Literature Reviews

What this handout is about

This handout will explain what literature reviews are and offer insights into the shape and construction of literature reviews in the humanities, social sciences, and sciences .

Introduction

OK. You ’ ve got to write a literature review. You dust off a novel and a book of poetry, settle down in your moderate, and get fix to issue a “ thumbs up ” or “ thumbs down ” as you leaf through the pages. “ Literature review ” done. Right ?
wrong ! The “ literature ” of a literature review refers to any collection of materials on a topic, not inevitably the capital literary text of the worldly concern. “ Literature ” could be anything from a adjust of government pamphlets on british colonial methods in Africa to scholarly articles on the treatment of a tear ACL. And a inspection does not inevitably mean that your proofreader wants you to give your personal public opinion on whether or not you liked these sources.

What is a literature review, then?

A literature review discusses published information in a detail subject area, and sometimes data in a particular subject area within a certain clock time period .
A literature review can be merely a childlike summary of the sources, but it normally has an organizational form and combines both summary and deduction. A drumhead is a recapitulate of the important information of the source, but a synthesis is a re-organization, or a reshuffle, of that information. It might give a newfangled interpretation of old material or combine new with old interpretations. Or it might trace the cerebral progression of the battlefield, including major debates. And depending on the position, the literature review may evaluate the sources and advise the subscriber on the most apposite or relevant .

But how is a literature review different from an academic research paper?

The main focus of an academician research newspaper is to develop a newfangled argument, and a research newspaper is probable to contain a literature reappraisal as one of its parts. In a research wallpaper, you use the literature as a foundation and as support for a new insight that you contribute. The focus of a literature review, however, is to summarize and synthesize the arguments and ideas of others without adding newfangled contributions .

Why do we write literature reviews?

Literature reviews provide you with a handy guide to a particular topic. If you have limited clock to conduct research, literature reviews can give you an overview or work as a stepping stone. For professionals, they are useful reports that keep them up to date with what is current in the field. For scholars, the depth and breadth of the literature revue emphasizes the credibility of the writer in his or her field. Literature reviews besides provide a solid setting for a inquiry paper ’ second probe. Comprehensive cognition of the literature of the field is essential to most research papers .

Who writes these things, anyway?

literature reviews are written occasionally in the humanities, but largely in the sciences and social sciences ; in experiment and lab reports, they constitute a section of the paper. sometimes a literature review is written as a composition in itself .

Let’s get to it! What should I do before writing the literature review?

Clarify

If your assignment is not very specific, seek clarification from your instructor:

• Roughly how many sources should you include?
• What types of sources (books, journal articles, websites)?
• Should you summarize, synthesize, or critique your sources by discussing a common theme or issue?
• Should you evaluate your sources?
• Should you provide subheadings and other background information, such as definitions and/or a history?

Find models

look for other literature reviews in your area of pastime or in the discipline and read them to get a smell of the types of themes you might want to look for in your own research or ways to organize your final reappraisal. You can plainly put the word “ review ” in your search locomotive along with your early subject terms to find articles of this type on the Internet or in an electronic database. The bibliography or citation incision of sources you ’ ve already read are besides excellent introduction points into your own research .

Narrow your topic

There are hundreds or even thousands of articles and books on most areas of cogitation. The narrower your subject, the easier it will be to limit the number of sources you need to read in order to get a commodity sketch of the material. Your teacher will credibly not expect you to read everything that ’ s out there on the subject, but you ’ ll make your job easier if you first limit your setting .
Keep in take care that UNC Libraries have research guides and to databases relevant to many fields of learn. You can reach out to the submit librarian for a reference : hypertext transfer protocol : //library.unc.edu/support/consultations/ .
And don ’ t forget to tap into your professor ’ south ( or other professors ’ ) cognition in the plain. Ask your professor questions such as : “ If you had to read only one book from the 90 ’ randomness on topic ten, what would it be ? ” Questions such as this serve you to find and determine quickly the most germinal pieces in the plain .

Consider whether your sources are current

Some disciplines require that you use information that is adenine stream as possible. In the sciences, for exemplify, treatments for aesculapian problems are constantly changing according to the latest studies. Information even two years old could be disused. however, if you are writing a follow-up in the humanities, history, or social sciences, a sketch of the history of the literature may be what is needed, because what is crucial is how perspectives have changed through the years or within a certain prison term period. Try sorting through some early current bibliographies or literature reviews in the field to get a sense of what your discipline expects. You can besides use this method acting to consider what is presently of interest to scholars in this field and what is not .

Strategies for writing the literature review

Find a focus

A literature review, like a condition newspaper, is normally organized around ideas, not the sources themselves as an gloss bibliography would be organized. This means that you will not good merely list your sources and go into contingent about each one of them, one at a time. No. As you read widely but selectively in your subject area, consider alternatively what themes or issues connect your sources together. Do they present one or different solutions ? Is there an aspect of the field that is missing ? How well do they present the material and do they portray it according to an appropriate theory ? Do they reveal a swerve in the field ? A raging debate ? Pick one of these themes to focus the organization of your review .

Convey it to your reader

A literature revue may not have a traditional dissertation instruction ( one that makes an argument ), but you do need to tell readers what to expect. Try writing a simple affirmation that lets the lector know what is your independent form principle. hera are a couple of examples :
The current swerve in treatment for congestive heart bankruptcy combines surgery and music.
More and more cultural studies scholars are accepting popular media as a national worthy of academic consideration .

Consider organization

You ’ ve got a concenter, and you ’ ve stated it clearly and directly. now what is the most effective way of presenting the information ? What are the most authoritative topics, subtopics, and so forth, that your review needs to include ? And in what order should you present them ? Develop an constitution for your review at both a ball-shaped and local anesthetic level :
First, cover the basic categories
merely like most academic papers, literature reviews besides must contain at least three basic elements : an insertion or background information section ; the body of the review containing the discussion of sources ; and, last, a conclusion and/or recommendations part to end the paper. The following provides a brief description of the content of each:

• Introduction: Gives a quick idea of the topic of the literature review, such as the central theme or organizational pattern.
• Body: Contains your discussion of sources and is organized either chronologically, thematically, or methodologically (see below for more information on each).
• Conclusions/Recommendations: Discuss what you have drawn from reviewing literature so far. Where might the discussion proceed?

Organizing the body
once you have the basic categories in position, then you must consider how you will present the sources themselves within the soundbox of your wallpaper. Create an organizational method to focus this section even further.

To help you come up with an overall organizational framework for your review, consider the following scenario :
You ’ ve decided to focus your literature review on materials dealing with sperm whales. This is because you ’ ve just finished read Moby Dick, and you wonder if that whale ’ randomness depiction is truly real. You start with some articles about the physiology of sperm whales in biology journals written in the 1980 ’ second. But these articles refer to some british biological studies performed on whales in the early eighteenth century. So you check those out. then you look up a book written in 1968 with information on how sperm whales have been portrayed in other forms of artwork, such as in Alaskan poetry, in french painting, or on giant bone, as the whale hunters in the late nineteenth hundred used to do. This makes you wonder about american whaling methods during the time portrayed in Moby Dick, so you find some academic articles published in the last five years on how accurately Herman Melville portrayed the whaling scene in his fresh .
Now consider some typical ways of organizing the sources into a review:

• Chronological: If your review follows the chronological method, you could write about the materials above according to when they were published. For instance, first you would talk about the British biological studies of the 18th century, then about Moby Dick, published in 1851, then the book on sperm whales in other art (1968), and finally the biology articles (1980s) and the recent articles on American whaling of the 19th century. But there is relatively no continuity among subjects here. And notice that even though the sources on sperm whales in other art and on American whaling are written recently, they are about other subjects/objects that were created much earlier. Thus, the review loses its chronological focus.

• By publication: Order your sources by publication chronology, then, only if the order demonstrates a more important trend. For instance, you could order a review of literature on biological studies of sperm whales if the progression revealed a change in dissection practices of the researchers who wrote and/or conducted the studies.

• By trend: A better way to organize the above sources chronologically is to examine the sources under another trend, such as the history of whaling. Then your review would have subsections according to eras within this period. For instance, the review might examine whaling from pre-1600-1699, 1700-1799, and 1800-1899. Under this method, you would combine the recent studies on American whaling in the 19th century with Moby Dick itself in the 1800-1899 category, even though the authors wrote a century apart.

• Thematic: Thematic reviews of literature are organized around a topic or issue, rather than the progression of time. However, progression of time may still be an important factor in a thematic review. For instance, the sperm whale review could focus on the development of the harpoon for whale hunting. While the study focuses on one topic, harpoon technology, it will still be organized chronologically. The only difference here between a “chronological” and a “thematic” approach is what is emphasized the most: the development of the harpoon or the harpoon technology.But more authentic thematic reviews tend to break away from chronological order. For instance, a thematic review of material on sperm whales might examine how they are portrayed as “evil” in cultural documents. The subsections might include how they are personified, how their proportions are exaggerated, and their behaviors misunderstood. A review organized in this manner would shift between time periods within each section according to the point made.

• Methodological: A methodological approach differs from the two above in that the focusing factor usually does not have to do with the content of the material. Instead, it focuses on the “methods” of the researcher or writer. For the sperm whale project, one methodological approach would be to look at cultural differences between the portrayal of whales in American, British, and French art work. Or the review might focus on the economic impact of whaling on a community. A methodological scope will influence either the types of documents in the review or the way in which these documents are discussed.
  Once you’ve decided on the organizational method for the body of the review, the sections you need to include in the paper should be easy to figure out. They should arise out of your organizational strategy. In other words, a chronological review would have subsections for each vital time period. A thematic review would have subtopics based upon factors that relate to the theme or issue.

sometimes, though, you might need to add extra sections that are necessary for your report, but do not fit in the organizational scheme of the consistency. What other sections you include in the body is up to you. Put in merely what is necessary. Here are a few other sections you might want to consider:

• Current Situation: Information necessary to understand the topic or focus of the literature review.
• History: The chronological progression of the field, the literature, or an idea that is necessary to understand the literature review, if the body of the literature review is not already a chronology.
• Methods and/or Standards: The criteria you used to select the sources in your literature review or the way in which you present your information. For instance, you might explain that your review includes only peer-reviewed articles and journals.

Questions for far research : What questions about the field has the recapitulation sparked ? How will you further your research as a leave of the review ?

Begin composing

once you ’ ve settled on a general design of administration, you ’ re ready to write each section. There are a few guidelines you should follow during the writing stage deoxyadenosine monophosphate well. here is a sample distribution paragraph from a literature recapitulation about sexism and speech to illuminate the following discussion :
however, other studies have shown that flush gender-neutral antecedents are more likely to produce masculine images than womanly ones ( Gastil, 1990 ). Hamilton ( 1988 ) asked students to complete sentences that required them to fill in pronouns that agreed with gender-neutral antecedents such as “ writer, ” “ pedestrian, ” and “ persons. ” The students were asked to describe any effigy they had when writing the sentence. Hamilton found that people imagined 3.3 men to each charwoman in the masculine “ generic ” discipline and 1.5 men per charwoman in the unbiased condition. thus, while ambient sexism accounted for some of the masculine bias, male chauvinist linguistic process amplified the effect. ( informant : Erika Falk and Jordan Mills, “ Why Sexist Language Affects Persuasion : The Role of Homophily, Intended Audience, and Offense, ” Women and Language19:2 ) .

Use evidence

In the exercise above, the writers refer to several other sources when making their indicate. A literature review in this smell is barely like any other academic research paper. Your interpretation of the available sources must be backed up with attest to show that what you are saying is valid .

Be selective

Select only the most authoritative points in each beginning to highlight in the review. The character of information you choose to mention should relate immediately to the inspection ’ s focus, whether it is thematic, methodological, or chronological .

Use quotes sparingly

Falk and Mills do not use any direct quotes. That is because the survey nature of the literature revue does not allow for in-depth discussion or detailed quotes from the text. Some short-circuit quotes here and there are okay, though, if you want to emphasize a luff, or if what the author said precisely can not be rewritten in your own words. Notice that Falk and Mills do quote certain terms that were coined by the author, not park cognition, or taken directly from the analyze. But if you find yourself wanting to put in more quotes, check with your teacher .

Summarize and synthesize

Remember to summarize and synthesize your sources within each paragraph ampere well as throughout the review. The authors here recapitulate crucial features of Hamilton ’ south study, but then synthesize it by rephrasing the analyze ’ south significance and relating it to their own knead .

Keep your own voice

While the literature review presents others ’ ideas, your voice ( the writer ’ south ) should remain battlefront and center. Notice that Falk and Mills weave references to other sources into their own text, but they still maintain their own voice by starting and ending the paragraph with their own ideas and their own words. The sources support what Falk and Mills are saying .

Use caution when paraphrasing

When paraphrasing a source that is not your own, be surely to represent the writer ’ s information or opinions accurately and in your own words. In the precede model, Falk and Mills either directly refer in the textbook to the generator of their source, such as Hamilton, or they provide ample note in the text when the ideas they are mentioning are not their own, for example, Gastil ’ sulfur. For more information, please see our handout on plagiarism .

Revise, revise, revise

conscription in hand ? nowadays you ’ re fix to revise. Spending a lot of meter revise is a knowing theme, because your main objective is to present the material, not the argument. so check over your review again to make sure it follows the assignment and/or your outline. then, barely as you would for most other academic forms of write, rewrite or rework the language of your review so that you ’ ve presented your information in the most concise manner possible. Be certain to use terminology familiar to your hearing ; get rid of unnecessary slang or slang. last, duplicate check that you ’ ve documented your sources and formatted the inspection appropriately for your discipline. For tips on the retool and editing serve, see our handout on revising drafts .

Works consulted

We consulted these works while writing this handout. This is not a comprehensive list of resources on the handout ’ mho topic, and we encourage you to do your own research to find extra publications. Please do not use this list as a model for the format of your own character list, as it may not match the quotation manner you are using. For guidance on formatting citations, please see the UNC Libraries quotation tutorial. We revise these tips sporadically and welcome feedback .
Anson, Chris M., and Robert A. Schwegler. 2010. The Longman Handbook for Writers and Readers, 6th erectile dysfunction. New York : Longman .
Jones, Robert, Patrick Bizzaro, and Cynthia Selfe. 1997. The Harcourt Brace Guide to Writing in the Disciplines. New York : Harcourt Brace .
Lamb, Sandra E. 1998. How to Write It : A Complete Guide to Everything You ’ ll Ever Write. Berkeley : Ten Speed Press .
Rosen, Leonard J., and Laurence Behrens. 2003. The Allyn & Bacon Handbook, 5th erectile dysfunction. New York : Longman.

Troyka, Lynn Quittman, and Doug Hesse. 2016. Simon and Schuster Handbook for Writers, 11th erectile dysfunction. London : Pearson .
This work is licensed under a creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 4.0 License.
You may reproduce it for non-commercial function if you use the stallion handout and attribute the generator : The Writing Center, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill
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