Literature Review Module
1) What is a Literature Review?
- A synthesis of the literature on a specific, well-defined topic, predominantly academic and scholarly in nature
- A literature review connotes a thorough, exhaustive understanding of the scholarly literature and scholarly discourse on a particular topic
- By identifying, reading, and synthesizing the information available on your topic, you should be able to identify trends and developments, key scholars, and the general state of knowledge on your topic
- It is important to understand what a Literature Review is NOT. A Literature Review:
- is NOT an Annotated Bibliography. An Annotated Bibliography is very different and is a list of sources that includes a simple summary or other explanation about each source.
- is NOT a simple descriptive summary of each source.
- is NOT a Literary Review. A Literary Review discusses and analyzes in detail a literary work such as a novel, play, or short story.
2) Why do we write literature reviews?
- To demonstrate that you have a thorough understanding of the research that has been done on your topic.
- To demonstrate that you understand the strengths and weaknesses of the existing literature, thereby, being able to identify, with authority, areas that have been well-researched as well as gaps in the existing literature.
- A literature review may be a separate assignment or it may be part of a larger thesis or research project. As part of a larger research project, a Literature Review is written in order to demonstrate that you have the authority to conduct your own research, by showing that you have a thorough understanding of the research that has already been conducted on your topic. This allows you to place your research in a larger scholarly context, and to show how your research makes a unique contribution to the scholarship in your field of study.
3) Tips for Defining Your Topic
- Choose a topic that is interesting to you.
- Describe your topic in one or two sentences. You may be working on a research question and want to phrase your topic as a question.
- Circle the keywords that best define your topic.
- Look at those keywords and think of the different ways to phrase your topic. Write down all the alternative terms you can think of to describe your topic. These will all be very useful to you as you conduct comprehensive searches to locate the breadth of published scholarship available on your topic.
4) Strategies for Identifying, Locating, and Retrieving Sources for your Literature Review
- Think about your topic in terms of what discipline(s) it falls into. This will help you identify the best databases to use to search for literature on your topic. Because research for a literature review is comprehensive research, searching for information in a range of relevant databases will greatly improve your odds of developing an understanding of the breadth of literature available on your topic.
- Make a list of the relevant databases you’ve defined that you will use to conduct your research. To look at the list of databases that you can use to locate scholarly journal literature, from the main library web page (http://library.uvm.edu ), go to: Find --> Articles and More. Look at the list that comes up under: General and Multidisciplinary; also select “Browse by subject” on the right side of the page, to look at the databases that are useful for researching specific subject areas. Use a combination of some of our broad, general , interdisciplinary databases whose coverage spans across disciplines, as well as some of our more subject-specific databases that focus with greater depth on the scholarly literature in one particular subject area.
Here are some recommendations of databases to search; it is important to search in multiple databases when conducting comprehensive research for your literature reviews:
- Academic Search Premier - great place to start - multidisciplinary coverage, can limit searches to scholarly, peer-reviewed articles.
- Web of Science - multidisciplinary coverage of the scholarly journal literature that is a “must use” for all students - this database has the very powerful feature of allowing you to see who has cited specific works, thereby allowing you to understand a particular piece of scholarship in its greater context of the impact that this scholarship has had on future research in a field - a very important tool for developing an understanding of the literature of a field.
- Environment Complete - broad coverage of environmental periodical literature; can limit searches to scholarly, peer-reviewed articles
- Environmental Sciences and Pollution Management - allows you to search a multitude of environmentally related databases simultaneously - broad coverage of the environmental/ ecological scholarly journal literature
- EconLit - broad coverage of articles from journals and collected volumes, books and dissertations, and working papers in economics
- CABDirect - includes great international coverage of the scholarly literature on agriculture, sustainable development, rural development and much more
- GEOBASE - covers the scholarly journal literature in the very broad field of geography, is great for international development topics (includes International Development Abstracts), natural resources, and environmental topics
- Using the rules of keyword searching, take the time to write down a number of different searches that you will run in the databases you search. Remember to combine terms, use synonyms, and use truncation in order to get comprehensive results from your searches:
- AND - use “and” to combine two or more terms and to narrow and focus your search ex.: environmental services AND costa rica
- OR - use “or” to broaden your search ex: environmental services OR ecosystem services
- NOT - use “not” to exclude terms from your search ex.: solar NOT wind
- Truncation - a symbol placed at the end of a word or word part to retrieve variant word endings; an asterisk is the truncation symbol recognized in most article databases ex.: environment* will retrieve: environment, environments, environmental, environmentally, environmentalist, environmentalism, etc.
** Many database search screens use pull-down menus, which allow you to select AND, OR, NOT in order to facilitate creation of good, comprehensive, and focused searches.
- Run your searches and select the records in each database that are useful to your research. Some databases may include links to the full text of articles; others may only provide a bibliographic citation and an abstract. If there is no direct link to the full text of the article, click on the “Find it at UVM” button in the record, to see if we own the journal article, and if it is available electronically. Sometimes, this will take you directly to the full text of the article. Other times, you may need to use the Library Catalog to see if we have a subscription to the journal. If we do not own the journal you are looking for, use Interlibrary Loan to order the article(s) you need.
- Save your search results by either: printing them, downloading them, e-mailing them to yourself, or exporting them into a citation management system such as EndNote.
- Review your search results and select the resources that will be included in your literature review. Make sure that you have access to the full text of the resources that you need. If you have any questions about any aspect of conducting research for your literature reviews, do not hesitate to Ask a Librarian for assistance.
- Use bibliographies from research you have located to lead you to more high quality, relevant sources
5) Evaluating Sources
Now you are at the point of needing to read the literature you have gathered in order to understand the state of research and knowledge on your topic. When reading the literature, consider the following in order to develop a broad understanding of it:
- How is the source relevant to your topic?
- What is the author’s perspective, disciplinary approach, theoretical framework?
- If it is a research study, what are the methods; are they sound; is there detailed analysis of the data, what are the conclusions and do they follow logically from the data presented?
- What are its unique contributions to the body of knowledge that comprises your topic? How does it contribute to an overall understanding of your topic?
- From your reading, can you identify how the knowledge about your topic has evolved over time; can you identify overall trends in the literature; are there certain themes and approaches that are prevalent and others that are notably absent?
6) Writing Your Literature Review
The University of North Carolina Writing Center has constructed a detailed and comprehensive handout that provides an excellent discussion of strategies for writing literature reviews. Take the time to read it; it is immensely helpful, and provides great strategies for organizing your literature review: Literature Reviews
7) Citing Your Sources
- Make sure you know whether a particular format for your bibliography and citations is required for your assignment.
- Commonly recognized citation formats include: APA, MLA, Chicago
- Although there are many other citation formats out there, in this area of study, APA format is commonly used.
- Whatever format you use, remember to be consistent, and that details matter.
- Whenever you are referring to somebody else’s ideas and writing, remember to cite your sources! When writing a literature review, this means that you will have lots of citations.
8) Literature Review checklist; are you satisfied that you have…
- identified the scope of knowledge and the state of research on your topic?
- identified overall trends in the literature on your topic?
- identified the main scholars who have been influential in the field?
- clearly cited your sources and included a complete bibliography of references cited?
Credit: This module was created by Laurie A. Kutner, Reference and Instruction Librarian and Library Associate Professor at the University of Vermont
