What is a -literature review- and how to do it

Conducting research? An extensive literature review is a critical step in any research and publication. A literature review refers to survey books, scholarly articles, and many other sources relevant to a particular issue, area of study, or theory. It provides a comprehensive description, overview, and critical evaluation allowing you to observe applicable theories, techniques, and gaps in the existing research.

While writing a literature review, you should find relevant published materials ( books, research papers, journal articles, etc.), thoroughly assess them, and explain briefly what you found. 

Literature review gives an in-depth overview of a topic and scholarly context. It helps the researcher develop a theoretical framework and research methodology for research. However, while writing a literature review, it’s important to relate your area of study to already published scholarly articles.

Here are the steps you should follow while writing a literature review:

●     Be precise with your topic and search papers accordingly. Try not to go with vague and general ideas. Try searching with specific keywords.

●     Search for relevant data from credible sources. It can be from books, journal articles, research papers, surveys, newspaper articles, etc.

●     Read the selected articles thoroughly and critically evaluate them. Discern the research problem and key concept of those studies. Study the topic, methodologies, hypothesis testing procedures, materials used, results and conclusions 

●     Deeply analyze the strengths and weaknesses of those research papers.

●     Understand the reason behind each theory used in those articles. 

●     Organize the selected papers and outline the structure of writing in them.

●     In the end, you’ll have to write about each citation in the bibliography. Keep track of your citations for that.

●     Write your literature review!

If you want to write a great literature review, don’t just summarize the information that you have gathered. Instead, analyze, synthesize, and critically evaluate to give a clear picture of the state of knowledge on the subject.