how to write a literature review in biology

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Ten Simple Rules for Writing a Literature Review

Marco pautasso.

1 Centre for Functional and Evolutionary Ecology (CEFE), CNRS, Montpellier, France

2 Centre for Biodiversity Synthesis and Analysis (CESAB), FRB, Aix-en-Provence, France

Literature reviews are in great demand in most scientific fields. Their need stems from the ever-increasing output of scientific publications [1] . For example, compared to 1991, in 2008 three, eight, and forty times more papers were indexed in Web of Science on malaria, obesity, and biodiversity, respectively [2] . Given such mountains of papers, scientists cannot be expected to examine in detail every single new paper relevant to their interests [3] . Thus, it is both advantageous and necessary to rely on regular summaries of the recent literature. Although recognition for scientists mainly comes from primary research, timely literature reviews can lead to new synthetic insights and are often widely read [4] . For such summaries to be useful, however, they need to be compiled in a professional way [5] .

When starting from scratch, reviewing the literature can require a titanic amount of work. That is why researchers who have spent their career working on a certain research issue are in a perfect position to review that literature. Some graduate schools are now offering courses in reviewing the literature, given that most research students start their project by producing an overview of what has already been done on their research issue [6] . However, it is likely that most scientists have not thought in detail about how to approach and carry out a literature review.

Reviewing the literature requires the ability to juggle multiple tasks, from finding and evaluating relevant material to synthesising information from various sources, from critical thinking to paraphrasing, evaluating, and citation skills [7] . In this contribution, I share ten simple rules I learned working on about 25 literature reviews as a PhD and postdoctoral student. Ideas and insights also come from discussions with coauthors and colleagues, as well as feedback from reviewers and editors.

Rule 1: Define a Topic and Audience

How to choose which topic to review? There are so many issues in contemporary science that you could spend a lifetime of attending conferences and reading the literature just pondering what to review. On the one hand, if you take several years to choose, several other people may have had the same idea in the meantime. On the other hand, only a well-considered topic is likely to lead to a brilliant literature review [8] . The topic must at least be:

• interesting to you (ideally, you should have come across a series of recent papers related to your line of work that call for a critical summary),
• an important aspect of the field (so that many readers will be interested in the review and there will be enough material to write it), and
• a well-defined issue (otherwise you could potentially include thousands of publications, which would make the review unhelpful).

Ideas for potential reviews may come from papers providing lists of key research questions to be answered [9] , but also from serendipitous moments during desultory reading and discussions. In addition to choosing your topic, you should also select a target audience. In many cases, the topic (e.g., web services in computational biology) will automatically define an audience (e.g., computational biologists), but that same topic may also be of interest to neighbouring fields (e.g., computer science, biology, etc.).

Rule 2: Search and Re-search the Literature

After having chosen your topic and audience, start by checking the literature and downloading relevant papers. Five pieces of advice here:

• keep track of the search items you use (so that your search can be replicated [10] ),
• keep a list of papers whose pdfs you cannot access immediately (so as to retrieve them later with alternative strategies),
• use a paper management system (e.g., Mendeley, Papers, Qiqqa, Sente),
• define early in the process some criteria for exclusion of irrelevant papers (these criteria can then be described in the review to help define its scope), and
• do not just look for research papers in the area you wish to review, but also seek previous reviews.

The chances are high that someone will already have published a literature review ( Figure 1 ), if not exactly on the issue you are planning to tackle, at least on a related topic. If there are already a few or several reviews of the literature on your issue, my advice is not to give up, but to carry on with your own literature review,

The bottom-right situation (many literature reviews but few research papers) is not just a theoretical situation; it applies, for example, to the study of the impacts of climate change on plant diseases, where there appear to be more literature reviews than research studies [33] .

• discussing in your review the approaches, limitations, and conclusions of past reviews,
• trying to find a new angle that has not been covered adequately in the previous reviews, and
• incorporating new material that has inevitably accumulated since their appearance.

When searching the literature for pertinent papers and reviews, the usual rules apply:

• be thorough,
• use different keywords and database sources (e.g., DBLP, Google Scholar, ISI Proceedings, JSTOR Search, Medline, Scopus, Web of Science), and
• look at who has cited past relevant papers and book chapters.

Rule 3: Take Notes While Reading

If you read the papers first, and only afterwards start writing the review, you will need a very good memory to remember who wrote what, and what your impressions and associations were while reading each single paper. My advice is, while reading, to start writing down interesting pieces of information, insights about how to organize the review, and thoughts on what to write. This way, by the time you have read the literature you selected, you will already have a rough draft of the review.

Of course, this draft will still need much rewriting, restructuring, and rethinking to obtain a text with a coherent argument [11] , but you will have avoided the danger posed by staring at a blank document. Be careful when taking notes to use quotation marks if you are provisionally copying verbatim from the literature. It is advisable then to reformulate such quotes with your own words in the final draft. It is important to be careful in noting the references already at this stage, so as to avoid misattributions. Using referencing software from the very beginning of your endeavour will save you time.

Rule 4: Choose the Type of Review You Wish to Write

After having taken notes while reading the literature, you will have a rough idea of the amount of material available for the review. This is probably a good time to decide whether to go for a mini- or a full review. Some journals are now favouring the publication of rather short reviews focusing on the last few years, with a limit on the number of words and citations. A mini-review is not necessarily a minor review: it may well attract more attention from busy readers, although it will inevitably simplify some issues and leave out some relevant material due to space limitations. A full review will have the advantage of more freedom to cover in detail the complexities of a particular scientific development, but may then be left in the pile of the very important papers “to be read” by readers with little time to spare for major monographs.

There is probably a continuum between mini- and full reviews. The same point applies to the dichotomy of descriptive vs. integrative reviews. While descriptive reviews focus on the methodology, findings, and interpretation of each reviewed study, integrative reviews attempt to find common ideas and concepts from the reviewed material [12] . A similar distinction exists between narrative and systematic reviews: while narrative reviews are qualitative, systematic reviews attempt to test a hypothesis based on the published evidence, which is gathered using a predefined protocol to reduce bias [13] , [14] . When systematic reviews analyse quantitative results in a quantitative way, they become meta-analyses. The choice between different review types will have to be made on a case-by-case basis, depending not just on the nature of the material found and the preferences of the target journal(s), but also on the time available to write the review and the number of coauthors [15] .

Rule 5: Keep the Review Focused, but Make It of Broad Interest

Whether your plan is to write a mini- or a full review, it is good advice to keep it focused 16 , 17 . Including material just for the sake of it can easily lead to reviews that are trying to do too many things at once. The need to keep a review focused can be problematic for interdisciplinary reviews, where the aim is to bridge the gap between fields [18] . If you are writing a review on, for example, how epidemiological approaches are used in modelling the spread of ideas, you may be inclined to include material from both parent fields, epidemiology and the study of cultural diffusion. This may be necessary to some extent, but in this case a focused review would only deal in detail with those studies at the interface between epidemiology and the spread of ideas.

While focus is an important feature of a successful review, this requirement has to be balanced with the need to make the review relevant to a broad audience. This square may be circled by discussing the wider implications of the reviewed topic for other disciplines.

Rule 6: Be Critical and Consistent

Reviewing the literature is not stamp collecting. A good review does not just summarize the literature, but discusses it critically, identifies methodological problems, and points out research gaps [19] . After having read a review of the literature, a reader should have a rough idea of:

• the major achievements in the reviewed field,
• the main areas of debate, and
• the outstanding research questions.

It is challenging to achieve a successful review on all these fronts. A solution can be to involve a set of complementary coauthors: some people are excellent at mapping what has been achieved, some others are very good at identifying dark clouds on the horizon, and some have instead a knack at predicting where solutions are going to come from. If your journal club has exactly this sort of team, then you should definitely write a review of the literature! In addition to critical thinking, a literature review needs consistency, for example in the choice of passive vs. active voice and present vs. past tense.

Rule 7: Find a Logical Structure

Like a well-baked cake, a good review has a number of telling features: it is worth the reader's time, timely, systematic, well written, focused, and critical. It also needs a good structure. With reviews, the usual subdivision of research papers into introduction, methods, results, and discussion does not work or is rarely used. However, a general introduction of the context and, toward the end, a recapitulation of the main points covered and take-home messages make sense also in the case of reviews. For systematic reviews, there is a trend towards including information about how the literature was searched (database, keywords, time limits) [20] .

How can you organize the flow of the main body of the review so that the reader will be drawn into and guided through it? It is generally helpful to draw a conceptual scheme of the review, e.g., with mind-mapping techniques. Such diagrams can help recognize a logical way to order and link the various sections of a review [21] . This is the case not just at the writing stage, but also for readers if the diagram is included in the review as a figure. A careful selection of diagrams and figures relevant to the reviewed topic can be very helpful to structure the text too [22] .

Rule 8: Make Use of Feedback

Reviews of the literature are normally peer-reviewed in the same way as research papers, and rightly so [23] . As a rule, incorporating feedback from reviewers greatly helps improve a review draft. Having read the review with a fresh mind, reviewers may spot inaccuracies, inconsistencies, and ambiguities that had not been noticed by the writers due to rereading the typescript too many times. It is however advisable to reread the draft one more time before submission, as a last-minute correction of typos, leaps, and muddled sentences may enable the reviewers to focus on providing advice on the content rather than the form.

Feedback is vital to writing a good review, and should be sought from a variety of colleagues, so as to obtain a diversity of views on the draft. This may lead in some cases to conflicting views on the merits of the paper, and on how to improve it, but such a situation is better than the absence of feedback. A diversity of feedback perspectives on a literature review can help identify where the consensus view stands in the landscape of the current scientific understanding of an issue [24] .

Rule 9: Include Your Own Relevant Research, but Be Objective

In many cases, reviewers of the literature will have published studies relevant to the review they are writing. This could create a conflict of interest: how can reviewers report objectively on their own work [25] ? Some scientists may be overly enthusiastic about what they have published, and thus risk giving too much importance to their own findings in the review. However, bias could also occur in the other direction: some scientists may be unduly dismissive of their own achievements, so that they will tend to downplay their contribution (if any) to a field when reviewing it.

In general, a review of the literature should neither be a public relations brochure nor an exercise in competitive self-denial. If a reviewer is up to the job of producing a well-organized and methodical review, which flows well and provides a service to the readership, then it should be possible to be objective in reviewing one's own relevant findings. In reviews written by multiple authors, this may be achieved by assigning the review of the results of a coauthor to different coauthors.

Rule 10: Be Up-to-Date, but Do Not Forget Older Studies

Given the progressive acceleration in the publication of scientific papers, today's reviews of the literature need awareness not just of the overall direction and achievements of a field of inquiry, but also of the latest studies, so as not to become out-of-date before they have been published. Ideally, a literature review should not identify as a major research gap an issue that has just been addressed in a series of papers in press (the same applies, of course, to older, overlooked studies (“sleeping beauties” [26] )). This implies that literature reviewers would do well to keep an eye on electronic lists of papers in press, given that it can take months before these appear in scientific databases. Some reviews declare that they have scanned the literature up to a certain point in time, but given that peer review can be a rather lengthy process, a full search for newly appeared literature at the revision stage may be worthwhile. Assessing the contribution of papers that have just appeared is particularly challenging, because there is little perspective with which to gauge their significance and impact on further research and society.

Inevitably, new papers on the reviewed topic (including independently written literature reviews) will appear from all quarters after the review has been published, so that there may soon be the need for an updated review. But this is the nature of science [27] – [32] . I wish everybody good luck with writing a review of the literature.

Acknowledgments

Many thanks to M. Barbosa, K. Dehnen-Schmutz, T. Döring, D. Fontaneto, M. Garbelotto, O. Holdenrieder, M. Jeger, D. Lonsdale, A. MacLeod, P. Mills, M. Moslonka-Lefebvre, G. Stancanelli, P. Weisberg, and X. Xu for insights and discussions, and to P. Bourne, T. Matoni, and D. Smith for helpful comments on a previous draft.

Funding Statement

This work was funded by the French Foundation for Research on Biodiversity (FRB) through its Centre for Synthesis and Analysis of Biodiversity data (CESAB), as part of the NETSEED research project. The funders had no role in the preparation of the manuscript.

• Where do I find biology resources in the library?
• What if I can't find what I'm looking for?
• How do I know if my source is a "scholarly" source?
• How do I paraphrase something?

Literature Review Basics

• Literature Review Step-by-Step
• Common Questions about Literature Reviews
• How do I craft a basic citation?
• What is citation tracing?
• How do I use Zotero for citation management?
• Who do I contact for help?

This video will provide a short introduction to literature reviews.

Steps For Writing a Literature Review

Recommended steps for writing a literature review:

• Review what a literature review is, and is not 
• Review your assignment and seek clarification from your instructor if needed
• Narrow your topic
• Search and gather literature resources. 
• Read and analyze literature resources
• Write the literature review
• Review appropriate  Citation and Documentation Style  for your assignment and literature review

Common Questions

What is a literature review?

A literature review is a type of scholarly, researched writing that discusses the already published information on a narrow topic . 

What is the purpose of a writing literature review?

Writing a literature review improves your personal understanding of a topic, and demonstrates your knowledge and ability to make connections between concepts and ideas. The literature review is a service to your reader, summarizing past ideas about a topic, bringing them up to date on the latest research, and making sure they have all any background information they need to understand the topic.  

What is "the literature"?

This already published information- called the literature- can be from primary information sources such as speeches, interviews, and reports, or from secondary information sources such as peer-reviewed journal articles, dissertations, and books. These type of sources are probably familiar to you from previous research projects you’ve done in your classes.

Is a literature review it's own paper?

You can write a literature review as a standalone paper , or as part of a larger research paper . When a standalone paper, the literature review acts as a summary, or snapshot, of what has been said and done about a topic in the field so far. When part of the a larger paper, a literature review still acts as a snapshot, but the prior information it provides can also support the new information, research, or arguments presented later in the paper.

Does a literature review contain an argument?

No, a literature review does NOT present an argument or new information. The literature review is a foundation that summarizes and synthesizes the existing literature in order for you and your readers to understand what has already been said and done about your topic.

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7 Writing a Literature Review

Hundreds of original investigation research articles on health science topics are published each year. It is becoming harder and harder to keep on top of all new findings in a topic area and – more importantly – to work out how they all fit together to determine our current understanding of a topic. This is where literature reviews come in.

In this chapter, we explain what a literature review is and outline the stages involved in writing one. We also provide practical tips on how to communicate the results of a review of current literature on a topic in the format of a literature review.

7.1 What is a literature review?

Literature reviews provide a synthesis and evaluation  of the existing literature on a particular topic with the aim of gaining a new, deeper understanding of the topic.

Published literature reviews are typically written by scientists who are experts in that particular area of science. Usually, they will be widely published as authors of their own original work, making them highly qualified to author a literature review.

However, literature reviews are still subject to peer review before being published. Literature reviews provide an important bridge between the expert scientific community and many other communities, such as science journalists, teachers, and medical and allied health professionals. When the most up-to-date knowledge reaches such audiences, it is more likely that this information will find its way to the general public. When this happens, – the ultimate good of science can be realised.

A literature review is structured differently from an original research article. It is developed based on themes, rather than stages of the scientific method.

In the article Ten simple rules for writing a literature review , Marco Pautasso explains the importance of literature reviews:

Literature reviews are in great demand in most scientific fields. Their need stems from the ever-increasing output of scientific publications. For example, compared to 1991, in 2008 three, eight, and forty times more papers were indexed in Web of Science on malaria, obesity, and biodiversity, respectively. Given such mountains of papers, scientists cannot be expected to examine in detail every single new paper relevant to their interests. Thus, it is both advantageous and necessary to rely on regular summaries of the recent literature. Although recognition for scientists mainly comes from primary research, timely literature reviews can lead to new synthetic insights and are often widely read. For such summaries to be useful, however, they need to be compiled in a professional way (Pautasso, 2013, para. 1).

An example of a literature review is shown in Figure 7.1.

Video 7.1: What is a literature review? [2 mins, 11 secs]

Watch this video created by Steely Library at Northern Kentucky Library called ‘ What is a literature review? Note: Closed captions are available by clicking on the CC button below.

Examples of published literature reviews

• Strength training alone, exercise therapy alone, and exercise therapy with passive manual mobilisation each reduce pain and disability in people with knee osteoarthritis: a systematic review
• Traveler’s diarrhea: a clinical review
• Cultural concepts of distress and psychiatric disorders: literature review and research recommendations for global mental health epidemiology

7.2 Steps of writing a literature review

Writing a literature review is a very challenging task. Figure 7.2 summarises the steps of writing a literature review. Depending on why you are writing your literature review, you may be given a topic area, or may choose a topic that particularly interests you or is related to a research project that you wish to undertake.

Chapter 6 provides instructions on finding scientific literature that would form the basis for your literature review.

Once you have your topic and have accessed the literature, the next stages (analysis, synthesis and evaluation) are challenging. Next, we look at these important cognitive skills student scientists will need to develop and employ to successfully write a literature review, and provide some guidance for navigating these stages.

Analysis, synthesis and evaluation

Analysis, synthesis and evaluation are three essential skills required by scientists  and you will need to develop these skills if you are to write a good literature review ( Figure 7.3 ). These important cognitive skills are discussed in more detail in Chapter 9.

The first step in writing a literature review is to analyse the original investigation research papers that you have gathered related to your topic.

Analysis requires examining the papers methodically and in detail, so you can understand and interpret aspects of the study described in each research article.

An analysis grid is a simple tool you can use to help with the careful examination and breakdown of each paper. This tool will allow you to create a concise summary of each research paper; see Table 7.1 for an example of  an analysis grid. When filling in the grid, the aim is to draw out key aspects of each research paper. Use a different row for each paper, and a different column for each aspect of the paper ( Tables 7.2 and 7.3 show how completed analysis grid may look).

Before completing your own grid, look at these examples and note the types of information that have been included, as well as the level of detail. Completing an analysis grid with a sufficient level of detail will help you to complete the synthesis and evaluation stages effectively. This grid will allow you to more easily observe similarities and differences across the findings of the research papers and to identify possible explanations (e.g., differences in methodologies employed) for observed differences between the findings of different research papers.

Table 7.1: Example of an analysis grid

Table 7.3: Sample filled-in analysis grid for research article by Ping and colleagues

Source: Ping, WC, Keong, CC & Bandyopadhyay, A 2010, ‘Effects of acute supplementation of caffeine on cardiorespiratory responses during endurance running in a hot and humid climate’, Indian Journal of Medical Research, vol. 132, pp. 36–41. Used under a CC-BY-NC-SA licence.

Step two of writing a literature review is synthesis.

Synthesis describes combining separate components or elements to form a connected whole.

You will use the results of your analysis to find themes to build your literature review around. Each of the themes identified will become a subheading within the body of your literature review.

A good place to start when identifying themes is with the dependent variables (results/findings) that were investigated in the research studies.

Because all of the research articles you are incorporating into your literature review are related to your topic, it is likely that they have similar study designs and have measured similar dependent variables. Review the ‘Results’ column of your analysis grid. You may like to collate the common themes in a synthesis grid (see, for example Table 7.4 ).

Step three of writing a literature review is evaluation, which can only be done after carefully analysing your research papers and synthesising the common themes (findings).

During the evaluation stage, you are making judgements on the themes presented in the research articles that you have read. This includes providing physiological explanations for the findings. It may be useful to refer to the discussion section of published original investigation research papers, or another literature review, where the authors may mention tested or hypothetical physiological mechanisms that may explain their findings.

When the findings of the investigations related to a particular theme are inconsistent (e.g., one study shows that caffeine effects performance and another study shows that caffeine had no effect on performance) you should attempt to provide explanations of why the results differ, including physiological explanations. A good place to start is by comparing the methodologies to determine if there are any differences that may explain the differences in the findings (see the ‘Experimental design’ column of your analysis grid). An example of evaluation is shown in the examples that follow in this section, under ‘Running performance’ and ‘RPE ratings’.

When the findings of the papers related to a particular theme are consistent (e.g., caffeine had no effect on oxygen uptake in both studies) an evaluation should include an explanation of why the results are similar. Once again, include physiological explanations. It is still a good idea to compare methodologies as a background to the evaluation. An example of evaluation is shown in the following under ‘Oxygen consumption’.

7.3 Writing your literature review

Once you have completed the analysis, and synthesis grids and written your evaluation of the research papers , you can combine synthesis and evaluation information to create a paragraph for a literature review ( Figure 7.4 ).

The following paragraphs are an example of combining the outcome of the synthesis and evaluation stages to produce a paragraph for a literature review.

Note that this is an example using only two papers – most literature reviews would be presenting information on many more papers than this ( (e.g., 106 papers in the review article by Bain and colleagues discussed later in this chapter). However, the same principle applies regardless of the number of papers reviewed.

The next part of this chapter looks at the each section of a literature review and explains how to write them by referring to a review article that was published in Frontiers in Physiology and shown in Figure 7.1. Each section from the published article is annotated to highlight important features of the format of the review article, and identifies the synthesis and evaluation information.

In the examination of each review article section we will point out examples of how the authors have presented certain information and where they display application of important cognitive processes; we will use the colour code shown below:

This should be one paragraph that accurately reflects the contents of the review article.

Introduction

The introduction should establish the context and importance of the review

Body of literature review

The reference section provides a list of the references that you cited in the body of your review article. The format will depend on the journal of publication as each journal has their own specific referencing format.

It is important to accurately cite references in research papers to acknowledge your sources and ensure credit is appropriately given to authors of work you have referred to. An accurate and comprehensive reference list also shows your readers that you are well-read in your topic area and are aware of the key papers that provide the context to your research.

It is important to keep track of your resources and to reference them consistently in the format required by the publication in which your work will appear. Most scientists will use reference management software to store details of all of the journal articles (and other sources) they use while writing their review article. This software also automates the process of adding in-text references and creating a reference list. In the review article by Bain et al. (2014) used as an example in this chapter, the reference list contains 106 items, so you can imagine how much help referencing software would be. Chapter 5 shows you how to use EndNote, one example of reference management software.

Click the drop down below to review the terms learned from this chapter.

Copyright note:

• The quotation from Pautasso, M 2013, ‘Ten simple rules for writing a literature review’, PLoS Computational Biology is use under a CC-BY licence. 
• Content from the annotated article and tables are based on Schubert, MM, Astorino, TA & Azevedo, JJL 2013, ‘The effects of caffeinated ‘energy shots’ on time trial performance’, Nutrients, vol. 5, no. 6, pp. 2062–2075 (used under a CC-BY 3.0 licence ) and P ing, WC, Keong , CC & Bandyopadhyay, A 2010, ‘Effects of acute supplementation of caffeine on cardiorespiratory responses during endurance running in a hot and humid climate’, Indian Journal of Medical Research, vol. 132, pp. 36–41 (used under a CC-BY-NC-SA 4.0 licence ). 

Bain, A.R., Morrison, S.A., & Ainslie, P.N. (2014). Cerebral oxygenation and hyperthermia. Frontiers in Physiology, 5 , 92.

Pautasso, M. (2013). Ten simple rules for writing a literature review. PLoS Computational Biology, 9 (7), e1003149.

How To Do Science Copyright © 2022 by University of Southern Queensland is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License , except where otherwise noted.

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• Correction 09 December 2020

How to write a superb literature review

Andy Tay is a freelance writer based in Singapore.

You can also search for this author in PubMed   Google Scholar

Literature reviews are important resources for scientists. They provide historical context for a field while offering opinions on its future trajectory. Creating them can provide inspiration for one’s own research, as well as some practice in writing. But few scientists are trained in how to write a review — or in what constitutes an excellent one. Even picking the appropriate software to use can be an involved decision (see ‘Tools and techniques’). So Nature asked editors and working scientists with well-cited reviews for their tips.

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Correction 09 December 2020 : An earlier version of the tables in this article included some incorrect details about the programs Zotero, Endnote and Manubot. These have now been corrected.

Hsing, I.-M., Xu, Y. & Zhao, W. Electroanalysis 19 , 755–768 (2007).

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Ledesma, H. A. et al. Nature Nanotechnol. 14 , 645–657 (2019).

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Brahlek, M., Koirala, N., Bansal, N. & Oh, S. Solid State Commun. 215–216 , 54–62 (2015).

Choi, Y. & Lee, S. Y. Nature Rev. Chem . https://doi.org/10.1038/s41570-020-00221-w (2020).

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What is a Literature Review?

A literature review is a body of text that aims to review the critical points of current knowledge on a particular topic. Most often associated with science-oriented literature, such as a thesis, the literature review usually proceeds a research proposal, methodology and results section. Its ultimate goals is to bring the reader up to date with current literature on a topic and forms that basis for another goal, such as the justification for future research in the area. (retrieved from  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Literature_review )

Writing a Literature Review

The literature review is the section of your paper in which you cite and briefly review the related research studies that have been conducted. In this space, you will describe the foundation on which  your  research will be/is built. You will:

• discuss the work of others
• evaluate their methods and findings
• identify any gaps in their research
• state how  your  research is different

The literature review should be selective and should group the cited studies in some logical fashion.

If you need some additional assistance writing your literature review, the Knight Institute for Writing in the Disciplines offers a  Graduate Writing Service .

Demystifying the Literature Review

For more information, visit our guide devoted to " Demystifying the Literature Review " which includes:

• guide to conducting a literature review,
• a recorded 1.5 hour workshop covering the steps of a literature review, a checklist for drafting your topic and search terms, citation management software for organizing your results, and database searching.

Online Resources

• A Guide to Library Research at Cornell University
• Literature Reviews: An Overview for Graduate Students North Carolina State University 
• The Literature Review: A Few Tips on Conducting Written by Dena Taylor, Director, Health Sciences Writing Centre, and Margaret Procter, Coordinator, Writing Support, University of Toronto
• How to Write a Literature Review University Library, University of California, Santa Cruz
• Review of Literature The Writing Center, University of Wisconsin-Madison

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• How to Write a Literature Review | Guide, Examples, & Templates

How to Write a Literature Review | Guide, Examples, & Templates

Published on January 2, 2023 by Shona McCombes . Revised on September 11, 2023.

What is a literature review? A literature review is a survey of scholarly sources on a specific topic. It provides an overview of current knowledge, allowing you to identify relevant theories, methods, and gaps in the existing research that you can later apply to your paper, thesis, or dissertation topic .

There are five key steps to writing a literature review:

• Search for relevant literature
• Evaluate sources
• Identify themes, debates, and gaps
• Outline the structure
• Write your literature review

A good literature review doesn’t just summarize sources—it analyzes, synthesizes , and critically evaluates to give a clear picture of the state of knowledge on the subject.

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Table of contents

What is the purpose of a literature review, examples of literature reviews, step 1 – search for relevant literature, step 2 – evaluate and select sources, step 3 – identify themes, debates, and gaps, step 4 – outline your literature review’s structure, step 5 – write your literature review, free lecture slides, other interesting articles, frequently asked questions, introduction.

• Quick Run-through
• Step 1 & 2

When you write a thesis , dissertation , or research paper , you will likely have to conduct a literature review to situate your research within existing knowledge. The literature review gives you a chance to:

• Demonstrate your familiarity with the topic and its scholarly context
• Develop a theoretical framework and methodology for your research
• Position your work in relation to other researchers and theorists
• Show how your research addresses a gap or contributes to a debate
• Evaluate the current state of research and demonstrate your knowledge of the scholarly debates around your topic.

Writing literature reviews is a particularly important skill if you want to apply for graduate school or pursue a career in research. We’ve written a step-by-step guide that you can follow below.

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Writing literature reviews can be quite challenging! A good starting point could be to look at some examples, depending on what kind of literature review you’d like to write.

• Example literature review #1: “Why Do People Migrate? A Review of the Theoretical Literature” ( Theoretical literature review about the development of economic migration theory from the 1950s to today.)
• Example literature review #2: “Literature review as a research methodology: An overview and guidelines” ( Methodological literature review about interdisciplinary knowledge acquisition and production.)
• Example literature review #3: “The Use of Technology in English Language Learning: A Literature Review” ( Thematic literature review about the effects of technology on language acquisition.)
• Example literature review #4: “Learners’ Listening Comprehension Difficulties in English Language Learning: A Literature Review” ( Chronological literature review about how the concept of listening skills has changed over time.)

You can also check out our templates with literature review examples and sample outlines at the links below.

Download Word doc Download Google doc

Before you begin searching for literature, you need a clearly defined topic .

If you are writing the literature review section of a dissertation or research paper, you will search for literature related to your research problem and questions .

Make a list of keywords

Start by creating a list of keywords related to your research question. Include each of the key concepts or variables you’re interested in, and list any synonyms and related terms. You can add to this list as you discover new keywords in the process of your literature search.

• Social media, Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, Snapchat, TikTok
• Body image, self-perception, self-esteem, mental health
• Generation Z, teenagers, adolescents, youth

Search for relevant sources

Use your keywords to begin searching for sources. Some useful databases to search for journals and articles include:

• Your university’s library catalogue
• Google Scholar
• Project Muse (humanities and social sciences)
• Medline (life sciences and biomedicine)
• EconLit (economics)
• Inspec (physics, engineering and computer science)

You can also use boolean operators to help narrow down your search.

Make sure to read the abstract to find out whether an article is relevant to your question. When you find a useful book or article, you can check the bibliography to find other relevant sources.

You likely won’t be able to read absolutely everything that has been written on your topic, so it will be necessary to evaluate which sources are most relevant to your research question.

For each publication, ask yourself:

• What question or problem is the author addressing?
• What are the key concepts and how are they defined?
• What are the key theories, models, and methods?
• Does the research use established frameworks or take an innovative approach?
• What are the results and conclusions of the study?
• How does the publication relate to other literature in the field? Does it confirm, add to, or challenge established knowledge?
• What are the strengths and weaknesses of the research?

Make sure the sources you use are credible , and make sure you read any landmark studies and major theories in your field of research.

You can use our template to summarize and evaluate sources you’re thinking about using. Click on either button below to download.

Take notes and cite your sources

As you read, you should also begin the writing process. Take notes that you can later incorporate into the text of your literature review.

It is important to keep track of your sources with citations to avoid plagiarism . It can be helpful to make an annotated bibliography , where you compile full citation information and write a paragraph of summary and analysis for each source. This helps you remember what you read and saves time later in the process.

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To begin organizing your literature review’s argument and structure, be sure you understand the connections and relationships between the sources you’ve read. Based on your reading and notes, you can look for:

• Trends and patterns (in theory, method or results): do certain approaches become more or less popular over time?
• Themes: what questions or concepts recur across the literature?
• Debates, conflicts and contradictions: where do sources disagree?
• Pivotal publications: are there any influential theories or studies that changed the direction of the field?
• 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 and (if applicable) show how your own research will contribute to existing knowledge.

• Most research has focused on young women.
• There is an increasing interest in the visual aspects of social media.
• But there is still a lack of robust research on highly visual platforms like Instagram and Snapchat—this is a gap that you could address in your own research.

There are various approaches to organizing the body of a literature review. Depending on the length of your literature review, you can combine several of these strategies (for example, your overall structure might be thematic, but each theme is discussed chronologically).

Chronological

The simplest approach is to trace the development of the topic over time. However, if you choose this strategy, be careful to avoid simply listing and summarizing sources in order.

Try to analyze patterns, turning points and key debates that have shaped the direction of the field. Give your interpretation of how and why certain developments occurred.

If you have found some recurring central themes, you can organize your literature review into subsections that address different aspects of the topic.

For example, if you are reviewing literature about inequalities in migrant health outcomes, key themes might include healthcare policy, language barriers, cultural attitudes, legal status, and economic access.

Methodological

If you draw your sources from different disciplines or fields that use a variety of research methods , you might want to compare the results and conclusions that emerge from different approaches. For example:

• Look at what results have emerged in qualitative versus quantitative research
• Discuss how the topic has been approached by empirical versus theoretical scholarship
• Divide the literature into sociological, historical, and cultural sources

Theoretical

A literature review is often the foundation for a theoretical framework . You can use it to discuss various theories, models, and definitions of key concepts.

You might argue for the relevance of a specific theoretical approach, or combine various theoretical concepts to create a framework for your research.

Like any other academic text , your literature review should have an introduction , a main body, and a conclusion . What you include in each depends on the objective of your literature review.

The introduction should clearly establish the focus and purpose of the literature review.

Depending on the length of your literature review, you might want to divide the body into subsections. You can use a subheading for each theme, time period, or methodological approach.

As you write, you can follow these tips:

• Summarize and synthesize: give an overview of the main points of each source and combine them into a coherent whole
• Analyze and interpret: don’t just paraphrase other researchers — add your own interpretations where possible, discussing the significance of findings in relation to the literature as a whole
• Critically evaluate: mention the strengths and weaknesses of your sources
• Write in well-structured paragraphs: use transition words and topic sentences to draw connections, comparisons and contrasts

In the conclusion, you should summarize the key findings you have taken from the literature and emphasize their significance.

When you’ve finished writing and revising your literature review, don’t forget to proofread thoroughly before submitting. Not a language expert? Check out Scribbr’s professional proofreading services !

This article has been adapted into lecture slides that you can use to teach your students about writing a literature review.

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If you want to know more about the research process , methodology , research bias , or statistics , make sure to check out some of our other articles with explanations and examples.

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Research bias

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A literature review is a survey of scholarly sources (such as books, journal articles, and theses) related to a specific topic or research question .

It is often written as part of a thesis, dissertation , or research paper , in order to situate your work in relation to existing knowledge.

There are several reasons to conduct a literature review at the beginning of a research project:

• To familiarize yourself with the current state of knowledge on your topic
• To ensure that you’re not just repeating what others have already done
• To identify gaps in knowledge and unresolved problems that your research can address
• To develop your theoretical framework and methodology
• To provide an overview of the key findings and debates on the topic

Writing the literature review shows your reader how your work relates to existing research and what new insights it will contribute.

The literature review usually comes near the beginning of your thesis or dissertation . After the introduction , it grounds your research in a scholarly field and leads directly to your theoretical framework or methodology .

A literature review is a survey of credible sources on a topic, often used in dissertations , theses, and research papers . Literature reviews give an overview of knowledge on a subject, helping you identify relevant theories and methods, as well as gaps in existing research. Literature reviews are set up similarly to other  academic texts , with an introduction , a main body, and a conclusion .

An  annotated bibliography is a list of  source references that has a short description (called an annotation ) for each of the sources. It is often assigned as part of the research process for a  paper .  

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Biology 231 - Research Methods

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• Creating a Literature Review
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Structure of an Evidence Matrix

The purpose of a literature review is to demonstrate your familiarity with existing research and how your proposed research fits within it.  It should consist of at least 4-5 peer-reviewed articles and provide an integration of ideas, concepts, theories and findings.

Constructing an Evidence Matrix will assist in the dissection of the articles being reviewed and provide a system that easily organizes common themes for later discussion.

Create a spreadsheet with the following fields: 

Themes are items of interest to you found within the article and are points of comparison between articles.

• Has the subject or style of research evolved over time?
• Are there any approaches or variables that have been consistently examined?  Do the articles ask the same questions?  Can you identify any gaps in research or inquiry?
• Are you aware of any specific common theoretical models used?

NOTE:  It is crucial that when summarizing any content that you appropriate paraphrase the text entered into your matrix. If not, use quotation marks for any words that are not your own and provide page numbers for your quotes.  This will help avoid plagiarism.

Writing a Literature Review

In a full-length paper or thesis the literature review tends to be 4-5 paragraphs long and explains how your original research topic fits into the existing body of scholarship on the topic. 

A basic format is as follows:

Paragraph #1.  Introduction of the research topic.  "The purpose of the study is to...".

Paragraph #2.  Describe how others have studied the subjects (Methods column).  Include any sampling techniques, strategies and limitations to research processes.

Paragraph #3.  Discuss a common theme from two or more articles (identified in evidence matrix).

Paragraph #4.   Discuss a common theme from two or more articles (identified in evidence matrix).

Paragraph #5.  Discuss the existing research identified in previous paragraphs, then your research topic and why it is important.  Give strong examples why your research is relevant and necessary to build a stronger understanding of the subject.

TIPS: 

• Do not summarize each article read in a separate paragraph.  The purpose here is to critically analyze them as a whole and reflect.
• When referencing an article in the literature, do not refer to it by its title.  Instead relate the article to the author and date.

Source: https://libguides.sonoma.edu/c.php?g=202672&p=1354272 (Downloaded 17AUG2022)

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Article Contents

• Introduction
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A Step-by-Step Guide to Writing a Scientific Review Article

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Manisha Bahl, A Step-by-Step Guide to Writing a Scientific Review Article, Journal of Breast Imaging , Volume 5, Issue 4, July/August 2023, Pages 480–485, https://doi.org/10.1093/jbi/wbad028

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Scientific review articles are comprehensive, focused reviews of the scientific literature written by subject matter experts. The task of writing a scientific review article can seem overwhelming; however, it can be managed by using an organized approach and devoting sufficient time to the process. The process involves selecting a topic about which the authors are knowledgeable and enthusiastic, conducting a literature search and critical analysis of the literature, and writing the article, which is composed of an abstract, introduction, body, and conclusion, with accompanying tables and figures. This article, which focuses on the narrative or traditional literature review, is intended to serve as a guide with practical steps for new writers. Tips for success are also discussed, including selecting a focused topic, maintaining objectivity and balance while writing, avoiding tedious data presentation in a laundry list format, moving from descriptions of the literature to critical analysis, avoiding simplistic conclusions, and budgeting time for the overall process.

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• What is a Literature Review?

What is a literature review?

A literature review surveys scholarly articles, books and other sources relevant to a particular issue, area of research, or theory. The purpose is to offer an overview of significant literature published on a topic.

A literature review may constitute an essential chapter of a thesis or dissertation, or may be a self-contained review of writings on a subject. In either case, its purpose is to:

• Place each work in the context of its contribution to the understanding of the subject under review
• Describe the relationship of each work to the others under consideration
• Identify new ways to interpret, and shed light on any gaps in, previous research
• Resolve conflicts amongst seemingly contradictory previous studies
• Identify areas of prior scholarship to prevent duplication of effort
• Point the way forward for further research
• Place one's original work (in the case of theses or dissertations) in the context of existing literature

A literature review can be just a simple summary of the sources, but it usually has an organizational pattern and combines both summary and synthesis. A summary is a recap of the important information of the source, but a synthesis is a re-organization, or a reshuffling, of that information. It might give a new interpretation of old material or combine new with old interpretations. Or it might trace the intellectual progression of the field, including major debates. And depending on the situation, the literature review may evaluate the sources and advise the reader on the most pertinent or relevant.

Similar to primary research, development of the literature review requires four stages:

• Problem formulation—which topic or field is being examined and what are its component issues?
• Literature search—finding materials relevant to the subject being explored
• Data evaluation—determining which literature makes a significant contribution to the understanding of the topic
• Analysis and interpretation—discussing the findings and conclusions of pertinent literature

Remember, this is a process and not necessarily a linear one. As you search and evaluate the literature, you may refine your topic or head in a different direction which will take you back to the search stage. In fact, it is useful to evaluate as you go along so you don't spend hours researching one aspect of your topic only to find yourself more interested in another.

The main focus of an academic research paper is to develop a new argument, and a research paper will contain a literature review as one of its parts. In a research paper, you use the literature as a foundation and as support for a new insight that you contribute. The focus of a literature review, however, is to summarize and synthesize the arguments and ideas of others without adding new contributions.

For additional information, including suggestions for the structure of your literature review, see this guide from the University of North Carolina's Writing Center: https://writingcenter.unc.edu/handouts/literature-reviews/

This <10 minute tutorial from North Carolina State University also provides a good overview of the literature review: https://www.lib.ncsu.edu/tutorials/lit-review/

Finding Examples

While we don't have any examples of an EEB JP literature review, it may be useful to look at other reviews to learn how researchers in the field "summarize and synthesize" the literature. Any research article or dissertation in the sciences will include a section which reviews the literature. Though the section may not be labeled as such, you will quickly recognize it by the number of citations and the discussion of the literature. Another option is to look for Review Articles, which are literature reviews as a stand alone article. Here are some resources where you can find Research Articles, Review Articles and Dissertations:

• Web of Science - If you'd like to limit your results to Review Articles, look to the left side of your results page. There you will see many options to refine your search including the section labeled Document Types. Select "Review" as the document type and click on Refine.
• Scopus - Similar to WoS, you can use the options on the left side of your results page if you'd like to limit the document type. Here you will again choose "Review" and then click on the Limit To button.
• Annual Reviews   - All articles in this database are review articles. You can search for your topic or browse in a related subject area.
• Dissertations @ Princeton - Provides access to many Princeton dissertations, full text is available for most published after 1996.

*** Note about using Review Articles in your research - while they are useful in helping you to locate articles on your topic, remember that you must go to and use the original source if you intend to include a study mentioned in the review. The only time you would cite a review article is if they have made an original insight in their work that you talk about in your paper. Going to the original research paper allows you to verify the information about that study and determine whether the points made in the review are valid and accurate.

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What is a Literature Review?

This handout will explain what a literature review is and offer insights into the form and construction of a literature review in the humanities, social sciences, and sciences.

OK. You've got to write a literature review. You dust off a novel and a book of poetry, settle down in your chair, and get ready to issue a "thumbs up" or "thumbs down" as you leaf through the pages. "Literature review" done. Right?

Wrong! The "literature" of a literature review refers to any collection of materials on a topic, not necessarily the great literary texts of the world. "Literature" could be anything from a set of government pamphlets on British colonial methods in Africa to scholarly articles on the treatment of a torn ACL. And a review does not necessarily mean that your reader wants you to give your personal opinion on whether or not you liked these sources.

What is a literature review, then?

A literature review discusses published information in a particular subject area, and sometimes information in a particular subject area within a certain time period.

A literature review can be just a simple summary of the sources, but it usually has an organizational pattern and combines both summary and synthesis. A summary is a recap of the important information of the source, but a synthesis is a re-organization, or a reshuffling, of that information. It might give a new interpretation of old material or combine new with old interpretations. Or it might trace the intellectual progression of the field, including major debates. And depending on the situation, the literature review may evaluate the sources and advise the reader on the most pertinent or relevant.

But how is a literature review different from an academic research paper?

The main focus of an academic research paper is to develop a new argument, and a research paper will contain a literature review as one of its parts. In a research paper, you use the literature as a foundation and as support for a new insight that you contribute. The focus of a literature review, however, is to summarize and synthesize the arguments and ideas of others without adding new contributions.

Why do we write literature reviews?

Literature reviews provide you with a handy guide to a particular topic. If you have limited time to conduct research, literature reviews can give you an overview or act as a stepping stone. For professionals, they are useful reports that keep them up to date with what is current in the field. For scholars, the depth and breadth of the literature review emphasizes the credibility of the writer in his or her field. Literature reviews also provide a solid background for a research paper's investigation. Comprehensive knowledge of the literature of the field is essential to most research papers.

Who writes these things, anyway?

Literature reviews are written occasionally in the humanities, but mostly in the sciences and social sciences; in experiment and lab reports, they constitute a section of the paper. Sometimes a literature review is written as a paper in itself.

If your assignment is not very specific, seek clarification from your instructor:

• Roughly how many sources should you include?
• What types of sources (books, journal articles, websites)?
• Should you summarize, synthesize, or critique your sources by discussing a common theme or issue?
• Should you evaluate your sources?
• Should you provide subheadings and other background information, such as definitions and/or a history?

Find models

Look for other literature reviews in your area of interest or in the discipline and read them to get a sense of the types of themes you might want to look for in your own research or ways to organize your final review. You can simply put the word "review" in your search engine along with your other topic terms to find articles of this type on the Internet or in an electronic database. The bibliography or reference section of sources you've already read are also excellent entry points into your own research.

Narrow your topic

There are hundreds or even thousands of articles and books on most areas of study. The narrower your topic, the easier it will be to limit the number of sources you need to read in order to get a good survey of the material. Your instructor will probably not expect you to read everything that's out there on the topic, but you'll make your job easier if you first limit your scope.

And don't forget to tap into your professor's (or other professors') knowledge in the field. Ask your professor questions such as: "If you had to read only one book from the 70's on topic X, what would it be?" Questions such as this help you to find and determine quickly the most seminal pieces in the field.

Consider whether your sources are current

Some disciplines require that you use information that is as current as possible. In the sciences, for instance, treatments for medical problems are constantly changing according to the latest studies. Information even two years old could be obsolete. However, if you are writing a review in the humanities, history, or social sciences, a survey of the history of the literature may be what is needed, because what is important is how perspectives have changed through the years or within a certain time period. Try sorting through some other current bibliographies or literature reviews in the field to get a sense of what your discipline expects. You can also use this method to consider what is currently of interest to scholars in this field and what is not.

Find a focus

A literature review, like a term paper, is usually organized around ideas, not the sources themselves as an annotated bibliography would be organized. This means that you will not just simply list your sources and go into detail about each one of them, one at a time. No. As you read widely but selectively in your topic area, consider instead what themes or issues connect your sources together. Do they present one or different solutions? Is there an aspect of the field that is missing? How well do they present the material and do they portray it according to an appropriate theory? Do they reveal a trend in the field? A raging debate? Pick one of these themes to focus the organization of your review.

Construct a working thesis statement

Then use the focus you've found to construct a thesis statement. Yes! Literature reviews have thesis statements as well! However, your thesis statement will not necessarily argue for a position or an opinion; rather it will argue for a particular perspective on the material. Some sample thesis statements for literature reviews are as follows:

The current trend in treatment for congestive heart failure combines surgery and medicine.

More and more cultural studies scholars are accepting popular media as a subject worthy of academic consideration.

Consider organization

You've got a focus, and you've narrowed it down to a thesis statement. Now what is the most effective way of presenting the information? What are the most important topics, subtopics, etc., that your review needs to include? And in what order should you present them? Develop an organization for your review at both a global and local level:

First, cover the basic categories Just like most academic papers, literature reviews also must contain at least three basic elements: an introduction or background information section; the body of the review containing the discussion of sources; and, finally, a conclusion and/or recommendations section to end the paper. Introduction: Gives a quick idea of the topic of the literature review, such as the central theme or organizational pattern. Body: Contains your discussion of sources and is organized either chronologically, thematically, or methodologically (see below for more information on each). Conclusions/Recommendations: Discuss what you have drawn from reviewing literature so far. Where might the discussion proceed? Organizing the body Once you have the basic categories in place, then you must consider how you will present the sources themselves within the body of your paper. Create an organizational method to focus this section even further. To help you come up with an overall organizational framework for your review, consider the following scenario and then three typical ways of organizing the sources into a review: You've decided to focus your literature review on materials dealing with sperm whales. This is because you've just finished reading Moby Dick , and you wonder if that whale's portrayal is really real. You start with some articles about the physiology of sperm whales in biology journals written in the 1980's. But these articles refer to some British biological studies performed on whales in the early 18th century. So you check those out. Then you look up a book written in 1968 with information on how sperm whales have been portrayed in other forms of art, such as in Alaskan poetry, in French painting, or on whale bone, as the whale hunters in the late 19th century used to do. This makes you wonder about American whaling methods during the time portrayed in Moby Dick , so you find some academic articles published in the last five years on how accurately Herman Melville portrayed the whaling scene in his novel. Chronological If your review follows the chronological method, you could write about the materials above according to when they were published. For instance, first you would talk about the British biological studies of the 18th century, then about Moby Dick, published in 1851, then the book on sperm whales in other art (1968), and finally the biology articles (1980s) and the recent articles on American whaling of the 19th century. But there is relatively no continuity among subjects here. And notice that even though the sources on sperm whales in other art and on American whaling are written recently, they are about other subjects/objects that were created much earlier. Thus, the review loses its chronological focus. By publication Order your sources by publication chronology, then, only if the order demonstrates a more important trend. For instance, you could order a review of literature on biological studies of sperm whales if the progression revealed a change in dissection practices of the researchers who wrote and/or conducted the studies. By trend A better way to organize the above sources chronologically is to examine the sources under another trend, such as the history of whaling. Then your review would have subsections according to eras within this period. For instance, the review might examine whaling from pre-1600-1699, 1700-1799, and 1800-1899. Under this method, you would combine the recent studies on American whaling in the 19th century with Moby Dick itself in the 1800-1899 category, even though the authors wrote a century apart.

Thematic reviews of literature are organized around a topic or issue, rather than the progression of time. However, progression of time may still be an important factor in a thematic review. For instance, the sperm whale review could focus on the development of the harpoon for whale hunting. While the study focuses on one topic, harpoon technology, it will still be organized chronologically. The only difference here between a "chronological" and a "thematic" approach is what is emphasized the most: the development of the harpoon or the harpoon technology.

But more authentic thematic reviews tend to break away from chronological order. For instance, a thematic review of material on sperm whales might examine how they are portrayed as "evil" in cultural documents. The subsections might include how they are personified, how their proportions are exaggerated, and their behaviors misunderstood. A review organized in this manner would shift between time periods within each section according to the point made.

Methodological

A methodological approach differs from the two above in that the focusing factor usually does not have to do with the content of the material. Instead, it focuses on the "methods" of the researcher or writer. For the sperm whale project, one methodological approach would be to look at cultural differences between the portrayal of whales in American, British, and French art work. Or the review might focus on the economic impact of whaling on a community. A methodological scope will influence either the types of documents in the review or the way in which these documents are discussed.

Once you've decided on the organizational method for the body of the review, the sections you need to include in the paper should be easy to figure out. They should arise out of your organizational strategy. In other words, a chronological review would have subsections for each vital time period. A thematic review would have subtopics based upon factors that relate to the theme or issue.

Sometimes, though, you might need to add additional sections that are necessary for your study, but do not fit in the organizational strategy of the body. What other sections you include in the body is up to you. Put in only what is necessary. Here are a few other sections you might want to consider:

Current Situation : Information necessary to understand the topic or focus of the literature review.

History : The chronological progression of the field, the literature, or an idea that is necessary to understand the literature review, if the body of the literature review is not already a chronology.

Methods and/or Standards : The criteria you used to select the sources in your literature review or the way in which you present your information. For instance, you might explain that your review includes only peer-reviewed articles and journals.

Questions for Further Research : What questions about the field has the review sparked? How will you further your research as a result of the review?

Once you've settled on a general pattern of organization, you're ready to write each section. There are a few guidelines you should follow during the writing stage as well. Here is a sample paragraph from a literature review about sexism and language to illuminate the following discussion:

However, other studies have shown that even gender-neutral antecedents are more likely to produce masculine images than feminine ones (Gastil, 1990). Hamilton (1988) asked students to complete sentences that required them to fill in pronouns that agreed with gender-neutral antecedents such as "writer," "pedestrian," and "persons." The students were asked to describe any image they had when writing the sentence. Hamilton found that people imagined 3.3 men to each woman in the masculine "generic" condition and 1.5 men per woman in the unbiased condition. Thus, while ambient sexism accounted for some of the masculine bias, sexist language amplified the effect. (Source: Erika Falk and Jordan Mills, "Why Sexist Language Affects Persuasion: The Role of Homophily, Intended Audience, and Offense," Women and Language19:2.

Use evidence

In the example above, the writers refer to several other sources when making their point. A literature review in this sense is just like any other academic research paper. Your interpretation of the available sources must be backed up with evidence to show that what you are saying is valid.

Be selective

Select only the most important points in each source to highlight in the review. The type of information you choose to mention should relate directly to the review's focus, whether it is thematic, methodological, or chronological.

Use quotes sparingly

Falk and Mills do not use any direct quotes. That is because the survey nature of the literature review does not allow for in-depth discussion or detailed quotes from the text. Some short quotes here and there are okay, though, if you want to emphasize a point, or if what the author said just cannot be rewritten in your own words. Notice that Falk and Mills do quote certain terms that were coined by the author, not common knowledge, or taken directly from the study. But if you find yourself wanting to put in more quotes, check with your instructor.

Summarize and synthesize

Remember to summarize and synthesize your sources within each paragraph as well as throughout the review. The authors here recapitulate important features of Hamilton's study, but then synthesize it by rephrasing the study's significance and relating it to their own work.

Keep your own voice

While the literature review presents others' ideas, your voice (the writer's) should remain front and center. Notice that Falk and Mills weave references to other sources into their own text, but they still maintain their own voice by starting and ending the paragraph with their own ideas and their own words. The sources support what Falk and Mills are saying.

Use caution when paraphrasing

When paraphrasing a source that is not your own, be sure to represent the author's information or opinions accurately and in your own words. In the preceding example, Falk and Mills either directly refer in the text to the author of their source, such as Hamilton, or they provide ample notation in the text when the ideas they are mentioning are not their own, for example, Gastil's. 

Draft in hand? Now you're ready to revise. Spending a lot of time revising is a wise idea, because your main objective is to present the material, not the argument. So check over your review again to make sure it follows the assignment and/or your outline. Then, just as you would for most other academic forms of writing, rewrite or rework the language of your review so that you've presented your information in the most concise manner possible. Be sure to use terminology familiar to your audience; get rid of unnecessary jargon or slang. Finally, double check that you've documented your sources and formatted the review appropriately for your discipline. 

We consulted these works while writing the original version of this handout. This is not a comprehensive list of resources on the handout's topic, and we encourage you to do your own research to find the latest publications on this topic. Please do not use this list as a model for the format of your own reference list, as it may not match the citation style you are using. 

Anson, Chris M. and Robert A. Schwegler, The Longman Handbook for Writers and Readers. Second edition. New York: Longman, 2000.

Jones, Robert, Patrick Bizzaro, and Cynthia Selfe. The Harcourt Brace Guide to Writing in the Disciplines. New York: Harcourt Brace, 1997.

Lamb, Sandra E. How to Write It: A Complete Guide to Everything You'll Ever Write. Berkeley, Calif.: Ten Speed Press, 1998.

Rosen, Leonard J. and Laurence Behrens. The Allyn and Bacon Handbook. Fourth edition. Boston: Allyn and Bacon, 2000.

Troyka, Lynn Quitman. Simon and Schuster Handbook for Writers. Upper Saddle River, N.J.: Prentice Hall, 2002.

Originally written and publised by the The Writing Center, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill

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Scope Notes and Credits

Scope Notes

The purpose of this page is to provide information about writing literature reviews in STEM fields. 

Maggie Gordon, MLIS

Literature Reviews

Literature reviews are an important step in the research process and are commonly assigned in upper-year and graduate level courses. Alternatively, you may need to include one at the beginning of a research paper or as a chapter in a dissertation or thesis. No matter your reason for conducting one, a literature review should show the reader that you have a comprehensive understanding of the published research on a particular topic . The literature review should identify what has already been done and what is still left to be explored in your topic area, which prevents duplication of research efforts. Finally, it should show that you can position your own informed perspective into the scholarly conversation  as you make connections between studies and situate them within the broader context. The literature review should not be a summary of what you have found - it should be a critical evaluation . 

The three goals of a literature review are to:

• Summarize and analyze previous research and theories
• Identify trends, important questions, common methodology, controversy, and contested claims
• Highlight any gaps that may exist in the research to date

Depending on the purpose of your literature review, you may also need to situate your own research into the scholarly conversation and justify its value. 

Getting Started

It's important to be well organized before  you start working on your lit review. It might be helpful to have the following in place:

• A plan to keep track of where you search and what you search. This can be as simple as a Word or Excel file where you list the databases that you search in and the search strings, parameters, and other filters that you've used. 
• A citation management tool such as Zotero, Mendeley, or EndNote. This will help you keep track of your references and auto-populate citations as you write your review. It can also be a great place to store PDFs of articles or book chapters that you read. For more information, see the tab on Citing & Citation Management

A sample search log: 

This can be adapted to suit your needs, for a literature review that is part of a course assignment, you likely will not need the last two columns. 

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What about Systematic Reviews?

Systematic Reviews are another type of knowledge synthesis that people might refer to when talking about a literature reviews; however, they are quite different! A true systematic review must follow a rigorous methodological process and requires at least two people. Other common types of evidence synthesis include Narrative Reviews, Rapid Reviews, and Scoping Reviews. To learn more, visit our Guide to Systematic Reviews & Other Synthesis . 

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Find your librarian, schedule a research appointment, today's hours : , what is a literature review.

A literature review ought to be a clear, concise synthesis of relevant information. A literature review should introduce the study it precedes and show how that study fits into topically related studies that already exist. Structurally, a literature review ought to be something like a funnel: start by addressing the topic broadly and gradually narrow as the review progresses.

from Literature Reviews by CU Writing Center

Why review the literature?

Reference to prior literature is a defining feature of academic and research writing. Why review the literature?

• To help you understand a research topic
• To establish the importance of a topic
• To help develop your own ideas
• To make sure you are not simply replicating research that others have already successfully completed
• To demonstrate knowledge and show how your current work is situated within, builds on, or departs from earlier publications

from Literature Review Basics from University of La Verne

Literature Review Writing Tips

Synthesize your findings . Your findings are your evaluation of the literature reviewed: what you consider the strengths and weakness of the studies reviewed; the comparison you did between studies; research trends and gaps in the research that you found while researching your topic, etc...

Across the articles that you read, pay attention to what are the:

• Common/contested findings
• Important trends
• Influential theories

Lectures & Slides

• Literature Reviews | CU Writing Center
• Writing a Literature Review | CU Writing Center
• Revising a Literature Review | CU Writing Center

How-To Guides

• Literature Reviews | Purdue OWL A how-to guide from Purdue OWL
• Literature Reviews | University of North Carolina
• Literature Reviews (University of Wisconsin-Madison)
• Literature Review: The What, Why and How-to Guide | University of Connecticut
• Literature Reviews | Florida A & M
• Conduct a Literature Review | SUNY
• Literature Review Basics | University of LaVerne

Organizing a Literature Review

Your literature review should have the following components:

• Introduction : Provide an overview of your topic, including the major problems and issues that have been studied.
• Thematic : You may have noticed specific themes emerge as you did your reading; if so, this may be a good way to organize your literature review. 
• Chronological : To use the example above, you may have observed that the way principals deal with behavioral problems has changed over time. If that's the case, perhaps you want to give a historical overview of the literature.
• Methodological : There are a number of different types of methodologies used in research.
• Conclusion/Discussion : Summarize what you've found in your review of literature, and identify areas in need of further research. Make sure to mention any gaps in the literature - things you think should have been researched, but were not.

Sample Literature Reviews

• Sample Literature Reviews | University of West Florida
• Sample APA Papers: Literature Review | Purdue OWL

Other Libguides

• Literature Reviews | Webster University
• Write a Literature Review | UC Santa Cruz
• Literature Reviews | California State University

A literature review may exist as:

• part of a larger whole like a section of a journal article or dissertation, or chapter of a book
• a self-contained entity, like an entire journal article 
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Writing a Literature Review

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A literature review is a document or section of a document that collects key sources on a topic and discusses those sources in conversation with each other (also called synthesis ). The lit review is an important genre in many disciplines, not just literature (i.e., the study of works of literature such as novels and plays). When we say “literature review” or refer to “the literature,” we are talking about the research ( scholarship ) in a given field. You will often see the terms “the research,” “the scholarship,” and “the literature” used mostly interchangeably.

Where, when, and why would I write a lit review?

There are a number of different situations where you might write a literature review, each with slightly different expectations; different disciplines, too, have field-specific expectations for what a literature review is and does. For instance, in the humanities, authors might include more overt argumentation and interpretation of source material in their literature reviews, whereas in the sciences, authors are more likely to report study designs and results in their literature reviews; these differences reflect these disciplines’ purposes and conventions in scholarship. You should always look at examples from your own discipline and talk to professors or mentors in your field to be sure you understand your discipline’s conventions, for literature reviews as well as for any other genre.

A literature review can be a part of a research paper or scholarly article, usually falling after the introduction and before the research methods sections. In these cases, the lit review just needs to cover scholarship that is important to the issue you are writing about; sometimes it will also cover key sources that informed your research methodology.

Lit reviews can also be standalone pieces, either as assignments in a class or as publications. In a class, a lit review may be assigned to help students familiarize themselves with a topic and with scholarship in their field, get an idea of the other researchers working on the topic they’re interested in, find gaps in existing research in order to propose new projects, and/or develop a theoretical framework and methodology for later research. As a publication, a lit review usually is meant to help make other scholars’ lives easier by collecting and summarizing, synthesizing, and analyzing existing research on a topic. This can be especially helpful for students or scholars getting into a new research area, or for directing an entire community of scholars toward questions that have not yet been answered.

What are the parts of a lit review?

Most lit reviews use a basic introduction-body-conclusion structure; if your lit review is part of a larger paper, the introduction and conclusion pieces may be just a few sentences while you focus most of your attention on the body. If your lit review is a standalone piece, the introduction and conclusion take up more space and give you a place to discuss your goals, research methods, and conclusions separately from where you discuss the literature itself.

Introduction:

• An introductory paragraph that explains what your working topic and thesis is
• A forecast of key topics or texts that will appear in the review
• Potentially, a description of how you found sources and how you analyzed them for inclusion and discussion in the review (more often found in published, standalone literature reviews than in lit review sections in an article or research paper)
• Summarize and synthesize: Give an overview of the main points of each source and combine them into a coherent whole
• Analyze and interpret: Don’t just paraphrase other researchers – add your own interpretations where possible, discussing the significance of findings in relation to the literature as a whole
• Critically Evaluate: Mention the strengths and weaknesses of your sources
• Write in well-structured paragraphs: Use transition words and topic sentence to draw connections, comparisons, and contrasts.

Conclusion:

• Summarize the key findings you have taken from the literature and emphasize their significance
• Connect it back to your primary research question

How should I organize my lit review?

Lit reviews can take many different organizational patterns depending on what you are trying to accomplish with the review. Here are some examples:

• Chronological : The simplest approach is to trace the development of the topic over time, which helps familiarize the audience with the topic (for instance if you are introducing something that is not commonly known in your field). If you choose this strategy, be careful to avoid simply listing and summarizing sources in order. Try to analyze the patterns, turning points, and key debates that have shaped the direction of the field. Give your interpretation of how and why certain developments occurred (as mentioned previously, this may not be appropriate in your discipline — check with a teacher or mentor if you’re unsure).
• Thematic : If you have found some recurring central themes that you will continue working with throughout your piece, you can organize your literature review into subsections that address different aspects of the topic. For example, if you are reviewing literature about women and religion, key themes can include the role of women in churches and the religious attitude towards women.
• Qualitative versus quantitative research
• Empirical versus theoretical scholarship
• Divide the research by sociological, historical, or cultural sources
• Theoretical : In many humanities articles, the literature review is the foundation for the theoretical framework. You can use it to discuss various theories, models, and definitions of key concepts. You can argue for the relevance of a specific theoretical approach or combine various theorical concepts to create a framework for your research.

What are some strategies or tips I can use while writing my lit review?

Any lit review is only as good as the research it discusses; make sure your sources are well-chosen and your research is thorough. Don’t be afraid to do more research if you discover a new thread as you’re writing. More info on the research process is available in our "Conducting Research" resources .

As you’re doing your research, create an annotated bibliography ( see our page on the this type of document ). Much of the information used in an annotated bibliography can be used also in a literature review, so you’ll be not only partially drafting your lit review as you research, but also developing your sense of the larger conversation going on among scholars, professionals, and any other stakeholders in your topic.

Usually you will need to synthesize research rather than just summarizing it. This means drawing connections between sources to create a picture of the scholarly conversation on a topic over time. Many student writers struggle to synthesize because they feel they don’t have anything to add to the scholars they are citing; here are some strategies to help you:

• It often helps to remember that the point of these kinds of syntheses is to show your readers how you understand your research, to help them read the rest of your paper.
• Writing teachers often say synthesis is like hosting a dinner party: imagine all your sources are together in a room, discussing your topic. What are they saying to each other?
• Look at the in-text citations in each paragraph. Are you citing just one source for each paragraph? This usually indicates summary only. When you have multiple sources cited in a paragraph, you are more likely to be synthesizing them (not always, but often
• Read more about synthesis here.

The most interesting literature reviews are often written as arguments (again, as mentioned at the beginning of the page, this is discipline-specific and doesn’t work for all situations). Often, the literature review is where you can establish your research as filling a particular gap or as relevant in a particular way. You have some chance to do this in your introduction in an article, but the literature review section gives a more extended opportunity to establish the conversation in the way you would like your readers to see it. You can choose the intellectual lineage you would like to be part of and whose definitions matter most to your thinking (mostly humanities-specific, but this goes for sciences as well). In addressing these points, you argue for your place in the conversation, which tends to make the lit review more compelling than a simple reporting of other sources.

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What is a Literature Review?

Literature review video.

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In Research Articles 

What is a literature review? Rather than describing original research results, literature reviews summarize the research on a particular topic by synthesizing information from many primary sources.

Why should I read literature reviews? Review articles can be helpful for gathering background information and identifying key articles in a particular field.

How can I find a literature review? Many library databases, including Scopus, Web of Science, and PubMed, allow you to filter search results to include only "review articles" or "literature reviews."  

For Class Assignments 

In a class, a lit review may be assigned to help students familiarize themselves with a topic and with scholarship in their field, get an idea of the other researchers working on the topic they’re interested in, find gaps in existing research in order to propose new projects, and/or develop a theoretical framework and methodology for later research.

Source: The Writing Lab & The OWL at Purdue. (n/a). What is a literature review? Purdue University.  Writing a Literature Review // Purdue Writing Lab

• Writing a Literature Review - Purdue OWL A great place to learn more about Literature Reviews to help you write a literature. Consult Purdue OWL.

To better understand what is a literature review, watch the video from the NC State University Libraries. 

Watch  Literature Reviews: An Overview for Graduate Students  00:09:37

Source: NC State University Libraries(n.a.)  Literature Reviews: An Overview for Graduate Students . Retrieved from   https://www.lib.ncsu.edu/tutorials/lit-review  

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Human Biology: Literature Review

Searching & reviewing the literature.

• Literature Review
• Search Strategy
• Database search tips

A literature review is an evaluation of relevant literature on a topic and is usually the starting point for any undergraduate essay or postgraduate thesis. The focus for a literature review is on scholarly published materials such as books, journal articles and reports.

A search and review of relevant sources may be extensive and form part of a thesis or research project. Postgraduate researchers will normally focus on primary sources such as research studies in journals.

A literature review also provides evidence for an undergraduate assignment. Students new to a discipline may find that starting with an overview or review of relevant research in books and journals, the easiest way to begin researching a topic and obtaining the necessary background information.

Source materials can be categorised as:

Primary source : Original research from journals articles or conference papers, original materials such as historical documents, or creative works.

Secondary source : Evaluations, reviews or syntheses of original work. e.g. review articles in journals.

Tertiary source : Broadly scoped material put together usually from secondary sources to provide an overview, e.g. a book.

The Literature Review Structure : Like a standard academic essay, a literature review is made up of three key components: an introduction, a body and a conclusion. Most literature reviews can follow the following format: • Introduction: Introduce the topic/problem and the context within which it is found. • Body: Examine past research in the area highlighting methodological and/or theoretical developments, areas of agreement, contentious areas, important studies and so forth. Keep the focus on your area of interest and identify gaps in the research that your research/investigation will attempt to fill. State clearly how your work builds on or responds to earlier work. • Conclusion: Summarise what has emerged from the review of literature and reiterate conclusions.

This information has been adapted from the Edith Cowan University Literature review: Academic tip sheet .

Steps in searching and reviewing the literature:

• Define the topic and scope of the assignment. Ensure you understand the question and expectations of the assignment. It's useful to develop a plan and outline, headings, etc.  
• Check terminology. e.g. dictionaries, encyclopedias, thesauruses  
• Identify keywords for searching (include English and American spelling and terminology)  
• Identify types of publications. e.g. books, journal articles, reports.  
• Search relevant databases (refer to the relevant subject guide for key databases and sources)  
• Select and evaluate relevant sources  
• Synthesise the information  
• Write the review following the structure outlined.  
• Save references used. e.g. from the databases save, email, print or download references to EndNote.  
• Reference sources (APA 7th) (see Referencing Library Guide )

When you are writing for an academic purpose such as an essay for an assignment, you need to find evidence to support your ideas. The library is a good place to begin your search for the evidence, as it acquires books and journals to support the disciplines within the University. The following outlines a list of steps to follow when starting to write an academic assignment:

Define your topic and scope of the search

• This will provide the search terms when gathering evidence from the literature to support your arguments.
• Sometimes it is a good idea to concept map key themes.

The scope will advise you:

• How much information is required, often identified by the number of words ie 500 or 3000 words
• What sort of writing you are to do eg essay, report, annotated bibliography
• How many marks are assigned. This may indicate the amount of time to allocate to the task.

Gather the information - Before writing about your topic, you will need to find evidence to support your ideas. 

Books provide a useful starting point for an introduction to the subject. Books also provide an in-depth coverage of a topic.

Journal Articles: For current research or information on a very specific topic, journal articles may be the most useful, as they are published on a regular basis. It is normally expected that you will use some journal articles in your assignment. When using journal articles, check whether they are from a magazine or scholalry publication. Scholarly publications are often peer reviewed, which means that the articles are reviewed by expert/s before being accepted for publication.

Reports : useful information can also be found in free web publications from government or research organizations (e.g. reports). Any web publications should be carefully evaluated. You are also required to view the whole publication, not just the abstract, if using the information in your assignment.

Remember to ensure that you note the citation details for references that you collect, at the time of locating the items. It is often time consuming and impossible to track the required data later.

Analyse the information collected

• Have I collected enough information on the topic?

Synthesise your information

Write the report or essay

• Check the ECU Academic tip sheet: the Academic Essay for some useful pointers
• Remember, in most cases you will need an introduction, body and conclusion
• Record details of references used for referencing. Information on referencing can be located on the ECU Referencing Guide.

Database search tips:

1. Identify main concepts and keywords . Search the main concepts first, then limit further as necessary.

2. Find Synonyms (Boolean  OR broadens the search to include alternative keywords or subject thesaurus terms):

• pediatrics  OR children
• teenagers  OR adolescents

3. AND (Boolean AND  joins concepts and narrows the                search):

• occupational therapy  AND children
• stress  AND (occupation OR job)

4. Be aware of differences in American and English spelling and terminology. Most databases use American spelling and terminology as preferred subject terms.

5. Use Truncation (putting * at the end of a word stem will search all forms of the word):

• disab * (disability, disabilities, disabled)
• child * (child, children, childhood, children's)

6. "...." (inverted commas) use for a phrase

• "mental health"
• "occupational therapy"

7. Wildcard ? will search for any single letter in the space. e.g. wom?n will search women, woman, organi?ation will search organisation, organization.

8. Wildcard * can also be used where alternate spelling may contain an extra character. e.g. p*ediatric, will search paediatric or pediatric, behavio*r, will search behaviour or behavior.

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BIOL 356: Microbiology: Literature Review

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• Writing a Literature Review by Conrad Woxland Last Updated Mar 22, 2024 56 views this year
• Lit Review Guide--University of Pittsburgh

What is a Literature Review?

• A literature review is a comprehensive and up-to-date overview of the principal research about the topic being studied.
• The review helps form the intellectual framework for the study.
• The review need not be exhaustive; the objective is not to list as many relevant books, articles, reports as possible.
• However, the review should contain the most pertinent studies and point to important past and current research and practices in the field.

Purpose of a Literature Review

A literature review serves several purposes. For example, it

• provides thorough knowledge of previous studies; introduces seminal works.
• helps focus one’s own research topic.
• identifies a conceptual framework for one’s own research questions or problems; indicates potential directions for future research.
• suggests previously unused or underused methodologies, designs, quantitative and qualitative strategies.
• identifies gaps in previous studies; identifies flawed methodologies and/or theoretical approaches; avoids replication of mistakes.
• helps the researcher avoid repetition of earlier research.
• suggests unexplored populations.
• determines whether past studies agree or disagree; identifies controversy in the literature.
• tests assumptions; may help counter preconceived ideas and remove unconscious bias.

What is "the literature"?

You'll often hear "explore the literature" or "what does the literature say?"  So, what is "the literature?"

Most simply put, "the literature" is a collection of scholarly writings on a topic. This includes:

• peer-reviewed journal articles
• conference proceedings
• dissertations

How do you know when you are done researching?

Are you seeing the same articles over and over?

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Biology: How to Create A Literature Review

• Peer Reviewed Databases
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• Avoiding Plagiarism Tips
• How to Create A Literature Review
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Useful Links for Literature Review Creation

How to write a literature review (includes a psychology example paper)

http://library.ucsc.edu/help/howto/write-a-literature-review

Explains the parts of a literature review

http://writing.wisc.edu/Handbook/ReviewofLiterature.html

How to write a literature review outline to get started

http://wilderdom.com/OEcourses/PROFLIT/Class3LiteratureReview.htm

Explains the difference between a research paper and a literature review (and the parts of each)

http://gcuonline.georgian.edu/wootton_l/scientificwriting.htm

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Review Essays for the Biological sciences

A review essay for the biological sciences serves to discuss and synthesize key findings on a particular subject. Review papers are helpful to the writer and their colleagues in gaining critical awareness in specialized fields that may or may not be their own.

This guide explains what a review essay is and identifies several approaches to writing a review essay. Although much of the information is geared directly to the biological sciences, it is generally applicable to review essays in all fields.

What is a Review Essay?

A review essay is a synthesis of primary sources (mainly research papers presented in academic journals) on a given topic. A biological review essay demonstrates that the writer has thorough understanding of the literature and can formulate a useful analysis. While no new research is presented by the writer, the field benefits from the review by recieving a new perspective. There are several approaches one may take when writing a biological review:

A State of the art review

A state of the art review considers mainly the most current research in a given area. The review may offer new perspectives on an issue or point out an area in need of further research.

A Historical review

A historical review is a survey of the development of a particular field of study. It may examine the early stages of the field, key findings to present, key theoretical models and their evolution, etc.

A Comparison of perspectives review

A comparison of perspectives review contrasts various ways of looking at a certain topic. If in fact there is a debate over some process or idea, a comparison of perspectives review may illustrate the research that supports both sides. A comparison of perspectives review may introduce a new perspective by way of comparing it to another.

A Synthesis of two fields review

Many times researchers in different fields may be working on similar problems. A synthesis of two fields review provides insights into a given topic based on a review of the literature from two or more disciplines.

A Theoretical model building review

A theoretical model building review examines the literature within a given area with the intention of developing new theoretical assumptions.

Key Considerations for Writing a Biological Review Essay

This guide will inform you of certain things not to miss when writing a review essay. It will also give you some information about using and documenting your sources.

Keep your focus narrow.

When writing a review essay it is important to keep the scope of the topic narrow enough so that you can discuss it thoroughly. For example a topic such as air quality in factories could be narrowed significantly to something like carbon dioxide levels in auto manufacturing plants .

A good way to narrow your focus is to start with a broad topic that is of some interest to you, then read some of the literature in the field. Look for a thread of the discussion that points to a more specific topic.

Analyze, synthesize, and interpret.

A review essay is not a pure summary of the information you read for your review. You are required to analyze, synthesize, and interpret the information you read in some meaningful way.

It is not enough to simply present the material you have found, you must go beyond that and explain its relevance and significance to the topic at hand.

Establish a clear thesis from the onset of your writing and examine which pieces of your reading help you in developing and supporting the ideas in your thesis.

Use only academic sources.

A review essay reviews the academic body of literature—articles and research presented in academic journals. Lay periodicals such as, Discover , Scientific America , or Popular Science , are not adequate sources for an academic review essay.

If you are having trouble finding the academic journals in your field, ask one of your professors or a reference librarian.

Document your sources.

The material that you discuss in a review essay is obviously not your own, therefore it is crucial to document your sources properly. Proper documentation is crucial for two reasons: 1. It prevents the writer from being accused of plagiarism and 2. It gives the reader the opportunity to locate the sources the writer has reviewed because they may find them valuable in their own academic pursuits. Proper documentation depends on which style guide you are following.

Quote sparingly and properly.

No one wants to read a paper that is simply a string of quotes; reserve direct quotations for when you want to create a big impact. Often times the way a quote is written will not fit with the language or the style of your paper so paraphrase the authors words carefully and verbage as necessary to create a well formed paragraph.

Choose an informative title.

The title you choose for your review essay should give some indication of what lies ahead for the reader. You might consider the process you took in narrowing your topic to help you with your title—think of the title as something specific rather than a vague representation of your paper's topic. For example the title Wastewater Treatment might be more informative if rewritten as The Removal of Cloroform Bacteria as Practiced by California's Municipal Water Treatment Facilities .

Consider your audience.

More than likely your audience will be your academic peers, therefore you can make a couple assumptions and choose a writing style that suits the audience. Though your audience may lack the detailed knowledge you have about your topic, they do have similar background knowledge to you. You can assume that you audience understands much of the technical language you have to use to write about your topic and you do not have to go into great detail about background information.

Elements of a Review Essay

This guide explains each section of a review essay and gives specific information about what should be included in each.

On the title page include the title, your name, and the date. Your instructor may have additional requirements (such as the course number, etc.) so be sure to follow the guidelines on the assignment sheet. Professional journals may also have more specific requirements for the title page.

An abstract is a brief summary of your review. The abstract should include only the main points of your review. Think of the abstract as a chance for the reader to preview your paper and decide if they want to read on for the details.

Introduction

The introduction of your review should accomplish three things:

• It may sound redundant to "introduce" your topic in the introduction, but often times writer's fail to do so. Let the reader in on background information specific to the topic, define terms that may be unfamiliar to them, explain the scope of the discussion, and your purpose for writing the review.
• Think of your review essay as a statement in the larger conversation of your academic community. Your review is your way of entering into that conversation and it is important to briefly address why your review is relevant to the discussion. You may feel the relevance is obvious because you are so familiar with the topic, but your readers have not yet established that familiarity.
• The thesis is the main idea that you want to get across to your reader. your thesis should be a clear statement of what you intend to prove or illustrate by your review. By revealing your thesis in the introduction the reader knows what to expect in the rest of the paper.

The discussion section is the body of your paper. The discussion section contains information that develops and supports your thesis. While there is no particular form that a discussion section must take there are several considerations that a writer must follow when building a discussion.

• A review essay is not simply a summary of literature you have reviewed. Be careful not to leave out your own analysis of the ideas presented in the literature. Synthesize the material from all the works—what are the connections you see, or the connections you are trying to illustrate, among your readings.

A review essay is not a pure summary of the information you read for your review. You are required to analyze, synthesize, and interpret the information you read in some meaningful way. It is not enough to simply present the material you have found, you must go beyond that and explain its relevance and significance to the topic at hand. Establish a clear thesis from the onset of your writing and examine which pieces of your reading help you in developing and supporting the ideas in your thesis.

• Keep your discussion focused on your topic and more importantly your thesis. Don't let tangents or extraneous material get in the way of a concise, coherent discussion. A well focused paper is crucial in getting your message across to your reader.
• Keeping your points organized makes it easier for the reader to follow along and make sense of your review. Start each paragraph with a topic sentence that relates back to your thesis. The headings used for this guide give you some idea of how to organize the overall paper, but as far as the discussion section goes use meaningful subheadings that relate to your content to organize your points.
• Your thesis should illustrate your objectives in writing the review and your discussion should serve to accomplish your objectives. Make sure your keep your discussion related to the thesis in order to meet your objectives. If you find that your discussion does not relate so much to your thesis, don't panic, you might want to revise your thesis instead of reworking the discussion.

Conclusions

Because the conclusions section often gets left for last it is often the weakest part of a student review essay. It is as crucial a part of the paper as any and should be treated as such.

A good conclusion should illustrate the key connections between your major points and your thesis as well as they key connections between your thesis and the broader discussion—what is the significance of your paper in a larger context? Make some conclusions —where have you arrived as a result of writing this paper?

Be careful not to present any new information in the conclusion section.

Here you report all the works you have cited in your paper. The format for a references page varies by discipline as does how you should cite your references within the paper.

Bastek, Neal. (1999). Review Essays for the Biological Sciences. Writing@CSU . Colorado State University. https://writing.colostate.edu/guides/guide.cfm?guideid=79

CPS Online Library Research Guide (UNH Manchester Library): Create a Literature Review

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What is a literature review?

A literature review discusses published information in a particular subject area, and sometimes information in a particular subject area within a certain time period.

A literature review can be just a simple summary of the sources, but it usually has an organizational pattern and combines both summary and synthesis. A summary is a recap of the important information of the source, but a synthesis is a re-organization, or a reshuffling, of that information. It might give a new interpretation of old material or combine new with old interpretations. Or it might trace the intellectual progression of the field, including major debates. And depending on the situation, the literature review may evaluate the sources and advise the reader on the most pertinent or relevant.

But how is a literature review different from an academic research paper?

The main focus of an academic research paper is to develop a new argument, and a research paper is likely to contain a literature review as one of its parts. In a research paper, you use the literature as a foundation and as support for a new insight that you contribute. The focus of a literature review, however, is to summarize and synthesize the arguments and ideas of others without adding new contributions.

Why do we write literature reviews?

Literature reviews provide you with a handy guide to a particular topic. If you have limited time to conduct research, literature reviews can give you an overview or act as a stepping stone. For professionals, they are useful reports that keep them up to date with what is current in the field. For scholars, the depth and breadth of the literature review emphasizes the credibility of the writer in his or her field. Literature reviews also provide a solid background for a research paper’s investigation. Comprehensive knowledge of the literature of the field is essential to most research papers.

Strategies for writing the literature review

Find a focus.

A literature review, like a term paper, is usually organized around ideas, not the sources themselves as an annotated bibliography would be organized. This means that you will not just simply list your sources and go into detail about each one of them, one at a time. No. As you read widely but selectively in your topic area, consider instead what themes or issues connect your sources together. Do they present one or different solutions? Is there an aspect of the field that is missing? How well do they present the material and do they portray it according to an appropriate theory? Do they reveal a trend in the field? A raging debate? Pick one of these themes to focus the organization of your review.

Convey it to your reader

A literature review may not have a traditional thesis statement (one that makes an argument), but you do need to tell readers what to expect. Try writing a simple statement that lets the reader know what is your main organizing principle. Here are a couple of examples:

The current trend in treatment for congestive heart failure combines surgery and medicine.

More and more cultural studies scholars are accepting popular media as a subject worthy of academic consideration.

Consider organization

You’ve got a focus, and you’ve stated it clearly and directly. Now what is the most effective way of presenting the information? What are the most important topics, subtopics, etc ., that your review needs to include? And in what order should you present them? Develop an organization for your review at both a global and local level:

First, cover the basic categories

Just like most academic papers, literature reviews are likely to contain at least three basic elements: an introduction or background information section; the body of the review containing the discussion of sources; and, finally, a conclusion and/or recommendations section to end the paper. The following provides a brief description of the content of each:

• Introduction: Gives a quick idea of the topic of the literature review, such as the central theme or organizational pattern.
• Body: Contains your discussion of sources and is organized either chronologically, thematically, or methodologically (see below for more information on each).
• Conclusions/Recommendations: Discuss what you have drawn from reviewing literature so far. Where might the discussion proceed?

Organizing the body

Once you have the basic categories in place, then you must consider how you will present the sources themselves within the body of your paper. Create an organizational method to focus this section even further.

To help you come up with an overall organizational framework for your review, consider the following scenario:

You’ve decided to focus your literature review on materials dealing with sperm whales. This is because you’ve just finished reading Moby Dick, and you wonder if that whale’s portrayal is really real. You start with some articles about the physiology of sperm whales in biology journals written in the 1980’s. But these articles refer to some British biological studies performed on whales in the early 18th century. So you check those out. Then you look up a book written in 1968 with information on how sperm whales have been portrayed in other forms of art, such as in Alaskan poetry, in French painting, or on whale bone, as the whale hunters in the late 19th century used to do. This makes you wonder about American whaling methods during the time portrayed in Moby Dick, so you find some academic articles published in the last five years on how accurately Herman Melville portrayed the whaling scene in his novel.

Now consider some typical ways of organizing the sources into a review:

• Chronological: If your review follows the chronological method, you could write about the materials above according to when they were published. For instance, first you would talk about the British biological studies of the 18th century, then about Moby Dick, published in 1851, then the book on sperm whales in other art (1968), and finally the biology articles (1980s) and the recent articles on American whaling of the 19th century. But there is relatively no continuity among subjects here. And notice that even though the sources on sperm whales in other art and on American whaling are written recently, they are about other subjects/objects that were created much earlier. Thus, the review loses its chronological focus.
• By publication: Order your sources by publication chronology, then, only if the order demonstrates a more important trend. For instance, you could order a review of literature on biological studies of sperm whales if the progression revealed a change in dissection practices of the researchers who wrote and/or conducted the studies.
• By trend: A better way to organize the above sources chronologically is to examine the sources under another trend, such as the history of whaling. Then your review would have subsections according to eras within this period. For instance, the review might examine whaling from pre-1600-1699, 1700-1799, and 1800-1899. Under this method, you would combine the recent studies on American whaling in the 19th century with Moby Dick itself in the 1800-1899 category, even though the authors wrote a century apart.
• Thematic: Thematic reviews of literature are organized around a topic or issue, rather than the progression of time. However, progression of time may still be an important factor in a thematic review. For instance, the sperm whale review could focus on the development of the harpoon for whale hunting. While the study focuses on one topic, harpoon technology, it will still be organized chronologically. The only difference here between a “chronological” and a “thematic” approach is what is emphasized the most: the development of the harpoon or the harpoon technology.But more authentic thematic reviews tend to break away from chronological order. For instance, a thematic review of material on sperm whales might examine how they are portrayed as “evil” in cultural documents. The subsections might include how they are personified, how their proportions are exaggerated, and their behaviors misunderstood. A review organized in this manner would shift between time periods within each section according to the point made.
• Methodological: A methodological approach differs from the two above in that the focusing factor usually does not have to do with the content of the material. Instead, it focuses on the “methods” of the researcher or writer. For the sperm whale project, one methodological approach would be to look at cultural differences between the portrayal of whales in American, British, and French art work. Or the review might focus on the economic impact of whaling on a community. A methodological scope will influence either the types of documents in the review or the way in which these documents are discussed. Once you’ve decided on the organizational method for the body of the review, the sections you need to include in the paper should be easy to figure out. They should arise out of your organizational strategy. In other words, a chronological review would have subsections for each vital time period. A thematic review would have subtopics based upon factors that relate to the theme or issue.

Sometimes, though, you might need to add additional sections that are necessary for your study, but do not fit in the organizational strategy of the body. What other sections you include in the body is up to you. Put in only what is necessary. Here are a few other sections you might want to consider:

• Current Situation: Information necessary to understand the topic or focus of the literature review.
• History: The chronological progression of the field, the literature, or an idea that is necessary to understand the literature review, if the body of the literature review is not already a chronology.
• Methods and/or Standards: The criteria you used to select the sources in your literature review or the way in which you present your information. For instance, you might explain that your review includes only peer-reviewed articles and journals.

Questions for Further Research: What questions about the field has the review sparked? How will you further your research as a result of the review?

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"Create a Literature Review" is derivative of Literature Reviews by The Writing Center, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill licensed Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 4.0 License .

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Mastering The Art Of Writing A Biology Literature Review

In the field of biology research, literature reviews play a crucial role in advancing scientific knowledge and understanding. These reviews provide a comprehensive analysis and synthesis of existing research on a specific topic, helping researchers identify gaps in knowledge, build upon previous studies, and propose new avenues for investigation. This blog post aims to shed light on the importance of literature reviews in biology research and provide guidance on how to effectively conduct and write a literature review in this field.

Table of Contents

Importance of Literature Reviews in Biology Research

Literature reviews are essential in biology research for several reasons. Firstly, they help researchers gain a thorough understanding of the current state of knowledge on a particular topic. By reviewing existing studies, researchers can identify the key findings, methodologies, and theories that have shaped the field. This knowledge serves as a foundation for their own research, allowing them to build upon existing knowledge and contribute to the scientific community.

Secondly, literature reviews help researchers identify gaps in knowledge and areas that require further investigation. By critically analyzing existing research, researchers can identify unanswered questions or inconsistencies in the literature. This enables them to formulate research questions and hypotheses that address these gaps, leading to new discoveries and advancements in the field.

Furthermore, literature reviews provide researchers with a broader perspective on their research topic. By examining a wide range of studies, researchers can identify patterns, trends, and controversies in the literature. This broader perspective allows them to critically evaluate the strengths and weaknesses of different studies and theories, enabling them to develop a more comprehensive and nuanced understanding of their research area.

Purpose of the Blog Post

The purpose of this blog post is to guide researchers in conducting and writing an effective literature review in the field of biology. It will provide a step-by-step approach to conducting research, identifying relevant sources, evaluating their credibility, and organizing research materials. Additionally, it will outline the key components of a biology literature review, including the introduction, methods, results, discussion, and conclusion sections. The blog post will also offer tips for writing an engaging and coherent literature review, such as using clear and concise language, organizing the review logically, providing sufficient evidence and examples, and avoiding plagiarism. Finally, it will emphasize the importance of editing and proofreading the literature review for clarity, coherence, grammar, spelling, and proper formatting.

By following the guidance provided in this blog post, researchers will be equipped with the necessary tools and techniques to conduct a thorough and impactful literature review in the field of biology. This will not only enhance their own research but also contribute to the advancement of scientific knowledge in the field.

Understanding the Basics of a Biology Literature Review

A literature review is an essential component of any biology research project. It involves a comprehensive analysis and evaluation of existing literature on a specific topic or research question. By examining and synthesizing previous studies, a literature review provides a foundation for new research and helps identify gaps in knowledge that can be addressed in future studies.

Definition and Purpose of a Literature Review

A literature review is a critical examination of published works, such as scientific articles, books, and other relevant sources, that are related to a particular research topic. Its purpose is to provide a comprehensive overview of the existing knowledge and research findings in a specific field or subject area.

The main objectives of a literature review in biology are:

• To identify and summarize the key theories, concepts, and methodologies used in previous studies.
• To evaluate the strengths and weaknesses of existing research.
• To identify gaps in knowledge and areas for further investigation.
• To provide a theoretical framework for the current research project.
• To demonstrate the researcher’s understanding of the topic and their ability to critically analyze and synthesize information.

Key Components of a Literature Review in Biology

A biology literature review typically consists of the following key components:

Introduction: This section provides an overview of the research topic and its significance. It establishes the context for the literature review and outlines the research question or objective.

Methods: The methods section describes the approach used to conduct the literature review. It explains the search strategies, inclusion and exclusion criteria, and any other methods employed to identify relevant sources.

Results: In this section, the findings of the literature review are presented. It includes a summary of the main themes, theories, and findings from the selected studies.

Discussion: The discussion section involves a critical analysis and interpretation of the results. It explores the relationships between different studies, identifies inconsistencies or contradictions, and highlights areas where further research is needed.

Conclusion: The conclusion summarizes the main points of the literature review and provides insights into the implications and future directions for research in the field.

By following this structure, a biology literature review provides a comprehensive and systematic analysis of existing research, allowing researchers to build upon previous knowledge and contribute to the advancement of their field.

In the next section, we will explore effective strategies for conducting research for a biology literature review.

Conducting Effective Research for a Biology Literature Review

In order to write a comprehensive and well-informed biology literature review, it is crucial to conduct effective research. This involves identifying relevant sources, evaluating their credibility and reliability, and organizing and managing research materials. Here are some tips to help you conduct effective research for your biology literature review.

Identifying Relevant Sources

Academic journals : Academic journals are a valuable source of information for biology research. They contain peer-reviewed articles that provide in-depth analysis and findings on specific topics. Look for journals that specialize in biology or related fields.

Books and textbooks : Books and textbooks can provide a broader understanding of the topic you are researching. They often cover foundational concepts and theories in biology, which can help you develop a strong theoretical framework for your literature review.

Online databases : Online databases such as PubMed, Google Scholar, and Web of Science are excellent resources for finding relevant research articles. These databases allow you to search for articles based on keywords, authors, or specific journals. Make sure to use advanced search options to refine your search and find the most relevant articles.

Evaluating the Credibility and Reliability of Sources

When conducting research for your biology literature review, it is important to critically evaluate the credibility and reliability of your sources. Here are some factors to consider:

Author credentials : Check the credentials and expertise of the authors. Look for authors who are experts in the field of biology and have published extensively on the topic.

Publication date : Consider the publication date of the source. In biology, new research is constantly emerging, so it is important to include recent studies to ensure the accuracy and relevance of your literature review.

Peer review process : Determine if the source has undergone a peer review process. Peer-reviewed articles have been evaluated by experts in the field, ensuring the quality and reliability of the research.

Citations and references : Examine the citations and references used in the source. A well-referenced article indicates that the author has consulted relevant and reliable sources.

Organizing and Managing Research Materials

To effectively manage your research materials, consider the following strategies:

Create a system : Develop a system for organizing your research materials. This can include creating folders on your computer, using citation management software, or keeping physical copies of articles in labeled folders.

Take detailed notes : As you read through your research materials, take detailed notes. Summarize key findings, highlight important points, and record any relevant quotes or statistics. This will make it easier to refer back to specific information when writing your literature review.

Use citation management software : Citation management software such as EndNote or Zotero can help you keep track of your sources and generate citations in the required format. These tools can save you time and ensure accurate referencing.

By following these tips, you can conduct effective research for your biology literature review. Remember to critically evaluate your sources, organize your research materials, and stay up-to-date with the latest research in the field. Conducting thorough research will provide a solid foundation for writing a comprehensive and well-supported literature review.

Structuring and Writing a Biology Literature Review

A well-structured and well-written literature review is essential in biology research as it provides a comprehensive overview of existing knowledge and helps identify gaps in the field. In this section, we will discuss the key components and guidelines for structuring and writing a biology literature review.

The introduction of a biology literature review serves as a roadmap for the reader, providing background information and stating the research question or objective. It should be concise and engaging, capturing the reader’s attention and setting the context for the review.

Background information : Start by providing a brief overview of the topic and its significance in the field of biology. This helps the reader understand the relevance of the review and its contribution to existing knowledge.

Research question or objective : Clearly state the main research question or objective of the literature review. This helps guide the structure and focus of the review, ensuring that it remains coherent and relevant.

The methods section of a biology literature review outlines the research design and data collection and analysis methods used in the reviewed studies. This section provides transparency and allows the reader to evaluate the reliability and validity of the reviewed research.

Research design : Describe the overall approach or methodology used in the reviewed studies. This may include experimental designs, observational studies, or systematic reviews.

Data collection and analysis methods : Explain how data were collected and analyzed in the reviewed studies. This may involve techniques such as surveys, experiments, statistical analysis, or qualitative analysis.

The results section summarizes the key findings of the reviewed studies. It should present the data and evidence in a clear and concise manner, allowing the reader to understand the main outcomes of the research.

Summarizing key findings : Provide a brief summary of the main findings from the reviewed studies. Highlight the most significant results that contribute to the understanding of the research question or objective.

Presenting data and evidence : Use tables, figures, or graphs to present the data and evidence from the reviewed studies. This visual representation helps the reader grasp the information more easily and supports the interpretation of the results.

The discussion section of a biology literature review involves analyzing and interpreting the results of the reviewed studies. It aims to provide insights into the current state of knowledge, identify gaps in existing research, and propose future directions for investigation.

Analyzing and interpreting the results : Discuss the implications and significance of the findings from the reviewed studies. Analyze the strengths and limitations of the research and identify any inconsistencies or controversies.

Identifying gaps in existing research : Highlight areas where further research is needed to address unanswered questions or unresolved issues. This helps identify the research gaps that the literature review aims to fill.

The conclusion of a biology literature review summarizes the main points discussed and provides implications and future directions for research. It should be concise and leave the reader with a clear understanding of the significance of the reviewed studies.

Summarizing the main points : Recap the key findings and insights from the literature review. Emphasize the main contributions and how they relate to the research question or objective.

Implications and future directions : Discuss the implications of the reviewed studies for future research and practice. Identify areas that require further investigation and suggest potential research directions.

In conclusion, structuring and writing a biology literature review requires careful planning and organization. By following the guidelines outlined in this section, you can create a coherent and informative review that contributes to the existing knowledge in the field of biology. Remember to use clear and concise language, provide sufficient evidence and examples, and cite sources properly to avoid plagiarism.

Tips for Writing an Engaging and Coherent Biology Literature Review

Writing a biology literature review can be a challenging task, but with the right approach, you can create an engaging and coherent piece of work. Here are some tips to help you write an effective biology literature review:

Use clear and concise language

When writing a literature review, it is important to use clear and concise language to convey your ideas. Avoid using jargon or technical terms that may confuse your readers. Instead, use simple and straightforward language that is easy to understand. Clarity is key when it comes to communicating your thoughts and findings.

Organize the review logically

To ensure that your literature review is engaging and coherent, it is essential to organize your ideas in a logical manner. Start with an introduction that provides background information and states your research question or objective. Then, proceed to discuss the methods, results, and discussion sections in a structured manner. Finally, conclude your review by summarizing the main points and discussing the implications and future directions. Logical organization will help your readers follow your thought process and understand the flow of your review.

Provide sufficient evidence and examples

To make your literature review more engaging and credible, it is important to provide sufficient evidence and examples to support your arguments. This can include citing relevant studies, experiments, or data that support your findings. By providing evidence and examples, you not only strengthen your arguments but also demonstrate your understanding of the topic and the existing research.

Avoid plagiarism and cite sources properly

Plagiarism is a serious offense in academic writing, so it is crucial to avoid it at all costs. When writing a biology literature review, make sure to properly cite all the sources you have used. This includes both in-text citations and a comprehensive reference list at the end of your review. Citing sources not only gives credit to the original authors but also allows your readers to verify the information and explore the topic further.

In addition to these tips, it is also important to proofread and edit your biology literature review to ensure clarity and coherence. Here are some additional tips for editing and proofreading:

Review the content for clarity and coherence

After completing your literature review, take the time to review the content for clarity and coherence. Make sure that your ideas are presented in a logical and organized manner. Check for any inconsistencies or gaps in your arguments and make necessary revisions. Clarity and coherence are essential for a well-written literature review.

Check for grammar and spelling errors

Grammar and spelling errors can undermine the credibility of your literature review. Therefore, it is important to carefully proofread your work and correct any grammar or spelling mistakes. You can use grammar-checking tools or ask a colleague to review your work for you. Grammar and spelling errors can distract your readers and make your review less engaging.

Format the review according to the required style guide

Lastly, make sure to format your biology literature review according to the required style guide. This includes formatting the headings, citations, and references in the appropriate style. Adhering to the required formatting guidelines shows your attention to detail and professionalism. Proper formatting enhances the overall presentation of your literature review.

In conclusion, writing an engaging and coherent biology literature review requires careful planning and attention to detail. By using clear and concise language, organizing your ideas logically, providing sufficient evidence and examples, avoiding plagiarism, and properly editing and proofreading your work, you can create a high-quality literature review that effectively communicates your research findings.

Editing and Proofreading a Biology Literature Review

Editing and proofreading are crucial steps in the writing process, especially when it comes to a biology literature review. These steps ensure that your review is clear, coherent, and free from errors. In this section, we will discuss the importance of editing and proofreading and provide some tips to help you polish your biology literature review.

Reviewing the content for clarity and coherence

When editing your biology literature review, it is essential to review the content for clarity and coherence. This involves checking if your ideas are presented in a logical and organized manner. Here are some tips to help you with this process:

Read your review aloud : Reading your review aloud can help you identify any awkward or unclear sentences. It allows you to hear how your ideas flow and if there are any gaps in your arguments.

Check for consistency : Ensure that your review maintains a consistent tone, style, and voice throughout. Inconsistencies can distract readers and make your review less coherent.

Eliminate unnecessary repetition : Look for any repetitive phrases or information that can be condensed or removed. This will help streamline your review and make it more concise.

Checking for grammar and spelling errors

Grammar and spelling errors can undermine the credibility of your biology literature review. It is crucial to carefully proofread your review to ensure that it is error-free. Here are some tips to help you with this process:

Use grammar and spell-check tools : Utilize grammar and spell-check tools available in word processing software to catch any obvious errors. However, be aware that these tools may not catch all mistakes, so manual proofreading is still necessary.

Proofread multiple times : Proofread your review multiple times, focusing on different aspects each time. For example, in one round, focus on grammar and punctuation, while in another round, focus on sentence structure and clarity.

Ask for feedback : Consider asking a peer or mentor to review your biology literature review. Fresh eyes can often catch errors that you may have missed.

Formatting the review according to the required style guide

Formatting your biology literature review according to the required style guide is essential for consistency and professionalism. Different style guides, such as APA or MLA, have specific guidelines for formatting citations, headings, and references. Here are some tips to help you with this process:

Familiarize yourself with the style guide : Take the time to understand the specific formatting guidelines outlined in the style guide. Pay attention to details such as font size, spacing, and citation format.

Create a checklist : Create a checklist based on the style guide to ensure that you have followed all the necessary formatting guidelines. This will help you avoid any formatting errors.

Double-check your citations : Ensure that your in-text citations and reference list are accurate and properly formatted. Incorrect citations can lead to accusations of plagiarism, so it is crucial to get them right.

In conclusion, editing and proofreading are essential steps in the writing process of a biology literature review. By reviewing the content for clarity and coherence, checking for grammar and spelling errors, and formatting the review according to the required style guide, you can ensure that your review is polished and professional. Taking the time to edit and proofread your work demonstrates your commitment to producing high-quality research. So, don’t skip these crucial steps and strive for excellence in your biology literature review.

The Importance of Literature Reviews in Biology Research

A. Importance of literature reviews in biology research B. Purpose of the blog post

A. Definition and purpose of a literature review B. Key components of a literature review in biology 1. Introduction 2. Methods 3. Results 4. Discussion 5. Conclusion

A. Identifying relevant sources 1. Academic journals 2. Books and textbooks 3. Online databases B. Evaluating the credibility and reliability of sources C. Organizing and managing research materials

A. Introduction 1. Background information 2. Research question or objective B. Methods 1. Research design 2. Data collection and analysis methods C. Results 1. Summarizing key findings 2. Presenting data and evidence D. Discussion 1. Analyzing and interpreting the results 2. Identifying gaps in existing research E. Conclusion 1. Summarizing the main points 2. Implications and future directions

A. Use clear and concise language B. Organize the review logically C. Provide sufficient evidence and examples D. Avoid plagiarism and cite sources properly

A. Reviewing the content for clarity and coherence B. Checking for grammar and spelling errors C. Formatting the review according to the required style guide

A. Recap of key points discussed B. Encouragement to apply the tips and techniques learned C. Importance of continuous improvement in writing literature reviews

The outline provided serves as a solid foundation for creating a comprehensive blog post on the importance of literature reviews in biology research. However, it is essential to note that the outline can be modified and expanded upon based on the specific requirements and focus of the blog post.

When writing a literature review in biology, it is crucial to understand its significance in the research process. Literature reviews help researchers gain a comprehensive understanding of existing knowledge and identify gaps that need further exploration. They provide a foundation for new research and contribute to the advancement of scientific knowledge.

To conduct an effective literature review, researchers must first identify relevant sources. These sources can include academic journals, books, textbooks, and online databases. It is essential to evaluate the credibility and reliability of these sources to ensure the accuracy of the information used in the review. Organizing and managing research materials is also crucial to keep track of the sources and findings.

Structuring and writing a biology literature review involves several key components. The introduction should provide background information and clearly state the research question or objective. The methods section should outline the research design and data collection and analysis methods employed. The results section summarizes the key findings and presents data and evidence. The discussion section analyzes and interprets the results, identifying gaps in existing research. Finally, the conclusion summarizes the main points and discusses the implications and future directions.

To make the literature review engaging and coherent, it is important to use clear and concise language. Organizing the review logically helps readers follow the flow of ideas. Providing sufficient evidence and examples supports the arguments made in the review. Additionally, avoiding plagiarism and properly citing sources is crucial to maintain academic integrity.

After completing the initial draft, it is essential to edit and proofread the literature review. Reviewing the content for clarity and coherence ensures that the ideas are effectively communicated. Checking for grammar and spelling errors helps maintain the professionalism of the review. Finally, formatting the review according to the required style guide ensures consistency and adherence to academic standards.

In conclusion, literature reviews play a vital role in biology research. They provide a comprehensive understanding of existing knowledge and guide future research. By following the tips and techniques discussed in this blog post, researchers can write engaging and coherent literature reviews that contribute to the advancement of scientific knowledge. Continuous improvement in writing literature reviews is essential for researchers to stay updated and make meaningful contributions to their field of study.

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• Library Guides
• Literature Reviews
• Writing the Review

Literature Reviews: Writing the Review

Outline of review sections.

Your Literature Review should not be a summary and evaluation of each article, one after the other. Your sources should be integrated together to create a narrative on your topic.

Consider the following ways to organize your review:

• By themes, variables, or issues
• By varying perspectives regarding a topic of controversy
• Chronologically, to show how the topic and research have developed over time

Use an outline to organize your sources and ideas in a logical sequence. Identify main points and subpoints, and consider the flow of your review. Outlines can be revised as your ideas develop. They help guide your readers through your ideas and show the hierarchy of your thoughts. What do your readers need to understand first? Where might certain studies fit most naturally? These are the kinds of questions that an outline can clarify.

An example outline for a Literature Review might look like this:

Introduction

• Background information on the topic & definitions
• Purpose of the literature review
• Scope and limitations of the review (what is included /excluded)
• Historical background 
• Overview of the existing research on the topic
• Principle question being asked
• Organization of the literature into categories or themes
• Evaluation of the strengths and weaknesses of each study
• Combining the findings from multiple sources to identify patterns and trends
• Insight into the relationship between your central topic and a larger area of study
• Development of a new research question or hypothesis
• Summary of the key points and findings in the literature
• Discussion of gaps in the existing knowledge
• Implications for future research

Strategies for Writing

Annotated bibliography.

An annotated bibliography collects short descriptions of each source in one place. After you have read each source carefully, set aside some time to write a brief summary. Your summary might be simply informative (e.g. identify the main argument/hypothesis, methods, major findings, and/or conclusions), or it might be evaluative (e.g. state why the source is interesting or useful for your review, or why it is not).

This method is more narrative than the Literature Matrix talked about on the Documenting Your Search page.

Taking the time to write short informative and/or evaluative summaries of your sources while you are researching can help you transition into the drafting stage later on. By making a record of your sources’ contents and your reactions to them, you make it less likely that you will need to go back and re-read many sources while drafting, and you might also start to gain a clearer idea of the overarching shape of your review.

READ EXTANT LIT REVIEWS CLOSELY

As you conduct your research, you will likely read many sources that model the same kind of literature review that you are researching and writing. While your original intent in reading those sources is likely to learn from the studies’ content (e.g. their results and discussion), it will benefit you to re-read these articles rhetorically.

Reading rhetorically means paying attention to how a text is written—how it has been structured, how it presents its claims and analyses, how it employs transitional words and phrases to move from one idea to the next. You might also pay attention to an author’s stylistic choices, like the use of first-person pronouns, active and passive voice, or technical terminology.

See  Finding Example Literature Reviews on the Developing a Research Question page for tips on finding reviews relevant to your topic.

MIND-MAPPING

Creating a mind-map is a form of brainstorming that lets you visualize how your ideas function and relate. Draw the diagram freehand or download software that lets you easily manipulate and group text, images, and shapes ( Coggle ,  FreeMind , MindMaple ).

Write down a central idea, then identify associated concepts, features, or questions around that idea. Make lines attaching various ideas, or arrows to signify directional relationships. Use different shapes, sizes, or colors to indicate commonalities, sequences, or relative importance.

This drafting technique allows you to generate ideas while thinking visually about how they function together. As you follow lines of thought, you can see which ideas can be connected, where certain pathways lead, and what the scope of your project might be. By drawing out a mind-map you may be able to see what elements of your review are underdeveloped and will benefit from more focused attention.

USE VISUALIZATION TOOLS

Attribution.

Thanks to Librarian Jamie Niehof at the University of Michigan for providing permission to reuse and remix this Literature Reviews guide.

Avoiding Bias

Reporting bias.

This occurs when you are summarizing the literature in an unbalanced, inconsistent or distorted way . 

Ways to avoid:

• look for literature that supports multiple perspectives, viewpoints or theories 
• ask multiple people to review your writing for bias
• Last Updated: Apr 9, 2024 3:50 PM
• URL: https://info.library.okstate.edu/literaturereviews

Warwick Business School

How to write a literature review.

Not sure what a literature review is or how to structure it? In this session, we will examine the function of a literature review and the importance of showing where your own piece of research fits into the overall context of research in your particular research field. We will focus on the importance of ensuring your literature review is both evaluative and critical. You will be given some samples of writing and be required to identify the typical conventions for paragraph structure, tense usage, and signposting language.

Please complete the form below to request a place on the session running

8 th june 11am-1pm (uk time).

This form is closed and is no longer accepting any submissions. Thank you for your time.