How to write a literature review

Literature review
• A literature review provide surveys of books, research articles,
and any other sources relevant to a particular issue, area of
research, or theory.
• It provides a detailed summary and critical evaluation of
previous works in relation to the research problem being
investigated.
• Literature reviews provide an overview of sources explored
while researching a particular topic.
• Demonstrate that how current research fits within a larger
field of study.
• A good literature review analyzes, synthesizes, and critically
evaluate to give a clear picture of the state of knowledge on
a particular topic.
 Purpose of literature review
The literature review gives you a chance to:
1. Locate current research within the context of existing literature (most
important).
2. Helps to understand the research problem being studied.
3. Identify new ways to interpret previous research.
4. Reveal gaps present in the literature & Pin Point the necessity for
additional research.
5. Develop a theoretical framework and methodology for current research
6. Identify new areas to prevent research duplication.
The content may look slightly different in  thesis, dissertation, research paper,
research proposal or review paper but the process of conducting a literature
review follows the same steps.
• In case of review paper, the purpose is to evaluate the current state of
research and demonstrate knowledge of scholarly debates around a
topic.
 Types of Literature Reviews
1. Argumentative Review
This form examines literature selectively in order to
support or refute an argument, already established in the
literature. The purpose is to develop a body of literature
that establishes a contrarian viewpoint

2. Integrative Review
Collection and synthesize of representative literature on a
topic in a way such that new frameworks and perspectives
on the topic are generated. The body of literature includes
all studies that address related or identical hypotheses or
research problems. This is the most common form of
reviews.
 Types of Literature Reviews
3. Historical Review
Historical literature reviews focus on examining research throughout a
period of time, often starting with the first time an issue emerged in the
literature. The research is placed in a historical context to show familiarity
with developments and to identify the likely directions for future
research.

4.Methodological Review
This type of review focus on how researcher came about saying what
they say [method of analysis].
– It provides a framework of understanding at different levels (i.e.
theory, research approaches, and data collection and analysis
techniques)
– how researchers draw a wide variety of knowledge ranging from the
conceptual level to practical documents for use in fieldwork
 Types of Literature Reviews
5. Systematic Review
This form consists of an overview of existing evidence related to a
clearly formulated research question.
The goal is to deliberately document, critically evaluate,
and summarize scientifically all of the research about a clearly
defined research problem.

6. Theoretical Review
The theoretical literature review helps to establish what theories
already exist, the relationships between them, to what degree the
existing theories have been investigated, and to develop new
hypotheses to be tested. Often this form is used to reveal that
current theories are inadequate for explaining new or emerging
research problems.
 Literature review
There are five main steps in the process of
writing a literature review:
1. Search for relevant literature
2. Evaluate sources
3. Identify themes, debates and gaps
4. Outline the structure
5. Write your literature review
 Step 1: Search for relevant literature
1. There should be a clearly defined topic before starting literature search.
2. To start, create a list of keywords related to research topic and question.
3. Search for research paper/literature relevant to research problem and
questions.
4. Read the abstract portion first and determine whether the research paper is
relevant to research topic.
5. After finding a useful literature (book or article), check also the bibliography
(literature Cited section at the end of paper) to find other relevant papers.
6. Important papers are those which keep on appearing repeatedly in your
search.
7. Google Scholar citation can also help to find a high citation paper in the field
of research.

If you are writing a literature review as a review paper (stand-alone assignment),

you will have to choose a focus and develop a central question to direct your
search and this question has to be answered without collecting original data.
 Step 2: Evaluate and select sources
• Evaluate and identify, which sources are most relevant to your questions.
• How does the publication contribute to your understanding of the topic?
What are its key insights and arguments?
• What are the strengths and weaknesses of the research?
• Use only credible sources, and make sure you read landmark studies and
major theories in your field of research.
• Consider mainly recent literature to review
• Take notes and cite your sources (prepare abstract card)
• Keep track of your sources with citations to avoid plagiarism.
• You can use free citation generator to quickly create correct and consistent
APA citation (according to the requirements of the institute or journal
where thesis or paper has to be submitted)
Step 3: Identify themes, debates, and gaps
• To begin organizing your literature review’s argument and structure, you
need to understand the connections and relationships between the
sources you’ve read. Based on your reading and notes, you can look for:
1. Trends and patterns: do certain approaches become more or less
popular over time?
2. Themes: what questions or concepts repeated across the literature?
3. Debates, conflicts and contradictions: where do sources disagree?
4. Important publications: Identify influential theories or studies that
changed the direction of the field?
5. Gaps: what is missing from the literature? Are there weaknesses that
need to be addressed?
• This step will help you work out the structure of your literature review.
 Step 4: Outline your literature review’s structure
There are various approaches to organizing the body of a literature review.
You can combine several of these strategies.
Chronological
• The simplest approach is to trace the development of the topic over time.
Give your interpretation of how and why certain developments occurred.
Thematic
• You can organize your literature review into subsections that address
different aspects of the topic.
Methodological
• If you draw your sources from a variety of research methods, you might
want to compare the results and conclusions that emerge from different
approaches.
Theoretical
• A literature review is often the foundation for a theoretical framework.
You might argue for the relevance of a specific theoretical approach, or
combine various theoretical concepts to create a framework for your
research
 Step 5: Write your literature review
•Like any other  academic texts, literature review should be divided into
introduction, main body and a conclusion depending on the objectives.
Introduction
•The introduction should clearly establish the focus and purpose of the literature
review. While writing the literature review of thesis or dissertation, focus on
–Central problem or research question
–Give a brief summary of the scholarly context
–Emphasize the timeliness of the topic and
–Highlight a gap in the literature.
•Body
–Divide the body into subsections for each theme, time period, or
methodological approach.
•Conclusion:
–Review of literature may culminate to questions to be answered according to
the objectives set out in the introduction section.