What is a literature review?
It is a critical overview of what has been written on a topic.
- condenses the dispersed and lengthy primary literature into a cohesive and understandable summary
- both summarises and critiques primary sources.
- identifies the current literature, major themes and developments in the topic.
Why do a literature review?
- Preparation for research
- has your question been done before?
- is there a research gap? Are you doing replication?
- have the evidence and understanding at hand for your ethics and funding applications.
- learn from prior research to make your research stronger.
- preempt potential problems
- identify useful methodologies
- eg standardise outcome measures to allow comparison
- To enhance understanding
- summarise evidence for evidence based practice
- to prepare or update clinical practice guidelines
- As a standalone document
- for publication or as part of study requirements.
What is involved?
The level of rigour and thoroughness involved will depend on the type of review (see Types of review).
- Searching
- databases such as Medline or PubMed (no need to search both - they are essentially the same content) and Embase should always be searched.
- ensures you are searching peer reviewed material
- maximises your opportunity to discover relevant research.
- grey literature - reports by professional bodies and other organisations may be included.
- may still constitute credible literature despite not being in peer reviewed journals.
- apply critical thinking on inclusion.
- for assistance with searching use our online guide or contact the library to arrange a personal tutorial.
- Assessment
- analyse each article you review.
- more rigorous reviews (eg systematic reviews) require more rigorous appraisal.
- use critical appraisal tools if required.
- Organisation
- keep track of your literature and workflow
- utilise database functionality
- export directly to reference management programs
- export to a spreadsheet to screen results and keep notes organised,
- save your search so can easily add to it or re-run it.
- use reference managers (Endnote, Zotero,etc) to organise articles and assist write-up.
- Write
- Introduction.
- provides context for what follows
- demonstrates relevance and need for the review
- delineates scope - what your review will focus on, and what it will leave out
- Methods
- your sources - which databases,other sources
- how you searched - keywords, etc.
- may be described briefly in text, with full strategy in an appendix or supplementary materials section.
- inclusion and exclusion criteria
- which appraisal tools you used (if any)
- Results and Discussion
- what you found and your analysis
- structure will depend on how you choose to organise the results. Two common structures are:
- chronological - development of the topic over time OR
- thematic - organised by approaches within the overall topic
- Conclusion
- recap and 'take home' information
- the research gap
- why your research should be done
- future research suggestions
- Bibliography
- the publications you cited or reviewed.