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Literature Reviews: Organising Your Research

When to stop reading?

  1. You should be guided by how long your literature review needs to be - it is no good reading hundreds of texts if you only have 1,000 words to fill.
  2. Try to set limits on how long you will spend reading. Then plan backwards from your deadline and decide when you need to move on to other parts of your investigation e.g. gathering the data.
  3. You need to show you have read the major and important texts in your topic, and that you have also explored the most up-to-date research. If you have demonstrated both of these, you are on the right track.
  4. Be guided by your research questions. When reading, ask yourself, "How does this relate to my investigation?" If you are going off into unrelated areas, stop reading and refocus on your topic.

 

If you keep coming across very similar viewpoints and your reading is no longer providing new information, this is a sign you have reached saturation point and should probably stop.

 

Source

Organising the research - 3 options

There are a few options for how to organise the body of your literature review, including theme, methodology and chronology.

Since a literature review is a critical evaluation of existing knowledge, it is useful to compare works that share the same themes or use similar methodologies. This allows for a more analytical and evaluative final product, rather than a simple list of available literature.

You will usually decide which option to go for based upon what commonalities emerge as you read and explore the literature. 

The following are three types of literature reviews, all on the example topic of farming and food security; however, each uses a different organising concept. 

Organising method Example
Theme/Trend

Farming approaches for greater biodiversity, livelihoods, and food security


Six types of farming systems (conventional, sustainably intensified, organic, diversified, ecologically intensified and agroecological) are examined, looking at their similarities and differences. After surveying current literature, the authors conclude that further study is required on how farming trends affect a community’s socioeconomic status.
Chronology

Evolution of regional to global paddy rice mapping methods: A review 


Rice paddies play an important role food security, but also contribute to climate change and disease transmission. This review tracks the agricultural efforts and the technology behind the mapping of rice paddies between 1987 and 2015. The authors contend there is a lack of comprehensive information on mapping technology, nor is there a systematic way of taking measurements across time and geography. 
Methodology

Yield gaps in rice-based farming systems: Insights from local studies and prospects for future analysis


This review examines and compares the methodologies used to measure rice-yield gaps across different geographical regions. The authors recommend that future studies on rice-yield gaps take local ecosystems into consideration.

Source

Zotero: Manage Your Sources

zotero logo with link to download the software

Conducting a literature review is likely to generate hundreds of search results. this can make it very hard to keep track of each source - it's significance to your research, it's citation, it's relevance to other research etc. To help with this, you can use a reference management software. 

 

The one we recommend is called Zotero. Zotero allows you to collect citations from sources of any type (books, articles, media, webpages, etc.), organise them, and create bibliographies automatically, in whatever citation style (MLA, APA, Chicago etc.) that you need.

  • In Zotero, you can also add notes to each reference so that you can jot down your thoughts or points to remember about it. 
  • You can take a Zotero library of hundreds of items and create an automatic bibliography that you just copy and paste in to your final document. 
  • You can create groups so that you can link relevant sources together, perhaps by topic.

 

You can learn more about Zotero here. 

lightbulb icon with the words "quick tip"Sometimes you might need to add additional sections that are necessary for your study, but do not fit in the organizational strategy of the body. What other sections you include in the body is up to you. Put in only 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. Source

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