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Home / What Is the Criteria for the Review of Literature

What Is the Criteria for the Review of Literature

What this handout is nearly

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

Introduction

OK. You've got to write a literature review. Yous dust off a novel and a book of poetry, settle down in your chair, and become ready to outcome a "thumbs up" or "thumbs downward" as you leaf through the pages. "Literature review" done. Right?

Incorrect! The "literature" of a literature review refers to any collection of materials on a topic, non necessarily the great literary texts of the world. "Literature" could be anything from a set of regime pamphlets on British colonial methods in Africa to scholarly articles on the treatment of a torn ACL. And a review does not necessarily hateful that your reader wants you to give your personal opinion on whether or not you liked these sources.

What is a literature review, and so?

A literature review discusses published information in a particular subject area expanse, and sometimes information in a particular subject area within a certain time period.

A literature review can be only a simple summary of the sources, merely it usually has an organizational blueprint and combines both summary and synthesis. A summary is a recap of the important information of the source, but a synthesis is a re-organization, or a reshuffling, of that data. It might give a new interpretation of old cloth or combine new with old interpretations. Or information technology might trace the intellectual progression of the field, including major debates. And depending on the state of affairs, the literature review may evaluate the sources and advise the reader on the most pertinent or relevant.

Just how is a literature review different from an academic enquiry paper?

The master focus of an academic inquiry paper is to develop a new argument, and a research paper is likely to comprise a literature review as one of its parts. In a research paper, yous utilize 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 new contributions.

Why do we write literature reviews?

Literature reviews provide you with a handy guide to a particular topic. If you take limited fourth dimension to conduct research, literature reviews tin give you an overview or human action 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 latitude of the literature review emphasizes the credibility of the writer in his or her field. Literature reviews likewise provide a solid groundwork for a research paper'southward investigation. Comprehensive knowledge 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, only mostly 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 paper in itself.

Permit's get to information technology! What should I practice before writing the literature review?

Clarify

If your assignment is not very specific, seek description 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 consequence?
  • Should you evaluate your sources?
  • Should you provide subheadings and other background information, such every bit definitions and/or a history?

Find models

Look for other literature reviews in your area of involvement or in the discipline and read them to get a sense of the types of themes you might want to wait for in your own enquiry or means to organize your final review. Yous can simply put the discussion "review" in your search engine along with your other topic terms to find articles of this type on the Internet or in an electronic database. The bibliography or reference section of sources you've already read are also fantabulous entry points into your own inquiry.

Narrow your topic

In that location are hundreds or fifty-fifty thousands of articles and books on well-nigh areas of report. The narrower your topic, the easier information technology volition be to limit the number of sources yous need to read in order to become a good survey of the material. Your instructor will probably not expect you to read everything that's out there on the topic, only you'll make your job easier if y'all showtime limit your scope.

Keep in listen that UNC Libraries accept enquiry guides and to databases relevant to many fields of study. Yous can reach out to the subject librarian for a consultation: https://library.unc.edu/support/consultations/.

And don't forget to tap into your professor's (or other professors') knowledge in the field. Ask your professor questions such every bit: "If you had to read merely one book from the 90's on topic X, what would it be?" Questions such as this assist you lot to discover and determine quickly the most seminal pieces in the field.

Consider whether your sources are current

Some disciplines require that you use data that is as electric current as possible. In the sciences, for instance, treatments for medical problems are constantly changing according to the latest studies. Information even two years old could be obsolete. However, if you are writing a review in the humanities, history, or social sciences, a survey of the history of the literature may be what is needed, because what is important is how perspectives have inverse through the years or inside a certain time period. Effort sorting through some other current bibliographies or literature reviews in the field to become a sense of what your field of study expects. You lot can besides use this method to consider what is currently of interest to scholars in this field and what is non.

Strategies for writing the literature review

Discover a focus

A literature review, like a term paper, is usually organized around ideas, not the sources themselves as an annotated bibliography would be organized. This means that you will not just but list your sources and go into detail about each i of them, 1 at a time. No. As you read widely but selectively in your topic surface area, consider instead what themes or issues connect your sources together. Do they present one or dissimilar solutions? Is there an aspect of the field that is missing? How well practice they nowadays the textile and do they portray it according to an appropriate theory? Exercise they reveal a tendency in the field? A raging debate? Pick one of these themes to focus the organisation of your review.

Convey it to your reader

A literature review may not have a traditional thesis argument (one that makes an argument), but you practice need to tell readers what to look. Endeavour writing a elementary argument that lets the reader know what is your main organizing principle. Here are a couple of examples:

The current tendency in treatment for congestive heart failure combines surgery and medicine.
More and more than cultural studies scholars are accepting pop media every bit a subject field worthy of academic consideration.

Consider organization

You've got a focus, and you've stated it clearly and straight. Now what is the most effective mode of presenting the information? What are the most important topics, subtopics, etc., that your review needs to include? And in what order should you present them? Develop an organization for your review at both a global and local level:

First, cover the basic categories

But like nearly academic papers, literature reviews also must incorporate at least 3 basic elements: an introduction or groundwork information section; the body of the review containing the discussion of sources; and, finally, a conclusion and/or recommendations section to end the paper. The post-obit 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 give-and-take of sources and is organized either chronologically, thematically, or methodologically (see below for more information on each).
  • Conclusions/Recommendations: Discuss what y'all have fatigued from reviewing literature and then far. Where might the discussion proceed?

Organizing the body

In one case y'all accept the bones categories in identify, and then you must consider how you will present the sources themselves within the torso of your paper. Create an organizational method to focus this section even further.

To help y'all come upward 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 reading Moby Dick, and you wonder if that whale's portrayal is actually real. Yous beginning with some articles about the physiology of sperm whales in biology journals written in the 1980's. But these articles refer to some British biological studies performed on whales in the early on 18th century. And then you cheque those out. Then you expect up a book written in 1968 with information on how sperm whales have been portrayed in other forms of fine art, such as in Alaskan poetry, in French painting, or on whale bone, equally the whale hunters in the late 19th century used to exercise. This makes you wonder almost American whaling methods during the time portrayed in Moby Dick, then you find some academic articles published in the last five years on how accurately Herman Melville portrayed the whaling scene in his novel.

Now consider some typical ways of organizing the sources into a review:

  • Chronological: If your review follows the chronological method, y'all could write nigh the materials above according to when they were published. For instance, first you would talk almost the British biological studies of the 18th century, and so about Moby Dick, published in 1851, then the volume on sperm whales in other art (1968), and finally the biology articles (1980s) and the recent articles on American whaling of the 19th century. Just at that place 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 well-nigh other subjects/objects that were created much earlier. Thus, the review loses its chronological focus.
  • By publication: Order your sources by publication chronology, so, only if the guild demonstrates a more of import tendency. For case, 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.
  • Past tendency: A improve manner to organize the above sources chronologically is to examine the sources under another trend, such as the history of whaling. And so your review would accept subsections according to eras inside this period. For example, the review might examine whaling from pre-1600-1699, 1700-1799, and 1800-1899. Nether this method, you would combine the contempo studies on American whaling in the 19th century with Moby Dick itself in the 1800-1899 category, even though the authors wrote a century autonomously.
  • Thematic: Thematic reviews of literature are organized effectually a topic or issue, rather than the progression of time. However, progression of time may withal be an of import factor in a thematic review. For instance, the sperm whale review could focus on the development of the harpoon for whale hunting. While the report focuses on i topic, harpoon technology, it volition still be organized chronologically. The just difference here between a "chronological" and a "thematic" approach is what is emphasized the most: the development of the harpoon or the harpoon applied science.Simply more than accurate thematic reviews tend to intermission 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 inside each department according to the point fabricated.
  • Methodological: A methodological arroyo differs from the two higher up in that the focusing factor normally does not have to do with the content of the material. Instead, information technology focuses on the "methods" of the researcher or writer. For the sperm whale project, 1 methodological approach would be to look at cultural differences betwixt 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.
    One time yous've decided on the organizational method for the body of the review, the sections you need to include in the paper should be piece of cake to figure out. They should arise out of your organizational strategy. In other words, a chronological review would accept subsections for each vital fourth dimension menses. A thematic review would accept subtopics based upon factors that chronicle to the theme or issue.

Sometimes, though, you lot might demand to add additional sections that are necessary for your study, but exercise not fit in the organizational strategy of the body. What other sections you include in the body is upwardly to y'all. Put in simply what is necessary. Hither are a few other sections y'all 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 thought that is necessary to empathise the literature review, if the body of the literature review is not already a chronology.
  • Methods and/or Standards: The criteria you lot used to select the sources in your literature review or the way in which you present your information. For instance, yous might explain that your review includes only peer-reviewed articles and journals.

Questions for Further Research: What questions about the field has the review sparked? How will you further your research as a event of the review?

Begin composing

Once you've settled on a general design of arrangement, you're fix to write each section. There are a few guidelines y'all should follow during the writing stage also. Here is a sample paragraph from a literature review virtually sexism and language to illuminate the following discussion:

However, other studies have shown that fifty-fifty 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 "author," "pedestrian," and "persons." The students were asked to describe whatever image they had when writing the sentence. Hamilton found that people imagined 3.3 men to each adult female in the masculine "generic" condition and one.5 men per woman in the unbiased condition. Thus, while ambience 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 Language19:two).

Utilize evidence

In the example above, the writers refer to several other sources when making their point. A literature review in this sense is just like whatsoever other bookish enquiry paper. Your estimation of the bachelor sources must be backed upward with evidence to bear witness that what you are maxim is valid.

Exist selective

Select simply the most important points in each source to highlight in the review. The type of information y'all choose to mention should relate straight to the review'southward focus, whether it is thematic, methodological, or chronological.

Use quotes sparingly

Falk and Mills exercise not use any directly 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 curt quotes hither and there are okay, though, if you want to emphasize a indicate, or if what the writer said just cannot be rewritten in your own words. Detect that Falk and Mills do quote certain terms that were coined past the author, non common noesis, or taken directly from the study. But if you notice yourself wanting to put in more quotes, check with your teacher.

Summarize and synthesize

Retrieve to summarize and synthesize your sources within each paragraph as well equally throughout the review. The authors here recapitulate of import features of Hamilton's written report, just then synthesize it by rephrasing the report'south significance and relating it to their own work.

Keep your own voice

While the literature review presents others' ideas, your voice (the writer's) should remain front end and eye. Detect that Falk and Mills weave references to other sources into their own text, simply they however maintain their own vocalisation by starting and catastrophe the paragraph with their own ideas and their own words. The sources support what Falk and Mills are saying.

Use circumspection when paraphrasing

When paraphrasing a source that is not your own, exist sure to represent the writer's information or opinions accurately and in your own words. In the preceding example, Falk and Mills either directly refer in the text to the writer of their source, such every bit Hamilton, or they provide aplenty notation in the text when the ideas they are mentioning are not their own, for example, Gastil'south. For more information, please run into our handout on plagiarism.

Revise, revise, revise

Draft in mitt? Now you lot're ready to revise. Spending a lot of time revising is a wise idea, because your master objective is to present the material, not the argument. Then check over your review over again to make sure it follows the consignment and/or your outline. Then, just as you would for virtually other academic forms of writing, rewrite or rework the language of your review then that you've presented your information in the most concise manner possible. Be certain to use terminology familiar to your audience; get rid of unnecessary jargon or slang. Finally, double check that you've documented your sources and formatted the review appropriately for your bailiwick. For tips on the revising and editing process, 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's topic, and we encourage you to practise your own research to detect boosted publications. Please do not utilize this list equally a model for the format of your own reference list, as it may not match the citation style you are using. For guidance on formatting citations, please come across the UNC Libraries citation tutorial. Nosotros revise these tips periodically and welcome feedback.

Anson, Chris M., and Robert A. Schwegler. 2010. The Longman Handbook for Writers and Readers, sixth ed. 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 Due east. 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 ed. New York: Longman.

Troyka, Lynn Quittman, and Doug Hesse. 2016. Simon and Schuster Handbook for Writers, 11th ed. London: Pearson.

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You may reproduce it for non-commercial use if you use the unabridged handout and attribute the source: The Writing Center, University of Due north Carolina at Chapel Colina

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Source: https://writingcenter.unc.edu/tips-and-tools/literature-reviews/