explains
indicates
notes
describes
Most of us have favourite verbs that we default to almost unconsciously when we are writing—reports, argues, describes, studies, explains, asserts—but these verbs are not interchangeable. They each inscribe a slightly different stance towards the knowledge—not only the writer’s stance, but also the stance of the researcher who created the knowledge. It is critical to get the original stance right in your critical summary. Nothing irritates me more than seeing my stance mispresented in someone else’s literature review. For example, if I wrote a paragraph offering tentative reflections on a new idea, I don’t want to see that summarized in someone’s literature review as ‘Lingard argues’, when more accurate would be ‘Lingard suggests’ or ‘Lingard explored’.
Writers need to extend their library of citation verbs to allow themselves to accurately and persuasively position knowledge claims published by authors in their field. You can find many online resources to help extend your vocabulary: Tab. 2 , adapted from one such online source [ 4 ], provides some suggestions. Tables like these should be thought of as tools, not rules—keep in mind that words have flexible meanings depending on context and purpose. This is why one word, such as suggest or conclude , can appear in more than one list.
Verbs to represent the nature and strength of an author’s contributions to the literature
Verbs to report what an author DID | Verbs to report what an author SAID | Verbs to report an author’s OPINION | ||
---|---|---|---|---|
analyse, assess, , discover, describe, demonstrate, examine, explore, establish, find, identify, inquire, prove, observe, study, show | Weaker | Stronger | Weaker | Stronger |
comment, describe, note, remark, add, offer, | affirm, emphasize, stress, maintain, stipulate, explain, , identify, insist | accept, believe, consider, think, , suspect, speculate | argue, assert, claim, contend, deny, recommend, reject, advocate, maintain |
Knowledge is a social construction and it accumulates as researchers debate, extend and refine one another’s contributions. To avoid your literature review reading like a laundry list of disconnected ‘facts’, reporting verbs are an important resource. Tab. 3 offers a selection of verbs organized to reflect different relationships among authors in the field of knowledge being reviewed.
Verbs to express relations among authors in the field
Depicting similar positions | Depicting contrasting positions | Depicting relating/responding positions |
---|---|---|
Taylor Jackson’s claim that … | Taylor Jackson’s claim that … | Taylor to Jackson’s claim that … |
affirms, agrees, confirms, concurs, aligns, shares, echoes, supports, verifies, concedes, accepts | argues, disagrees, questions, dismisses, refuses, rejects, challenges contradicts, criticizes, opposes, counters, disputes | extends, elaborates, refines, builds on, reconsiders, draws upon, advances, repositions, addresses |
Finally, although we have focused on citation verbs in this article, adverbs (e. g., similarly, consequently) and prepositional phrases (e. g., by contrast, in addition) are also important for expressing similar, contrasting or responding relations among knowledge claims and their authors in the field being reviewed.
In summary, an effective literature review not only summarizes existing knowledge, it also critically presents that knowledge to depict an evolving conversation and understanding in a particular domain of study. As writers we need to know when we are summarizing and when we are critically summarizing—summary alone makes for a literature review that reads like a laundry list of undigested ‘facts-in-the-world’. Finally, writers need to attend to the subtle power of citation verbs to position themselves and the authors they are citing in relation to the knowledge being reviewed. Broadening our catalogue of ‘go-to’ verbs is an important step in enlivening and strengthening our writing.
Thanks to Mark Goldszmidt for his feedback on an early version of this manuscript.
PhD, is director of the Centre for Education Research & Innovation at Schulich School of Medicine & Dentistry, and professor for the Department of Medicine at Western University in London, Ontario, Canada.
A literature review is much more than just another section in your research paper. It forms the very foundation of your research. It is a formal piece of writing where you analyze the existing theoretical framework, principles, and assumptions and use that as a base to shape your approach to the research question.
Curating and drafting a solid literature review section not only lends more credibility to your research paper but also makes your research tighter and better focused. But, writing literature reviews is a difficult task. It requires extensive reading, plus you have to consider market trends and technological and political changes, which tend to change in the blink of an eye.
Now streamline your literature review process with the help of SciSpace Copilot. With this AI research assistant, you can efficiently synthesize and analyze a vast amount of information, identify key themes and trends, and uncover gaps in the existing research. Get real-time explanations, summaries, and answers to your questions for the paper you're reviewing, making navigating and understanding the complex literature landscape easier.
In this comprehensive guide, we will explore everything from the definition of a literature review, its appropriate length, various types of literature reviews, and how to write one.
A literature review is a collation of survey, research, critical evaluation, and assessment of the existing literature in a preferred domain.
Eminent researcher and academic Arlene Fink, in her book Conducting Research Literature Reviews , defines it as the following:
“A literature review surveys books, scholarly articles, and any other sources relevant to a particular issue, area of research, or theory, and by so doing, provides a description, summary, and critical evaluation of these works in relation to the research problem being investigated.
Literature reviews are designed to provide an overview of sources you have explored while researching a particular topic, and to demonstrate to your readers how your research fits within a larger field of study.”
Simply put, a literature review can be defined as a critical discussion of relevant pre-existing research around your research question and carving out a definitive place for your study in the existing body of knowledge. Literature reviews can be presented in multiple ways: a section of an article, the whole research paper itself, or a chapter of your thesis.
A literature review does function as a summary of sources, but it also allows you to analyze further, interpret, and examine the stated theories, methods, viewpoints, and, of course, the gaps in the existing content.
As an author, you can discuss and interpret the research question and its various aspects and debate your adopted methods to support the claim.
A literature review is meant to help your readers understand the relevance of your research question and where it fits within the existing body of knowledge. As a researcher, you should use it to set the context, build your argument, and establish the need for your study.
The literature review is a critical part of research papers because it helps you:
Ideally, the literature review should take up 15%-40% of the total length of your manuscript. So, if you have a 10,000-word research paper, the minimum word count could be 1500.
Your literature review format depends heavily on the kind of manuscript you are writing — an entire chapter in case of doctoral theses, a part of the introductory section in a research article, to a full-fledged review article that examines the previously published research on a topic.
Another determining factor is the type of research you are doing. The literature review section tends to be longer for secondary research projects than primary research projects.
All literature reviews are not the same. There are a variety of possible approaches that you can take. It all depends on the type of research you are pursuing.
Here are the different types of literature reviews:
Argumentative review
It is called an argumentative review when you carefully present literature that only supports or counters a specific argument or premise to establish a viewpoint.
Integrative review
It is a type of literature review focused on building a comprehensive understanding of a topic by combining available theoretical frameworks and empirical evidence.
Methodological review
This approach delves into the ''how'' and the ''what" of the research question — you cannot look at the outcome in isolation; you should also review the methodology used.
Systematic review
This form consists of an overview of existing evidence pertinent to a clearly formulated research question, which uses pre-specified and standardized methods to identify and critically appraise relevant research and collect, report, and analyze data from the studies included in the review.
Meta-analysis review
Meta-analysis uses statistical methods to summarize the results of independent studies. By combining information from all relevant studies, meta-analysis can provide more precise estimates of the effects than those derived from the individual studies included within a review.
Historical review
Historical literature reviews focus on examining research throughout a period, often starting with the first time an issue, concept, theory, or phenomenon emerged in the literature, then tracing its evolution within the scholarship of a discipline. The purpose is to place research in a historical context to show familiarity with state-of-the-art developments and identify future research's likely directions.
Theoretical Review
This form aims to examine the corpus of theory accumulated regarding an issue, concept, theory, and phenomenon. The theoretical literature review helps to establish what theories exist, the relationships between them, the degree the existing approaches have been investigated, and to develop new hypotheses to be tested.
Scoping Review
The Scoping Review is often used at the beginning of an article, dissertation, or research proposal. It is conducted before the research to highlight gaps in the existing body of knowledge and explains why the project should be greenlit.
State-of-the-Art Review
The State-of-the-Art review is conducted periodically, focusing on the most recent research. It describes what is currently known, understood, or agreed upon regarding the research topic and highlights where there are still disagreements.
When writing literature reviews, you should avoid the usage of first-person pronouns. It means that instead of "I argue that" or "we argue that," the appropriate expression would be "this research paper argues that."
Ideally, yes. It is always good to have a condensed summary that is self-contained and independent of the rest of your review. As for how to draft one, you can follow the same fundamental idea when preparing an abstract for a literature review. It should also include:
Here's an example of the abstract of a literature review
Yes, the literature review should ideally be written in the past tense. You should not use the present or future tense when writing one. The exceptions are when you have statements describing events that happened earlier than the literature you are reviewing or events that are currently occurring; then, you can use the past perfect or present perfect tenses.
There are multiple approaches to deciding how many sources to include in a literature review section. The first approach would be to look level you are at as a researcher. For instance, a doctoral thesis might need 60+ sources. In contrast, you might only need to refer to 5-15 sources at the undergraduate level.
The second approach is based on the kind of literature review you are doing — whether it is merely a chapter of your paper or if it is a self-contained paper in itself. When it is just a chapter, sources should equal the total number of pages in your article's body. In the second scenario, you need at least three times as many sources as there are pages in your work.
To know how to write a literature review, you must clearly understand its impact and role in establishing your work as substantive research material.
You need to follow the below-mentioned steps, to write a literature review:
As a first step on how to write a literature review, you must know what the research question or topic is and what shape you want your literature review to take. Ensure you understand the research topic inside out, or else seek clarifications. You must be able to the answer below questions before you start:
Additionally, you should know that the narrower your research topic is, the swifter it will be for you to restrict the number of sources to be analyzed.
Dig deeper into search engines to discover what has already been published around your chosen topic. Make sure you thoroughly go through appropriate reference sources like books, reports, journal articles, government docs, and web-based resources.
You must prepare a list of keywords and their different variations. You can start your search from any library’s catalog, provided you are an active member of that institution. The exact keywords can be extended to widen your research over other databases and academic search engines like:
Besides, it is not advisable to go through every resource word by word. Alternatively, what you can do is you can start by reading the abstract and then decide whether that source is relevant to your research or not.
Additionally, you must spend surplus time assessing the quality and relevance of resources. It would help if you tried preparing a list of citations to ensure that there lies no repetition of authors, publications, or articles in the literature review.
It is nearly impossible for you to go through every detail in the research article. So rather than trying to fetch every detail, you have to analyze and decide which research sources resemble closest and appear relevant to your chosen domain.
While analyzing the sources, you should look to find out answers to questions like:
Be always mindful that you refer only to credible and authentic resources. It would be best if you always take references from different publications to validate your theory.
Always keep track of important information or data you can present in your literature review right from the beginning. It will help steer your path from any threats of plagiarism and also make it easier to curate an annotated bibliography or reference section.
At this stage, you must start deciding on the argument and structure of your literature review. To accomplish this, you must discover and identify the relations and connections between various resources while drafting your abstract.
A few aspects that you should be aware of while writing a literature review include:
Once you join the dots between various past research works, it will be easier for you to draw a conclusion and identify your contribution to the existing knowledge base.
There exist different ways towards planning and executing the structure of a literature review. The format of a literature review varies and depends upon the length of the research.
Like any other research paper, the literature review format must contain three sections: introduction, body, and conclusion. The goals and objectives of the research question determine what goes inside these three sections.
Nevertheless, a good literature review can be structured according to the chronological, thematic, methodological, or theoretical framework approach.
1. Standalone
2. As a section of a research paper
SciSpace Discover is a one-stop solution to do an effective literature search and get barrier-free access to scientific knowledge. It is an excellent repository where you can find millions of only peer-reviewed articles and full-text PDF files. Here’s more on how you can use it:
Find the right information
Find what you want quickly and easily with comprehensive search filters that let you narrow down papers according to PDF availability, year of publishing, document type, and affiliated institution. Moreover, you can sort the results based on the publishing date, citation count, and relevance.
Assess credibility of papers quickly
When doing the literature review, it is critical to establish the quality of your sources. They form the foundation of your research. SciSpace Discover helps you assess the quality of a source by providing an overview of its references, citations, and performance metrics.
Get the complete picture in no time
SciSpace Discover’s personalized suggestion engine helps you stay on course and get the complete picture of the topic from one place. Every time you visit an article page, it provides you links to related papers. Besides that, it helps you understand what’s trending, who are the top authors, and who are the leading publishers on a topic.
Make referring sources super easy
To ensure you don't lose track of your sources, you must start noting down your references when doing the literature review. SciSpace Discover makes this step effortless. Click the 'cite' button on an article page, and you will receive preloaded citation text in multiple styles — all you've to do is copy-paste it into your manuscript.
A massive chunk of time and effort is required to write a good literature review. But, if you go about it systematically, you'll be able to save a ton of time and build a solid foundation for your research.
We hope this guide has helped you answer several key questions you have about writing literature reviews.
Would you like to explore SciSpace Discover and kick off your literature search right away? You can get started here .
1. how to start a literature review.
• What questions do you want to answer?
• What sources do you need to answer these questions?
• What information do these sources contain?
• How can you use this information to answer your questions?
• A brief background of the problem or issue
• What has previously been done to address the problem or issue
• A description of what you will do in your project
• How this study will contribute to research on the subject
The literature review is an important part of any research project because it allows the writer to look at previous studies on a topic and determine existing gaps in the literature, as well as what has already been done. It will also help them to choose the most appropriate method for their own study.
To cite a literature review in APA style, you need to provide the author's name, the title of the article, and the year of publication. For example: Patel, A. B., & Stokes, G. S. (2012). The relationship between personality and intelligence: A meta-analysis of longitudinal research. Personality and Individual Differences, 53(1), 16-21
• A brief introduction to the topic, including its background and context. The introduction should also include a rationale for why the study is being conducted and what it will accomplish.
• A description of the methodologies used in the study. This can include information about data collection methods, sample size, and statistical analyses.
• A presentation of the findings in an organized format that helps readers follow along with the author's conclusions.
• Not spending enough time to critically evaluate the relevance of resources, observations and conclusions.
• Totally relying on secondary data while ignoring primary data.
• Letting your personal bias seep into your interpretation of existing literature.
• No detailed explanation of the procedure to discover and identify an appropriate literature review.
• Cite - the sources you utilized and referenced in your research.
• Compare - existing arguments, hypotheses, methodologies, and conclusions found in the knowledge base.
• Contrast - the arguments, topics, methodologies, approaches, and disputes that may be found in the literature.
• Critique - the literature and describe the ideas and opinions you find more convincing and why.
• Connect - the various studies you reviewed in your research.
When it is just a chapter, sources should equal the total number of pages in your article's body. if it is a self-contained paper in itself, you need at least three times as many sources as there are pages in your work.
• To represent an abstract idea or concept
• To explain the steps of a process or procedure
• To help readers understand the relationships between different concepts
Sources for a literature review should be as current as possible or not older than ten years. The only exception to this rule is if you are reviewing a historical topic and need to use older sources.
• Argumentative review
• Integrative review
• Methodological review
• Systematic review
• Meta-analysis review
• Historical review
• Theoretical review
• Scoping review
• State-of-the-Art review
Yes. Literature review is a mandatory part of any research project. It is a critical step in the process that allows you to establish the scope of your research, and provide a background for the rest of your work.
But before you go,
Harvard University Digital Accessibility Policy
4 literature review and citations/references.
Figure 4.1: Literature reviews and references
Your may have done a literature survey as part of your proposal. This will be incorporated into your dissertation, not left as separate stand-alone. Most economics papers include a literature review section, which may be a separate section, or incorporated into the paper’s introduction. (See organising for a standard format.)
Some disambiguation:
A ‘Literature survey’ paper: Some academic papers are called ‘literature surveys’. These try to summarise and discuss the existing work that has been done on a particular topic, and can be very useful. See, for example, works in The Journal of Economic Perspectives, the Journal of Economic Literature, the “Handbook of [XXX] Economics”
Many student projects and undergraduate dissertations are mainly literature surveys.
Your literature review should explain:
what has been done already to address your topic and related questions, putting your work in perspective, and
what techniques others have used, what are their strengths and weaknesses, and how might they be relevant tools for your own analysis.
Figure 4.2: Take notes on this as you read, and write them up.
Focus on literature that is relevant to your topic only.
But do not focus only on articles about your exact topic ! For example, if your paper is about the relative price of cars in the UK, you might cite papers (i) about the global automobile market, (ii) about the theory and evidence on competition in markets with similar features and (iii) using econometric techniques such as “hedonic regression” to estimate “price premia” in other markets and in other countries.
Consider: If you were Colchester a doctor and wanted to know whether a medicine would be effective for your patients, would you only consider medical studies that ran tests on Colchester residents, or would you consider more general national and international investigations?
You should aim to read and cite peer-reviewed articles in reputable economics journals. (Journals in other fields such as Finance, Marketing and Political Science may also be useful.) These papers have a certain credibility as they have been checked by several referees and one or more editors before being published. (In fact, the publication process in Economics is extremely lengthy and difficult.)
Which journals are “reputable”? Economists spend a lot of time thinking about how to rank and compare journals (there are so many papers written about this topic that they someone could start a “Journal of Ranking Economics Journals”. For example, “ REPEC ” has one ranking, and SCIMAGO/SCOPUS has another one. You may want to focus on journals ranked in the top 100 or top 200 of these rankings. If you find it very interesting and relevant paper published somewhere that is ranked below this, is okay to cite it, but you may want to be a bit more skeptical of its findings.
Any journal you find on JSTOR is respectable, and if you look in the back of your textbooks, there will be references to articles in journals, most of which are decent.
You may also find unpublished “working papers”; these may also be useful as references. However, it is more difficult to evaluate the credibility of these, as they have not been through a process of peer review. However, if the author has published well and has a good reputation, it might be more likely that these are worth reading and citing.
You may also find unpublished “working papers” or ‘mimeos’; these may also be useful as references. In fact, the publication process in Economics is so slow (six years from first working paper to publication is not uncommon) that not consulting working papers often means not being current.
However, it is more difficult to evaluate the credibility of this ‘grey literature’, as they have not been through a process of peer review. However, if the author has published well and has a good reputation, it might be more likely that these are worth reading and citing. Some working paper series are vetted, such as NBER; in terms of credibility, these might be seen as something in between a working paper and a publication.
Which of the following are “peer-reviewed articles in reputable economics journals”? Which of the following may be appropriate to cite in your literature review and in your final project? 8
Klein, G, J. (2011) “Cartel Destabilization and Leniency Programs – Empirical Evidence.” ZEW - Centre for European Economic Research Discussion Paper No. 10-107
Spencer, B. and Brander, J.A. (1983) “International R&D Rivalry and Industrial Strategy”, Review of Economic Studies Vol. 50, 707-722
Troisi, Jordan D., Andrew N. Christopher, and Pam Marek. “Materialism and money spending disposition as predictors of economic and personality variables.” North American Journal of Psychology 8.3 (2006): 421.
The Economist,. ‘Good, Bad And Ugly’. Web. 11 Apr. 2015. [accessed on…]
Mecaj, Arjola, and María Isabel González Bravo. “CSR Actions and Financial Distress: Do Firms Change Their CSR Behavior When Signals of Financial Distress Are Identified?.” Modern Economy 2014 (2014).
Universities, U. K. “Creating Prosperity: the role of higher education in driving the UK’s creative economy.” London Universities UK (2010).
You should be able to find and access all the relevant articles online. Leafing through bound volumes and photocopying should not be neededs. (Having been a student in the late 90’s and 2000’s, I wish I could get those hours back.)
Figure 4.3: The old way!
Good online tools include Jstor (jstor.org) and Google Scholar (scholar.google.co.uk). Your university should have access to Jstor, and Google is accessible to all (although the linked articles may require special access). You will usually have the ‘most access’ when logged into your university or library computing system.If you cannot access a paper, you may want to consult a reference librarian.
It is also ok, if you cannot access the journal article itself, to use the last working paper version (on Google scholar find this in the tab that says “all X versions”, where X is some number, and look for a PDF). However, authors do not always put up the most polished versions, although they should do to promote open-access. As a very last resort, you can e-mail the author and ask him or her to send you the paper.
When looking for references, try to find ones published in respected refereed economics journals (see above ).
A “survey article” is a good place to start; this is a paper that is largely a categorization and discussion of previous work on a particular topic. You can often find such papers in journals such as
These will be useful as a “catalog” of papers to read and considers citing. They are also typically very readable and offer a decent introduction to the issue or the field.
It is also helpful to consult module (course) notes and syllabi from the relevant field. Do not only limit yourself to the ones at your own university; many of universities make their course materials publicly accessible online. These will not only typically contain reading lists with well-respected and useful references, they may also contain slides and other material that will help you better understand your topic and the relevant issues.
However, be careful not to take material from course notes without properly citing it. (Better yet, try to find the original paper that the course notes are referring to.)
Textbooks serve as another extremely useful jumping off point. Look through your own textbooks and other textbooks in the right fields. Textbooks draw from, and cite a range of relevant articles and papers. (You may also want to go back to textbooks when you are finding the articles you are reading too difficult. Textbooks may present a simpler version of the material presented in an article, and explain the concepts better.)
When you find a useful paper, look for its “family.” You may want to go back to earlier, more fundamental references, by looking at the articles that this paper cited. See what is listed as “keywords” (these are usually given at the top of the paper), and “JEL codes”. Check what papers this paper cites, and check what other papers cited this paper. On Google scholar you can follow this with a link “Cited by…” below the listed article. “Related articles” is also a useful link.
Keep track of all references and citations
You may find it helpful to use software to help you manage your citations
A storage “database” of citations (e.g., Jabref, Zotero, Endnote, Mendeley); these interface well with Google Scholar and Jstor
An automatic “insert citation” and “insert bibliography” in your word processing software
Use a tool like Endnote to manage and insert the bibliographies, or use a bibliography manager software such as Zotero or Jabref,
Further discussion: Citation management tools
Put your list of references in alphabetical order by author’s last name (surname).
Include all articles and works that you cite in your paper; do not include any that you don’t cite.
Here is a definition of plagiarism
The main point is that you need to cite everything that is not your own work. Furthermore, be clear to distinguish what is your own work and your own language and what is from somewhere/someone else.
Why cite? Not just to give credit to others but to make it clear that the remaining uncited content is your own.
Here are some basic rules:
(Rephrased from University of Essex material, as seen in Department of Economics, EC100 Economics for Business Handbook 2017-18, https://www1.essex.ac.uk/economics/documents/EC100-Booklet_2017.pdf accessed on 20 July 2019, pp. 15-16)
Do not submit anything that is not your own work.
Never copy from friends.
Do not copy your own work or previously submitted work. (Caveat: If you are submitting a draft or a ‘literature review and project plan’ at an earlier stage, this can be incorporated into your final submission.
Don’t copy text directly into your work, unless:
It is not sufficient merely to add a citation for the source of copied material following the copied material (typically the end of a paragraph). You must include the copied material in quotation marks. … Ignorance … is no defence.’ (ibid, pp. 15 )
(‘Ibid’ means ‘same as the previous citation’.)
Your university may use sophisticated plagiarism-detection software. Markers may also report if the paper looks suspect
Before final submission, they may ask you to go over your draft and sign that you understand the contents and you have demonstrated that the work is your own.
Not being in touch with your supervisor may put you under suspicion.
Your university may give a Viva Voce oral exam if your work is under suspicion. It is a cool-sounding word but probably something you want to avoid.
Your university may store your work in its our database, and can pursue disciplinary action, even after you have graduated.
Penalties may be severe, including failure with no opportunity to retake the module (course). You may even risk your degree!
Comprehension questions; answers in footnotes
True or false: “If you do not directly quote a paper you do not need to cite it” 9
You should read and cite a paper (choose all that are correct)… 10
Use the right terminology.
“Johnson et al. (2000) provide an analytical framework that sheds substantial doubt on that belief. When trying to obtain a correlation between institutional efficiency and wealth per capita, they are left with largely inconclusive results.”
They are not trying to “obtain a correlation”; they are trying to measure the relationship and test hypotheses.
Don’t take everything that is in print (or written online) as gospel truth. Be skeptical and carefully evaluate the arguments and evidence presented. Try to really survey what has been written, to consider the range of opinions and the preponderance of the evidence. You also need to be careful to distinguish between “real research” and propaganda or press releases.
The returns to higher education in Atlantis are extremely high. For the majority of Atlanian students a university degree has increased their lifetime income by over 50%, as reported in the “Benefits of Higher Education” report put out by the Association of Atlantian Universities (2016).
But don’t be harsh without explanation:
Smith (2014) found a return to education in Atlantis exceeding 50%. This result is unlikely to be true because the study was not a very good one.
A theoretical economic model can not really prove anything about the real world; they typically rely on strong simplifying assumptions.
Through their economic model, they prove that as long as elites have incentives to invest in de facto power, through lobbying or corruption for example, they will invest as much as possible in order to gain favourable conditions in the future for their businesses.
In their two period model, which assumes \[details of key assumptions here\] , they find that when an elite Agent has an incentive to invest in de facto power, he invests a strictly positive amount, up to the point where marginal benefit equals marginal cost”
Empirical work does not “prove” anything (nor does it claim to).
It relies on statistical inference under specific assumptions, and an intuitive sense that evidence from one situation is likely to apply to other situations.
“As Smith et al (1999) proved using data from the 1910-1920 Scandanavian stock exchange, equity prices always increase in response to reductions in corporate tax rates.”
“Smith et al (199) estimated a VAR regression for a dynamic CAP model using data from the 1910-1920 Scandanavian stock exchange. They found a strongly statistically significant negative coefficient on corporate tax rates. This suggests that such taxes may have a negative effect on publicly traded securities. However, as their data was from a limited period with several simultaneous changes in policy, and their results are not robust to \[something here\] , further evidence is needed on this question.”
Use the language of classical 11 statistics:
Hypothesis testing, statistical significance, robustness checks, magnitudes of effects, confidence intervals.
Note that generalisation outside the data depends on an intuitive sense that evidence from one situation is likely to apply to other situations.
This policy was explained by Smith and Johnson (2002) in their research on subsidies and redistribution in higher education. Their results showed that people with higher degree have higher salaries and so pay higher taxes. Thus subsidizing higher education leads to a large social gain.
The results the student discusses seem to show an association between higher degrees and higher salaries. The student seems to imply that the education itself led to higher salaries. This has not been shown by the cited paper. Perhaps people who were able to get into higher education would earn higher salaries anyway. There are ways economists used to try to identify a “causal effect” (by the way, this widely used term is redundant as all effects must have a cause), but a mere association between two variables is not enough
As inflation was systematically lower during periods of recession, we see that too low a level of inflation increases unemployment.
Economists have long debated the nature of this “Phillips curve” relationship. There is much work trying to determine whether the association (to the extent it exists) is a causal one. We could not rule out reverse causality, or third factor that might cause changes in both variables.
Don’t write: “I accept the null hypothesis.”
Do write: “The results fail to reject the null hypothesis, in spite of a large sample size and an estimate with small standard errors” (if this is the case)
Note: The question of what to infer from acceptance/rejection of null hypotheses is a complex difficult one in Classical (as opposed to Bayesian) statistics. This difficulty is in part philosophical: classical hypothesis testing is deductive , while inference is necessarily inductive.
You need to read this paper more clearly; it is not clear what they conclude nor what their evidence is.
A common marking comment:
These papers seem to be discussed in random order – you need some structure organising these papers thematically, by finding, by technique, or chronologically perhaps.
How should you organise it? In what order?
Thematically (usually better)
By method, by theoretical framework, by results or assumptions, by field
Chronologically (perhaps within themes)
Exercise: Compare how the literature review section is organized in papers you are reading.
Figure 4.4: Organising a set of references
Q: What sort of structure am I using in the above outline?
It may also be helpful to make a ‘table’ of the relevant literature, as in the figure below. This will help you get a sense of the methods and results, and how the papers relate, and how to assess the evidence. You may end up putting this in the actual paper.
Figure 4.5: Organisational table from Reinstein and Riener, 2012b
Consult a survey paper, textbook, or lecture notes that discuss this paper and this topic
Try to find an easier related paper
Ask your supervisor for help; if he or she can
Try to understand what you can; do not try to “fake it”
Do not cite irrelevant literature.
Do not merely list all the papers you could find.
Discuss them, and their relevance to your paper.
What are their strengths and weaknesses? What techniques do they use, and what assumptions do they rely on? How do they relate to each other?
Use correct citation formats.
Try to find original sources (don’t just cite a web link).
Don’t just cut and paste from other sources. And make sure to attribute every source and every quote. Be clear: which part of your paper is your own work and what is cited from others? The penalties for plagiarism can be severe!
How to discuss empirical results: “Causal” estimation, e.g., with Instrumental Variables
Which is the best way to state it? 12
“As I prove in table 2, more lawyers lead to slower growth (as demonstrated by the regression analysis evidence).”
“Table 2 provides evidence that a high share of lawyers in a city’s population leads to slower growth.”
3.“Table 2 shows that a high share of lawyers in a city’s population is correlated with slower growth.”
Which is better? 13
Stating empirical results: descriptive
“Using the US data from 1850-1950, I find that inflation is lower during periods of recession. This is statistically significant in a t-test [or whatever test] at the 99% level, and the difference is economically meaningful. This is consistent with the theory of …, which predicts that lower inflation increases unemployment. However, other explanations are possible, including reverse causality, and unmeasured covarying lags and trends.”
“I find a significantly lower level of inflation during periods of recession, and the difference is economically meaningful. This relationship is statistically significant and the data is accurately measured. Thus I find that inflation increases unemployment.”
Some tips on writing a good paper– relevant to literature reviews
Answer: only b is a ‘peer reviewed article in a reputable economics journal’. All of these might be useful to cite, however. ↩
False. You need to cite any content and ideas that are not your own. ↩
Answers: 1, 5, and 6. Note that 2 and 3 are too narrow criteria, and 4 is too broad. ↩
or Bayesian if you like ↩
The second one; if this is really causal evidence. ↩
The first one. There is no ‘correct regression’. It is also not really correct in classical statistics to ‘find no effect’. ↩
The number of sources you cite in your paper depends on the purpose of your work. For most papers, cite one or two of the most representative sources for each key point. Literature review papers, however, typically include a more exhaustive list of references.
Provide appropriate credit to the source (e.g., by using an in-text citation) whenever you do the following:
Avoid both undercitation and overcitation. Undercitation can lead to plagiarism and/or self-plagiarism . Overcitation can be distracting and is unnecessary.
For example, it is considered overcitation to repeat the same citation in every sentence when the source and topic have not changed. Instead, when paraphrasing a key point in more than one sentence within a paragraph, cite the source in the first sentence in which it is relevant and do not repeat the citation in subsequent sentences as long as the source remains clear and unchanged.
Figure 8.1 in Chapter 8 of the Publication Manual provides an example of an appropriate level of citation.
Determining the appropriate level of citation is covered in the seventh edition APA Style manuals in the Publication Manual Section 8.1 and the Concise Guide Section 8.1
How to cite your own translations
If you translate a passage from one language into another on your own in your paper, your translation is considered a paraphrase, not a direct quotation.
Key takeaways from the Psi Chi webinar So You Need to Write a Literature Review
This blog post describes key tasks in writing an effective literature review and provides strategies for approaching those tasks.
How to cite a work with a nonrecoverable source
In most cases, nonrecoverable sources such as personal emails, nonarchived social media livestreams (or deleted and unarchived social media posts), classroom lectures, unrecorded webinars or presentations, and intranet sources should be cited only in the text as personal communications.
The “outdated sources” myth
The “outdated sources” myth is that sources must have been published recently, such as the last 5 to 10 years. There is no timeliness requirement in APA Style.
From COVID-19 to demands for social justice: Citing contemporary sources for current events
The guidance in the seventh edition of the Publication Manual makes the process of citing contemporary sources found online easier than ever before.
Citing classical and religious works
A classical or religious work is cited as either a book or a webpage, depending on what version of the source you are using. This post includes details and examples.
Academic Writer—APA’s essential teaching resource for higher education instructors
Academic Writer’s advanced authoring technology and digital learning tools allow students to take a hands-on approach to learning the scholarly research and writing process.
APA Style webinar on citing works in text
Attend the webinar, “Citing Works in Text Using Seventh Edition APA Style,” on July 14, 2020, to learn the keys to accurately and consistently citing sources in APA Style.
Writing a scientific paper.
Guides from other schools, citation styles & writing guides, "literature cited checklist" from: how to write a good scientific paper. chris a. mack. spie. 2018..
This is the last section of the paper. Here you should provide an alphabetical listing of all the published work you cited in the text of the paper. This does not mean every article you found in your research; only include the works you actually cited in the text of your paper. A standard format is used both to cite literature in the text and to list these studies in the Literature Cited section. Hypothetical examples of the format used in the journal Ecology are below: Djorjevic, M., D.W. Gabriel and B.G. Rolfe. 1987. Rhizobium: Refined parasite of legumes. Annual Review of Phytopathology 25: 145-168. Jones, I. J. and B. J. Green. 1963. Inhibitory agents in walnut trees. Plant Physiology 70:101-152. MacArthur, R.H. and E.O. Wilson. 1967. The Theory of Island Biogeography. Princeton University Press, Princeton, N.J. Smith, E. A. 1949. Allelopathy in walnuts. American Journal of Botany 35:1066-1071. Here is a dissection of the first entry, in the format for Ecology : Firstauthor, M., D.W. Secondauthor and B.G. Thirdauthor. Year. Article title with only the first letter capitalized. Journal Article Title with Important Words in Caps volume#(issue# if there is one): firstpage-lastpage. Notice some of the following details: - the list is alphabetized; - no first or middle names are listed (the author's first and middle initials are used instead); - only the first word in the title of the journal article (except for proper nouns) is capitalized; - different journals use different styles for Literature Cited sections. You should pay careful attention to details of formatting when you write your own Literature Cited section. For papers published in journals you must provide the date, title, journal name, volume number, and page numbers. For books you need the publication date, title, publisher, and place of publication.
biased citations (references added or omitted for reasons other than meeting the above goals of citations); excessive self-cites (citations to one’s own work).
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Your literature review should be guided by a central research question. Remember, it is not a collection of loosely related studies in a field but instead represents background and research developments related to a specific research question, interpreted and analyzed by you in a synthesized way.
How many studies do you need to look at? How comprehensive should it be? How many years should it cover?
Tip: This may depend on your assignment. How many sources does the assignment require?
Make a list of the databases you will search. You can use a Discovery Service , such as and individual database.
Tips:
Some questions to help you analyze the research:
Conducting a literature review is usually recursive, meaning that somewhere along the way, you'll find yourself repeating steps out-of-order.
That is actually a good sign.
Reviewing the research should lead to more research questions and those questions will likely lead you to either revise your initial research question or go back and find more literature related to a more specific aspect of your research question.
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I have a paper which is a literature review about a specific topic. How can I reference some texts from this literature review if I want to paraphrase that in my research proposal for PhD?
If it is a small quote (1 or 2 sentences) you can put it between quotation marks " ... "
If you want to quote a paragraph, the most used ways is to indent the text you quoted sometimes with or without quotation marks.
However, I beleive the previous two cases are only necessary when you need the exact wording. Although it might be necessary some times but it is usually not the case. You can reword the important part you want and cite the review article. An even better way is to check the original research paper that the literature review cited then you cite that ( unless what you needed was a critical analysis done by the literature review author)
If we wish to point readers towards a large body of work which you do not want to discuss in detail use the same citation style as for any other citation, but preceded by "reviewed in" e.g. (reviewed in Smith et al, 2016).
If you want to discuss ideas or conclusions first expressed in a review, use exactly the same citation style you would you for primary material.
Not the answer you're looking for browse other questions tagged citations literature-review ..
What is a literature review? What purpose does it serve in research? What should you expect when writing one? Find out here!
Hello, I am Elan, and I am Cas and we’re here to talk about literature reviews. Literature reviews are common assignments in classes, as well as vital components of larger research projects.
The goal of the literature review is to learn enough information about the topic to form or clarify a research question. During the literature review process you will read and review the existing research - or literature - on a given topic. Many research articles include a literature review section, but sometimes the review is the whole paper.
In this video we will share strategies and processes for synthesizing literature to address a research question. This video won’t cover strategies for finding research articles – for guidance on literature searching , check out our other videos or get in touch with the Ask Us desk! Before we get into literature review strategies, let’s talk about the length and scope of your review.
The number of sources you’ll review depends on the topic and the purpose of the literature review. If you are writing this review as an assignment for a semester-long course, your instructor may require a minimum number of sources.
If this is part of your master's thesis or dissertation, the review will be much more thorough and will provide a comprehensive view of the major scholarly works published on your topic.
So, how do you know when you’ve done enough research and you’re ready to begin writing? There’s no easy answer to this question. A good indicator is when you’re no longer learning new details, and you’re not finding leads on any new resources. At this point you're ready to begin writing and are in the synthesis stage.
Synthesis goes beyond simply summarizing each source you’ve found. Synthesizing requires organizing the resources and arguments into subtopics by tracing the connections between what you’ve found and your larger research topic. You’ll be discussing, comparing, contrasting, or otherwise connecting smaller topics and arguments to tell the “story” of the research.
You can think of the synthesis process like baking a pie. When you eat a slice of apple pie, you can’t taste the individual ingredients – flour, eggs, sugar, and butter all combine to form a new creation. Literature reviews are the same – you don’t want to focus too much on any individual source. Instead, you’re transforming the sources that you found into an entirely new creation that addresses your research question and is written in your voice.
Keep in mind that research is an iterative process.
Once you begin writing your literature review you may find that you haven’t fully addressed your research question and need to go back to search for more sources. There are multiple strategies that can help you synthesize the literature that you found. One way to get started is with an annotated bibliography, which is a list of citations accompanied by a descriptive and critical summary.
The annotations summarize each source, assess its usefulness, and reflect on its benefit to your topic. An annotated bibliography can help you identify themes and serve as a foundation to your literature review.
However, it is important to move beyond a summary because a literature review synthesizes the information presented in the sources. Another strategy that can be used to plan and organize your review is a Synthesis Matrix synthesis-matrix .
The synthesis matrix is a chart that allows you to sort and categorize different arguments presented on an issue. Across the top of the chart are the spaces to record sources, and along the side of the chart are the spaces to record the main points of argument on the topic at hand.
Organize your literature by taking notes on the main ideas of each article. After your chart is complete, you’ll notice patterns of information. You may find that your sources discuss very similar material, or that they deal with completely different aspects of your topic. These patterns can be useful in creating a thesis statement that can guide your writing and keep you focused as you begin your draft.
When examining how each source ties into your research question, some important considerations that can influence how you synthesize your findings include:
Depending on what fits your topic best, here are a few options for organizing your review (Transition to ANI slate)
However you decide to organize your literature review and synthesize the information, the goal is still the same: to present your reader with a broad overview of the major research findings related to your topic. (Talking Head)
For help with your literature review, finding articles in Libraries databases, or keeping track of your citations, check out our other Research Tips videos or ask a librarian for help!
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Sooner or later in your academic path, you will be required to compose a literature review. So, it’s important to approach this task well-prepared and understand how to write a literature review inside out.
Are you interested in how to write lit review projects correctly and cover the subject comprehensively, from all angles? This article will explore the concept of review of literature , dwell on how to write a literature review in line with your professor’s expectations, and share a universal literature review template for your usage.
To understand what should be included in a literature review , you need to understand its purpose and value in a larger work. A well-researched and written lit review usually addresses the following objectives:
These purposes lay the foundation for understanding how to write a literature review that will attain all academic goals. You simply need to use this list as your checklist for structuring an impactful lit review and including all vital data in it.
Now, we come to the main topic of this article – how to write a good literature review for dissertation projects, research papers, and other works. Follow the steps we’ve covered below to arrive at a consistent, logical piece of lit review .
Any literature review writing starts with academic research. You should look for sources that explore your topic from various angles and provide valuable literature review findings to expand your knowledge on the subject. It’s best to look for subject-specific books first and then go through academic databases that publish journal articles. This way, you will start with the evidence of the highest reliability level and move on to expand your literature review dataset conveniently.
The best solution on how to write a literature review without challenges is to rely on high-quality evidence. Your task is to research extensively in reliable academic databases to find peer-reviewed academic journals and books written by experts in your field. Don’t over-rely on online sources in your literature review, like blogs or opinion pieces, because they rarely possess the needed degree of credibility for an academic review. By choosing only industry-approved sources from qualified professionals, you can build a solid foundation for your writing and impress the audience.
How to write a literature review of value for your readers? One of the best approaches is to go beyond mere summarization of what other researchers have found on the subject and to apply critical thinking and data categorization. This way, you will manage to uncover existing patterns and trends and examine those dependencies in your literature review. A systematic, critical approach is always evaluated much higher than a simple outline of what people say on your subject.
Now, it’s time to compose an outline for a literature review . The outline should include the main concepts you’re planning to cover in the literature review text and should structure the narrative consistently. By means of composing an outline before the actual writing process, you give yourself a hands-on roadmap for composing a logically flowing piece. As a result of using an outline, you will write the literature review faster and will avoid the risk of going off-topic.
With a good and detailed outline, you should have no more problems or concerns about how to write a literature review . The writing process should go quickly and smoothly when you have all your evidence at your fingertips, categorized by themes and requiring only proper summarization in the text.
We recommend starting with a broad introduction to the topic and concepts related to it. You should give definitions and explain the topic’s features and components that require attention in the research process. After that, you may briefly outline the main sections of your review and then proceed to the exploration of each section in depth.
At times, your professor will give you a specific structure for review writing – such as the general introduction, coverage of theories, and then coverage of empirical evidence. At times, it may be a review of the data search strategy and a report on the identified resources that follow. In any case, you should follow the tutor’s prompt closely to ensure compliance with the task.
Looking for a universal, ready-to-use literature review template ? Here is an effective literature review template that everyone can apply with minor tweaks to produce a high-quality review of literature .
LITERATURE REVIEW TEMPLATE
Introduction
Body of the literature review
Conclusion
Use this literature review template to pump your writing muscle and get ready for new literature review challenges.
If you’re still unsure about how to do a literature review with excellence, these pro tips may improve your understanding of this task type.
With these recommendations at your disposal, you’re sure to become much more proficient in how to do a lit review . If you need more help with a literature review project, welcome to use our professional and quick literature review writing service . Our experts know everything about how to write a literature review , so they will handle your literature review task with ease within the timeframe you set for them.
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A literature review provides a thorough background of the topic by giving your reader a guided overview of major findings and current gaps in what is known so far about the topic. The literature review is not a list (like an annotated bibliography) -- it is a narrative helping your reader understand the topic and where you will "stand" in the ...
Writing a Literature Review. 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 ...
Step 4: Write. Be selective. Highlight only the most important and relevant points from a source in your review. Use quotes sparingly. Short quotes can help to emphasize a point, but thorough analysis of language from each source is generally unnecessary in a literature review. Synthesize your sources.
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.
"a narrative summary and evaluation of the findings or theories within a literature base. Also known as 'narrative literature review'. Key takeaways from the Psi Chi webinar So You Need to Write a Literature Review via APA Style.org
Start by Downloading the APA 7th Edition Reference Quick Guide to help you visualize how you cite your references. The Quick Guide is missing on how to cite a webpage. A webpage will never be the home page of the URL. It is part of a greater whole that is the website.
Organizing Your Literature Review. An APA style paper is organized in the author-date style. This means you cite the author's name and year of publication within the text with an in-text citation. You also include the page number, if appropriate. You then include the full information of that source in a reference list at the end of your paper.
Step 2: Identify the literature. Start by searching broadly. Literature for your review will typically be acquired through scholarly books, journal articles, and/or dissertations. Develop an understanding of what is out there, what terms are accurate and helpful, etc., and keep track of all of it with citation management tools.
A literature review may be a stand alone work or the introduction to a larger research paper, depending on the assignment. ... Use a citation manager, such as EndNote as the repository for your citations. See the EndNote tutorials for help. Review the literature. Some questions to help you analyze the research:
Literature Review A literature review is a survey of scholarly sources that provides an overview of a particular topic. Literature reviews are a collection of the most relevant and significant publications regarding that topic in order to provide a comprehensive look at what has been said on the topic and by whom.
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.
Structure of a literature review Introduction. Your introduction should give an outline of: why you are writing a review, and why the topic is important; the scope of the review — what aspects of the topic will be discussed; the criteria used for your literature selection (e.g. type of sources used, date range) the organisational pattern of ...
As p art of your lit review, you'll need to provide a list of references -- your professors want to know where you found your information. Your professor will also require that you use a specific format ("style") for citing your references, such as one of these: APA (American Psychological Association) Chicago Manual of Style
Writing a literature review requires a range of skills to gather, sort, evaluate and summarise peer-reviewed published data into a relevant and informative unbiased narrative. Digital access to research papers, academic texts, review articles, reference databases and public data sets are all sources of information that are available to enrich ...
Citations for a review in APA referencing are similar to those for other sources. This means you cite the reviewer's surname and year of publication: One review was especially scathing (Smith, 2001). In addition, if you quote a print source, make sure to cite a page number: Smith (2001) dismisses the argument as "puerile" (p. 16).
Seen this way, citation is a sophisticated task, requiring in-depth knowledge of the literature in a domain. Citation is more than just referencing; it is how we represent the social construction of knowledge in a field. A citation strategy is any indication in the text about the source and nature of knowledge.
To cite a literature review in APA style, you need to provide the author's name, the title of the article, and the year of publication. For example: Patel, A. B., & Stokes, G. S. (2012). The relationship between personality and intelligence: A meta-analysis of longitudinal research. Personality and Individual Differences, 53(1), 16-21
Write and Cite. This guide offers information on writing resources, citation style guides, and academic writing expectations and best practices, as well as information on resources related to copyright, fair use, permissions, and open access. This page is not currently available due to visibility settings. Last Updated: May 17, 2024 2:30 PM.
Figure 4.1: Literature reviews and references. Your may have done a literature survey as part of your proposal. This will be incorporated into your dissertation, not left as separate stand-alone. Most economics papers include a literature review section, which may be a separate section, or incorporated into the paper's introduction.
Figure 8.1 in Chapter 8 of the Publication Manual provides an example of an appropriate level of citation. The number of sources you cite in your paper depends on the purpose of your work. For most papers, cite one or two of the most representative sources for each key point. Literature review papers typically include a more exhaustive list of ...
Literature Cited Section. This is the last section of the paper. Here you should provide an alphabetical listing of all the published work you cited in the text of the paper. This does not mean every article you found in your research; only include the works you actually cited in the text of your paper. A standard format is used both to cite ...
Peer Review; Citation/Style Guides; 1. Choose a topic. ... Your literature review should be guided by a central research question. Remember, it is not a collection of loosely related studies in a field but instead represents background and research developments related to a specific research question, interpreted and analyzed by you in a ...
Then, it could make sense to cite the review authors as the originators of the new questions or new hypotheses. Effectively, this is an common criterion for citing anything (whether a review or an original research paper): cite the originators of whatever you're referring to, whether you're referring to data or to ideas.
1. If we wish to point readers towards a large body of work which you do not want to discuss in detail use the same citation style as for any other citation, but preceded by "reviewed in" e.g. (reviewed in Smith et al, 2016). If you want to discuss ideas or conclusions first expressed in a review, use exactly the same citation style you would ...
The goal of the literature review is to learn enough information about the topic to form or clarify a research question. During the literature review process you will read and review the existing research - or literature - on a given topic. Many research articles include a literature review section, but sometimes the review is the whole paper.
Understanding how to do a literature review for a research paper often has little to do with how to write literature review for thesis. This difference is explained by the fact that these types of academic work are of different lengths and pursue different scholarly goals. ... At the end of the literature review, you should typically cite a ...
The Online Writing Lab (the Purdue OWL) at Purdue University houses writing resources and instructional material, and we provide these as a free service at Purdue. Students, members of the community, and users worldwide will find information to assist with many writing projects. Teachers and trainers may use this material for in-class and out ...