Where Are Literature Reviews Located in Research Reports
What is a Literature Review
A literature review is an objective, concise, critical summary of published research literature relevant to a topic existence researched in an article.
A literature review does NOT:
A literature review does not simply reference and list all of the fabric yous have cited in your newspaper.
- Presenting material that is non directly relevant to your study will distract and frustrate the reader and make them lose sight of the purpose of your written report.
- Starting a literature review with "A number of scholars accept studied the relationship between X and Y" and simply listing who has studied the topic and what each scholar ended is not going to strengthen your paper.
A proficient literature review DOES:
- Present a brief typology that orders articles and books into groups to help readers focus on unresolved debates, inconsistencies, tensions, and new questions about a research topic.
- Summarize the most relevant and of import aspects of the scientific literature related to your area of research
- Synthesize what has been done in this area of enquiry and by whom, highlight what previous research indicates about a topic, and identify potential gaps and areas of disagreement in the field
- Give the reader an understanding of the background of the field and testify which studies are important—and highlight errors in previous studies
Building Your Literature Review Bookshelf
1 way to conceive of a literature review is to call up about writing it as you lot would build a bookshelf. You don't need to cut each piece by yourself from scratch. Rather, you can take the pieces that other researchers have cut out and put them together to build a framework on which to hang your own "books"—that is, your own study methods, results, and conclusions.
What Makes a Good Literature Review?
The contents of a literature review are determined by many factors, including its precise purpose in the article, the caste of consensus with a given theory or tension between competing theories, the length of the article, the number of previous studies existing in the given field, etc. The post-obit are some of the most of import elements that a literature review provides.
- A historical background for your research: Clarify what has been written about your field of research to highlight what is new and meaning in your study—or how the analysis itself contributes to the understanding of this field, even in a small way. Providing a historical background also demonstrates to other researchers and journal editors your competency in discussing theoretical concepts. You should also make sure to understand how to paraphrase scientific literature to avoid plagiarism in your work.
- The current context in which your enquiry is situated: Discuss cardinal (or peripheral) questions, issues, and debates in the field. Because a field is constantly beingness updated by new piece of work, you can show where your enquiry fits into this context and explain developments and trends in research.
- A discussion of relevant theories and concepts that provide the foundation for your enquiry: For example, if you are researching the relationship between ecological environments and human being populations, provide models and theories that focus on specific aspects of this connection to contextualize your study. If your report asks a question apropos sustainability, mention a theory or model that underpins this concept. If it concerns invasive species, choose material that is focused in this direction.
- A definition of the relevant terminology: In the natural sciences, the meaning of terms is relatively straightforward and consistent. But if you lot nowadays a term that is obscure or context-specific, you should ascertain the meaning of the term in the Introduction department (if you are introducing a study) or in the summary of the literature existence reviewed.
- A description of related research that shows how your piece of work expands or challenges earlier studies or fills in gaps in previous work: You tin can use your literature review as bear witness of what works, what doesn't, and what is missing in the field.
- Supporting evidence for a applied problem or consequence your research is addressing that demonstrates its importance: Referencing related research establishes your area of research as reputable and shows you are edifice upon previous work that other researchers accept deemed significant.
Types of Literature Reviews
Literature reviews tin differ in structure, length, and amount and breadth of content included. They can range from the selective (a very narrow area of research or only a single work) to the comprehensive (a larger corporeality or range of works). They can too be part of a larger work or stand on their own.
- A course assignment is an example of a selective, stand up-alone work. Information technology focuses on a small segment of the literature on a topic and makes up an entire piece of work on its own.
- The literature review in a dissertation or thesis is both comprehensive and helps brand up a larger work.
- A majority of journal manufactures start with a selective literature review to provide context for the research reported in the study; such a literature review is usually included in the Introduction section (just it can also follow the presentation of the results in the Give-and-take section).
- Some literature reviews are both comprehensive and stand every bit a separate work—in this case, the entire article analyzes the literature on a given topic.
Type of Literature Reviews Institute in Journals
The two types of literature reviews ordinarily constitute in journals are those introducing research articles (studies and surveys) and stand-alone literature analyses. They can differ in their scope, length, and specific purpose.
Literature reviews introducing research manufactures
The literature review plant at the beginning of a periodical article is used to introduce enquiry related to the specific report and is plant in the Introduction section, usually about the terminate. It is shorter than a stand up-solitary review because it must be express to very specific studies and theories that are directly relevant to the current study. Its purpose is to set research precedence and provide support for the written report's theory, methods, results, and/or conclusions. Not all research articles contain an explicit review of the literature, just nigh do, whether information technology is a detached section or duplicate from the rest of the Introduction.
How to structure a literature review for an commodity
When writing a literature review as function of an introduction to a study, simply follow the structure of the Introduction and move from the full general to the specific—presenting the broadest background data near a topic outset and then moving to specific studies that back up your rationale, finally leading to your hypothesis argument. Such a literature review is oft duplicate from the Introduction itself—the literature is INTRODUCING the groundwork and defining the gaps your study aims to fill.
The stand-solitary literature review
The literature review published equally a stand-alone article presents and analyzes every bit many of the important publications in an area of written report as possible to provide background information and context for a current area of research or a study. Stand-lone reviews are an excellent resource for researchers when they are beginning searching for the most relevant information on an area of report.
Such literature reviews are generally a bit broader in scope and tin can extend further back in time. This means that sometimes a scientific literature review can be highly theoretical, in add-on to focusing on specific methods and outcomes of previous studies. In addition, all sections of such a "review article" refer to existing literature rather than describing the results of the authors' own study.
In improver, this type of literature review is usually much longer than the literature review introducing a study. At the cease of the review follows a conclusion that once more explicitly ties all of the cited works together to show how this analysis is itself a contribution to the literature. While not absolutely necessary, such articles ofttimes include the terms "Literature Review" or "Review of the Literature" in the title. Whether or non that is necessary or appropriate can also depend on the specific writer instructions of the target journal. Take a look at this article for more input on how to compile a stand up-lone review article that is insightful and helpful for other researchers in your field.
Writing a Literature Review in 6 Steps
And so how practise authors turn a network of manufactures into a coherent review of relevant literature?
Writing a literature review is not ordinarily a linear process—authors often become dorsum and check the literature while reformulating their ideas or making adjustments to their study. Sometimes new findings are published before a written report is completed and need to exist incorporated into the current piece of work. This also ways you lot will not exist writing the literature review at any 1 time, just constantly working on it earlier, during, and after your study is consummate.
Here are some steps that will assist you lot begin and follow through on your literature review.
Step 1: Choose a topic to write nearly—focus on and explore this topic.
Choose a topic that you are familiar with and highly interested in analyzing; a topic your intended readers and researchers volition find interesting and useful; and a topic that is current, well-established in the field, and nigh which there has been sufficient research conducted for a review. This volition help you find the "sweetness spot" for what to focus on.
Step two: Inquiry and collect all the scholarly data on the topic that might be pertinent to your written report.
This includes scholarly manufactures, books, conventions, conferences, dissertations and theses—these and any other academic piece of work related to your area of study is called "the literature."
Step 3: Analyze the network of information that extends or responds to the major works in your area; select the material that is most useful.
Apply thought maps and charts to identify intersections in the research and to outline important categories; select the fabric that volition exist nigh useful to you review.
Step iv: Describe and summarize each article—provide the essential information of the article that pertains to your study.
Determine ii-iii important concepts (depending on the length of your article) that are discussed in the literature; take notes about all of the important aspects of this study relevant to your topic being reviewed.
For instance, in a given study, mayhap some of the main concepts are X, Y, and Z. Note these concepts so write a brief summary nearly how the article incorporates them. In reviews that introduce a study, these tin be relatively short. In stand up-alone reviews, there may be significantly more texts and more concepts.
Step five: Demonstrate how these concepts in the literature chronicle to what you discovered in your study or how the literature connects the concepts or topics beingness discussed.
In a literature review intro for an article, this information might include a summary of the results or methods of previous studies that stand for and/or ostend to those sections in your own study. For a stand-alone literature review, this may mean highlighting the concepts in each article and showing how they strengthen a hypothesis or evidence a pattern.
Discuss unaddressed issues in previous studies. These studies that are missing something y'all address are important to include in your literature review. In addition, those works whose theories and conclusions directly support your findings will exist valuable to review here.
Footstep 6: Place relationships in the literature and develop and connect your own ideas to them.
This is essentially the aforementioned as step 5, but focused on the connections between the literature and the electric current study or guiding concepts or arguments of the paper, not only on the connections between the works themselves.
Your hypothesis, argument, or guiding concept is the "golden thread" that will ultimately necktie the works together and provide readers with specific insights they didn't have earlier reading your literature review. Make certain you know where to put the research question, hypothesis, or statement of the problem in your research paper so that you guide your readers logically and naturally from your introduction of earlier work and evidence to the conclusions you want them to depict from the bigger picture.
Your review volition not only encompass publications on your topics but volition include your own ideas and contributions. By following these steps you will be telling the specific story that sets the groundwork and shows the significance of your research and yous can turn a network of related works into a focused review of the literature.
In addition to these guidelines, authors also need to cheque which mode guidelines to employ (APA, AMA, MLA, etc.) and what specific rules the target periodical might have for how to structure such articles or how many studies to include—such information tin can ordinarily be found on the journals' "Guide for Authors" pages.
Finally, after you have finished drafting your literature review, exist sure to receive proofreading and language editing for your academic work. A competent proofreader who understands academic writing conventions and the specific way guides used by academic journals will ensure that your paper is fix for publication in your target journal.
Wordvice Resources
If you lot need more than advice on how many references to include in your paper, how to write the abstruse or title for your manuscript, or how to impress the editor of your target periodical with a perfect cover letter, then head over to the Wordvice academic resources website.
Source: https://blog.wordvice.com/how-to-write-a-literature-review/
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