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Ten Simple Rules for Writing a Literature Review

Affiliations Centre for Functional and Evolutionary Ecology (CEFE), CNRS, Montpellier, France, Centre for Biodiversity Synthesis and Analysis (CESAB), FRB, Aix-en-Provence, France

Marco Pautasso

Published: July 18, 2013

https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pcbi.1003149
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Citation: Pautasso M (2013) Ten Simple Rules for Writing a Literature Review. PLoS Comput Biol 9(7): e1003149. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pcbi.1003149

Editor: Philip E. Bourne, University of California San Diego, United States of America

Copyright: © 2013 Marco Pautasso. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.

Funding: This work was funded by the French Foundation for Research on Biodiversity (FRB) through its Centre for Synthesis and Analysis of Biodiversity data (CESAB), as part of the NETSEED research project. The funders had no role in the preparation of the manuscript.

Competing interests: The author has declared that no competing interests exist.

Literature reviews are in great demand in most scientific fields. Their need stems from the ever-increasing output of scientific publications [1] . For example, compared to 1991, in 2008 three, eight, and forty times more papers were indexed in Web of Science on malaria, obesity, and biodiversity, respectively [2] . Given such mountains of papers, scientists cannot be expected to examine in detail every single new paper relevant to their interests [3] . Thus, it is both advantageous and necessary to rely on regular summaries of the recent literature. Although recognition for scientists mainly comes from primary research, timely literature reviews can lead to new synthetic insights and are often widely read [4] . For such summaries to be useful, however, they need to be compiled in a professional way [5] .

When starting from scratch, reviewing the literature can require a titanic amount of work. That is why researchers who have spent their career working on a certain research issue are in a perfect position to review that literature. Some graduate schools are now offering courses in reviewing the literature, given that most research students start their project by producing an overview of what has already been done on their research issue [6] . However, it is likely that most scientists have not thought in detail about how to approach and carry out a literature review.

Reviewing the literature requires the ability to juggle multiple tasks, from finding and evaluating relevant material to synthesising information from various sources, from critical thinking to paraphrasing, evaluating, and citation skills [7] . In this contribution, I share ten simple rules I learned working on about 25 literature reviews as a PhD and postdoctoral student. Ideas and insights also come from discussions with coauthors and colleagues, as well as feedback from reviewers and editors.

Rule 1: Define a Topic and Audience

How to choose which topic to review? There are so many issues in contemporary science that you could spend a lifetime of attending conferences and reading the literature just pondering what to review. On the one hand, if you take several years to choose, several other people may have had the same idea in the meantime. On the other hand, only a well-considered topic is likely to lead to a brilliant literature review [8] . The topic must at least be:

interesting to you (ideally, you should have come across a series of recent papers related to your line of work that call for a critical summary),
an important aspect of the field (so that many readers will be interested in the review and there will be enough material to write it), and
a well-defined issue (otherwise you could potentially include thousands of publications, which would make the review unhelpful).

Ideas for potential reviews may come from papers providing lists of key research questions to be answered [9] , but also from serendipitous moments during desultory reading and discussions. In addition to choosing your topic, you should also select a target audience. In many cases, the topic (e.g., web services in computational biology) will automatically define an audience (e.g., computational biologists), but that same topic may also be of interest to neighbouring fields (e.g., computer science, biology, etc.).

Rule 2: Search and Re-search the Literature

After having chosen your topic and audience, start by checking the literature and downloading relevant papers. Five pieces of advice here:

keep track of the search items you use (so that your search can be replicated [10] ),
keep a list of papers whose pdfs you cannot access immediately (so as to retrieve them later with alternative strategies),
use a paper management system (e.g., Mendeley, Papers, Qiqqa, Sente),
define early in the process some criteria for exclusion of irrelevant papers (these criteria can then be described in the review to help define its scope), and
do not just look for research papers in the area you wish to review, but also seek previous reviews.

The chances are high that someone will already have published a literature review ( Figure 1 ), if not exactly on the issue you are planning to tackle, at least on a related topic. If there are already a few or several reviews of the literature on your issue, my advice is not to give up, but to carry on with your own literature review,

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The bottom-right situation (many literature reviews but few research papers) is not just a theoretical situation; it applies, for example, to the study of the impacts of climate change on plant diseases, where there appear to be more literature reviews than research studies [33] .

https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pcbi.1003149.g001

discussing in your review the approaches, limitations, and conclusions of past reviews,
trying to find a new angle that has not been covered adequately in the previous reviews, and
incorporating new material that has inevitably accumulated since their appearance.

When searching the literature for pertinent papers and reviews, the usual rules apply:

be thorough,
use different keywords and database sources (e.g., DBLP, Google Scholar, ISI Proceedings, JSTOR Search, Medline, Scopus, Web of Science), and
look at who has cited past relevant papers and book chapters.

Rule 3: Take Notes While Reading

If you read the papers first, and only afterwards start writing the review, you will need a very good memory to remember who wrote what, and what your impressions and associations were while reading each single paper. My advice is, while reading, to start writing down interesting pieces of information, insights about how to organize the review, and thoughts on what to write. This way, by the time you have read the literature you selected, you will already have a rough draft of the review.

Of course, this draft will still need much rewriting, restructuring, and rethinking to obtain a text with a coherent argument [11] , but you will have avoided the danger posed by staring at a blank document. Be careful when taking notes to use quotation marks if you are provisionally copying verbatim from the literature. It is advisable then to reformulate such quotes with your own words in the final draft. It is important to be careful in noting the references already at this stage, so as to avoid misattributions. Using referencing software from the very beginning of your endeavour will save you time.

Rule 4: Choose the Type of Review You Wish to Write

After having taken notes while reading the literature, you will have a rough idea of the amount of material available for the review. This is probably a good time to decide whether to go for a mini- or a full review. Some journals are now favouring the publication of rather short reviews focusing on the last few years, with a limit on the number of words and citations. A mini-review is not necessarily a minor review: it may well attract more attention from busy readers, although it will inevitably simplify some issues and leave out some relevant material due to space limitations. A full review will have the advantage of more freedom to cover in detail the complexities of a particular scientific development, but may then be left in the pile of the very important papers “to be read” by readers with little time to spare for major monographs.

There is probably a continuum between mini- and full reviews. The same point applies to the dichotomy of descriptive vs. integrative reviews. While descriptive reviews focus on the methodology, findings, and interpretation of each reviewed study, integrative reviews attempt to find common ideas and concepts from the reviewed material [12] . A similar distinction exists between narrative and systematic reviews: while narrative reviews are qualitative, systematic reviews attempt to test a hypothesis based on the published evidence, which is gathered using a predefined protocol to reduce bias [13] , [14] . When systematic reviews analyse quantitative results in a quantitative way, they become meta-analyses. The choice between different review types will have to be made on a case-by-case basis, depending not just on the nature of the material found and the preferences of the target journal(s), but also on the time available to write the review and the number of coauthors [15] .

Rule 5: Keep the Review Focused, but Make It of Broad Interest

Whether your plan is to write a mini- or a full review, it is good advice to keep it focused 16 , 17 . Including material just for the sake of it can easily lead to reviews that are trying to do too many things at once. The need to keep a review focused can be problematic for interdisciplinary reviews, where the aim is to bridge the gap between fields [18] . If you are writing a review on, for example, how epidemiological approaches are used in modelling the spread of ideas, you may be inclined to include material from both parent fields, epidemiology and the study of cultural diffusion. This may be necessary to some extent, but in this case a focused review would only deal in detail with those studies at the interface between epidemiology and the spread of ideas.

While focus is an important feature of a successful review, this requirement has to be balanced with the need to make the review relevant to a broad audience. This square may be circled by discussing the wider implications of the reviewed topic for other disciplines.

Rule 6: Be Critical and Consistent

Reviewing the literature is not stamp collecting. A good review does not just summarize the literature, but discusses it critically, identifies methodological problems, and points out research gaps [19] . After having read a review of the literature, a reader should have a rough idea of:

the major achievements in the reviewed field,
the main areas of debate, and
the outstanding research questions.

It is challenging to achieve a successful review on all these fronts. A solution can be to involve a set of complementary coauthors: some people are excellent at mapping what has been achieved, some others are very good at identifying dark clouds on the horizon, and some have instead a knack at predicting where solutions are going to come from. If your journal club has exactly this sort of team, then you should definitely write a review of the literature! In addition to critical thinking, a literature review needs consistency, for example in the choice of passive vs. active voice and present vs. past tense.

Rule 7: Find a Logical Structure

Like a well-baked cake, a good review has a number of telling features: it is worth the reader's time, timely, systematic, well written, focused, and critical. It also needs a good structure. With reviews, the usual subdivision of research papers into introduction, methods, results, and discussion does not work or is rarely used. However, a general introduction of the context and, toward the end, a recapitulation of the main points covered and take-home messages make sense also in the case of reviews. For systematic reviews, there is a trend towards including information about how the literature was searched (database, keywords, time limits) [20] .

How can you organize the flow of the main body of the review so that the reader will be drawn into and guided through it? It is generally helpful to draw a conceptual scheme of the review, e.g., with mind-mapping techniques. Such diagrams can help recognize a logical way to order and link the various sections of a review [21] . This is the case not just at the writing stage, but also for readers if the diagram is included in the review as a figure. A careful selection of diagrams and figures relevant to the reviewed topic can be very helpful to structure the text too [22] .

Rule 8: Make Use of Feedback

Reviews of the literature are normally peer-reviewed in the same way as research papers, and rightly so [23] . As a rule, incorporating feedback from reviewers greatly helps improve a review draft. Having read the review with a fresh mind, reviewers may spot inaccuracies, inconsistencies, and ambiguities that had not been noticed by the writers due to rereading the typescript too many times. It is however advisable to reread the draft one more time before submission, as a last-minute correction of typos, leaps, and muddled sentences may enable the reviewers to focus on providing advice on the content rather than the form.

Feedback is vital to writing a good review, and should be sought from a variety of colleagues, so as to obtain a diversity of views on the draft. This may lead in some cases to conflicting views on the merits of the paper, and on how to improve it, but such a situation is better than the absence of feedback. A diversity of feedback perspectives on a literature review can help identify where the consensus view stands in the landscape of the current scientific understanding of an issue [24] .

Rule 9: Include Your Own Relevant Research, but Be Objective

In many cases, reviewers of the literature will have published studies relevant to the review they are writing. This could create a conflict of interest: how can reviewers report objectively on their own work [25] ? Some scientists may be overly enthusiastic about what they have published, and thus risk giving too much importance to their own findings in the review. However, bias could also occur in the other direction: some scientists may be unduly dismissive of their own achievements, so that they will tend to downplay their contribution (if any) to a field when reviewing it.

In general, a review of the literature should neither be a public relations brochure nor an exercise in competitive self-denial. If a reviewer is up to the job of producing a well-organized and methodical review, which flows well and provides a service to the readership, then it should be possible to be objective in reviewing one's own relevant findings. In reviews written by multiple authors, this may be achieved by assigning the review of the results of a coauthor to different coauthors.

Rule 10: Be Up-to-Date, but Do Not Forget Older Studies

Given the progressive acceleration in the publication of scientific papers, today's reviews of the literature need awareness not just of the overall direction and achievements of a field of inquiry, but also of the latest studies, so as not to become out-of-date before they have been published. Ideally, a literature review should not identify as a major research gap an issue that has just been addressed in a series of papers in press (the same applies, of course, to older, overlooked studies (“sleeping beauties” [26] )). This implies that literature reviewers would do well to keep an eye on electronic lists of papers in press, given that it can take months before these appear in scientific databases. Some reviews declare that they have scanned the literature up to a certain point in time, but given that peer review can be a rather lengthy process, a full search for newly appeared literature at the revision stage may be worthwhile. Assessing the contribution of papers that have just appeared is particularly challenging, because there is little perspective with which to gauge their significance and impact on further research and society.

Inevitably, new papers on the reviewed topic (including independently written literature reviews) will appear from all quarters after the review has been published, so that there may soon be the need for an updated review. But this is the nature of science [27] – [32] . I wish everybody good luck with writing a review of the literature.

Acknowledgments

Many thanks to M. Barbosa, K. Dehnen-Schmutz, T. Döring, D. Fontaneto, M. Garbelotto, O. Holdenrieder, M. Jeger, D. Lonsdale, A. MacLeod, P. Mills, M. Moslonka-Lefebvre, G. Stancanelli, P. Weisberg, and X. Xu for insights and discussions, and to P. Bourne, T. Matoni, and D. Smith for helpful comments on a previous draft.

1. Rapple C (2011) The role of the critical review article in alleviating information overload. Annual Reviews White Paper. Available: http://www.annualreviews.org/userimages/ContentEditor/1300384004941/Annual_Reviews_WhitePaper_Web_2011.pdf . Accessed May 2013.
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7. Budgen D, Brereton P (2006) Performing systematic literature reviews in software engineering. Proc 28th Int Conf Software Engineering, ACM New York, NY, USA, pp. 1051–1052. doi: https://doi.org/10.1145/1134285.1134500 .
16. Eco U (1977) Come si fa una tesi di laurea. Milan: Bompiani.
17. Hart C (1998) Doing a literature review: releasing the social science research imagination. London: SAGE.
21. Ridley D (2008) The literature review: a step-by-step guide for students. London: SAGE.

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How to Write a Literature Review | Guide, Examples, & Templates

How to Write a Literature Review | Guide, Examples, & Templates

Published on January 2, 2023 by Shona McCombes . Revised on September 11, 2023.

What is a literature review? A literature review is a survey of scholarly sources on a specific topic. It provides an overview of current knowledge, allowing you to identify relevant theories, methods, and gaps in the existing research that you can later apply to your paper, thesis, or dissertation topic .

There are five key steps to writing a literature review:

Search for relevant literature
Evaluate sources
Identify themes, debates, and gaps
Outline the structure
Write your literature review

A good literature review doesn’t just summarize sources—it analyzes, synthesizes , and critically evaluates to give a clear picture of the state of knowledge on the subject.

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What is the purpose of a literature review, examples of literature reviews, step 1 – search for relevant literature, step 2 – evaluate and select sources, step 3 – identify themes, debates, and gaps, step 4 – outline your literature review’s structure, step 5 – write your literature review, free lecture slides, other interesting articles, frequently asked questions, introduction.

Quick Run-through
Step 1 & 2

When you write a thesis , dissertation , or research paper , you will likely have to conduct a literature review to situate your research within existing knowledge. The literature review gives you a chance to:

Demonstrate your familiarity with the topic and its scholarly context
Develop a theoretical framework and methodology for your research
Position your work in relation to other researchers and theorists
Show how your research addresses a gap or contributes to a debate
Evaluate the current state of research and demonstrate your knowledge of the scholarly debates around your topic.

Writing literature reviews is a particularly important skill if you want to apply for graduate school or pursue a career in research. We’ve written a step-by-step guide that you can follow below.

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Writing literature reviews can be quite challenging! A good starting point could be to look at some examples, depending on what kind of literature review you’d like to write.

Example literature review #1: “Why Do People Migrate? A Review of the Theoretical Literature” ( Theoretical literature review about the development of economic migration theory from the 1950s to today.)
Example literature review #2: “Literature review as a research methodology: An overview and guidelines” ( Methodological literature review about interdisciplinary knowledge acquisition and production.)
Example literature review #3: “The Use of Technology in English Language Learning: A Literature Review” ( Thematic literature review about the effects of technology on language acquisition.)
Example literature review #4: “Learners’ Listening Comprehension Difficulties in English Language Learning: A Literature Review” ( Chronological literature review about how the concept of listening skills has changed over time.)

You can also check out our templates with literature review examples and sample outlines at the links below.

Download Word doc Download Google doc

Before you begin searching for literature, you need a clearly defined topic .

If you are writing the literature review section of a dissertation or research paper, you will search for literature related to your research problem and questions .

Make a list of keywords

Start by creating a list of keywords related to your research question. Include each of the key concepts or variables you’re interested in, and list any synonyms and related terms. You can add to this list as you discover new keywords in the process of your literature search.

Social media, Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, Snapchat, TikTok
Body image, self-perception, self-esteem, mental health
Generation Z, teenagers, adolescents, youth

Search for relevant sources

Use your keywords to begin searching for sources. Some useful databases to search for journals and articles include:

Your university’s library catalogue
Google Scholar
Project Muse (humanities and social sciences)
Medline (life sciences and biomedicine)
EconLit (economics)
Inspec (physics, engineering and computer science)

You can also use boolean operators to help narrow down your search.

Make sure to read the abstract to find out whether an article is relevant to your question. When you find a useful book or article, you can check the bibliography to find other relevant sources.

You likely won’t be able to read absolutely everything that has been written on your topic, so it will be necessary to evaluate which sources are most relevant to your research question.

For each publication, ask yourself:

What question or problem is the author addressing?
What are the key concepts and how are they defined?
What are the key theories, models, and methods?
Does the research use established frameworks or take an innovative approach?
What are the results and conclusions of the study?
How does the publication relate to other literature in the field? Does it confirm, add to, or challenge established knowledge?
What are the strengths and weaknesses of the research?

Make sure the sources you use are credible , and make sure you read any landmark studies and major theories in your field of research.

You can use our template to summarize and evaluate sources you’re thinking about using. Click on either button below to download.

Take notes and cite your sources

As you read, you should also begin the writing process. Take notes that you can later incorporate into the text of your literature review.

It is important to keep track of your sources with citations to avoid plagiarism . It can be helpful to make an annotated bibliography , where you compile full citation information and write a paragraph of summary and analysis for each source. This helps you remember what you read and saves time later in the process.

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To begin organizing your literature review’s argument and structure, be sure you understand the connections and relationships between the sources you’ve read. Based on your reading and notes, you can look for:

Trends and patterns (in theory, method or results): do certain approaches become more or less popular over time?
Themes: what questions or concepts recur across the literature?
Debates, conflicts and contradictions: where do sources disagree?
Pivotal publications: are there any influential theories or studies that changed the direction of the field?
Gaps: what is missing from the literature? Are there weaknesses that need to be addressed?

This step will help you work out the structure of your literature review and (if applicable) show how your own research will contribute to existing knowledge.

Most research has focused on young women.
There is an increasing interest in the visual aspects of social media.
But there is still a lack of robust research on highly visual platforms like Instagram and Snapchat—this is a gap that you could address in your own research.

There are various approaches to organizing the body of a literature review. Depending on the length of your literature review, you can combine several of these strategies (for example, your overall structure might be thematic, but each theme is discussed chronologically).

Chronological

The simplest approach is to trace the development of the topic over time. However, if you choose this strategy, be careful to avoid simply listing and summarizing sources in order.

Try to analyze patterns, turning points and key debates that have shaped the direction of the field. Give your interpretation of how and why certain developments occurred.

If you have found some recurring central themes, you can organize your literature review into subsections that address different aspects of the topic.

For example, if you are reviewing literature about inequalities in migrant health outcomes, key themes might include healthcare policy, language barriers, cultural attitudes, legal status, and economic access.

Methodological

If you draw your sources from different disciplines or fields that use a variety of research methods , you might want to compare the results and conclusions that emerge from different approaches. For example:

Look at what results have emerged in qualitative versus quantitative research
Discuss how the topic has been approached by empirical versus theoretical scholarship
Divide the literature into sociological, historical, and cultural sources

Theoretical

A literature review is often the foundation for a theoretical framework . You can use it to discuss various theories, models, and definitions of key concepts.

You might argue for the relevance of a specific theoretical approach, or combine various theoretical concepts to create a framework for your research.

Like any other academic text , your literature review should have an introduction , a main body, and a conclusion . What you include in each depends on the objective of your literature review.

The introduction should clearly establish the focus and purpose of the literature review.

Depending on the length of your literature review, you might want to divide the body into subsections. You can use a subheading for each theme, time period, or methodological approach.

As you write, you can follow these tips:

Summarize and synthesize: give an overview of the main points of each source and combine them into a coherent whole
Analyze and interpret: don’t just paraphrase other researchers — add your own interpretations where possible, discussing the significance of findings in relation to the literature as a whole
Critically evaluate: mention the strengths and weaknesses of your sources
Write in well-structured paragraphs: use transition words and topic sentences to draw connections, comparisons and contrasts

In the conclusion, you should summarize the key findings you have taken from the literature and emphasize their significance.

When you’ve finished writing and revising your literature review, don’t forget to proofread thoroughly before submitting. Not a language expert? Check out Scribbr’s professional proofreading services !

This article has been adapted into lecture slides that you can use to teach your students about writing a literature review.

Scribbr slides are free to use, customize, and distribute for educational purposes.

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If you want to know more about the research process , methodology , research bias , or statistics , make sure to check out some of our other articles with explanations and examples.

Sampling methods
Simple random sampling
Stratified sampling
Cluster sampling
Likert scales
Reproducibility

Statistics

Null hypothesis
Statistical power
Probability distribution
Effect size
Poisson distribution

Research bias

Optimism bias
Cognitive bias
Implicit bias
Hawthorne effect
Anchoring bias
Explicit bias

A literature review is a survey of scholarly sources (such as books, journal articles, and theses) related to a specific topic or research question .

It is often written as part of a thesis, dissertation , or research paper , in order to situate your work in relation to existing knowledge.

There are several reasons to conduct a literature review at the beginning of a research project:

To familiarize yourself with the current state of knowledge on your topic
To ensure that you’re not just repeating what others have already done
To identify gaps in knowledge and unresolved problems that your research can address
To develop your theoretical framework and methodology
To provide an overview of the key findings and debates on the topic

Writing the literature review shows your reader how your work relates to existing research and what new insights it will contribute.

The literature review usually comes near the beginning of your thesis or dissertation . After the introduction , it grounds your research in a scholarly field and leads directly to your theoretical framework or methodology .

A literature review is a survey of credible sources on a topic, often used in dissertations , theses, and research papers . Literature reviews give an overview of knowledge on a subject, helping you identify relevant theories and methods, as well as gaps in existing research. Literature reviews are set up similarly to other academic texts , with an introduction , a main body, and a conclusion .

An annotated bibliography is a list of source references that has a short description (called an annotation ) for each of the sources. It is often assigned as part of the research process for a paper .

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What is a Literature Review? | Guide, Template, & Examples

What is a Literature Review? | Guide, Template, & Examples

Published on 22 February 2022 by Shona McCombes . Revised on 7 June 2022.

There are five key steps to writing a literature review:

Search for relevant literature
Evaluate sources
Identify themes, debates and gaps
Outline the structure
Write your literature review

A good literature review doesn’t just summarise sources – it analyses, synthesises, and critically evaluates to give a clear picture of the state of knowledge on the subject.

Instantly correct all language mistakes in your text

Be assured that you'll submit flawless writing. Upload your document to correct all your mistakes.

Why write a literature review, examples of literature reviews, step 1: search for relevant literature, step 2: evaluate and select sources, step 3: identify themes, debates and gaps, step 4: outline your literature review’s structure, step 5: write your literature review, frequently asked questions about literature reviews, introduction.

Quick Run-through
Step 1 & 2

When you write a dissertation or thesis, you will have to conduct a literature review to situate your research within existing knowledge. The literature review gives you a chance to:

Demonstrate your familiarity with the topic and scholarly context
Develop a theoretical framework and methodology for your research
Position yourself in relation to other researchers and theorists
Show how your dissertation addresses a gap or contributes to a debate

You might also have to write a literature review as a stand-alone assignment. In this case, the purpose is to evaluate the current state of research and demonstrate your knowledge of scholarly debates around a topic.

The content will look slightly different in each case, but the process of conducting a literature review follows the same steps. We’ve written a step-by-step guide that you can follow below.

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Writing literature reviews can be quite challenging! A good starting point could be to look at some examples, depending on what kind of literature review you’d like to write.

Example literature review #1: “Why Do People Migrate? A Review of the Theoretical Literature” ( Theoretical literature review about the development of economic migration theory from the 1950s to today.)
Example literature review #2: “Literature review as a research methodology: An overview and guidelines” ( Methodological literature review about interdisciplinary knowledge acquisition and production.)
Example literature review #3: “The Use of Technology in English Language Learning: A Literature Review” ( Thematic literature review about the effects of technology on language acquisition.)
Example literature review #4: “Learners’ Listening Comprehension Difficulties in English Language Learning: A Literature Review” ( Chronological literature review about how the concept of listening skills has changed over time.)

You can also check out our templates with literature review examples and sample outlines at the links below.

Download Word doc Download Google doc

Before you begin searching for literature, you need a clearly defined topic .

If you are writing the literature review section of a dissertation or research paper, you will search for literature related to your research objectives and questions .

If you are writing a literature review as a stand-alone assignment, you will have to choose a focus and develop a central question to direct your search. Unlike a dissertation research question, this question has to be answerable without collecting original data. You should be able to answer it based only on a review of existing publications.

Make a list of keywords

Start by creating a list of keywords related to your research topic. Include each of the key concepts or variables you’re interested in, and list any synonyms and related terms. You can add to this list if you discover new keywords in the process of your literature search.

Social media, Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, Snapchat, TikTok
Body image, self-perception, self-esteem, mental health
Generation Z, teenagers, adolescents, youth

Search for relevant sources

Use your keywords to begin searching for sources. Some databases to search for journals and articles include:

Your university’s library catalogue
Google Scholar
Project Muse (humanities and social sciences)
Medline (life sciences and biomedicine)
EconLit (economics)
Inspec (physics, engineering and computer science)

You can use boolean operators to help narrow down your search:

Read the abstract to find out whether an article is relevant to your question. When you find a useful book or article, you can check the bibliography to find other relevant sources.

To identify the most important publications on your topic, take note of recurring citations. If the same authors, books or articles keep appearing in your reading, make sure to seek them out.

You probably won’t be able to read absolutely everything that has been written on the topic – you’ll have to evaluate which sources are most relevant to your questions.

For each publication, ask yourself:

What question or problem is the author addressing?
What are the key concepts and how are they defined?
What are the key theories, models and methods? Does the research use established frameworks or take an innovative approach?
What are the results and conclusions of the study?
How does the publication relate to other literature in the field? Does it confirm, add to, or challenge established knowledge?
How does the publication contribute to your understanding of the topic? What are its key insights and arguments?
What are the strengths and weaknesses of the research?

Make sure the sources you use are credible, and make sure you read any landmark studies and major theories in your field of research.

You can find out how many times an article has been cited on Google Scholar – a high citation count means the article has been influential in the field, and should certainly be included in your literature review.

The scope of your review will depend on your topic and discipline: in the sciences you usually only review recent literature, but in the humanities you might take a long historical perspective (for example, to trace how a concept has changed in meaning over time).

Remember that you can use our template to summarise and evaluate sources you’re thinking about using!

Take notes and cite your sources

As you read, you should also begin the writing process. Take notes that you can later incorporate into the text of your literature review.

It’s important to keep track of your sources with references to avoid plagiarism . It can be helpful to make an annotated bibliography, where you compile full reference information and write a paragraph of summary and analysis for each source. This helps you remember what you read and saves time later in the process.

You can use our free APA Reference Generator for quick, correct, consistent citations.

To begin organising your literature review’s argument and structure, you need to understand the connections and relationships between the sources you’ve read. Based on your reading and notes, you can look for:

Trends and patterns (in theory, method or results): do certain approaches become more or less popular over time?
Themes: what questions or concepts recur across the literature?
Debates, conflicts and contradictions: where do sources disagree?
Pivotal publications: are there any influential theories or studies that changed the direction of the field?
Gaps: what is missing from the literature? Are there weaknesses that need to be addressed?

This step will help you work out the structure of your literature review and (if applicable) show how your own research will contribute to existing knowledge.

Most research has focused on young women.
There is an increasing interest in the visual aspects of social media.
But there is still a lack of robust research on highly-visual platforms like Instagram and Snapchat – this is a gap that you could address in your own research.

There are various approaches to organising the body of a literature review. You should have a rough idea of your strategy before you start writing.

Depending on the length of your literature review, you can combine several of these strategies (for example, your overall structure might be thematic, but each theme is discussed chronologically).

Chronological

The simplest approach is to trace the development of the topic over time. However, if you choose this strategy, be careful to avoid simply listing and summarising sources in order.

Try to analyse patterns, turning points and key debates that have shaped the direction of the field. Give your interpretation of how and why certain developments occurred.

If you have found some recurring central themes, you can organise your literature review into subsections that address different aspects of the topic.

Methodological

Look at what results have emerged in qualitative versus quantitative research
Discuss how the topic has been approached by empirical versus theoretical scholarship
Divide the literature into sociological, historical, and cultural sources

Theoretical

A literature review is often the foundation for a theoretical framework . You can use it to discuss various theories, models, and definitions of key concepts.

You might argue for the relevance of a specific theoretical approach, or combine various theoretical concepts to create a framework for your research.

Like any other academic text, your literature review should have an introduction , a main body, and a conclusion . What you include in each depends on the objective of your literature review.

The introduction should clearly establish the focus and purpose of the literature review.

If you are writing the literature review as part of your dissertation or thesis, reiterate your central problem or research question and give a brief summary of the scholarly context. You can emphasise the timeliness of the topic (“many recent studies have focused on the problem of x”) or highlight a gap in the literature (“while there has been much research on x, few researchers have taken y into consideration”).

Depending on the length of your literature review, you might want to divide the body into subsections. You can use a subheading for each theme, time period, or methodological approach.

As you write, make sure to follow these tips:

Summarise and synthesise: give an overview of the main points of each source and combine them into a coherent whole.
Analyse and interpret: don’t just paraphrase other researchers – add your own interpretations, discussing the significance of findings in relation to the literature as a whole.
Critically evaluate: mention the strengths and weaknesses of your sources.
Write in well-structured paragraphs: use transitions and topic sentences to draw connections, comparisons and contrasts.

In the conclusion, you should summarise the key findings you have taken from the literature and emphasise their significance.

If the literature review is part of your dissertation or thesis, reiterate how your research addresses gaps and contributes new knowledge, or discuss how you have drawn on existing theories and methods to build a framework for your research. This can lead directly into your methodology section.

A literature review is a survey of scholarly sources (such as books, journal articles, and theses) related to a specific topic or research question .

It is often written as part of a dissertation , thesis, research paper , or proposal .

There are several reasons to conduct a literature review at the beginning of a research project:

To familiarise yourself with the current state of knowledge on your topic
To ensure that you’re not just repeating what others have already done
To identify gaps in knowledge and unresolved problems that your research can address
To develop your theoretical framework and methodology
To provide an overview of the key findings and debates on the topic

Writing the literature review shows your reader how your work relates to existing research and what new insights it will contribute.

The literature review usually comes near the beginning of your dissertation . After the introduction , it grounds your research in a scholarly field and leads directly to your theoretical framework or methodology .

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A literature review is a document or section of a document that collects key sources on a topic and discusses those sources in conversation with each other (also called synthesis ). The lit review is an important genre in many disciplines, not just literature (i.e., the study of works of literature such as novels and plays). When we say “literature review” or refer to “the literature,” we are talking about the research ( scholarship ) in a given field. You will often see the terms “the research,” “the scholarship,” and “the literature” used mostly interchangeably.

Where, when, and why would I write a lit review?

There are a number of different situations where you might write a literature review, each with slightly different expectations; different disciplines, too, have field-specific expectations for what a literature review is and does. For instance, in the humanities, authors might include more overt argumentation and interpretation of source material in their literature reviews, whereas in the sciences, authors are more likely to report study designs and results in their literature reviews; these differences reflect these disciplines’ purposes and conventions in scholarship. You should always look at examples from your own discipline and talk to professors or mentors in your field to be sure you understand your discipline’s conventions, for literature reviews as well as for any other genre.

A literature review can be a part of a research paper or scholarly article, usually falling after the introduction and before the research methods sections. In these cases, the lit review just needs to cover scholarship that is important to the issue you are writing about; sometimes it will also cover key sources that informed your research methodology.

Lit reviews can also be standalone pieces, either as assignments in a class or as publications. In a class, a lit review may be assigned to help students familiarize themselves with a topic and with scholarship in their field, get an idea of the other researchers working on the topic they’re interested in, find gaps in existing research in order to propose new projects, and/or develop a theoretical framework and methodology for later research. As a publication, a lit review usually is meant to help make other scholars’ lives easier by collecting and summarizing, synthesizing, and analyzing existing research on a topic. This can be especially helpful for students or scholars getting into a new research area, or for directing an entire community of scholars toward questions that have not yet been answered.

What are the parts of a lit review?

Most lit reviews use a basic introduction-body-conclusion structure; if your lit review is part of a larger paper, the introduction and conclusion pieces may be just a few sentences while you focus most of your attention on the body. If your lit review is a standalone piece, the introduction and conclusion take up more space and give you a place to discuss your goals, research methods, and conclusions separately from where you discuss the literature itself.

Introduction:

An introductory paragraph that explains what your working topic and thesis is
A forecast of key topics or texts that will appear in the review
Potentially, a description of how you found sources and how you analyzed them for inclusion and discussion in the review (more often found in published, standalone literature reviews than in lit review sections in an article or research paper)
Summarize and synthesize: Give an overview of the main points of each source and combine them into a coherent whole
Analyze and interpret: Don’t just paraphrase other researchers – add your own interpretations where possible, discussing the significance of findings in relation to the literature as a whole
Critically Evaluate: Mention the strengths and weaknesses of your sources
Write in well-structured paragraphs: Use transition words and topic sentence to draw connections, comparisons, and contrasts.

Conclusion:

Summarize the key findings you have taken from the literature and emphasize their significance
Connect it back to your primary research question

How should I organize my lit review?

Lit reviews can take many different organizational patterns depending on what you are trying to accomplish with the review. Here are some examples:

Chronological : The simplest approach is to trace the development of the topic over time, which helps familiarize the audience with the topic (for instance if you are introducing something that is not commonly known in your field). If you choose this strategy, be careful to avoid simply listing and summarizing sources in order. Try to analyze the patterns, turning points, and key debates that have shaped the direction of the field. Give your interpretation of how and why certain developments occurred (as mentioned previously, this may not be appropriate in your discipline — check with a teacher or mentor if you’re unsure).
Thematic : If you have found some recurring central themes that you will continue working with throughout your piece, you can organize your literature review into subsections that address different aspects of the topic. For example, if you are reviewing literature about women and religion, key themes can include the role of women in churches and the religious attitude towards women.
Qualitative versus quantitative research
Empirical versus theoretical scholarship
Divide the research by sociological, historical, or cultural sources
Theoretical : In many humanities articles, the literature review is the foundation for the theoretical framework. You can use it to discuss various theories, models, and definitions of key concepts. You can argue for the relevance of a specific theoretical approach or combine various theorical concepts to create a framework for your research.

What are some strategies or tips I can use while writing my lit review?

Any lit review is only as good as the research it discusses; make sure your sources are well-chosen and your research is thorough. Don’t be afraid to do more research if you discover a new thread as you’re writing. More info on the research process is available in our "Conducting Research" resources .

As you’re doing your research, create an annotated bibliography ( see our page on the this type of document ). Much of the information used in an annotated bibliography can be used also in a literature review, so you’ll be not only partially drafting your lit review as you research, but also developing your sense of the larger conversation going on among scholars, professionals, and any other stakeholders in your topic.

Usually you will need to synthesize research rather than just summarizing it. This means drawing connections between sources to create a picture of the scholarly conversation on a topic over time. Many student writers struggle to synthesize because they feel they don’t have anything to add to the scholars they are citing; here are some strategies to help you:

It often helps to remember that the point of these kinds of syntheses is to show your readers how you understand your research, to help them read the rest of your paper.
Writing teachers often say synthesis is like hosting a dinner party: imagine all your sources are together in a room, discussing your topic. What are they saying to each other?
Look at the in-text citations in each paragraph. Are you citing just one source for each paragraph? This usually indicates summary only. When you have multiple sources cited in a paragraph, you are more likely to be synthesizing them (not always, but often
Read more about synthesis here.

The most interesting literature reviews are often written as arguments (again, as mentioned at the beginning of the page, this is discipline-specific and doesn’t work for all situations). Often, the literature review is where you can establish your research as filling a particular gap or as relevant in a particular way. You have some chance to do this in your introduction in an article, but the literature review section gives a more extended opportunity to establish the conversation in the way you would like your readers to see it. You can choose the intellectual lineage you would like to be part of and whose definitions matter most to your thinking (mostly humanities-specific, but this goes for sciences as well). In addressing these points, you argue for your place in the conversation, which tends to make the lit review more compelling than a simple reporting of other sources.

my research
contributions and comments

I can’t find anything written on my topic… really?

Sometimes people tell me that they can’t find any literature that is relevant to their research. They are doing something that nobody else has researched and written about and so there isn’t anything to read. What, they ask, can they do for their literature chapter.

A lack of literature is very rarely a real problem. The real problem is that the researcher with the nothing-written-on-my-topic question has drawn the boundary around their topic too tightly. They haven’t thought about the kinds of literatures that might be relevant, even if they are not written on exactly the same question.

Let me give an example. Say a researcher is doing a project on the use of whiteboards in science lectures. OK, I don’t know why, but let’s go with this for argument’s sake. Its just a hypothetical. The researcher has searched and searched through the literatures and they can only find one paper written on the use of whiteboards in science. Hooray, they say, I’ve found a gap. My research is needed. But there is nothing written on it. That’s a problem. What will go in my literature chapter?

Well, no. That’s not the case. Of course there’s something in print. Even if it’s not directly on the exact same topic, it’s related. Let’s think of some of the other literatures that might be connected and relevant to our pretend inquiry. There’s probably research about the use of whiteboards in subject areas other than science. There is some research into the lecture as a form of teaching and learning (I know this to be the case!). And there is certainly material about general teaching and learning in science. So all of these different literatures have a connection with our imaginary topic.

But wait, there’s more. There is an enormous literature about the use of digital technologies in higher education, some of which quite specifically addresses the pedagogical strategies that they do and don’t afford – this is relevant to the way in which whiteboards are used in science lectures. And there’s material about students’ experiences of lectures and their own personal use of digital technologies. And of course all of this related research is framed within a broader scholarly conversation about learning and teaching – and our mythical researcher concerned about whiteboards in science lectures is certainly going to have to establish their work within a general pedagogical conceptual framework – so there’s more reading.

So it’s not that there is no literature for the pretend researcher on their topic, it’s rather that they have to think more broadly about what they might need and use. They have to map the possible areas that are linked to their question and then sort out, by skimming and noting, what’s most relevant and related. They must then bring these selected literatures together in a way that supports the research they are going to do.

The answer to the no literature question is always, always, always – what else is pertinent. The resulting strategy is to widen the boundaries of the search to include related and framing scholarship. Take off the blinkers and look further… There is another answer of course. It’s one that always lurks behind the nothing-written-on-my-topic question. And this answer is a scary one, but its always one worth asking. Nothing in your area? Maybe there is nothing specifically written on the topic because it just isn’t that interesting. The topic is too narrow and specialised, and studying it isn’t that important. There’s a good reason no-one has looked at the use of whiteboards in science lectures in any great depth… Asking why no-one has been here before is a scary proposition. But it’s one that’s very important to dare to consider if you do happen to find yourself asking the nothing-written-on-my-topic question.

For more on strategies for doing a review of literatures – see scoping , mapping ( here and here ) and focusing ( here and here ).

About pat thomson

19 responses to i can’t find anything written on my topic… really.

Hello, I have answered similarly to colleagues saying there is not literature written about my context. How to write a chapter about my context? I had the same issue when I come to write about the context of language and policy in Syria. There are not standard classic books to use and copy when writing my context chapter I made my own, it is even better. I used history, politics, and economy books to map out what influenced education policy and philosophy from the time before independence till after independepceSo I draw the context and compared policies in the Middle East and in Assia regarding language, policy and identity.

And when it comes to defining one’s methodological (philosophical positions), some students feel insecure due to their lack of knowledge of the Western thinking development. Why worry? Even better, try to draw on your own philosophy using your own history in China and other parts of the world – decolonize yourself and take the best from both worlds.

Yes, great example, better to have a real case than my made up one!

Also–if there is absolutely nothing on your topic, it’s not a good topic for a thesis or article. Your thesis demonstrates your ability to contribute original work to an existing scholarly conversation. Radically new work is better saved for a scholarly monograph. I extended the scope of my PhD by 5 years to include the extensively researched 1930s and later 1950s, to frame my work on the mostly neglected 1940s in English poetry.

By saying “Radically new work is better saved for a scholarly monograph”, I wonder what role junior and upcoming scholars have to play in our time of science and knowledge production.

Its like saying lets not invent, rather lets keep polishing on the old inventions because there is no need to reinvent the wheel.

Interesting. When I started, my topic was a candidate for the “no literature” complaint. I had to look at theories that might apply and write it as a test case of existing theories. I also had to face the “why?” topic. I disagree that the answer is necessarily “because it’s a bad area”. In newer disciplines, it could be more related to funding priorities, existing ideologies or even fashion. The important thing is still to find which conversations it relates to and then make the argument that this new case (or set of cases) has something important to add.

I was just suggesting you had to ask yourself if it was a dud area, not that it necessarily was. I was suggesting you need to face that possibility. That’s all.

No problem. I was hoping that was the case and just wanted to point out another possibility.

I remember feeling perplexed at the apparent lack of literatures when I started out on my project, which is located primarily in a social work context. After some fruitless weeks of searching social work and sociology databases, I happened upon an article in a nursing journal, and – ta da!!! – it was like opening the jammed door to a dragon’s treasure trove. The gold spilled out and now I’m busy trying to contain it all and regain my focus. Sometimes broadening your search is not only about looking for a wider set of related concepts, but searching more widely in general. The existing work in other disciplines, and in particular their epistemologies, led me to an exciting (well, I think it is) space for my own work. It just took some time and patience, and a willingness to think beyond my own discplinary assumptions.

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Hello, I’m currently trying to wrangle together articles for the literature review that will go into my masters thesis proposal. My thesis topic has no directly related literature. Your article has helped – I will attempt to look at closely related topics.

Hi Pat, thanks for some insights into writing a lit review in the apparent absence of any literature on a research topic. You are absolutely right about the tendency to have the parameters narrowed to such an absurd point that nothing else can fit in. Good point.

There will always be something relevant to write about if we can have fresh eyes to look at our research approach.

Awesome. Thank you

I needed to hear/read this. I have tried to go beyond my speciality and the existing parameters before, I guess l have been missing the mark somewhere.

I feel rejuvenated and eager to go back and dig out that bone

Hi, I am currently working on my doctorate in nursing and I am writing the first part of my systematic review. What is written in this blog is super helpful, but my question is when writing your literature review you have to have a research question, how do you then justify a ‘change’ of question when you cant find relevant research, I absolutely get changing the stance on your question as there will be research out there that is relevant, but is it appropriate to say this is my RQ and this is my literature review question and justify why they are different? Are there any good papers or texts out there that discuss this query? Thanks

I think if you are doing a systematic review, the review questions have to provide the basis for you to design your project and analyse your results.

Very resourceful. If there is no previous research how to write previous research part of the research process?

I would say this is difficult to defend in some areas. What about presenting a point that is based on public press releases, such as 5G deployment commitment by companies? Officially there would be little to no research published on press releases that suddenly appear within a short time frame, which can be the case for technology races. How can there be any research cited if something on the topic is to early to be available? How to go about this? Of course parallels could be drawn to other technology deployment races and their evaluation in research, none would be able to address the current one without citing news. And this ties in to the question, can sources such as press releases be considered viable sources? I do agree that there is always something somewhere, but I feel this heavily ties in to “informaiton freshness” and what can be considered a good source.

Even thought technological,advances are one of the areas which by definition has less published research, there would surely still be relevant literatures related to the problem framing, theorisation or literatures on adaptions to previous or similar innovations? The point is that what’s relevant is not necessarily on your exact topic.

What if your not researching for academic papers? I want to know more about a specific thing but can only find one article on it other than the news articles about the article i have read. I want to read research that doesn’t seem to exist. How do you tackle that? I do not have the qualifications to do the research myself but I need to know more about the topic. What does one do then?

For reference I want to understand more about the presentation and signs of abuse in affluent children. I have read much about presentation of abuse in children but it focuses on poorer disadvantaged children, or states emotional changes that I need to know more about and how that may present differently in private schools and boarding schools. I have found information on emotional neglect in affluent families but I want to know more about signs of physical, sexual and emotional abuse in these affluent families. I want to read research on why teachers in private schools seem to miss/overlook signs of abuse far more than there government school counterparts. I want to find papers on underreporting in these communities or even papers contradicting these presumptions. How do you find information that doesn’t seem to exist.

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Academic writing: What is a literature review?

A review of the literature in a discipline is not the same as an annotated bibliography of sources, though an annotated bibliography can be a type of literature review. The purpose of a lit review is not only to tell your reader the state of scholarship about a given topic, but also to organize and evaluate the major points, parts, or arguments of each source. From the University of Toronto Writing Centre’s Tips on Conducting the Literature Review :

"A literature review is a piece of discursive prose , not a list describing or summarizing one piece of literature after another. It's usually a bad sign to see every paragraph beginning with the name of a researcher. Instead, organize the literature review into sections that present themes or identify trends, including relevant theory. You are not trying to list all the material published, but to synthesize and evaluate it according to the guiding concept of your thesis or research question."

A lit review may serve as a stand-alone piece or article. For example, see this published Stand-Alone Literature Review (content note: this literature review focuses on the topic of abuse against women with disabilities). However, more often a lit review is part of a larger research publication. For example, see this published research article that includes a Literature Review (content note: this article discusses depression among college students).

What should a literature review include?

Introduction: Explain why this research topic is important. Outline what direction your review will take: i.e., what aspects of the topic you’re focusing on.

Body : Present your summaries and evaluations of the sources in a clear, logical, and coherent manner. Some options for organizing your review include chronological, order of importance, two sides of a controversial problem, differences in perspective or viewpoint. Your review must “read” like a coherent paper, not a list.

Note: Most literature reviews describe only the main findings, relevant methodological issues, and/or major conclusions of other research.

Ensure your final list of references includes all sources you’ve discussed, and use the citation style required in your discipline.

Don’t provide a lot of detail about the procedures used in your sources. Don’t mention every study conducted on the topic. Include only the ones that are most relevant for the purpose and scope of your review.

Plan and organize your literature review

Define your central problem, issue, or focus (create a research question or thesis statement)
Consider audience expectations. In writing the literature review, your purpose is to convey to your reader what knowledge and ideas have been established on a topic, and what their strengths and weaknesses are.
summarize the “gist” or main ideas of the source
comment on the source’s usefulness, relevance, methodology, and/or findings in the context of your question or issue
Do not use a “list-like” approach in drafting your lit review. Rather, organize your information logically to address your research question, thesis, or central issue. For more, see the Writeonline.ca guide to Literature Reviews and the Monash University Learn HQ mini-module on Literature Reviews (including sections on the process of writing a literature review, structuring a literature review, and the language of literature reviews).

Revise your literature review, keeping in mind these tips for effective writing

Pay attention to sentence structure
Use the active and passive voices appropriately
Reduce or omit wordy, redundant phrases
Proofread for common punctuation and expression errors

For more about literature reviews, including definitions, protocols and guidelines, search strategies, and managing citations, see the Library's Literature reviews for graduate students .

A systematized literature review of Reddit

Naiyan Jones

Towards Data Science

A couple months back I conducted a sytematized literature review of research on Reddit.

The results? I identified 211 academic works on Reddit.

This includes published works in peer reviewed journals, submitted conference papers, chapters in edited collections and the occasional PhD dissertation.

Reddit versus Twitter: how do they compare?

Social scientists love Twitter as a platform. They’re on it tweeting about their own work, doing digital networking and following the occasional parody account. Political scientists in particular absolutely love Twitter.

Now let’s do a fun comparison between academic research on both platforms. Reddit has 211 academic works and this compares to:

380 papers on Twitter between 2007 and 2012 ( Michael and Proferes, 2014 )
575 on Twitter and Micro-blogging ( Williams, Warwick and Melissa, 2013 )
671 research works on social networking sites ( Boyd, 2015 )
127 works on Twitter and political election campaigning ( Jungherr, 2016 ).

Research output by year

Reddit was founded in 2005 but it wasn’t until several years later that works started appearing in peer reviewed journals and conference papers. Minus a blip in 2012 research output has grown year on year.

This review stopped at works published in early May. Considering the trend I wouldn’t be surprised at all if this year eclipsed the last on output.¹

Research by paradigm

The majority of studies are quantitative, followed by qualitative and mixed method. Studies situated in Computer Science and Human Computer Interaction (HCI) were overwhelmingly quantitative. Mixed method studies tended to be from projects with multiple researchers who brought with them a diversity of skills to best approach the research aim. Qualitative studies were common across most disciplines.

Which disciplines study Reddit?

The overwhelming majority of studies are from Computer Science, followed by a mix from the social sciences. The most popular being Health, Communication, and Culture and Media Studies.

Excluding Computer Science helps visualise the rest of the social sciences a bit easier.

As a side note, I wasn’t expecting to find a study from Music Studies when I originally conducted this review. This study was by Kovacevich and Huron ( 2018 ) and focused on Autonomous Sensory Meridian Response (ASMR) music and the /r/ASMR subreddit. Interesting stuff.

Literature Review Method

This was a systematized review. It had elements of a systematic review but fell short of claiming to be as comprehensive ( Grant & Booth, 2009 ).

Scoping of literature was done by searching the words ‘Reddit’ and ‘subreddit’ on Web of Science and Scopus databases between May and July 2019. The first 50 pages of Google Scholar was searched but no further. This was because of many false positives coming from social media share functions being picked up.²

Going on from there I conducted a snowball search from bibliographies and footnotes of highly cited articles which led to more researchers, research projects and organisations. These included research output and conference articles from the Association of Computer Machinery (ACM) library, and the non-profit CivilSevant.io

A spreadsheet was created including information on each research item. These included: publication date, name of study, research paradigm, academic discipline, second academic discipline if relevant, method(s) used, and type of publication (conference paper, journal article, book chapters).

The above information was collected by reading journal abstracts. If the information was not provided in abstracts the the article itself was searched for keywords and skim read to find the relevant information.³

Limitations

If the keywords Reddit and subreddit were not included in abstracts or tags used in the databases searched they would not have appeared in this literature review.

This review was also limited to one researcher. This means that if the coding categorisation of studies were incorrect there was no second researchers to correct the mistakes. This is notable for studies which are situated in disciplines and methods outside this researcher’s knowledge and skillset. A systematic review in comparison would usually include two or more researchers either categorising studies independently or in tandem to find any mistakes and correct them.⁴

I plan to update this review do account for further research output in the full year 2019. Call it a bit of round number bias and being a completionist.
This resulted in 1,560,000 search hits.
Keywords searched included: method, research method, paradigm, quantitative, qualitative. This was done to speed up analysis of articles.
See inter-code reliability for a more in-depth explanation.

Written by Naiyan Jones

Social researcher and published academic interested in social media and online communities. University of Birmingham alumni.

Text to speech

Hardening – the new way to stop your kids getting a cold?

Feedback delves into a new study about snotty-nose prevention in children, and is intrigued to discover that hardening, rubbing and water procedures are the cutting edge of cold science these days

By Marc Abrahams

26 June 2024

New Scientist. Science news and long reads from expert journalists, covering developments in science, technology, health and the environment on the website and the magazine.

Hardened children

“It is well known that the best means of preventing colds is hardening,” writes Sidikova Maryam Amankeldievna in the Journal of Medicine, Practice and Nursing . To prevent parents from going overboard, she warns that only healthy children “can be hardened with water procedures”.

Hardening may be best, but it isn’t the one-and-only method of cold prevention. Amankeldievna, a researcher at Samarkand State Medical University, Uzbekistan, also advocates rubbing. “Rubbing,” she specifies, “should be done all year round.” Done properly, rubbing “is carried out in the following order: first the arms, then the legs, chest, stomach and back”.

Hardening need not be water-based. Amankeldievna also approves of air. “Air hardening is a milder factor,” she writes, “and is allowed for children of all health groups.”

Sunlight is another alternative. But sunlight hardening is problematic: “Sunbathing,” says Amankeldievna, “is possible only with the permission of a doctor.”

We all know that

If you are a rapid reader, it is easy to keep abreast of everything that is well known: just read the thousands of new research papers published every week. But not everyone is a rapid reader.

As a service for slower readers, Feedback aims to round up some of the things that – as testified in scientific literature (see above) – are officially well known. Each is documented in a statement that begins “It is well known that…”.

Here are some well-known examples.

The forgetful functor is well-known. Cary Malkiewich and Maru Sarazola write in a preprint study: “It is well-known that the stable model structure on symmetric spectra cannot be transferred from the one on sequential spectra through the forgetful functor.”

Some really complicated things are well known. Frank Nielsen, writing in the journal Entropy , mentions one: “It is well known that skewed Bhattacharyya distances between the probability densities of an exponential family amount to skewed Jensen divergences induced by the cumulant function between their corresponding natural parameters, and that in limit cases the sided Kullback-Leibler divergences amount to reverse-sided Bregman divergences.”

Heinz Kohut’s papers on narcissism are well known. Allison Merrick, writing in the journal Psychoanalysis, Self and Context , reminds us it is “well known that Heinz Kohut’s papers on narcissism brought forth a re-evaluation of a patient’s healthy self-regard”.

Ronald Fagin and Joseph Halpern, in a paper called A new approach to updating beliefs” , note that it is “well known that the conditional probability function is a probability function”.

And Luca Di Luzio, Admir Greljo and Marco Nardecchia, writing in Physical Review D , assure us that “ it is well known that massive vectors crave an ultraviolet (UV) completion”.

How many of these well-known things do most people know? The answer to that question is unknown. If you know of a way-too-little-known well-known thing that screams for its moment in the sun, please send it (with documentation) to: Well-known things, c/o Feedback.

The fascist disease

Reader Jennifer Skillen tells Feedback how thinking about thinking led to a mother-son collaboration during one of their shared reading sessions, which began years ago with The Very Hungry Caterpillar and now encompass New Scientist, along with other more adult material.

“The other day when I started reading the cancer section of ‘How to think about…’ [ New Scientist , 25 May, page 42], my son said, ‘Mum, how about reading it substituting the word fascist for cancer.’ Well, nothing is too much trouble for me when it comes to my son, so I did,” says Jennifer.

“Surprisingly, the article read very well with the substitution; it both continued to make sense, but was also very funny. It seems both cancer cells and fascist cells respond to changes in the environment, and can divide rapidly.”

Feedback agrees, and provides some snippets from the article so readers can make up their own minds: “Cancer cells compete for access to nutrients, and only the fittest survive… They’re evolving to become the best cancer cell they can become and that typically is bad news.”

Jennifer and her son have thus been wondering about other word pair substitutions that readers may have found for New Scientist articles, where the substitution “makes sense, increases knowledge and amuses”.

The question “What’s inside?” leads to many a surprise, sometimes involving an eel. Rohit Goel at Pondicherry Institute of Medical Sciences in India and his colleagues reveal one of those surprises.

Writing in the The American Journal of Forensic Medicine and Pathology , the researchers describe “ a rare example of an interesting postmortem artifact of the presence of moray eels within a corpse”.

The team says that to the best of its knowledge, “this is the first reported case of such a finding”.

Marc Abrahams created the Ig Nobel Prize ceremony and co-founded the magazine Annals of Improbable Research. Earlier, he worked on unusual ways to use computers. His website is improbable.com .

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You can send stories to Feedback by email at [email protected] . Please include your home address. This week’s and past Feedbacks can be seen on our website .

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COMMENTS

I don't understand how to write a literature review. : r/writing
A literature review begins as a collection of material and sources (usually peer-reviewed journal articles) that are related to your chosen topic/argument. When you begin researching your topic, you will be acquiring different journal articles that are related to your discipline, thesis, and topic/argument.
How to write a literature review? : r/AskAcademia
Sort by: sedatedcow420. • 7 yr. ago. Step 1: Start with a preliminary search. Just go onto google and type in "your topic" with systematic review or review. Start reading some of these papers and look at the sources they are citing to give you a better understanding of the research and what limitations the topic has.
I have 7 hours to learn what a Lit Review is, how to write a ...
Lit review- literally a review of the literature published on that specific topic/field- usually within a set time frame- IE like the within the last 5 years etc. For example- Lit review of the cellular entry mechanism of the Ebola virus- using all sources from only the last 5 years.
How to write a literature review? : r/AskAcademia
Here are some crucial points you need to consider: Select the vital areas of the existing literature and try to sum it up. Find out critical gaps or flaws present in the current research material. Outline the areas you think can be suggested for future study. Try linking the research to the exiting research materials.
How do I write the Literature Review : r/academia
I agree it sucks to write a lit review. Lots of ways to do it. My method may not work well for you, but I essentially 'take notes' and collect references for a while. Just read and notes, read and notes. Make sure I stare out the window to think about it every hour or so for a few minutes. Then, after a week or two of doing that off and on, I ...
Honestly, WTF is a literature review?
Literature review defined. A portion of a research paper that compiles, describes, and analyzes different sources of information relevant to a given research topic, and then draws connections between each source to one another and the research of the author writing the review. Rather than simply describing each of the sources, critical reviews ...
How have you been using Al for literature review and research ...
Grammar and writing help if needed - GPT-4. Note taking my thoughts if it's related to my research and if I feel like it - otter.ai. I know most people probably don't use many tools for the literature review, but if you do, are there any other tools you would recommend?
What hacks do you have for literature review? : r/PhD
This way I can just click on it and send an attachment. I use ResearchRabbit. Google scholar: " topic " "systemic review of". Look for big review papers in your field, and start going through papers in the references there. Seekfast app. End Note 20 30 day's free trial. https://rayyan.ai/.
How to Write a Critical Discussion for a Literature Review : r ...
Below is a structured approach to help you add critical analysis to your literature review. Structure for an Academic Critical Discussion. 1.Summarize the Main Arguments; Begin by summarizing the key points and arguments presented in the literature sources you are reviewing. This sets the stage for your critical analysis and ensures that your ...
Ten Simple Rules for Writing a Literature Review
Rule 4: Choose the Type of Review You Wish to Write. After having taken notes while reading the literature, you will have a rough idea of the amount of material available for the review. This is probably a good time to decide whether to go for a mini- or a full review.
How to Write a Literature Review
Examples of literature reviews. Step 1 - Search for relevant literature. Step 2 - Evaluate and select sources. Step 3 - Identify themes, debates, and gaps. Step 4 - Outline your literature review's structure. Step 5 - Write your literature review.
What is a Literature Review?
A literature review is a survey of scholarly sources on a specific topic. It provides an overview of current knowledge, allowing you to identify relevant theories, methods, and gaps in the existing research. There are five key steps to writing a literature review: Search for relevant literature. Evaluate sources. Identify themes, debates and gaps.
What procedure do you have for literature review purposes? : r ...
New grad student looking for advice on what procedure/resources/workflow you guys use to perform literature review. Need to find something that works for me. Idk if this helps but I'm a very visual thinker and learner. ... We are an all-inclusive Reddit community not only for Unitarian Universalists, but all interested in participating. Feel ...
Need help with writing essay for my literature class : r/InspireEd
Hi everyone, I'm really struggling with writing essays for my literature class. Does anyone have any tips for structuring an essay and organizing my…
How to Write a Literature Review
Your report, in addition to detailing the methods, results, etc. of your research, should show how your work relates to others' work. A literature review for a research report is often a revision of the review for a research proposal, which can be a revision of a stand-alone review. Each revision should be a fairly extensive revision.
Writing a Literature Review
Include References/Works Cited List. As you are writing the literature review you will mention the author names and the publication years in your text, but you will still need to compile comprehensive citations for each entry at the end of your review. Follow APA, MLA, or Chicago style guidelines, as your course requires.
Writing a Literature Review
Writing a Literature Review. A literature review is a document or section of a document that collects key sources on a topic and discusses those sources in conversation with each other (also called synthesis ). The lit review is an important genre in many disciplines, not just literature (i.e., the study of works of literature such as novels ...
To Dissertation Support Members…Help me in my dissertation ...
Should I mention other biomarkers or just mention glycemic control ——————-//// 2- should I do (descriptive literature review ) Or ( literature review with meta analysis) what kinds of research should I include ( RCTs, Cohort, Pilot, case studies….) If I have to choose meta analysis which software should I use( SPSS, R..,,,)
I can't find anything written on my topic… really?
The answer to the no literature question is always, always, always - what else is pertinent. The resulting strategy is to widen the boundaries of the search to include related and framing scholarship. Take off the blinkers and look further…. There is another answer of course. It's one that always lurks behind the nothing-written-on-my ...
Academic writing: What is a literature review?
In writing the literature review, your purpose is to convey to your reader what knowledge and ideas have been established on a topic, and what their strengths and weaknesses are. Critically read and annotate your sources with your research question or central issue in mind. Effective annotations. summarize the "gist" or main ideas of the ...
How to Write a Literature Review in 6 Steps
The literature review makes up a large portion of any research paper, so writing it well is a valuable skill. QuillBot enables you to write in 6 easy steps. Give yourself ample time, use the right tools, and follow these simple steps to write a thorough and compelling literature review.
r/literature on Reddit: What are some fine books and short stories that
Welcome to /r/literature, a community for deeper discussions of plays, poetry, short stories, and novels. Discussions of literary criticism, literary history, literary theory, and critical theory are also welcome. We are not /r/books: please do not use this sub to seek book recommendations or homework help.
A systematized literature review of Reddit
Literature Review Method. This was a systematized review. It had elements of a systematic review but fell short of claiming to be as comprehensive (Grant & Booth, 2009).Scoping of literature was done by searching the words 'Reddit' and 'subreddit' on Web of Science and Scopus databases between May and July 2019. The first 50 pages of Google Scholar was searched but no further.
Hardening
Feedback delves into a new study about snotty-nose prevention in children, and is intrigued to discover that hardening, rubbing and water procedures are the cutting edge of cold science these days

Ten Simple Rules for Writing a Literature Review

Rule 1: Define a Topic and Audience

Rule 2: Search and Re-search the Literature

Rule 3: Take Notes While Reading

Rule 4: Choose the Type of Review You Wish to Write

Rule 5: Keep the Review Focused, but Make It of Broad Interest

Rule 6: Be Critical and Consistent

Rule 7: Find a Logical Structure

Rule 8: Make Use of Feedback

Rule 9: Include Your Own Relevant Research, but Be Objective

Rule 10: Be Up-to-Date, but Do Not Forget Older Studies

Acknowledgments

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Theoretical

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