What is the meaning of the term “Literature Review”?

The literature review is a task undertaken by a researcher in the beginning stages of his research to survey scholarly sources on a specific topic. It gives an overview of the current knowledge and gives the researcher room to identify relevant theories, methods, and most importantly the gaps in the existing literature which can be later applied and used in your own research, thesis, or any kind of dissertation.

 Writing of Literature review is a systematic process and needs to be undertaken in a methodical way. There are five key steps in writing a literature review and they are:

• Hunting for Relevant Literature
• Evaluation of the sources
• Identification of themes, debates, and the relevant gaps
• Outline the structure
• Writing of literature review

A strong literature review is not the one that summarizes the sources in a systematic manner but rather a good review is the one that analyses, synthesizes and also critically evaluates to give a clear picture of the state of knowledge on that given topic.

Whenever a researcher takes up any research initiative of the level of a research paper, dissertation, or thesis, he is likely to conduct a literature review to be able to find room for fresh research within the existing pool of research. The literature review gives a chance to the researcher to prove the depth of his work in the following ways

• Depict his familiarity with the topic and its scholarly context
• Build a strong theoretical framework for his research and the methodology for conducting it
• Position your work in alignment with other researchers and theorists in this domain
• Prove the way your research is contributing to the existing pool of knowledge and filling the existing research gap
• Assess the current state of research and depict your knowledge of all the scholarly debates that exist around your topic.

Writing a good literature review is very important not just for researchers who are taking up Ph.D. or any high-level dissertation but also for young people applying to high school for a career in research. As stated, before it is a methodical process, and let’s understand it with a step-by-step guide on doing the same

• Hunting for Relevant Literature: At the onset, before you start looking for literature it is imperative to clearly define your topic.  In a situation when you are writing a literature review section of a dissertation or a research paper, you are first going to look for literature that is linked to your research problem and the questions.
• Listing down the specific keywords:  Begin by creating a list of keywords that are linked to your research question. Include all the key concepts or variables that you wish to incorporate in your research. It is always suggested to include any synonyms and related terms if you wish to do that. This list can be increased and new keywords can be added in the process of creating the complete Literature Review.
• Explore the relevant sources: Once you have made the keywords, use your keywords to start searching for the sources.  There are many online sources available where you can search for relevant and worthy literature for your study. Some of the prominent and most used ones are:

1. Google Scholar
   
2. JSTOR
3. EBSCO
4. Medline
5. Econlit 

Some of these are more general in nature and some are more subject-specific. For example, Medline is where you would find literature that is relevant to medicine. Econlit is specific to economics. Whenever you find an article or research paper that looks related to your research, you must read the abstract to be sure about it.  You can even go through the bibliography to explore other sources that could be related to your research.

• Assess and Evaluate the selected sources: It is very difficult to read all the content that is available on your topic and so you will have to shortlist and select the most relevant one for your research question. For each of the documents that you find online and you have to decide whether to retain it or not, ask yourself these questions:

1. What issues are being dealt with by the author in this research?
2. What is the basic idea or research question of this research and how has it been defined?
3. What are the key theories, models, and methods in this research?
4. Is the research exploratory or descriptive in nature?
5. Are the findings and conclusion of the research impressive and noteworthy?
6. Is the publication noteworthy enough to challenge the already established knowledge in this field?
7. What are the key strengths and weaknesses of this research?

You must ensure that all the literature that you shortlist for your research is credible and you have not missed shortlisting the landmark studies and the major theories that exist in your research. You must also begin the writing process of your literature review as you are reading the content. This should go parallel. Take down relevant notes which can be later incorporated into your literature review. Ensure that in the journey, you do not lose track of your citations and avoid plagiarism of any kind. Try to make an annotated bibliography in the process itself. This means that along the way, where you are compiling full citation information you are also writing the summary paragraph and the analysis for each of the sources. This really helps in your retention and saves you time at a later stage in the process of writing the dissertation.

• Elucidate themes, debates, and gaps: When you start to organize the argument and structure of your review make sure you can comprehend as well as build up the relationship amongst the sources that you have read. Based on the readings and notes, you can look for patterns and trends in the theory or methods or results in any way. There are certain approaches that can become obsolete over time and you must remove them. Identify the themes that you find consistently recurring across the different literature you have shortlisted. It is also suggestive to point down the conflicts and the contradictions where the sources disagree.  Another important thing to not miss is to identify and include the pivotal studies which have changed the course of direction in your field. And last but not least, categorically note down the gaps that have been missing from the literature and the weaknesses that you feel need to be addressed.
• Establish the structure or framework of your Literature Review: There are various approaches to organizing the body of the Literature Review. Some of the techniques have been added recently and are more organized and systematic as compared to traditional techniques. However, the technique that you finalize and adopt for your research should be based on the length of your literature and the domain of your study. You can even combine various strategies, for instance, the overall structure of your literature review can be thematic but it is possible to discuss each theme in a chronological manner.

 There are many types of literature reviews. The choice of a specific type depends on your research approach and design. 

Let us look at some of the traditional as well as modern techniques of structuring your literature review. You must note that each of these techniques has its pros and cons and the best techniques for specific research can be subjective and dependent on various factors.

1. Narrative or traditional Literature Review: This is called by many names, such as traditional or critique literature.  It helps to draw conclusions about the topic and summarizes the body It works on identifying the gaps or inconsistencies in a body of knowledge. It is required to have a sufficiently focused research question to take forward a narrative literature review.
2. Systematic Literature Review: This technique is more focused and specific in nature. It requires more rigorous and well-defined approach in contrast to other types of literature review. A systematic literature review is comprehensive in nature and its structure details the timeframe within which the literature was selected. The systematic literature review can be further split into two categories: meta-analysis and meta-synthesis.

        2.1. Meta-Analysis and Meta-Synthesis Systematic Review:  When you take up Meta-Analysis you select findings from many studies on the same subject. You further analyze them using standardized statistical procedures. In the case of Meta-analysis, patterns, and relationships are identified and conclusions are drawn. This is an approach that is deductive in nature. On the other side, the meta-synthesis approach is based on a non-statistical technique. This technique is used to integrate, evaluate as well as interpret findings of studies that are qualitative in nature. This approach is inductive in nature and followed in studies that need a qualitative literature review.

3. Scoping Literature Review: As the name itself is explanatory, this kind of review is used to find out the scope as well as the coverage of the literature on the research question. These kinds of Literature reviews are found in the context of emerging evidence when the clarity of what more specific questions can be posed is asked. The key distinction between scoping and a systematic literature review is that a systematic review is undertaken when answers to more specific questions are sought whereas scoping literature review is conducted in the exploration of more specific research questions.
4. Augmented Literature Review: as the name implies, it explores the literature selectively to support a specific research question or argument, or a philosophical problem that is deeply embedded in the literature. In the case of augmented literature review, potential bias is a major concern because of its selective nature.
5. Integrative Literature Review: This kind of review is critical in nature and synthesizes secondary data about the research topic in a way that new frameworks and topic perspectives are generated. This form of conducting a literature review remains the only alternative when there is no primary study and data analysis involved in the study.
6. Theoretical Literature Review: It focuses on a pool of theories that has accumulated regarding an issue, concept, theory, phenomena. This kind of review is extremely contributing to establishing a relationship between the already existing theories and also goes in-depth to analyze the depth and degree of the investigation of the pre-existing theories and from that creates fresh hypotheses to be tested.

It is not the free will of the researcher to choose the style of literature review. The choice of the style of literature review adopted should be based on the research area, research problem, and research methods. But whatever style you adopt, In the earlier parts of the literature review chapter, you need to specify the type of your literature review your chose and justify your choice. 

• Write your Literature Review: As the sequence goes for any systematic text, your literature review should have an introduction a main body followed by a conclusion. The further content of each subhead depends on the objective of our literature review.
  • Introduction: The introduction should explicitly build the focus and purpose of the literature review. If you are writing the literature review as part of your dissertation or thesis, reinforce your central problem or research question and give a brief summary of the scholarly context. You can stress the timeliness of the topic (“many recent studies have focused on the problem of x”) or even raise a gap in the literature.
  • Body of the Literature Review: Depending on the length of your literature review, you can further create as many smaller sections in the literature review. You can even give a subheading to each section depending on the criterion on which you create these subheadings.
  • Conclusion: In the conclusion, you should summarize the key findings you have taken from the literature and emphasize their significance. Make sure that you justify the purpose achieved by your literature review by stating clearly how your research is addressing gaps and contributing new knowledge or discuss how you have drawn on existing theories and methods in order to set up a framework for your research.