Developing your literature review

Types of Literature for the social sciences, arts, and humanities

One of the most obvious resources is books, and this category includes textbooks. These
which cover the basic information about a broad range of topic areas. Textbooks do not
provide original commentary but instead review existing work to bring a particular field
together for students in the area. They might be a good place to start to get a sense of
the relevant theories and concepts in your topic area but as doctoral students you are
expected to go well beyond this kind of resource in your engagement with the literature.
Any thesis which makes substantial use of textbooks in a review of the relevant
commentary in the area would not be considered to be of doctoral standard.

Another type of book is a monograph. The first sub-category is the standard monograph,
which reports the results or conclusions of an original research project(/s) by one or
more authors. The second is the edited book, which collects together chapters written
by individual authors reporting their own research into a particular topic area. Edited
books have the advantage of offering a range of different perspectives on the same
issue, whereas standard monographs are more in-depth than edited book coverage. But
either of these types of monograph reports original research projects of various types,
and as such are a much more legitimate source for doctoral research than a textbook.
There is also a third category of book which is usually referred to as a reader. A reader
is a very helpful source to locate, especially at the start of your literature search, as it
contains extracts from previously published work either by one author or on one
particular topic by several authors. So, it is a quick and easy way of accessing original
commentary on a subject.

Another obvious source of social science literature is journal articles. Remember,

though, that all full academic journal papers are refereed – in other words, they have
been subject to an anonymous review process involving commentary from at least two
independent referees, and the author making the revisions and amendments these
referees recommend, before being accepted. So, in many ways they can be regarded as
more robust than their professional or trade equivalents. Academic journals are usually
published in volumes (which refer to a particular year of publication) and issues (so
that one particular journal may have four, six or even twelve issues per year). Journal
papers are also usually preceded by an abstract/executive summary which allows you
to decide whether you should continue to read the paper or not, and may also include
keywords for the same purpose. In addition, these publications often include shorter
pieces than papers (which are usually about 8000 words long) like book reviews.

Other sources include reports, like Key Note market research reports, government
reports on specific issues or even company annual reports – but do consider who
commissioned the report, and for what purposes, as this may have a significant impact
on the findings.

You may also be able to get access to conference proceedings or discussion or working
papers. Depending on the date of publication these can be very cutting edge/up to the
minute indeed but they will also usually be a draft version of an argument that needs to
be refined and developed and may not have been subject to any peer review. So always
check to see whether there is a final published version in book or journal format before
you use them. Then there are student theses and dissertations. Because there is no real
way to assess their quality, our recommendation is that you use these as a source of
references and further reading, as opposed to using the commentary and analysis they
provide.

Newspapers, radio and television programmes are also acceptable as sources for a
literature review, but obviously differ in quality. We would expect you only to use
‘respectable’ sources like the UK national broadsheets (e.g., The Guardian and The
Telegraph) or their television or radio equivalents (e.g., the BBC stations Radio 4 and
Radio 5, or the BBC World Service).

Also remember that media of this kind typically display political bias. Good quality
periodicals can, further, be a useful source – such as The Economist or National
Geographic or the New Statesman.

Finally, sources like library catalogues, encyclopaedias, databases, bibliographies and so

on are what we call ‘tertiary’ or ‘metadata’ sources – they are not literature in
themselves, but they provide lists of the relevant literature in a subject area/s. The
university library provides access to a range of electronic databases. Most of these are
bibliographic databases. Whereas a library catalogue lists details of books and journal
titles within a library, databases include information about individual articles and
chapters within those titles, including full citation details and an abstract.

Planning Your Literature Search

Most literature searches will start with a broad and non-selective process which
Easterby-Smith et al. (2008: 34), following Selvin and Stuart, call ‘trawling’: “a wide
overall review of the literature in a specific field”. This should involve as comprehensive
an overview as you can manage of the relevant material to ensure breadth of coverage:
you should of course have already undertaken something like this for your research
proposal.

You can start trawling in various ways. First, it is necessary to ‘unpack’ your research
area as part of confirming your research questions. In other words, you need to frame
the questions you want to ask as clearly and specifically as possible, even if you expect
these questions to change as you progress. Producing a visual map as part of this
process assists you in linking themes together and, for our purposes here, helps to
organise the structure of your literature search and eventual review. These visual maps
are also called mind maps or spider diagrams and are intended to facilitate a
brainstorming process. They can often highlight the fact that you know more than you
think as well as identifying areas with which you are less familiar.

This mapping exercise won’t be all-inclusive at this stage of your research. It does
however provide a useful template, which can be amended as the research progresses.
Newly discovered or recently published concepts may become important, or existing
topics may emerge as relating to each other differently. It is highly likely that a similar
exercise carried out at a later stage would produce a very different map. You may even
need to produce several specific maps, one for each key area in the literature search.
This is a very individual process that will reflect your own approach to the subject and
to the way you organise information.

You need of course to start with the question/s that you have already identified as
central to your research. The visual map above has been produced as an initial way to
plan a literature search for the research question ‘Is work-life balance still a gendered
experience for British professionals?’ Visual mapping, done at various stages during
your thesis project, should help you identify some of the following:

Important words or phrases in your research.

Synonyms, alternative spellings, word variants and differing terminology for
these key terms. Terminology both within and across disciplines can vary
according to the age, geographical location, (sub-)disciplinary context and
personal preferences of the authors. Whilst you may have a clear idea of the
terms you would use; it is important to identify alternative words that may

Different authors can use different words to mean the same thing, or the same word to
mean different things!
Topics, sub-topics, sub-sub-topics.
Relationships between topics.
Key theories and theorists.
Appropriate research methodologies.
Topics that could be included or investigated further.

The exercise of producing a visual map therefore enables you to translate your research
questions into keywords and phrases that can form the basis of your trawling literature
search strategy. The temptation to start searching before spending time on this task
might be strong but if you give in it will probably lead to wasted time, frustration and
poor retrieval of relevant information. Your experience of the searching process itself
will also provide you with a good idea of the most successful keywords or phrases for
finding the most appropriate literature. Likewise, new keywords may also become
apparent as you read the literature, instigating additional searches.

Another way to begin trawling is to revisit relevant reading lists from the modules you
have already studied at bachelor’s or master’s level. Identification of key authors and
seminal contributions is likewise especially helpful at the start of the process: the kind
of material you would find in any textbook coverage of your research topic. For
example, a thesis investigating new varieties of organisational structure would be
expected to refer to the very important, if controversial, work of Max Weber
on bureaucracy.

Similarly, research on the extent to which cross-cultural differences in employee

behaviour are still visible and significant in our rapidly globalising world would be
expected to note and discuss the (equally controversial) work of Geert Hofstede in this
regard. Review articles also appear from time to time in the academic journals,
discussing a particular body of literature and the relevant developments in this area –
again these are good resources for starting your literature review. And of course you
can (and should) follow up references from texts you have already read by using the
bibliographies in those texts.

Do also consult your supervisor(/s) to see if there is anything specific, they think you
should be reading at this stage, and perhaps also recent doctoral theses in your area via
the Leicester Research Archive. You can also find the LRA at https://lra.le.ac.uk/.

Specifically, about staying abreast of your discipline, obviously you can ensure you read
current issues of key journals and new monographs in the field. To make this easier,
however, some electronic resource providers offer an updating facility whereby you
identify your areas of interest, and they automatically send an email to alert you to new
articles of relevance. These are known as alerting services.

Electronic Searching

Using electronic databases

We recommend that you make extensive use of both the electronic databases (e.g.,
JSTOR or ISI Web of Knowledge) and the electronic journal search facilities available
through the University library when searching for relevant literature. Although most
electronic search tools utilise the same general searching concepts and methods, the
user interfaces (i.e., what you see on the screen when you log in) can vary considerably.
Databases also all provide a help facility. It is well worth reading the advice given there
before you start to get the best out of that resource and avoid wasting time.
Another excellent feature of many databases is a function which allows you to save a
search and re-run it later. This is particularly useful if you carry out a successful search
with several words and phrases, as it prevents you re-inventing and re-typing the terms.
The help screens of individual databases will, again, provide details of how to do this.

When entering keywords or phrases as part of a search there are a few things to bear in
mind. If we take as an example the phrase ‘organisational learning’ it is important to
consider exactly what you want to retrieve. Do you want to find articles (or indeed
books) that use the specific phrase ‘organisational learning’ or do you want to find
articles containing both of these two separate words? Each search would require a
different approach to entering terms and would produce a different set of results.

Using the phrase would produce fewer results and would retrieve articles specifically
concerned with organisational learning. Searching for articles with both of the terms
‘organisational’ and ‘learning’ would find more results (many, many more!) and may
also find articles that are not very relevant as the two words would not necessarily be
related to each other. The nature of your subject will determine which is the best
approach to use. With this example, where there is a considerable literature on the
subject of organisational learning, and even bigger literatures on organisations and on
learning, a phrase approach to searching should limit the results to a manageable size
and produce articles of higher relevance. Also, your visual mapping exercise should
have identified several useful search phrases: sticking with our example, it would be
important to use both ‘organisational learning’ and ‘learning organisation/s’.

When searching for phrases, it is important to understand how to combine search terms
to the best effect. Using the help screen of the database you have chosen will provide the
rules used to search for phrases. Some databases allow you to identify a phrase with the
use of speech marks, such as “organisational learning”. Others only ask that you enter
the phrase itself, with no speech marks, in the relevant search box.

Still others may provide you with a code, such as ‘adj’ (an abbreviation for adjacent), to
use to search for words which are next to each other in the text. Searching for our
example phrase here then would require typing in organisational adj learning. But
searching for a specific phrase such as ‘organisational learning’ will only retrieve
articles that use this exact phrase, spelling, and all.

During the visual mapping exercise, you should have identified some alternative
spellings. The word ‘organisation’ is often spelt as ‘organization’, for example, especially
in the United States. Most databases allow you to use a symbol, or wildcard, which can
represent any letter. This is often an * or a ? and will be identified on the help screen for
each database. As an example, typing in the phrase “organi*ational learning” or “organi?
ational learning” should retrieve articles with either spelling, depending on each
database’s wildcard. The same symbols can be used at the end of a word to allow
retrieval of several word endings. Searching for the term organi*ation* or organi?ation*
will therefore retrieve articles including the terms ‘organis/zation’, ‘organis/zations’
and ‘organis/zational’.

The word ‘learning’ could also have alternative endings so typing in learn* would
retrieve ‘learn’, ‘learns’, ‘learners’, ‘learned’ and ‘learning’. Relatedly, most databases use
the same method for combining separate keywords into a statement for searching. This
is known as ‘Boolean logic’. This method allows the searcher to broaden, narrow or limit
a search depending on the coverage of their subject in a database. The three basic
methods to combine terms are AND, OR and NOT.

AND finds articles with all of the terms somewhere in the record or article. Any number
of words can be used, although it is advisable to start with a few key terms and narrow
down adding further terms if too many records are found. Examples are:
organi*ation*AND learn*
cultur* AND organi*ation*
organi*ation* AND learn* AND cultur*

OR finds articles which include either of the terms and is, therefore, a much broader
search than using AND. This is a useful method to use at the start of a search (i.e., when
trawling) to produce a large set of results that you can later refine using AND or NOT.
Examples are:
“organi*ational learning” OR “learning organi*ation*”
values OR beliefs OR norms

NOT limits the search by excluding terms that the searcher knows aren’t useful.
Examples are:
cultur* NOT biology
learn* NOT school
A good understanding of Boolean logic will, undoubtedly, improve the relevance of
your searches and prevent the retrieval of references that are not appropriate to your
needs. Also remember, as we established earlier, that researchers can use different
terms to refer to the same thing: an example is that a search for material on downsizing
might also include the use of search terms like redundancy, outplacement or even
recruitment.

Further, not only do UK English and American English spell words differently (e.g., the
UK ‘behaviour’ and the US ‘behavior’ as well as the UK preference for ‘s’ and the US
preference for ‘z’ as discussed above), but they also use different words for the same
thing (e.g., a UK chemist is a US drug store; a UK lift is a US elevator; a UK pavement is a
US sidewalk and so on). If you don’t have any luck with one version of English in a
particular search, try the other version. Third, a search facility might not recognise
acronyms or abbreviations like ICI or TQM or HEFCE, depending on how it has been
programmed. Fourth, you may already be familiar with authoritative writers in your
field – let’s take Michel Foucault on sexuality as an example. Most electronic databases
allow searching using the author’s name. In effect this allows you to find anything in
that database produced by that author: here, anything that Foucault has written which a
specific database contains. It may, however, be important to find articles or books
written by other authors about their work. In our example it would be wise to search for
the name Foucault as a keyword anywhere in the record. Fifth, some databases allow
you to identify references to the research cited in a particular article.

This can lead to the discovery of other authors in the field and key articles on the main
subject or related topics. They may also identify which other articles cited the work you
are looking at. This is another excellent way to ensure that your searching is as
comprehensive as possible.

Using the Internet more generally

In terms of using the Internet as a research tool more generally, its federal nature
means it is extraordinarily prolific: anyone, anywhere in the world, can set up their own
web pages and link to pages produced by other people or institutions. You will also
probably have your favourite search engine, but Google is the most comprehensive
service we are aware of. Moreover, many people using search engines are unaware that
there are some very effective methods for eliminating thousands of irrelevant,
commercially sponsored or otherwise dubious pieces of information.

You can also use the Google Scholar search facility which is dedicated to the retrieval of
information about academic research.

Some words of caution however: do remember, even if you have set the parameters of
your search carefully and strategically, that some Internet sites are biased, inaccurate,
non-comprehensive and/or out of date. Moreover, the dynamic character of the Internet
results in regular changes to content, which can be positive, in relation to up to the
minute research, or negative, in relation to the relatively short life of some links. Even
established websites of large institutions change the way they organise information on a
regular basis. A website that you checked yesterday can look entirely different today, so
you can no longer easily find that vital piece of information you need.

This does not mean that Internet sites cannot or should not be used in academic study:
rather it means you need to use this information with caution. This list identifies some
of the significant types of information available on the web – apart from what you find
via electronic databases – that may support your research:

Formally unpublished academic research such as working papers or conference

papers;
 Discussions of key theories in your field aimed at students of a specific university
but accessible to all; and/or legislation and other official government
publications, such as population or income statistics.

In general, before you use information from the Internet, consider the following
questions. Is the source
1. a downloaded academic journal article?
2. a good quality newspaper article?
3. an official company or research organisation (like Key Note) website?
4. a government website?
5. a university website?

If the answer to all five questions is ‘no’, then be careful: can you really vouch for
the integrity of this source? Is it likely to be a reliable source of information? Has it
been subject to any sort of review process, for example?

Consider these additional questions:

Who has provided this information? Is there any commercial motivation behind
this website? Who has written the article? Is it a personal opinion or based on
empirical evidence? Do the authors have expertise in their field? How do you
know?
Are they educators or involved in education? This does not mean they are
necessarily reliable, but it helps to situate the material and the possible reasons
why the material is being presented?
If they are not educators, what is the purpose of making the information
available on this website? For example, PBS, the US public broadcasting service,
maintains a website that has a great deal of information on science programmes
like Nova, Nature, The American Experience or Scientific American Frontiers. Like
the information provided by BBC programmes, the information generated by
these programmes is well-researched and reliable. It is often put together by
experts and can point to new sources of information that are also reliable and
interesting.

Please also be aware that results from encyclopaedic resources such as Wikipedia, or
indeed so-called ‘education resource’ websites like netMBA.com and tutor2u.com,
are not acceptable in doctoral research. If in doubt about the validity of a particular
source, ask your supervisor(/s) for advice.

Reading and Evaluating the Literature

As implied above, putting together a literature review entails you reading the relevant
material and drafting a review fairly early on in the project process, but doing further
searches to update your review and ensure it is as comprehensive as possible as you go
along. Especially keep an eye out for new journal papers, books, newspaper articles etc.,
as we have already said.

To produce a high-quality review, you obviously need to read as widely as possible, but
also to be selective. In other words, you may well have gathered material, particularly if
you are trawling, that isn’t very relevant to your purposes. So, before you start to read,
look at the title, the back cover ‘blurb’ and/or the introduction if it is a book, or the
abstract if it is a journal article.

Ask yourself the following questions:

Does this source relate to my research interests – is the context or content

relevant to what I am researching? (if yes, then you should read it);
Might it have been superseded by something more recent? (in which case try and
find more up to date sources);
Or is it a ‘classic’ or seminal text? (in which case you should read it); and
Do other authors refer to it frequently? (in which case it is probably considered
to be a classic text, or at least an important contribution to the area).

Further to this, please do try and read primary or original material as much as you can.
In other words, do not rely on others’ summaries of or commentaries on a scholar’s
work: read that work in its original form. This is especially important at doctoral level.
Further, with regard to books, don’t just start at page 1 and keep reading until the end
of the book – use the contents pages and index to ensure that you read the parts or
chapters that are relevant to your project.

When you have decided what to read, make sure you keep your research questions in
mind. Keep asking yourself ‘Can I use this material to explore my area of interest, and if
so how?’ Whether you are physically taking notes or highlighting parts of each text,
focus on the material, which is relevant, not everything every author says. Even if you
have chosen your texts carefully, not everything you read in every source is going to be
pertinent to your project. And when writing notes, use your own words as far as
possible. If you do want to use the author’s own words, then make sure you record the
relevant section as a direct quotation using quotation marks and take the page number
down. Failure to do this could mean you being accused of plagiarism because extracts
from other people’s work will probably end up without the appropriate attributions in
your work. Another important, if obvious, point when note-taking is to record all the
relevant details for referencing purposes as you make your notes from each text – e.g.,
page numbers for direct quotations (as suggested above) and dates accessed for
Internet sites. It’s also a good idea to compile a ‘running’ bibliography, adding to this as
you read each text. You can of course use bibliographic software like RefWorks for this
purpose.
In terms of structuring the finished version more generally, move from the general to
the specific as follows. Begin with a short introduction laying out what the chapter
will do. Then move to the main ideas, concepts, theories, findings and, where relevant,
coverage of policy and/or legislation in the available literature – offer the kind of
summary that would be found in the textbooks in the subject area. This is your
background material. Summarise and contrast these key ideas then narrow down to
more specific ideas; those most relevant to your research, your foreground material.

This should provide a detailed analysis of the theoretical framework, the conceptual
tools and the intellectual debates which are germane to your research questions, and
relevant gaps and omissions; a discussion of the main findings of the important
empirical studies and any relevant criticisms of these studies; and a focused analysis of
policy and legislation, its implementation, and effects, both positive and negative.

All these extended analyses should be sub-divided by theme and there should be, as
stated, an explicit connection with your project. Throughout this main body of the
review, you should also highlight the areas where your research will contribute. That is,
identify the weaknesses and gaps in the existing literature which your research will
address conceptually, methodologically, or empirically, or the new ways in which you
will combine or evaluate literature/s. And finally offer a summary of the key points from
the review, which again highlights the contribution of your research and how this is
operationalised in your research questions.

Overall, your examiners will want to see three main things in your literature review.
First, they look for evidence of reading: have you accessed and referred to the key texts,
theories, concepts, models, and findings? Is your review reasonably comprehensive and
up to date? Second, have you understood what you have read?

The aforementioned comparative, thematic approach is the key here, as is writing in

your own words! Third, you need to evaluate the literature. Evaluation also leads into
establishing your contribution as discussed above.

Some final words of advice include the importance of using the literature, not letting
it use you. In other words, ensure that you read everything with a critical eye so that
you can move beyond the extant commentary in your field to identify where the gaps
and problems are and which of these form the basis of your research questions. So, you
need also to read with a consistent focus on your own questions and to write your
review with an ‘active voice’. You’re not just describing what exists but also commenting
on it – and there needs to be a balance between the two. Remember, further, to signpost
the review throughout, clearly indicating to your reader your line of progression from
the outset and as the discussion unfolds.
Guidance on how to structure the literature review:

A literature review should not list and describe each of the articles and other
sources you include – the shopping list approach. Instead, you need to compare,
contrast, and analyse the articles around the general themes relevant to your
topic.
So, the first thing you need to do is determine what the key themes are from the
reading you have done. You will probably have to do more reading than articles
you include to get a better sense of this. You can then use those themes as
headings. Themes are simply the salient things that authors are highlighting as
important to the topic.
The purpose of the literature review is to summarise and synthesise what we
know about a topic to identify a gap. To do this you need to identify and critique
key theories, concepts and methods that relate to the topic and to your identified
articles. So, it is useful to note any conflicting ideas, controversy, or general
disagreements in the field.
The argument is a key academic skill and a major part of what you are being
assessed on. You need to demonstrate a clear reasoned argument that
demonstrates a connection between the premises of your argument and the
evidence you are citing. Your points in the argument should be supported by
theory and research and acknowledge differing views on the issue. Your
argument should address your question and map onto what you wrote in your
introduction paragraph.

So…

It is helpful to organise your literature review into sections built around the
themes you have identified.
You need a strong introduction paragraph that sets the scene for the reader,
describes the topic, and demonstrates the relevance. This also should lay out the
aims and objectives of the review, demonstrate the question you wrote and
describe the central features of the argument to come. So, your introduction
paragraph should define your topic and set context, provide a rationale for its
importance, demonstrate the overall organisation of the review and its scope.
The main body needs subheadings, the themes and issues you found that are
pertinent to your PhD problem. This should demonstrate the major issues and
debates in this field, the key questions and ideas that have been presented in the
field to date, the key theoretical and conceptual ideas, a critical assessment of the
evidence, an evaluation of the contribution to knowledge.
It would be expected that the articles (that is the evidence) you are including
would be synthesised within your review making different points in your
argument and not dryly described one at a time.
 You need a conclusion to the review which summarises the key features of the
argument you have presented, identifies the gap in knowledge, makes
suggestions for the importance of the research issue and signs off with a
concluding sentence.

Ask yourself these questions:

Have you managed to identify the key issues, themes, theories, and concepts that
are relevant to your topic area?
Have you defined your key terms?
Have you made the purpose of your review clear?
Have you included evidence that is relevant to the for your PhD topic?
Have you considered the contribution of your discipline and others in terms of
this topic?
Have you demonstrated emerging issues and ideas for future?
Have you organised your review in a logical way that demonstrates an
argument?
Have you critically assessed the evidence and made reference to the
methodological issues?
Have you included relevant disciplinary theory?

Useful resources

There are many guides to writing literature reviews and critical reading in the Library
and on the internet. The module reading list contains a selection. Here are some useful
examples:

Ridley, D, (2012) The Literature Review: A Step-By-Step Guide For Students.

Sage Study Skills Series, London.
Wallace, M & Wray, A (2016), Critical Reading and Writing for Postgraduates,
Sage Study Skills Series, London.

Below are a couple of websites that have useful guides to writing the literature review
aimed at a wide readership. You may want to track down more subject specific guides
as well.

How to write a dissertation literature review

Slaying the (literature review) beast : this is a blog in three parts; you can click through
to parts 2 and 3 from part 1
How to write a PhD in a hundred steps is another useful blog demystifying the process
of critical reading and writing a literature review, with helpful suggestions for strategies
on how to tackle it.

The British Library's Ethos site allows you to search over 500,000 PhDs : use it look at
examples of other literature reviews and to search other people's bibliographies.