How to Write a Literature Review in Graduate School

This guide is designed as a starting point for graduate students conducting a literature review, particularly in the social and behavioral sciences.

Related guides:

• Systematic reviews, a more specific guide for conducting systematic reviews from a health sciences perspective.
• Academic writing: what is a literature review, a guide that addresses the writing and limerick aspect of a literature review
• Media literature reviews: how to conduct a literature review using news sources
• Literature reviews in the applied sciences
• Start your enquiry here, literature review searching, mainly of interest to newer researchers

For more assistance, please contact the Liaison Librarian in your discipline.

What is a literature review?

Most generally, a literature review is a search within a defined range of information source types, such every bit, for case, journals and books, to notice what has been already written about a specific subject or topic.  A literature review is a key component of almost all research papers.  However, the term is often applied loosely to depict a wide range of methodological approaches. A literature review in a first or 2nd year course may involve browsing the library databases to get a sense of the enquiry landscape in your topic and including iii-four journal articles in your paper. At the other finish of the continuum, the review may involve completing a comprehensive search, complete with documented search strategies and a listing of article inclusion and exclusion criteria. In the most rigorous format - a Systematic Review - a team of researchers may compile and review over 100,000 journal manufactures in a project spanning one to two years! These are out of scope for virtually graduate students, but information technology is important to be aware of the range of types of reviews possible.

One of the first steps in conducting a lit review is thus to clarify what kind of review you lot are doing, and its associated expectations.

Factors determining review arroyo are varied, including departmental/discipline conventions, granting agency stipulations, evolving standards for evidence-based research (and the corollary need for documented, replicable search strategies), and available time and resources.

The standards are as well continually evolving in light of changing technology and testify-based research about literature review methodology effectiveness. The availability of new tools such as large-calibration library search engines and sophisticated citation management software continues to influence the inquiry process.

Some specific types of lit reviews types include systematic reviews, scoping reviews, realist reviews, narrative reviews, mapping reviews, and qualitative systematic reviews, just to name a few. The protocols and distinctions for review types are peculiarly delineated in health research fields, but nosotros are seeing conventions quickly establishing themselves in other academic fields.

Literature review type definitions

The below definitions are quoted from the very helpful book, Booth, A., Papaioannou, D., & Sutton, A. (2012). Systematic approaches to a successful literature review. London: SAGE Publications Ltd.

Mapping Review: "A rapid search of the literature aiming to give a broad overview of the characteristics of a topic area. Mapping of existing enquiry, identification of gaps, and a summary assessment of the quantity and quality of the available prove helps to decide future areas for research or for systematic reviews." (Booth, Papaioannou & Sutton, 2012, p. 264)

Mixed Method Review: "A literature review that seeks to join data from quantitative and qualitative studies integrating them in a manner that facilitates subsequent assay" (Booth et al., p. 265).

Meta-assay: "The process of combining statistically quantitative studies that have measured the aforementioned effect using similar methods and a common outcome measure" (Booth et al., p. 264).

Narrative Review: "A term used to describe a conventional overview of the literature, particularly when assorted with a systematic review" (Booth et al., p. 265).

Note: this term is often used pejoratively, describing a review that is inadvertently guided by a confirmation bias.

Qualitative Evidence Synthesis: "An umbrella term increasingly used to describe a grouping of review types that try to synthesize and analyze findings from primary qualitative inquiry studies" (Berth et al., p. 267).

Rapid Review: "Assessment of what is already known nearly a policy or practice issue, by using systematic review methods to search and critically appraise existing enquiry" (Grant & Booth, 2009, p.96).

Note: Rapid reviews are often washed when at that place are insufficient time and/or resources to conduct a systematic review. As stated by Butler et. al, "They aim to be rigorous and explicit in method and thus systematic simply make concessions to the breadth or depth of the process past limiting detail aspects of the systematic review process" (every bit cited in Grant & Berth, 2009, p. 100).

Scoping Review: "A blazon of review that has as its principal objective the identification of the size and quality of research in a topic surface area in guild to inform subsequent review" (Booth et al., p. 269).

Systematic Review: "A review of a clearly formulated question that uses systematic and explicit methods to place, select and critically appraise relevant enquiry and to collect and analyse data from the studies that are included in the review" (Booth et al., p. 271).

Note: a systematic review (SR) is the most all-encompassing and well-documented type of lit review, as well as potentially the nearly time-consuming. The thought with SRs  is that the search process becomes a replicable scientific report in itself. This level of review volition possibly not be necessary (or desirable) for your research project.

Literature review protocols and guidelines

Many lit review types are based on organization-driven specific protocols for conducting the reviews. These protocols provide specific frameworks, checklists, and other guidance to the generic literature review sub-types. Here are a few pop examples:

Cochrane Review - known every bit the "gilt standard" of systematic reviews, designed by the Cochrane Collaboration. Primarily used in health research literature reviews.

• Cochrane Handbook for Systematic Reviews of Interventions. "The official certificate that describes in detail the process of preparing and maintaining Cochrane systematic reviews".

Campbell Review - the sister organisation of the Cochrane Constitute which focuses on systematic reviews in the social sciences.

• So y'all want to write a Campbell Systematic review?
• Campbell Information Retrieval Guide. The details of effective data searching

Literature Reviews in Psychology

A recent article in theAnnual Review of Psychology provides a very helpful guide to conducting literature reviews specifically in the field of Psychology.

How to Exercise a Systematic Review: A All-time Practice Guide for Conducting and Reporting Narrative Reviews, Meta-Analyses, and Meta-Syntheses. (2019). Annual Review of Psychology, 70(ane), 747-770. doi:10.1146/annurev-psych-010418-102803

Rapid Reviews take become increasingly common due to their flexibility, besides as the lack of time and resources bachelor to practise a comprehensive systematic review. McMaster University's National Collaborating Centre for Methods and Tools (NCCMT) has created a Rapid Review Guidebook, which "details each footstep in the rapid review process, with notes on how to tailor the process given resource limitations."

Scoping Review

There is no strict protocol for a scoping review (unlike Campbell and Cochrane reviews). The following are some recommended guidelines for scoping reviews:

• Scoping Reviews from the JBI Manual for Prove Synthesis
• Current best practices for the bear of scoping reviews, from the EQUATOR Network

In improver to protocols which provide holistic guidance for conducting specific kinds of reviews, in that location are likewise a vast number of frameworks, checklists, and other tools available to help focus your review and ensure comprehensiveness. Some provide broader-level guidance; others are targeted to specific parts of your reviews such every bit data extraction or reporting out results.

Examples:

• PICO or PICOC A framework for posing a researchable question (population, intervention, comparisons, outcomes, context/environs)
• PRISMA Minimum items to report upon in a systematic review
• SALSA framework: frames the literature review into four parts: search (Southward), appraisement(AL), synthesis(S), analysis(A)
• STARLITE Minimum requirements for reporting out on literature reviews.
• Critical Appraisement Skills Program (CASP) Checklists Includes a checklist for evaluating Systematic Reviews.

These are merely a sampling of specific guides generated from the ever-growing literature review manufacture.

To Google Scholar, or not to Google Scholar

Much of the online word about the use of Google Scholar in literature reviews seems to focus more on values and ideals, rather than a technical assessment of the search engine's role. Here are some things to keep in heed.

• It'south good practice to use both Google Scholar and field of study-specific databases (example: PsycINFO) for conducting a lit review of whatever type. For nearly graduate-level literature reviews, it is usually recommended to use both.
• You should search Google Scholar through the library's website when off-campus. This way you tin can avoid existence prompted for payment to access articles that the SFU Library already subscribes to.
• Search tips for Google and Google Scholar

Google Advantages:

• Allows you lot to cast a broad net in your search.
• The nearly pop manufactures are revealed
• A high volume of manufactures are retrieved
• Google'due south algorithm helps compensate for poorly designed searches
• Total-text indexing of articles is now being done in Google Scholar
• A search feature permit y'all to search within articles citing your key article
• Splendid for known-item searching or locating a quote/citation
• Helpful when searching for very unique terminology (e.yard., places and people)
• Times cited tool can help identify relevant manufactures
• Extensive searching of non-article, only bookish, information items: universities' institutional repositories, US case police force, grey literature, academic websites, etc.

Disadvantages:

• The database is not mapped to a specific discipline
• Much less search sophistication and manipulation supported
• Psuedo-Boolean operators
• Missing deep information (e.1000., statistics)
• Mysterious algorithms and unknown source coverage at odds with the systematic and transparent requirement of a literature review.
• Searches are optimized (for instance, by your location), disappointment the replicability criteria of about literature review types
• Depression level of subject field and author collocation - that is, bringing together all works by 1 writer or i sub-topic
• Challenging to run searches that involve common words. A search for "art AND fourth dimension", for instance, might bring up results on the art of time management when you lot are looking for the representation of fourth dimension in art. In contrast, searching by topic is readily facilitated by use of subject headings in discipline-specific databases. Google Scholar has no subject headings.
• New articles might not exist pushed up if the popularity of an article is prioritized
• Indexes articles from predatory publishers, which may exist hard to identify if working outside of your field

Different Google Scholar, subject specific databases such as PsycINFO, Medline, or Criminal Justice Abstracts are mapped to a disciplinary perspective. Article citations contain high-quality and detailed metadata. Metadata can be used to build specific searches and apply search limits relevant to your subject area. These databases as well ofttimes offer access to specialized fabric in your area such as grayness literature, psychological tests, statistics, books and dissertations.

For most graduate-level literature reviews, information technology is commonly recommended to use both. Build careful searches in the bailiwick/academic databases, and check Google Scholar likewise.

Field of study headings vs. Keywords

For most graduate-level lit reviews, yous will want to brand use of the subject headings (aka descriptors) constitute in the various databases.

Bailiwick headings are words or phrases assigned to articles, books, and other info items that describe the subject of their content. They are designed to succinctly capture a document'south concepts, allowing the researcher to remember all articles/info items about that concept using one term. By identifying the subject headings associated with your enquiry areas, and subsequently searching the database for other manufactures and materials assigned with that same subject heading, y'all are taking a significant measure out to ensure the comprehensiveness of your literature review.

Well-nigh subject headings:

• They are applied systematically: articles and books volition usually have almost iii-8 subject headings assigned to their bibliographic tape.
• The field of study headings come from a finite puddle of terms -  one that is updated oftentimes.
• They are oft organized in a hierarchical taxonomy, with subject headings belonging to broader headings, and/or having narrower headings beneath them. Sometimes in that location are related terms (lateral) besides.
• They provide a standardized way to describe a concept. For example, a subject heading of "physician" may be used to capture many of the natural language words that describe a doc such as medico, family md, GP, and Medico.

One fashion to identify subject headings (SHs) of interest to you lot is to start with a keyword search in a database, and see which SHs are associated with the articles of interest.

A. In the below example, we first with a keyword search for "blazon a" personality in PsycINFO.  A more than contemporary term to describe this phenomena is then found in the subject heading field:

B. Some other style to identify field of study headings related to your topic is to become directly to a database's thesaurus or index. For case, if we are researching low, the PsycINFO entry for major low suggests some hyponym nosotros could focus our search by.

For more in-depth help with using subject headings in a literature review, please contact the Liaison Librarian in your subject area.

Keeping track of your research

Project direction software

• NVivo is a robust software package that helps with management and analysis of qualitative information.The Library's Research Commons offers all-encompassing support for NVivo.
• Enquiry Support Software offered by the Research Commons

Commendation management software

Commendation direction software such as Mendeley or Zotero is essential for completing a substantial lit review. Commendation software is a centralized, online location for managing your sources. Specifically, information technology allows you to:

• Access and manage your sources online, all in one place
• Import references from library databases and websites
• Automatically generate bibliographies and in-text citations within Microsoft Word
• Share your collection of sources with others, and piece of work collaboratively with references
• De-duplicate your search results
• Annotate your citations. Some software allows you to mark upwards PDFs.
• Note trends in your research such as which journals or authors you cite from the most.

More information on Citation Management Software

Saved searches

Did you know that many databases allow you to salvage  your search strategies? The advantages of saving and tracking your search strategies online in a literature review include:

• Developing your search strategy in a methodological manner, department by section. For instance, yous can run searches for all synonyms and subjects headings associated with i concept, then combine them with different concepts in various combinations.
• Re-running your well-executed search in the time to come
• Creating search alerts based on a well-designed search, assuasive you to stay notified of new research in your surface area
• Tracking and recollect all of the searches y'all take done. Avoid inadvertently re-doing your searches by existence well-documented and systematic as you keep - it's worth the extra attempt!

Databases housed on the EBSCO plaform (examples: Business Source Complete, PsycINFO, Medline, Academic Search Premier) allow you to create an free account where you might relieve your searches:

• Using the EBSCOhost Search History - Tutorial [ii:08]
• Creating a Search Alarm in EBSCOhost - Tutorial [1:26]

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Source: https://www.lib.sfu.ca/about/branches-depts/rc/writing-theses/writing/literature-reviews

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