Understanding the Challenge of Writing a Literature Review

Embarking on a literature review can often feel like diving into an ocean of information with no
compass. It's an essential part of academic and research endeavors, yet it's also one of the most
daunting tasks scholars face. Crafting a literature review demands meticulous attention to detail,
comprehensive research, and the ability to synthesize diverse sources into a coherent narrative.

The Complexity of Literature Review

A literature review isn't merely summarizing a bunch of articles; it's about critically analyzing
existing literature, identifying gaps, and contributing new insights to the field. This process requires:

1. Thorough Research: Scouring through countless journals, articles, books, and other sources
relevant to the topic.
2. Critical Analysis:Evaluating the credibility, relevance, and methodology of each source to
determine its contribution to the topic.
3. Synthesis: Integrating findings from various sources to construct a cohesive narrative that
highlights existing knowledge and identifies areas for further exploration.
4. Organizational Skills:Structuring the review in a logical flow, often adhering to specific
guidelines or frameworks set by academic institutions or publishers.

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Surveillance search techniques identified the need to update systematic reviews. Furthermore, we
found that appraisal tools designed for specific interventions had potential to be transferred for
general interventions. A practical guide to understanding systematic reviews and meta-analyses. As
you have seen in this brief introduction, literature reviews are a very specific type of research,
analysis, and writing. World-Wide Web OR project OR development) AND (method OR process
OR. Keep in mind that the exact requirements for the literature review chapter will vary between
universities and degree programs. These are typically minor, but it’s always a good idea to double-
check your university’s requirements before you finalize your structure. Method: We conduct a
systematic review of the literature on UCASD. Another finding of our research was that whether and
to what extent a quality concern was addressed by a tool partly depended on the tool purpose. Codes
related to the parallel interwoven creation tracks principle. Direction of the effect (i.e., which group
is favoured) and size of the effect in terms meaningful to patients and clinicians. Tabulation of study
characteristics aids the examination and comparison of PICO elements across studies, facilitates
synthesis of these characteristics and grouping of studies for statistical synthesis. Finally, the
conclusions of the review should be clearly stated. Codes related to the iterative and incremental
design and development principle. At the graduate or doctoral level, the literature review is an
essential feature of thesis and dissertation, as well as grant proposal writing. Omission of a literature
review chapter or section in a graduate-level project represents a serious void or absence of critical
element in the research process. LCA of renewable energy for electricity generation systems - A
review. In the fourth stage, the ?nal sample passed a ?rst categorization. As a result, it is possible and
encouraged to publish abbreviated versions of the review in other applicable scholarly journals;
indeed, engaging in a review update or joining a well-established review team may be a beneficial
way to get involved in the systematic review process. Systematic reviews of the literature, with or
without meta-analysis, can help summarize the existing data in meaningful ways to better answer
existing questions or answer altogether new questions. The Cochrane Handbook and other studies
strongly suggest at least two reviewers and extractors to reduce the number of errors. Additional
sources of bias across studies, such as failing to locate appropriate reports to include and the effects
of financial conflicts of interest, should be evaluated as part of the review process; this category of
bias can often be minimized by utilizing a well-designed review protocol ( Miller 2000 ). Your reader
expects you to have done the hard work of gathering, evaluating and synthesizes the literature.
Although they are new publications, updates will generally include content from the published
version. Comparable reviews that are never cited or rarely downloaded, for example, could indicate
that they are not addressing a question that is valued, and might not be worth updating. Were the
sources and resources used to search for studies adequate? 5. How do I know which findings to use,
or how many to include. A systematic review is a labor-intensive team effort. Electronic forms are
useful and can facilitate subsequent analysis. The template follows the standard format for academic
literature reviews, which means it will be suitable for the vast majority of academic research projects
(especially those within the sciences), whether they are qualitative or quantitative in terms of design.
You can download it in MS Word format or make a copy to your Google Drive.
Consider how each source approaches your topic in addition to their collective points of intersection
and separation. One approach to resolving this conflict is where “harmonization” of data from
relevant studies is performed to allow for further insights from previously heterogeneous data
(Arvizu et al. 2011). Locating previous data appropriate for harmonization may require a systematic
review of the literature ( Moomaw et al. 2011 ), yet there is currently no consensus regarding how
such reviews should be approached. This expands on a previous definition of a systematic review
update. 10 An update asks a similar question with regard to the participants, intervention,
comparisons, and outcomes (PICO) and has similar objectives; thus it has similar inclusion criteria. If
chosen, the electronic document or paper-and-pencil extraction methods should only be used for
small reviews, as larger sets of articles may become unwieldy. It is a well-known and well-respected
multinational non-profit organisation that promotes, funds, and disseminates systematic reviews and
meta-analyses on the effectiveness of healthcare interventions (2). The authors further specified that
if there were multiple time points at which the outcome was measured within a time frame, they
would select the longest time point. Furthermore, systematic reviews are of particular importance in
research areas where substantial work has been done and information has been produced in the past.
The ultimate goal is to provide a general interpretation of the results in the context of other evidence.
This will serve as the basis for your thesis statement. Your research question tells you which findings
are of interest in your research, so work from your research question to decide what needs to go in
each Finding header, and how many findings are necessary. It’s also crucial to determine what types
of experiments to include and exclude (e.g., RCTs only, RCTs and quasi-experimental designs,
qualitative research), the minimum number of participants in each group, published and unpublished
studies, and language restrictions. Can I include literature that contradicts my hypothesis. For
permission to re-use material from the Handbook (either academic or commercial), please see here for
full details. You can see a more complete list of options in the Systematic Review Toolbox. A review
of a clearly formulated question that uses systematic and explicit methods to identify, select, and
critically appraise relevant research, and to collect and analyse data from the studies that are included
in the review. You can record extracted data in electronic tables or forms created in Microsoft Word
or other word processing programs, but this process may take longer than many of our previously
listed methods. They are inductive because they conclude based on existing literature, but also
deductive since they typically start with theoretical assumptions and a pre-defined thematic scope.
For more on Meta-Analyses, please read the respective Wiki entry. Evidence level 1 (Table 3.1).
RCTs, controlled clinical trials, controlled before-and-after studies, interrupted time series from 1966
to 1998 (levels 2, 3, 4). They need to examine the weight and certainty of the new evidence to help
determine whether an update is needed and how urgent that update is. Since reviews published in
other outlets do not need to be listed as such, they should state in the title that they are a systematic
review and meta-analysis. The template follows the standard format for academic literature reviews,
which means it will be suitable for the vast majority of academic research projects (especially those
within the sciences), whether they are qualitative or quantitative in terms of design. Conclusion: Our
paper contributes to the software development body of knowledge by (1) providing a. What types of
literature reviews can this template be used for. FCL, EA, and CL made substantial additions to the
first and subsequent drafts. Another important origin of research synthesis can be traced to the work
of 17th Century astronomers who combined data sets from different studies to ammend their own
observations (3). Pre-specified methods to deal with the multiplicity can then be implemented (see
Table 9.3.c for examples of approaches for dealing with multiplicity). Describe the rationale for the
review in the context of existing knowledge. From the remaining 27 eligible studies, we identified
417 appraisal tools. It includes multiple pieces of data derived from both quantitative and qualitative
data analysis in systematic reviews.
Using the Research Table This is an example of a research table, in which you provide a basic
description of the most important features of the studies, articles, and other items you discover in
your research. You can adapt examples to suit your systematic review. Specify the inclusion and
exclusion criteria for the review and how. Careful planning will also help you to provide insightful
analysis. Due to this variety of formats, make sure you are clear on what kind of literature review
your professor is expecting. The PRISMA or Meta-analysis must be used to write up the systematic
study and meta-analysis. In order to identify candidate principles, each code was investi-. When and
how to update systematic reviews: consensus and checklist Related content Peer review This article
has a correction. Search Databases and Other Sources Not all databases use the same search syntax,
so when searching multiple databases, use search syntaxes that would work in individual databases.
It is considered the ideal type of literature review, especially for dissemination in high-level clinical
journals and the presentations of scientific studies. Then, explain where your work fits within this
discussion and why. Limitations are also generally an excellent opportunity to highlight important
questions for further research. Systematic review formats utilized in other disciplines Guidelines for
performing and reporting the results of systematic reviews are utilized in areas of research including
software engineering ( Staples and Niazi 2007 ), ecology ( Pullin and Stewart 2006 ), and medicine
(e.g., van Tulder et al. 2003; Centre for Reviews and Dissemination 2009 ). A critical review
represents the analyst’s view of a particular study based on what the analyst knows with certainty
and what the analyst further perceives through a critical examination of the data selected concerning
the topic. To our knowledge, this is the first study that compared level of sufficient descriptions of
appraisal tools at quality-item levels. They are self-contained pieces of writing that can function as a
stepping stone to a larger piece of writing or can enhance writers’ understandings of a topic. The
unfiltered search results should be saved and retained for possible reanalysis. These methods may
also be more prone to errors in data entry than some of the more automated methods. One of four
different approaches may be applied (3). The average number of titles clicked on to obtain the
abstract or full text, even after retrieving several searches in a row, is less than five. Rapid reviews
differ from systematic reviews in that the process is tailored for a shorter timeline, but it is still
important to use rigorous methodology to ensure that the best available research evidence is used in
decision making. Preferred reporting items for systematic review and meta-analysis protocols
(PRISMA-P) 2015 statement Strategic Publishing RV2 Checklist To help make informed decisions
before publishing, MQ has developed the RV2 checklist to assist with selecting appropriate peer-
reviewed journals. If you are writing a narrative review to summarise information reported in a small
number of studies then you probably don't need to go to the trouble of coding the data variables for
computer analysis but instead summarize the information from the data extraction forms for the
included studies. More broadly, synthesis of the PICO (Population, Intervention, Comparator and
Outcome) elements of the included studies underpins interpretation of review findings and is an
important output of the review in its own right. There are circumstances under which a meta-analysis
is not possible, however, and other statistical synthesis methods might be considered, so as to make
best use of the available data. In order to assist the reader in appropriate interpretation of the review
results it is important to highlight and discuss limitations in any review publication. If yes then visit
Geoffandfrancis.co.uk and get best ideas for your literature review. To recognise all applicable trials
in a given region, it is essential to create a detailed list of key terms (i.e., “MeSH” terms) related to
each component of PICOC. This process can be done by hand or by using a computer program.?
Click an item below to see how it applies to Step 7: Extract Data from Included Studies. Artesunate
combinations for treatment of malaria: meta-analysis.
These themes will also be used as the headings for your Matrix, which will be discussed in detail in
Section B: Planning and Researching. A review may discuss data, opinions, or practices from a
focused geographical region; it may explore one specific technology or system, or aim to provide
comprehensive coverage about a topic. Phases to planning a systematic review and meta-analysis
The succeeding components to a successful systematic review and meta-analysis writing are:
Formulate the Review Question The first stage involves describing the review topic, formulating
hypotheses, and developing a title for the review. Rather than examining the topic itself,
historiography is the study of how historical topics have been examined over time by other historians.
Taylor-Robinson D, Maayan N, Soares-Weiser K, et al. Why conduct a literature review, stages of a
literature review, lit reviews: an overview (video), check out these books. Embedded literature
reviews are usually placed near the beginning of your essay in order to provide your reader with
important context as well as to situate your work within the wider body of research on your topic.
While the International Organization for Standardization provides a framework for conducting LCA
studies in general, there is currently no direct guidance about best practices in conducting systematic
reviews in LCA. The iterative use of economic evaluation as part of the process of health technology
assessment. Read the advice for authors page on the journal website, or ask the journal editor to
advise you on what citation format the journal requires you to use. The authors found that there were
two sets of expertise required: that of gathering the information to ensure completeness, and creating
a literature review that could be repeated by a different person later to yield largely the same
information. Because FSTA indexes research articles related to the science of food and health
wherever they appear, including journals not indexed in PubMed, Web of Science, CAB Abstracts, or
other databases, using FSTA will help ensure that literature searches are exhaustive. Energy- and
greenhouse gas-based LCA of biofuel and bioenergy systems: Key issues, ranges and
recommendations. New York: Child and Adolescent Health and Development, 18 July 2001. ? Smaill
FM, Grivell RM. The appraisal of these new data can be carried out in different ways. Beyond this, it
also organizes and assesses the crucial points. These may be available on the aforementioned
platforms, sometimes via paid subscriptions, or by contacting the researchers directly, which are
often happy to provide their publications. The population of interest is children enrolled in early
childhood education programs between the ages of 0 and 5 and their control-group counterparts.
Systematic Reviews and Meta Analysis It may take several weeks to complete and run a search. Box
2: Examples of how different organisations decide on updating systematic reviews Agency for
healthcare research and quality (us). Combining both types of review has the benefit of first focusing
on conceptual and qualitative insights from the body of literature, and then going deeper into
quantitative measures. In PubMed you can use the systematic review subset to limit to a broad group
of papers that is enriched for systematic reviews. Zumsteg, University of Washington, Department of
Rehabilitation Medicine in Seattle, WA, USA. Joyce S. Cooper, University of Washington,
Department of Mechanical Engineering. Michael S. Noon, University of Washington, Department of
Civil and Environmental Engineering. Joanne E McKenzie, Sue E Brennan, Rebecca E Ryan, Hilary
J Thomson, Renea V Johnston Key Points: Synthesis is a process of bringing together data from a
set of included studies with the aim of drawing conclusions about a body of evidence. UCASD.
Overall, as listed in Table 5, four codes from our coding sys-. You can also add or alter the columns
to look for shared study populations, sort by level of evidence or source type, etc. IPCC special
report on renewable energy sources and climate change mitigation. Integrates findings from a large
body of quantitative findings to enhance understanding, draw conclusions, and detect patterns and
relationships. Being 'systematic' means being reproducible and goes along with an a priori specified,
dedicated research design and an explicit documentation of the steps taken during the research (3,
see Normativity). In order to help, this blog post will introduce you to the basics of literature reviews
and explain a specific methodological approach towards writing one, known as the systematic
literature review.
Pattanittum P, Laopaiboon M, Moher D, Lumbiganon P, Ngamjarus C. The first round of screening
can consume 1 hour per screener for every 100-200 records. Since it purposely seeks to solve a
research question, although a systematic literature review uses the already available investigation on
a subject, it is considered original work and utterly necessary for the scientific community. Etext on
Health Technology Assessment (HTA) Information Resources. After this first exploration, you will
conduct a deeper dive into the literature to learn everything you can about the topic and its related
issues. FAQs: Literature Review Template What format is the template (doc, pdf, ppt, etc.). The
literature review chapter template is provided as a Google Doc. This may be done by modifying
their instructions to authors and including a link to the checklist on their website. Examples: 12a.
“PROSPERO registration: CRD42011001243.” 12b. “PROSPERO 2011:CRD42011001329.”
Explanation: Registration of systematic reviews provides a record of reviews that have been
initiated, even if they have not been published. Systematic review article and Meta-analysis: Main
steps for Successful writin. For three items in methodology and nine items in reporting, less than five
tools addressed them, and none of the tools sufficiently described them. Cochrane Database Syst
Rev 2014; suppl 1: 31 - 3. A review may discuss data, opinions, or practices from a focused
geographical region; it may explore one specific technology or system, or aim to provide
comprehensive coverage about a topic. Moreover, we identi?ed the research type of each paper as
pre-. However, Cochrane’s principle of keeping all reviews up to date has not been possible, and the
organisation has had to adapt: from updating when new evidence becomes available, 7 to updating
every two years, 8 to updating based on need and priority. 9 This experience has shown that it is not
possible, sensible, or feasible to continually update all reviews all the time. We’ve also included
practical examples and links to more free videos and guides to help you understand exactly what’s
required in each section. Before starting out on a systematic review, check to see if someone has
done it already. They are usually one of the first steps in research methodologies. In the event,
consensus was reached, and the annex was not required. Large group, round table discussions
deliberated further these small group developments. The checklist includes two items with several
elements. If meta-analyses have been done, include for each the summary measure (estimated effect)
and confidence interval. The unfiltered search results should be saved and retained for possible
reanalysis. Cochrane systematic reviews do not include 'systematic' in the title, however. Authors
should take care to make it clear whether the reported measure is an absolute or a relative one (e.g.,
where percentage is used as the units of measurement). In other words, the GRADE allows users to
use any additional tools to assess NRSI quality. 52 Also, the GRADE checklist was designed for
both RCTs and NRSIs, so some criteria might be relatively brief, compared with specifically
designed tools, such as RTI Item Bank. 27 Finally, GRADE can be used to estimate and score the
quality of evidence for the full body of evidence and not only for individual primary studies. Fig 1
Decision framework to assess systematic reviews for updating, with standard terms to report such
decisions Download figure Open in new tab Download powerpoint Step 1: assess currency Does the
published review still address a current question. You will be able to get a quick price and instant
permission to reuse the content in many different ways. You will need to search the cognate literature
before claiming there is “little previous research” on your topic. Must include a team of at least 2-3
and includes the critical appraisal of the literature. Purpose: It serves to provide a comprehensive
overview of the current state of knowledge within a particular field.
Fig. 5. Codes and articles related to the process dimension. Also, Ma et al 46 and Quigley et al 14
both recommended ROBINS-I, MINORS and JBI, and all these tools ranked top 10 for addressing
and sufficiently describing methodological quality in our study. The amount of data generated from
life cycle assessment methodology is steadily increasing; reconciling conflicts between data sets and
leveraging existing data to answer new questions are important tasks for advancing decision making
capacity related to LCA. The summary table could either be an appendix or in the text itself if the
table is small enough e.g. similar to Table 1 of Shah et al (2007). Description of systematic review
protocol Generally, a team of individuals participates in a systematic review and a prospectively
designed protocol is helpful for consistency, accuracy, and overall organization. It allows the
combination of findings from different studies, highlighting new findings relevant to practice or
policy. The framework includes built-in mechanisms to adjust the analysis as the work progresses and
more is learned about the topic. Some more publications may be excluded at this point, when it
becomes obvious that a previously eligible-thought publications does not really fit the inclusion
criteria after all. The table helps you organize and compare information for your systematic review,
scholarly report, dissertation or thesis Synthesis Matrix. Future scope The systematic review’s
findings should be discussed in terms of the strength of evidence and shortcomings of the initial
research used for the review. The number of steps for conducting Evidence Synthesis varies a little,
depending on the source that one consults. Today, Systematic Literature Reviews are most
commonly used in Medicine, in the Social Sciences, Business and Economics, but have found their
way into several other disciplines (5). In order to help, this blog post will introduce you to the basics
of literature reviews and explain a specific methodological approach towards writing one, known as
the systematic literature review. Is this template for an undergrad, Master or PhD-level thesis.
Authors of updates need to consider inputs to the current edition, and follow ICMJE criteria
regarding authorship. 56 The PUGs panel proposed a decision framework (fig 1 ? ), with terms and
categories for reporting the decisions made for updating procedures for adoption by Cochrane and
other stakeholders. The stages listed above may appear to be sequential, but it is important to
recognize. Although this aspect is important, additional studies can add important information to a
review, which is more than just changing the primary outcome to a more accurate and reliable
estimate. We propose a checklist for a standardized technique for assessing and reporting reviews of
LCA data (STARR-LCA) to assist in structuring the process of conducting and reporting systematic
reviews. Third, identify patterns in approaches to your topic. It is easy to understand how this well-
documented tendency can skew a review’s findings, but someone conducting a systematic literature
review in the loose sense of the phrase might, for lack of resource or capacity, forgo that step. They
are inductive because they conclude based on existing literature, but also deductive since they
typically start with theoretical assumptions and a pre-defined thematic scope. We describe the
preliminary steps undertaken before performing the statistical synthesis. Your paper will also include
a PRISMA chart that is an image of your research process. LCA of renewable energy for electricity
generation systems - A review. For each concept, only the first 10 hits sorted by relevance, if
optional, were included (ie, a maximum of 40 hits for each website). UCASD. Overall, as listed in
Table 5, four codes from our coding sys-. Such information on tool linkage may also be considered
for tool selection, if available from the tools. Dogan RI, Murray GC, Neveol A, Lu Z (2009)
Understanding PubMed user search behavior through log analysis. May require the author to adopt a
guiding theory, a set of competing models, or a point of view about a topic. The middle represents
the effect size (e.g., SMD) and the endpoints representing both ends of the CI.