This could either be the easy bit or the difficult bit, depending on your experiences. Some find searching to be arduous and frustrating, but then find synthesising and analysing what they've found to be much easier - or vice versa.
Remember: a literature review is NOT a summary. It should be a piece of writing that combines, analyses and evaluates what is currently known and published about a particular topic.It's important to make sure the literature review is structured, organised, and analytical. Make sure you have organised the literature in a comprehensive manner, and kept it consistent throughout.
Just like any other academic paper, a literature review consists of three main sections: an introduction or background information section; the body of the review containing the discussion of sources; and, finally, a conclusion and/or recommendations section to end the paper.
Your introduction should specify your literature review topic and how it is relevant to your field/discipline overall. It briefly highlights the relevant issues or debates that have characterised your field of research. It should also include some signposting for the reader, explaining the organisation/sequence of topics covered, and the scope of your survey. As with any other research paper, your introduction should preview the conclusions that you will come to, based on your analysis and evaluation.
Your conclusion should summarise the results of your analysis and the current state of the research in your field as analysed in the main body. It should identify any gaps or problems with the existing research, and explain how your own research is going to address these gaps or build on the existing research.
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The main, and largest, section of your literature review is the body. Here you will write an analysis of the literature according to whichever organisation method you have decided upon.
You can write your literature review one section at a time, but make sure you read through them all to check they link together and tell a coherent "story". This should show how your research builds on what has been done before. Based on previous research, you provide justifications for what you are studying, why you are studying it, and how you are going to do it.
It is important to know that you don't have to refer to everything in the same depth in your literature review. You are usually expected to prioritise recent research. Some scientific research that was crucial in the past is now out of date. For instance, there may be a few older studies that were important in starting research in the field, but their methods have been surpassed by more accurate methods. You only need to demonstrate your awareness of these older, dated studies in a few sentences, then move on to discussing in greater depth the up-to-date methods and why they are more accurate.
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The below points are some guidelines for composing your literature review. Here is a sample paragraph (from a literature review about sexism and language) to illustrate what these points look like in practice:
However, other studies have shown that even gender-neutral antecedents are more likely to produce masculine images than feminine 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 image they had when writing the sentence. Hamilton found that people imagined 3.3 men to each woman in the masculine “generic” condition and 1.5 men per woman in the unbiased condition. Thus, while ambient sexism accounted for some of the masculine bias, sexist language amplified the effect.
(Source: Erika Falk and Jordan Mills, “Why Sexist Language Affects Persuasion: The Role of Homophily, Intended Audience, and Offense,” Women and Language 19:2).
In the example above, the writers refer to several other sources when making their point. A literature review in this sense is just like any other academic research paper. Your interpretation of the available sources must be backed up with evidence to show that what you are saying is valid.
Select only the most important points in each source to highlight in the review. The type of information you choose to mention should relate directly to the review’s focus, whether it is thematic, methodological, or chronological.
Falk and Mills, the authors of the sample paragraph, do not use any direct quotes. That is because the survey nature of the literature review does not allow for in-depth discussion or detailed quotes from the text. Some short quotes here and there are okay, though, if you want to emphasize a point, or if what the author said just cannot be rewritten in your own words. Notice that Falk and Mills do quote certain terms that were coined by the author, not common knowledge, or taken directly from the study. But if you find yourself wanting to put in more quotes, check with your lecturer.
Remember to summarise and synthesise your sources within each paragraph as well as throughout the review. The authors here recap important features of Hamilton’s study, but then synthesise it by rephrasing the study’s significance and relating it to their own work.
While the literature review presents others’ ideas, your voice (the writer’s) should remain front 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.
When paraphrasing a source that is not your own, be sure to represent the author’s information or opinions accurately and in your own words. In the example above, Falk and Mills either directly refer in the text to the author of their source, such as Hamilton, or they provide ample notation in the text when the ideas they are mentioning are not their own, for example, they mentioned a source from Gastil, 1990. For more information, please see our Library help guide on plagiarism.