How to Write a Literature Review

A literature review is a critical evaluation and review of publications and research for a specific topic. Scholarly sources are covered in this review for a particular time, including websites, government reports, journal articles, books, and others.

Reviewing these sources ensures description, summarization, and evaluation of a specific topic. Work by previous researchers is well acknowledged in the literature review. A literature review has a standard format that includes an introduction, body, and conclusion.

For a reader, the literature review provides him or her with a clear understanding of the developments in the field and what knowledge and ideas have been established on a topic.

The various types of literature review include integrative, methodological, argumentative, systematic, theoretical, and historical reviews.

Research papers given to students have a literature review as a requirement for the research topics. You do not have to struggle with your project assignment; elite academic brokers can help you with your literature review.

Elite Academic Brokers is among the top academic Experts, and we have the best team of professionals to help you with the research topic. If you are in social sciences, sciences, or humanities, extensive research on the issues and literature review comes in handy.

Types of Literature Review

1. Narrative or Traditional Literature Review

• Description: Summarizes and synthesizes existing literature without a specific methodology.
• Focus: Broader themes and concepts rather than specific research questions.
• Purpose: Provides an overview, historical context, and theoretical framework of a topic.

2. Systematic Literature Review

• Description: Follows a structured methodology with predefined criteria for selecting, evaluating, and synthesizing literature.
• Focus: Reduces bias by setting strict inclusion and exclusion criteria.
• Purpose: Aims for comprehensive coverage and critically evaluating available literature on a focused question.

3. Meta-Analysis Review

• Description: Utilizes statistical methods to analyze data from multiple studies.
• Focus: Quantitatively pools data from various sources to identify patterns, effects, or correlations.
• Purpose: Aims to draw conclusive insights by synthesizing results from multiple studies.

4. Scoping Review

• Description: Provides a broad overview of literature in a particular field.
• Focus: Maps key concepts, sources, and knowledge gaps without deep critical analysis.
• Purpose: Defines research questions and identifies the extent of available literature on a subject.

5. Integrative Literature Review

• Description: Synthesizes findings from diverse sources and methodologies.
• Focus: Integrates data from different study designs to provide a comprehensive understanding.
• Purpose: Identifies patterns, contradictions, and emerging trends across a broad range of literature.

6. Comparative Literature Review

• Description: Contrasts and compares theories, methodologies, or approaches within the literature.
• Focus: Evaluates strengths, weaknesses, and contradictions among different perspectives.
• Purpose: Offers insights into conflicting viewpoints and helps in theory evaluation.

Importance of Literature Review

There are various reasons why a literature review is essential in a project assignment, and these include the following:

• Familiarizing oneself with the scholarly context and the topic in question
• Helps in developing a theoretical framework and methodology to do your research
• A person can identify oneself with other authors from the sources
• Help to address a gap in the various research

The above points help achieve a good literature review and provide a clear understanding. Components in this literature review include objectives, subject overview, sources categorization, discussion of the similarities and differences in each source, and a conclusion in which source gives the best argument and understanding of the research area.

Steps of how to write a literature review include the following:

Problem formulation and goal definition

By defining the paper’s purpose, you should know what your project assignment entails. This is done by creating a thesis statement for an argument paper, a central question for a literature review assignment, and a hypothesis for a scientific paper. Defining the paper’s purpose helps in knowing the specific kind of literature review to use.

Limit the scope of your research problem.

This is by narrowing the topic to the specific area of study. It helps establish a good review of the most important and relevant sources for the research by limiting the number of sources to read.

Search for literature

This is done by setting specific criteria to search for the sources given by specific methodology, geographic region, and date range. Once you identify and define the given criteria, create a list of keywords that are concerning your research question.

Use these keywords to search for sources. This can be done by the use of databases like a library database, EBSCO, Google Scholar, and others. Articles and journals can be found in these databases.

These articles and journals can help get additional sources by using the references provided there. Some of the citations keep recurring and can help narrow down to the most relevant ones, where some have different opinions regarding the question. You must identify the appropriate sources for your research based on the procedure given.

How to Write a Literature Review

Step 1: Define the Scope and Objectives

• Identify your topic: Clearly define the subject area and the research question or problem you want to explore.
• Establish the purpose: Determine the goal of your literature review—whether it’s to provide an overview, analyze existing research, or identify gaps in knowledge.

Step 2: Conduct Thorough Research

• Gather relevant sources: Use academic databases, journals, books, and reputable online sources to collect scholarly articles and literature related to your topic.
• Evaluate sources: Assess each source’s credibility, reliability, and relevance. Consider the publication date, methodology, and authority of the authors.

Step 3: Organize the Review

• Create an outline: Structure your literature review based on themes, chronological order, methodology, or theoretical frameworks.
• Group similar ideas: Organize the literature into categories or sections based on common themes, arguments, or findings.

Step 4: Analyze and Synthesize Information

• Summarize the literature: Provide a brief overview of each source, highlighting key points, methodologies, and conclusions.
• Identify patterns and connections: Analyze similarities, differences, and trends across different sources. Synthesize the information to develop a coherent narrative.

Step 5: Write the Literature Review

• Introduction: Introduce the topic, state the purpose of the review, and outline the structure or organization of your review.
• Body: Present the literature based on your chosen structure. Discuss key findings, debates, and methodologies. Compare and contrast different viewpoints and studies.
• Conclusion: Summarize the main points, highlight the significance of the literature, and address any gaps or areas for future research.

Step 6: Revise and Edit

• Check coherence and flow: Ensure a logical progression of ideas throughout the review.
• Verify citations: Properly cite all sources using a consistent citation style (e.g., APA, MLA, Chicago).
• Proofread: Edit for grammar, punctuation, and clarity.

Step 7: Finalize the Review

• Ensure completeness: Revisit your objectives to confirm you’ve covered all relevant aspects.
• Seek feedback: Share your review with peers or mentors for feedback and suggestions for improvement.

Please select the relevant sources and evaluate them.

Once you have searched and found all the sources based on keywords, you must establish if your source fits the research question appropriately.

This is done by checking the methodologies and procedures used by various researchers, assumptions made by most researchers, the number of times a citation has been repeated in the databases, and the period of the literature, depending on the topic of study.

All these will help you determine and select the most relevant source for your research question or hypothesis by keeping track of these sources with citations.

Establish patterns, themes, and gaps that exist in the sources

This will help organize the selected papers based on the relationship between the given sources. To do this, you have to identify the pattern seen by looking at the popularity of the literature over a given time.

The concepts mostly repeated in the literature are themes, contradictions, and the existing gaps, which show weaknesses that must be addressed. All this will help you organize your work and develop the proper structure for the literature review.

Write a review of your work.

In this part, you have to state the purpose or thesis statement to enable the reader to understand your topic and the argument you will present in the paper by summarizing the developments seen in the research.

Read more on how to write an article review

Organize your literature review using various strategies

These strategies will help organize and structure the body of your literature review. The different ways to manage your literature review include a chronology of events based on the vital period, thematically based on the various aspects or issues of the topic, publication based on publication chronology, theoretically based on relevant theories models and key concepts which is the foundation of a theoretical framework and methodologically based on the variety of methods used.

Write your literature review.

After structuring and all the above, you should write your literature review. You have to make sure you follow a specific format when writing it. Your literature review should have an introduction, body, and conclusion.

The introduction establishes the purpose of the study, giving a proper outline of the topic in question. For the body part, you show the connections of various sources, analyzing them critically, and dealing with the themes relevant to the topic.

The conclusion summarizes the literature showing agreements and disagreements in the work and gives your perspective.

Review all your work from the beginning to the end

Proofread your work to eliminate your mistakes and include things you might have missed.

At Elite academic brokers, we provide the best quality services to our clients. We have other informative articles you can read and learn to write research papers and essays.