How to Write a Literature Review: The Complete Guide

A literature review is an important piece of any thesis, dissertation, or research paper. It’s a summary of prior research on a particular topic. You can’t write on a new topic without first looking at what others have done before you, and literature reviews help to do that.

In this article, we’ll tell you how to write a literature review for your thesis or dissertation project!

What is a Literature Review?

A literature review critically analyzes what other researchers have written about your topic. The goal is to inform the reader about previous research on this issue and show how you will build upon or extend current knowledge in your study.

Why is it important for your research?

A literature review is an important part of any research project, and it’s especially important for a thesis or dissertation. That’s because your thesis or dissertation is the culmination of your academic career, and you need to show that you have a thorough understanding of the existing knowledge on your topic.

A well-done literature review demonstrates that you know your field inside and out, and it helps to make your project more credible. So, how do you write a literature review? There’s no one formula, but there are some general steps that you can follow:

Steps to Write a Best Literature Review

Writing a literature review can be a daunting task. It may seem overwhelming, especially because you have to pay attention to the following aspects:

• Citing other people’s work properly and accurately
• Maintain academic integrity throughout your writing process
• showing that you’ve done extensive research on several articles and texts.

Here are few steps to follow while writing a literature review.

Step 1: First, start by finding all of the relevant literature on your topic. This includes journal articles, book chapters, and even conference papers.

Step 2: Then, read and analyze the literature. What are the key findings? What are the major arguments? What does this research add to our understanding of your topic?

Step 3: Finally, write up your review. Organize it clearly and logically, and be sure to cite all of your sources.

A literature review can be a difficult and time-consuming process, so starting as early as possible is a good idea. Begin by reviewing the existing literature on your topic. This will make writing your thesis or dissertation much easier in the long run.

Types of Literature Reviews

There are two main types of literature reviews: narrative and systematic. A narrative review collects a series of anecdotes to conclude, while the systematic review uses statistical analysis, generally, meta-analysis, to correlate variables in order to explore relationships between phenomena.

A third type, the scoping review, is a hybrid of the two. It uses methods from both systematic and narrative reviews to map out all the relevant literature on a given topic. This can be helpful when there is no previous research to build upon or when you need to get an overview of a complex field.

Each type of review has its own strengths and weaknesses.

Narrative Literature Reviews

Narrative reviews are useful when there are few studies because they give an in-depth, insightful account of the research that has already been done on a topic.

On the other hand, it can be difficult to generalize findings from narrative reviews unless you have enough evidence to form conclusions without statistical analysis.

Systematic Literature Review

Systematic reviews are good at drawing together previous research and providing a general consensus on what has been found.

However, they can be time-consuming to conduct as extensive searches must be conducted for high-quality studies before the results of those studies can be analyzed statistically.

Scoping Literature Review

Scoping reviews provide an overview of all the current literature in a field by summarizing findings from all literature reviews.

However, they are not as deep or insightful as narrative or systematic reviews because it is impossible to analyze the data without conducting many different studies.

Guideline to write a Literature Review

Follow these simple guidelines to make your literature review process easy:

• Start by creating an outline of the different points that you want to cover in your review.
• Once you have a general idea of what points you want to discuss, start reading articles and integrating their ideas into your writing. You can organize your articles in different folders, depending on what point they make. For example, you may want to create a folder for authors who support the same view as yours or another one for those that disagree with you.
• After reading enough material and creating an outline of all the points you will include in your review, it’s time to write the first draft. During this process, you may find that some points are not relevant anymore, or new information may have emerged.
• Once your literature review is finished and ready for submission, proofread it one more time before sending it in!

How to Find and Evaluate Sources for your Literature Review

When conducting a literature review, it is important to find and evaluate relevant sources. The following steps can help you locate high-quality sources for your review:

• First, identify the topic of your review and compile a list of keywords related to that topic.
• Second, use online databases or library catalogs to search for scholarly articles on your topic.
• Third, read the abstracts of the articles you find to determine if they are relevant to your review.
• Fourth, evaluate the quality of the sources you have found by examining their credibility, accuracy, and objectivity.
• Finally, select the best sources for your review and incorporate them into your writing.

Tips for Writing a Strong Literature Review

When it comes to writing a literature review, there are a few things you can do to ensure that it is strong. A strong literature review should be able to provide an overview of the research that has already been done on a topic. You want your readers to come away with a good understanding of what you are trying to study and why it is important.

The following tips will help you write stronger literature reviews for your papers:

1)  Make sure that you are familiar with the topic that you are reviewing.

When you are writing a literature review, it is important to be familiar with the topic that you are discussing.

Make sure that you understand the key concepts and terminology associated with your topic. This will help you to write a more accurate and informative review.

2)   Be sure to analyze the research that you are discussing.

When writing a literature review, it is important not just to summarize what others have done in their studies but also to critique and analyze their work.

Make sure that you understand how previous researchers have studied your topic and why they chose certain methods for collecting data or analyzing results. This will help you to make sure that your research builds on the work of others.

3)   Organize your review in a logical manner.

When writing a literature review, it is important to organize your thoughts in a clear and concise manner. Make sure that you introduce each section of your review with a brief overview of what will be discussed.

Then, break down the research that you are discussing into manageable chunks. This will make it easier for your readers to understand what you are trying to say.

4) Be sure to include the appropriate citations throughout your review.

It is important that you properly cite all sources of information when writing a literature review. You want your readers to be able to track down the original research if they are interested in learning more about it, so make sure that you are using proper citation styles for different types of resources.

5) Edit and proofread your review before submitting it.

It is important to take the time to edit and proofread your literature review before submitting it for publication. This will help to ensure that your writing is clear and error-free.

These are just a few tips for writing stronger literature reviews. By following these guidelines, you can create a review that is informative and engaging for your readers.

Wrapping Up

Writing a literature review is an important part of your dissertation or thesis. You must find articles that are relevant to the topic you are studying, summarize what they say, and then present this information in a cohesive way so it makes sense for readers who may not have read the original article themselves. Here’s how to write one with ease!

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