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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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See an example

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.

Scribbr slides are free to use, customize, and distribute for educational purposes.

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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.

• Sampling methods
• Simple random sampling
• Stratified sampling
• Cluster sampling
• Likert scales
• Reproducibility

 Statistics

• Null hypothesis
• Statistical power
• Probability distribution
• Effect size
• Poisson distribution

Research bias

• Optimism bias
• Cognitive bias
• Implicit bias
• Hawthorne effect
• Anchoring bias
• Explicit bias

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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Becoming a good writer takes time, practice, and perseverance. Few people find writing easy, no matter how often or how much they write. This is because when you write, you are undertaking a complex process. This QUT write resource will guide you through the process and give you the skills and knowledge to develop into a confident writer.

Good academic writing always considers the audience and the topic . A writer should always consider the reader’s role, expectations and purpose for reading. For assessed tasks think about the criteria used to mark your work. Your writing should show you understand the topic and that you can use your knowledge to respond to the task.

Good academic writing is clear, coherent, and credible .

A writer’s meaning should always be clear to the reader. One way to achieve clarity is to effectively use grammar, vocabulary, and punctuation. Coherence describes how you link your ideas so they flow from sentence to sentence and between paragraphs. The goal is to be logical as the reader cannot ask questions to check what you mean. Finally, good academic writing is credible . Check you have used the most appropriate research to support your ideas, looked at the issue from relevant perspectives and that you know your topic. If you keep these considerations in mind, you are on the way to producing stronger writing.

Keep reading QUT write for more detailed guidance. If you would like to try some activities to develop your writing and learn more skills to study successfully, go to Study Smart . If you are a QUT student more support is available in the study section of HiQ .

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• AIRS modules
• 1 The research question
• 2 Preliminary search
• 3 Retrieving and evaluating information
• 4 Comprehensive search
• 5 Search alerts
• 6 Cited reference search
• 7 Organising the literature
• 7.1 Specialist research software
• 7.2 Bibliographic management
• 7.3 Coding the literature
• 7.4 Keeping useful notes
• 7.5 Module 7: Knowledge check
• 8 Managing data
• 9 Collaboration
• 10 Getting published
• 11 Publication metrics
• 12 Building further skills

Coding the literature

Once you have a bibliographic management system in place, you can begin your reading and coding the literature for relevance to your research question. This section will help you create a code to skim, scan and select literature efficiently and effectively.

Background reading

Foss, S. K. & Waters, W. (2007). Destination dissertation: A traveler's guide to a done dissertation . Maryland MD: Rowman & Littlefield : 75-112

Wallace, M. & Wray, A. (2011). Critical reading and writing for postgraduates . London: Sage.

How to start

Students often think that a research topic is established after reading the literature. However, reading the literature is best done after defining a research question. A well written research question helps you to quickly read and scan the literature for new ideas or 'research gaps' while remaining focussed on your topic. You may alter and narrow the scope of your research question as you progress through the research process while remaining confident that you are answering your question directly.

Categorising your literature

The categories you need to code your literature come directly from the terms of your research question. The key terms of your research question become the major areas of your literature review. The categories of literature need to form a logical sequence of ideas that lead to a coherent, well-argued position.

Example: The bodies of literature relevant to answering the research question: 'What factors characterise a successful mentoring relationship for minority students?' would include:

• factors of successful mentoring
• factors of successful academic mentoring of minority students
• factors of successful academic mentoring of university students
• factors that affect the completion of graduate degrees (you would include this body of literature because you are defining successful in the question as completion of degree).

Then you need to establish a system for coding reference material for each category. Coding allows you to categorise literature according to themes and sub-themes, such as relevant topics, points of view, research inter-relationships, or new or challenging ideas and theories. Using the coding system helps you avoid writing notes on areas of interest that aren't directly relevant to your research question.

To begin, establish a coding system that is meaningful to you as you plan the first version of your literature review outline (headings, paragraphs etc.). Consider using:

• a word or short phrase
• a numerical code
• an abbreviation.

You can also use software such as Leximancer to help you with coding your literature. Leximancer examines a body of text and produces a ranked list of terms based on frequency and related occurrence. These terms are then visually represented to show connections between concepts.

Watch the video: Introduction to Leximancer (YouTube video, 8m04s)

Activity – Coding your literature

• Identify the categories of literature you need to cover in your literature review from your research question. Add these to your resource log.
• Determine a code that delineates each of these categories.

Literature Review vs. Essay.

It is easy to get confused about the difference between literature reviews and essays because these two writing structures can be based on the same research.  However, the main difference is on where the emphasis is placed.

The purpose of an essay is to use what is known about a subject to prove an argument or point of view.  Not all of the knowledge of a topic may be used in an essay, but only what is relevant to the argument.  In an essay, mentioning the people who discovered or developed the knowledge is generally only for referencing purposes.

On the other hand, a literature review is designed to be a critical analysis of all the knowledge that has been discovered about a subject.  Its purpose is to examine all that others have already discovered about the subject and the researchers working on the subject are considered to be key.

At a sentence level, one way to emphasise a particular aspect of a subject is to place that aspect at the beginning of sentences and paragraphs.

In an essay, where the focus is on the knowledge itself, it is put to the front of sentences.  For example:

Playing computer and video games have risen dramatically in popularity.  It is estimated that three billion hours of gaming are played globally each week.  The major reason for this is because players are able to tap into a high level of emotional satisfaction that is difficult to experience in everyday life (McGonigal, 2011).

However, in literature reviews what is considered to be more important are the authors and researchers who found or developed the information.  Therefore they appear at the beginning of sentences.

  Jane McGonigal (2011) estimates that three billion hours of gaming are played globally every week.  Her research suggests that the major reason for this is because players are able to tap into a high level of emotional satisfaction that is difficult to experience in everyday life.

This is not to say that both kinds of sentences can be used in both types of writing.  However, the overall trend for essays is to emphasise the information, whereas for literature reviews the trend is to emphasise the authors.

For more on the differences between the structure of essays and the structure of literature reviews ,  check out QUT Cite|Write

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Have you looked at our Literature Review checklist ? You might like to compare the checklist to your own work.

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To me a literature review is about stating what other researchers think of the topic. So, mostly I just restate what they said and put that in a nice form. Still, it’s indeed really hard to draw a clear line between the two, well, between any type of papers. For example, this literature essay on Beowulf is said to be an essay. But shouldn’t an essay have a thesis statement, some ideas to prove? Well, this one doesn’t have them. It looks like a narrative essay still it doesn’t tell a personal story. So, in the end I just cannot clearly define it.

Thanks for your comment! You can take a look at our page for Writing an Essay for some examples of different essay styles.

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Have you looked at our Literature Review checklist? You might like to compare the checklist to your own work. https://www.citewrite.qut.edu.au/write/litreview.jsp

If you’re studying at a university, get in touch with your librarian who might also be able to provide you with some useful information or meet with you on an individual basis.

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A literature review is a critical evaluation of existing research on a particular topic. It can be used to identify gaps in existing knowledge, assess a particular idea or concept, and to provide a framework for further research.

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• QUT Library
• Library guides
• Systematic reviews

Step 4 Search the literature

• Where to find Systematic Reviews
• Conducting a Systematic Review
• Step 1 Formulate a focused question
• Step 2 Develop criteria
• Step 3 Register the review protocol
• Step 5 Screen literature and assess quality of studies
• Step 6 Extract and manage data
• Step 7 Synthesise the data
• Step 8 Write review and publish results
• Creative Commons licence

Develop a search strategy

The search strategy for a systematic review needs to be as comprehensive as possible in order to capture all studies relevant to the review question. 

The general process in developing a search strategy is:

• Identify synonyms and concepts related to the key concepts in your research question
• Identify the databases and other sources you need to search 
• Identify relevant database subject headings (e.g. MeSH  - Medline, Emtree - Embase, etc) and apply to your search strategy
• Apply search techniques such as Boolean , Nesting , Phrase Searching ,  Truncation and Wildcards
• Consider if certain concepts/keywords require to be searched in particular database fields e.g. Title/Abstract
• Consider if certain database filters need to be applied in order to narrow the search e.g. publication dates, age, sex, article type, language etc.
• Test, review and amend search as required

A useful starting point can be to check the search strategies in published systematic reviews for examples of how searches are structured and assist in keyword development.

Your Liaison Librarian can provide you with assistance in developing search strategies.

• Study Smart: Module 2: Identify and find information
• Checklist for Reviewing Search Strategies (Newcastle University)
• Building a search in Medline (Ebschohost)
• Building a search in Embase
• Building a search in PubMed

Documenting the search strategy

Systematic reviews require a meticulous documentation of their search strategy to enable a possible replication of their search in the future and a clear assessment of their quality. Most databases allow for the search history to saved which provides an exact record of the search.

Search details which must be recorded are;

• Databases (including the platform) e.g. EBSCO (platform) PsycINFO (database).
• Hand searching a record of the source (for example, Conference proceedings, journal title) and years searched must be kept
• Grey Literature sources
• Organisations or experts contacted.
• The date the search was conducted and the period searched
• Subject headings and keywords used
• Search history , including the combination of terms and any restrictions applied such as Language .
• Number of results retrieved  
• Total number of records retrieved
• Duplicates identified

The numbers of search results are documented using the  PRISMA Flow Diagram .

• Systematic Review Worksheet.xlsx (University of Canberra)

Managing search results

It is important to establish a method for managing the search results retrieved via your search strategy.

• Reference management software such as EndNote  is can be used for exporting all search results from final database searches so that duplicates can be removed and the records managed.
• Rayyan  is a free tool with help guide for screening studies. See also the following guide .
• SUMARI is a tool with help guide for screening studies available through the QUT subscription to JBI Evidence-Based Practice
• Covidence (subscription)  is an online systematic review program developed by, and for, systematic reviewers. It can import citations from reference managers like EndNote, facilitate the screening of abstracts and full-text, populate risk of bias tables, assist with data extraction, and export to all common formats. QUT has an institutional licence for Covidence. Be sure to use your QUT email address to request access.
• Managing reviews in Endnote

Identify the relevant databases for your review. Your Liaison Librarian can advise on which databases should be searched and on developing search strategies .

Below are some of the key  Health databases :

• Medline (via Ovid) The authoritative database for medicine and health research produced by the National Library of Medicine (NLM). It indexes the most prominent journals used in the field of medical research.
• Embase Embase covers worldwide literature in health, including biochemistry, biomedical engineering and medical instrumentation, biotechnology, clinical and experimental medicine, drugs, environmental science, hospital management, medical devices, occupational hygiene, pediatrics, pharmacy, public health, psychology and alternative medicine.

Selected fulltext of articles and other publications covering numerous nursing and allied health disciplines.

The key psychology database produced by the American Psychological Association (APA). It provides access to summaries of scholarly, peer-reviewed articles, books, chapters and dissertations covering behavioural science and mental health, with some citations dating back as far as the 1600s.

Freely available high quality independent evidence to inform healthcare decision making. Includes the Cochrane database of systematic reviews.

• Scopus An index of peer-reviewed literature including journals, books and conference papers covering a wide range of subject areas. It is primarily aimed at researchers and provides a number of tools to track, analyse and visualise research. tag-eng-pm health-ql
• Web of Science (via Clarivate) A collection of citation and index databases that provide citation count information for articles, books and conferences. tag-eng-pm health-ql

Study registers

• Australian New Zealand Clinical Trials Registry  Covers trials being undertaken in Australia, New Zealand on the therapeutic areas of pharmaceuticals, surgical procedures, preventive measures, lifestyle, devices, treatment and rehabilitation strategies and complementary therapies.
• ClinicalTrials.gov  Database of federally and privately supported clinical trials conducted in the United States and around the world.
• EU Clinical Trials Register
• Chinese Clinical Trial Registry  A register for trials supported by Chinese Evidence-Based Medicine Center, Ministry of Health of the People’s Republic of China, West China Hospital, Sichuan University, and is a member of Ottawa Statement Group.
• Clinical Trials Registry India
• Internet Portal of the German Clinical Trials Register (DRKS)
• ISRCTN Register  The ISRCTN is a numeric system for the unique identification of randomised controlled trials worldwide.
• Pan African Clinical Trials Registry
• Current Controlled Trials
• WHO International Clinical Trials Registry Platform

Grey literature

Literature that is NOT published in traditional sources such as books and journals is referred to as “ Grey Literature ”.

Conference proceedings and theses are the most common types of Grey Literature in the academic context, but examples also include technical and research reports, government publications, policy papers, annual reports, fact sheets, maps, geological surveys and statistics.

See the following page for more information about Grey Literature.

Sources of grey literature

Dissertations and Theses

• ProQuest Dissertations and Theses
• ProQuest Dissertations & Theses: UK & Ireland
• Trove : Australian Theses

Australian sources of grey literature

• Australian Institute of Health and Welfare
• State Health Departments
• National Health and Medical Research Council
• Australian Indigenous HealthInfoNet
• Department of Health and Ageing
• Australian University Research Repositories
• Australian Bureau of Statistics
• Australian Policy Online

  International sources of grey literature

• Policy Commons : Platform for think-tank publishing, grey literature, and government reports. 
• Overton: A searchable index of policy documents, guidelines, think tank publications and working papers from worldwide sources.
• World Health Organization
• The Grey Literature Report : The report is a bimonthly publication of The New York Academy of Medicine Library alerting readers to new grey literature publications in health services research and selected public health topics.
• Grey Matters: a practical search tool for evidence-based medicine: Published by The Canadian Agency for Drugs and Technologies in Health (CADTH). Provides details on where to locate grey literature in Australia and other countries.
• OpenGrey : System for Information on Grey Literature in Europe, is your open access to 700.000 bibliographical references of grey literature (paper) produced in Europe and allows you to export records and locate the documents.
• National Technical Information Service (U.S.): The National Technical Information Service is the largest central resource for U.S. government-funded scientific, technical, engineering, and business related information.
• OAIster : A union catalog of millions of records representing open access resources including theses, technical reports and research papers.
• Google :  A search of Google using keywords and the advanced search functionality allows for limiting searches to specific domains such as government or research web sites. This can be useful for tracking down grey literature.
• PsychEXTRA :  Covers technical, annual and government reports, conference papers, newsletters, magazines, newspapers and consumer brochures in  psychology.
• CogPrints : A self-archive for papers in any area of Psychology, Neuroscience, and Linguistics, and many areas of Computer Science.
• Mednar : A federated search engine of peer-reviewed medical resources.  
• OpenDOAR - Directory of Open Access Repositories

Hand searching

Hand searching is the manual examination of resources which are not indexed electronically, such as special issues of journals or conference proceedings.

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Literature Reviews

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What is a literature review?

A literature review discusses published information in a particular subject area. Often part of the introduction to an essay, research report or thesis, the literature review is literally a "re" view or "look again" at what has already been written about the topic, wherein the author analyzes a segment of a published body of knowledge through summary, classification, and comparison of prior research studies, reviews of literature, and theoretical articles. Literature reviews provide the reader with a bibliographic history of the scholarly research in any given field of study. As such,  as new information becomes available, literature reviews grow in length or become focused on one specific aspect of the topic.

A literature review can be just a simple summary of the sources, but usually contains an organizational pattern and combines both summary and synthesis. A summary is a recap of the important information of the source, whereas a synthesis is a re-organization, or a reshuffling, of that information. The literature review 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. Depending on the situation, the literature review may evaluate the sources and advise the reader on the most pertinent or relevant.

A literature review is NOT:

• An annotated bibliography – a list of citations to books, articles and documents that includes a brief description and evaluation for each citation. The annotations inform the reader of the relevance, accuracy and quality of the sources cited.
• A literary review – a critical discussion of the merits and weaknesses of a literary work.
• A book review – a critical discussion of the merits and weaknesses of a particular book.
• Teaching Information Literacy Reframed: 50+ Framework-Based Exercises for Creating Information-Literate Learners
• The UNC Writing Center – Literature Reviews
• The UW-Madison Writing Center: The Writer’s Handbook – Academic and Professional Writing – Learn How to Write a Literature Review

What is the difference between a literature review and a research paper?

The focus of a literature review is to summarize and synthesize the arguments and ideas of others without adding new contributions, whereas academic research papers present and develop new arguments that build upon the previously available body of literature.

How do I write a literature review?

There are many resources that offer step-by-step guidance for writing a literature review, and you can find some of them under Other Resources in the menu to the left. Writing the Literature Review: A Practical Guide suggests these steps:

• Chose a review topic and develop a research question
• Locate and organize research sources
• Select, analyze and annotate sources
• Evaluate research articles and other documents
• Structure and organize the literature review
• Develop arguments and supporting claims
• Synthesize and interpret the literature
• Put it all together

What is the purpose of writing a literature review?

Literature reviews serve as a guide to a particular topic: professionals can use literature reviews to keep current on their field; scholars can determine credibility of the writer in his or her field by analyzing the literature review.

As a writer, you will use the literature review to:

• See what has, and what has not, been investigated about your topic
• Identify data sources that other researches have used
• Learn how others in the field have defined and measured key concepts
• Establish context, or background, for the argument explored in the rest of a paper
• Explain what the strengths and weaknesses of that knowledge and ideas might be
• Contribute to the field by moving research forward
• To keep the writer/reader up to date with current developments in a particular field of study
• Develop alternative research projects
• Put your work in perspective
• Demonstrate your understanding and your ability to critically evaluate research in the field
• Provide evidence that may support your own findings
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• Last Updated: Sep 7, 2023 8:35 AM
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Literature reviews

• Introduction
• Conducting your search
• Store and organise the literature
• Evaluate and critique the literature

Literature reviews in different disciplines

Science and engineering, health and behavioural sciences.

• Find literature reviews

Different disciplines have different requirements and styles for their literature reviews. 

Become familiar with the style used in your discipline

Look at literature reviews published in your field. See our tips on finding literature reviews  in the next section.

Literature review information for your subject area

• SAGE research methods online Contains resources on literature reviews for different disciplines. 1. Click Browse and choose your discipline, or 2. Search for "literature review" and limit to your discipline.

• Systematic quantitative literature review This method, developed by the Griffith University School of Environment, is used to produce reliable, quantifiable and reproducible results.
• Report writing guide for engineers (PDF, 948 KB) A guide to developing technical report writing skills for engineers.

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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.

University of Tasmania, Australia

Literature reviews.

• What is a literature review?
• How to develop a researchable question
• How to find the literature
• How to manage the reading and take notes that make sense
• Organising your Literature Review

Advice, other sites and examples

• Advice and examples for nursing students

Organising your literature review

https://www.helpforassessment.com/blog/how-to-outline-a-literature-review/

Using your notes from the matrix, it is now time to plan before writing.  

The usual structure of Introduction, Body and Conclusion apply here but after that, you need to make decisions about how the information will be organised: 

• Sequentially/Chronological?
• Topical - subtopics?
• Theoretical?
• Methodology?
• Importance?

This will sometimes depend on your discipline. For example, in Science disciplines it might be better to organise by the methods of research used if you are going to find gaps in those methods, while in Education or the Social Sciences, it might be better to organise by synthesising theory. 

Some literature reviews will require a description of the search strategy. For more information, you may want to look at the advice on this page:  Steps of Building Search Strategies

This video from Western Sydney University explains further and has examples for geographical and thematic organisation. 

Language and structure

Once you have written a draft, think carefully about the language you have used to signpost the structure of your review in order to build a convincing and logical synthesis.

Carefully choosing transition/linking words and reporting verbs will strengthen your writing. 

• Transition and Linking Language
• Reporting verbs
• Academic Phrasebank: referring to sources This academic phrasebank has many more examples of using language to build the structure of your argument.
• 1. Guidance notes for Lit Review
• 2. Literature Review purpose
• Cite/Write: Writing a literature Review, QUT
• RMIT Learning Lab: Literature Review overview

Advice and examples for nursing students (may be useful for other Health Sciences)

• Postgrad Literature Review Good example
• Postgrad Literature Review Poor Example
• Southern Cross University Literature Review Examples
• Literature review outline Boswell, C & Cannon, S (eds) 2014, Introduction to nursing research: incorporating evidence-based practice, Jones and Bartlett Learning, Sudbury, viewed 5 October 2017, Ovid, http://ovidsp.ovid.com.ezproxy.utas.edu.au/ovidweb.cgi?T=JS&CSC=Y&NEWS=N&PAGE=booktext&D=books1&AN=01965234/4th_Edition/2&EPUB=Y

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How to write a literature review

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A literature review critically analyses existing literature to develop an argument.

Writing a literature review can be challenging because:

• you need to coordinate many sources and ideas into a logical argument
• you may be dealing with language and ideas you haven't fully mastered yet
• there are no fixed rules for what to include or how to organise your writing.

This is just a general guide to help you write a literature review. The specific requirements for your course may be different. Make sure you read through any assignment requirements carefully and ask your lecturer or tutor if you're unsure how to meet them.

Purpose of a literature review

A literature review should demonstrate your overall understanding of the literature and develop an argument, often by answering specific questions. It shouldn't just list and summarise what you've read.

Unlike other assignment types, you're often expected to determine the purpose of a literature review yourself.

Commonly, a literature review is written to help develop and justify a novel research question. But they have many other uses. For example, you may use a literature review to develop an argument that:

• justifies the significance or interest of a research question
• demonstrates your professional competence in a field of research
• critically reviews theory or methodological approaches
• weighs evidence to reach a conclusion or recommendation.

Selecting relevant materials

Your literature review should only include relevant materials, and it should be clear how each work is relevant to your main argument.

When selecting materials you should:

• read widely – don't just cite papers produced by a particular research group, or from only one country or continent.
• use up-to-date material – if you're completing a PhD or MPhil, you'll need to update your confirmation literature review for your final thesis.
• include relevant landmark studies – show that you know the influential and highly cited works in your field, but make sure they're relevant to your argument.
• limit background information – only include background details that are needed to orient the reader and help them appreciate your argument.
• include as much evidence as needed – be selective about what you include, even if you're building on, updating or challenging previous work. To challenge a common assumption, include a representative list of papers to demonstrate that it's common; you don't have to list every paper that makes the assumption.

Analysing the literature

Your literature review should provide a detailed justification for your main argument. You need to critically review the literature and synthesise your analysis into a logical argument.

This general process may help:

• familiarise yourself with the literature to learn what's been done and what's already known
• organise the materials around themes, issues or questions rather than individual papers
• critically review the information to identify things like assumptions, limitations, deficiencies, lack of clarity, methodological weaknesses, gaps, controversies and problems in existing knowledge or practice that need to be addressed.

Organising your argument

Your literature review should be a logical, well-structured argument organised into an introduction, body and conclusion.

To help organise your argument:

• plan before you start writing – creating a mind map or outline can help to clarify your thinking before you start drafting.
• refine as you write – give yourself time to write many drafts, and refine the writing and structure of your argument as you go. Look for repetition and common themes.
• Assignment types
• Steps for writing assignments
• Literature review example analysis

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Further support

UQ Library guide to literature reviews Guide for research students (PDF, 1.7 MB) Example literature review analysis

Teachers as evaluators: Results from a systematic literature review

McFadden, Amanda & Williams, Kate (2020) Teachers as evaluators: Results from a systematic literature review. Studies in Educational Evaluation , 64 , Article number: 100830.

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Description

Teacher professional standards globally now include a stronger emphasis on teacher research and evaluation skills. Yet, little is known about how to build these capacities through teacher education. This paper reports on a systematic literature review conducted to synthesize the literature about approaches to improving research and evaluative skills and attitudes in teachers. A total of 19 studies were included. The field is largely dominated by small qualitative studies that focus on teacher action research as a facilitator of professional development. There is a substantial and highly problematic gap in the research specifically in relation to building evaluation skills in teachers. Recommendations include a stronger investment in teacher education focussed on evaluation and evaluative thinking, which holds significant potential to positively impact the professional practice of teachers and student learning outcomes.

Impact and interest:

Citation counts are sourced monthly from Scopus and Web of Science® citation databases.

These databases contain citations from different subsets of available publications and different time periods and thus the citation count from each is usually different. Some works are not in either database and no count is displayed. Scopus includes citations from articles published in 1996 onwards, and Web of Science® generally from 1980 onwards.

Citations counts from the Google Scholar™ indexing service can be viewed at the linked Google Scholar™ search.

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Full-text downloads:

Full-text downloads displays the total number of times this work’s files (e.g., a PDF ) have been downloaded from QUT ePrints as well as the number of downloads in the previous 365 days. The count includes downloads for all files if a work has more than one.

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• Using VOSVIEWER: A tool for literature review analysis and bibliometrics

In conjunction with Prof Jan Kietzmann, University of Victoria, Canada, the BEST Centre is pleased to host this professional development seminar.  Presented by Andrew Park, a Phd student at Simon Fraser University, Canada.

Workshop presentation – Andrew Park on VosViewer:

Workshop description:

Date: 9th September, 2020 Time:  8:00am – 9:30am (AEST) Zoom Link:  https://uvic.zoom.us/j/93905990891?pwd=SXJId0tyeVc4amVnTDZPZlhPMEE0Zz09

Vosviewer is a new software tool that can be used to generate, visualize and analyze bibliometric networks. These networks include research authors, journals, institutions and individual publications. Through Vosviewer, these networks can be visualized at speeds and scales that are infeasible using manual methods or legacy software tools. Vosviewer also has text mining capabilities that can construct network maps of co-occurring keywords sourced from abstracts and bodies of research articles. In this workshop, we walk you through how to conduct a complete bibliometric analysis using Vosviewer. We then provide an example of how to use this analysis to write a bibliometric research article for journal submission.

Workshop outline below  – please follow the instructions to download and install the software, and watch the quick YouTube video prior to the workshop.

• Download Vosviewer: https://www.Vosviewer.com/download
• Watch introduction: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9dTWkNRxUtw&feature=emb_title

Bio – Andrew Park:

Andrew Park founded and sold a successful software startup that grew to over 100 employees, with offices in British Columbia and Washington State. He then returned to academia at SFU Beedie where is a PhD candidate conducting research in innovation and entrepreneurship with a focus on healthcare and digital technology. He is currently investigating how Open Innovation mechanisms impact value creation of firms emerging in the intersection of software and biotechnology. He has been published in interdisciplinary journals such as Research-Technology Management, Business Horizons and the Journal of Medicine & Philosophy spanning the diverse fields of medicine, biotechnology, digital innovation and management. Andrew is also part of a national network of innovation scholars (4POINT0) evaluating innovation ecosystem models that accelerate the trajectory of Science & Technology innovations to foster strong economic development in Canada. Finally, he recently co-founded another software startup that aims to decentralize and improve access to personal health data. He holds a BSc. in Molecular Biology and Biochemistry and a Management of Technology MBA from Simon Fraser University.

Suggested Preparation

• Download Vosviewer https://www.Vosviewer.com/download
• Watch introduction https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9dTWkNRxUtw&feature=emb_title

Workshop Outline

• Intro to bibliographic analyses
• Examples of insights derived from Vosviewer
• Longitudinal look at journal trends
• Summary of academic discussions occurring in different domains of study and groups of journals
• How does Vosviewer enable deeper insights compared to manual analyses?
• Data sources
• Visualization
• Output techniques and algorithms
• Martínez-López, F.J., Merigó, J.M., Valenzuela-Fernández, L., & Nicolás, C. (2018). Fifty years of the European Journal of Marketing: A bibliometric analysis. European Journal of Marketing, 52(1/2), 439-468.
• Advantages and Disadvantages vs. Scopus
• Constructing a Boolean search
• Selecting the appropriate options
• Complying with Vosviewer requirements
• Analyzing data in Web of Science and post-download
• Co-citations
• Co-authorship
• Bibliometric coupling
• Feeding data into Vosviewer
• Selecting the appropriate options for your desired output
• Setting reasonable limits to data output
• Making sense of the raw data output
• Making sense of the network diagrams and customizing them
• Review different sections of sample paper
• Collating data before writing
• Writing the paper with efficiency, without being formulaic
• Potential reviewer pushback (e.g. including editorials)

Time Permitting

• Create a full data set on your own using Web of Science and Vosviewer