Research Guides: Write a Literature Review: Home

Steps to Completing a Literature Review

Find
Conduct searches for relevant information.
Evaluate
Critically review your sources.
Summarize
Determine the most important and relevant information from each source, theories, findings, etc.
Synthesize
Create a synthesis matrix to find connections between resources, and ensure your sources relate to your main ideas.
Integrate
Use the synthesis matrix to organize your literature review. Integrate the individual main ideas to put together the state of knowledge related to your topic.

Introduction to Lit Reviews

A literature review is a summary and evaluation of significant research on a particular subject. Lit reviews are often at the beginning of a larger research article, to introduce a topic and provide its history and development, but they could also stand on their own as separate publications.

Purpose of Lit Reviews:

Provide context for a research paper
Explore the history and development of a topic
Examine the scholarly conversation surrounding the topic
Shows relationships between studies
Examines gaps in research on the topic

Lit reviews are not just summaries of the different articles written on a topic; they should take a critical eye to published research to provide insight on the topic.

What counts as "literature"?

"Literature" covers everything relevant that is written on a topic: books, journal articles, newspaper articles, historical records, government reports, theses and dissertations, etc. However, your professor may have specific guidelines as to what type of materials you may include.

A literature review follows a different style, format and structure from a research article.

Lit Review Article

Research Article

Describes what?

Reports on the work of others.

Reports on the authors' original research.

Purpose

To examine and evaluate previous literature.

To test a hypothesis and/or make an argument.

May include a short literature review to introduce the subject.