.

A literature review is not the same thing as an abstract. Both are critical parts
of a research project, but while an abstract summarizes your work, a literature
review summarizes the research you conducted to complete your work. In
many cases, an abstract’s goal is to engage readers and help researchers
and cataloguers determine whether your work is a relevant source for their
work and whether it’s a good fit for a specific collection or academic journal. A
literature review’s goal is to provide a “behind the scenes” look at how you did
your research, underpinning it as a valid piece of scholarly research. 

How to write a literature review

Structure
A literature review is structured similarly to an essay. It begins with an
introduction that states the research question and explains how you tackled it.
Following are body paragraphs that explain your research in further detail.
Then, it ends with a conclusion section that reiterates the research question
while summarizing the insights you had through your research. 

A literature review’s length depends largely on the type of research it’s being
written for. For a short paper, it might only be a few pages long, but for a
lengthy work like a thesis or dissertation, it’s often an entire chapter. 

Style

A literature review requires the same style as any other piece of academic
writing. That means no contractions or colloquialisms, concise language,
formal tone, and an objective perspective at all times. 

To distinguish between your analysis and prior scholarly work in the field, use
the past tense when discussing the previous research conducted on your topic
and the present tense when discussing your point of view. For example, you
might write that a specific author conducted research or that they had been
influenced by earlier researchers in the field, but also that you are exploring
different research methods and that you are posing certain questions. 

Writing a literature review, step by step

Define your research scope

If you haven’t yet narrowed your research focus down to a specific,

answerable question, do that before you move forward with finding sources.
Once you have a clear, specific thesis for your work, write a list of keywords
 related to that thesis you can use to streamline your source-gathering
process. 

Find relevant literature

Using the keywords you listed, search for relevant sources through your
university library and/or databases like Google Scholar, JSTOR, EBSCO, and
field-specific databases like Project Muse and EconLit. 

As you find potential sources, read their abstracts to determine whether they
are within your research’s scope. By reading a quick preview of each source
(and taking note of recurring authors, contributors, and citations) you can pare
down your list to a collection of works that provide the data, insights, and
additional content you need to conduct your research. 

Identify themes, patterns, and gaps within your body of

sources

Read your pared-down body of sources. As you conduct your research, take
note of the themes present in them and ask questions: 

 Do different authors agree with each other on these themes? 

 Where do they disagree? 

 How does each author support their position?

Examine the research methods each author used in their work. If your sources
involve studies or experiments, note whether the results were replicated and
where, if at all, the studies’ results varied from each other. 

Write down your key insights and how each source you consult contributes to
the existing pool of knowledge on its subject. Explore how the sources
challenge and contradict each other and where they agree or expand upon
each other. 

Create a literature review outline

Writing an outline is an important part of the writing process. Once you’ve read
your sources and you understand their themes, patterns, and connections to
each other, it’s time to organize your strategy for writing about how you’ve
used them in your research by creating an outline. 

There are a few different ways you can organize your outline. You can
organize it chronologically, listing and discussing the oldest sources you’ve
consulted and working up to the latest pieces. You can also organize your
sources according to their themes, creating a section for each shared theme
you encountered and discussing it there. Another way to organize your
sources in your outline is to group them according to the research methods
used by their authors. 

The best way to organize your literature review often depends on your subject
area. In the humanities, presenting your sources chronologically or according
to their themes can effectively highlight how existing research on your subject
has evolved, whereas in the hard sciences, organizing your sources according
to their research methods can enable you to highlight why the current
scholarly consensus (if there is one!) is what it is. 

Write your literature review

Once your outline is complete, it’s time to start writing. In nearly all cases,
literature reviews are written in the third person. For example, you might
discuss a scholarly article by stating “this paper argues . . .” or “in her work,
the author elaborates on . . .” However, there are cases where first
person is appropriate in a literature review, such as when you’re referencing
your own research. For example, if you’re citing an earlier paper you’ve written
or data collected from a study you conducted, you may use phrases like “I
argue,” “I propose,” and “through my research, I found that . . .”

Remember to follow the style you’re using for your research paper, whether
that’s MLA, APA, or another style. Similarly, use the same objective academic
tone you’ll use in your research paper. Don’t just list and describe the sources
you’ve read; respond to them, interpret them, and critically evaluate them.
Keep in mind that you don’t have to agree with every source you use—in fact,
exploring where your findings diverge from a source’s findings can be a strong
point in your literature review and your research as a whole.  

Don’t forget to write an annotated bibliography of all your sources. Failing to

cite your sources correctly can get you in trouble for plagiarism, which can
potentially result in having your work discredited or even being expelled from
your university. 

Literature review examples

Reading others’ literature reviews, especially literature reviews for research in

your academic field, can be a very helpful way for you to understand how they
work and see what you need to include in yours. 

Read the literature reviews of the sources you read in your own research.
Your university might also have a resources page of literature review
examples you can read. Ashford University is one university that publishes
literature review examples online, such as this sample that highlights and
outlines key components that need to be in your literature review.
Get academic writing just right

Academic writing is a lot different from other types of writing. While you want
to strive for spot-on grammar and clear wording in everything you write, these
factors are especially important in academic writing. There, you’re establishing
yourself as a credible source on the topic you’ve covered—making polished,
coherent writing essential. 

That’s also why it’s so important to strike the right tone in your academic
writing—and it’s a tone you don’t find in many other kinds of work. Grammarly
does more than catch your grammar mistakes and unclear writing; it detects
your tone and offers valuable suggestions you can use to polish your writing
into its final, submission-ready version.