what is the meaning of rrl in research paper

Educational resources and simple solutions for your research journey

How to Write Review of Related Literature (RRL) in Research

A review of related literature (a.k.a RRL in research) is a comprehensive review of the existing literature pertaining to a specific topic or research question. An effective review provides the reader with an organized analysis and synthesis of the existing knowledge about a subject. With the increasing amount of new information being disseminated every day, conducting a review of related literature is becoming more difficult and the purpose of review of related literature is clearer than ever.  

All new knowledge is necessarily based on previously known information, and every new scientific study must be conducted and reported in the context of previous studies. This makes a review of related literature essential for research, and although it may be tedious work at times , most researchers will complete many such reviews of varying depths during their career. So, why exactly is a review of related literature important?    

Table of Contents

Why a review of related literature in research is important  

Before thinking how to do reviews of related literature , it is necessary to understand its importance. Although the purpose of a review of related literature varies depending on the discipline and how it will be used, its importance is never in question. Here are some ways in which a review can be crucial.  

• Identify gaps in the knowledge – This is the primary purpose of a review of related literature (often called RRL in research ). To create new knowledge, you must first determine what knowledge may be missing. This also helps to identify the scope of your study.  
• Avoid duplication of research efforts – Not only will a review of related literature indicate gaps in the existing research, but it will also lead you away from duplicating research that has already been done and thus save precious resources.  
• Provide an overview of disparate and interdisciplinary research areas – Researchers cannot possibly know everything related to their disciplines. Therefore, it is very helpful to have access to a review of related literature already written and published.  
• Highlight researcher’s familiarity with their topic 1  – A strong review of related literature in a study strengthens readers’ confidence in that study and that researcher.

Tips on how to write a review of related literature in research

Given that you will probably need to produce a number of these at some point, here are a few general tips on how to write an effective review of related literature 2 .

• Define your topic, audience, and purpose: You will be spending a lot of time with this review, so choose a topic that is interesting to you. While deciding what to write in a review of related literature , think about who you expect to read the review – researchers in your discipline, other scientists, the general public – and tailor the language to the audience. Also, think about the purpose of your review of related literature .  
• Conduct a comprehensive literature search: While writing your review of related literature , emphasize more recent works but don’t forget to include some older publications as well. Cast a wide net, as you may find some interesting and relevant literature in unexpected databases or library corners. Don’t forget to search for recent conference papers.
• Review the identified articles and take notes: It is a good idea to take notes in a way such that individual items in your notes can be moved around when you organize them. For example, index cards are great tools for this. Write each individual idea on a separate card along with the source. The cards can then be easily grouped and organized.  
• Determine how to organize your review: A review of related literature should not be merely a listing of descriptions. It should be organized by some criterion, such as chronologically or thematically.  
• Be critical and objective: Don’t just report the findings of other studies in your review of related literature . Challenge the methodology, find errors in the analysis, question the conclusions. Use what you find to improve your research. However, do not insert your opinions into the review of related literature. Remain objective and open-minded.  
• Structure your review logically: Guide the reader through the information. The structure will depend on the function of the review of related literature. Creating an outline prior to writing the RRL in research is a good way to ensure the presented information flows well.  

As you read more extensively in your discipline, you will notice that the review of related literature appears in various forms in different places. For example, when you read an article about an experimental study, you will typically see a literature review or a RRL in research , in the introduction that includes brief descriptions of similar studies. In longer research studies and dissertations, especially in the social sciences, the review of related literature will typically be a separate chapter and include more information on methodologies and theory building. In addition, stand-alone review articles will be published that are extremely useful to researchers.  

The review of relevant literature or often abbreviated as, RRL in research , is an important communication tool that can be used in many forms for many purposes. It is a tool that all researchers should befriend.  

• University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill Writing Center. Literature Reviews.  https://writingcenter.unc.edu/tips-and-tools/literature-reviews/  [Accessed September 8, 2022]
• Pautasso M. Ten simple rules for writing a literature review. PLoS Comput Biol. 2013, 9. doi: 10.1371/journal.pcbi.1003149.

Q:  Is research complete without a review of related literature?

A research project is usually considered incomplete without a proper review of related literature. The review of related literature is a crucial component of any research project as it provides context for the research question, identifies gaps in existing literature, and ensures novelty by avoiding duplication. It also helps inform research design and supports arguments, highlights the significance of a study, and demonstrates your knowledge an expertise.

Q: What is difference between RRL and RRS?

The key difference between an RRL and an RRS lies in their focus and scope. An RRL or review of related literature examines a broad range of literature, including theoretical frameworks, concepts, and empirical studies, to establish the context and significance of the research topic. On the other hand, an RRS or review of research studies specifically focuses on analyzing and summarizing previous research studies within a specific research domain to gain insights into methodologies, findings, and gaps in the existing body of knowledge. While there may be some overlap between the two, they serve distinct purposes and cover different aspects of the research process.

Q: Does review of related literature improve accuracy and validity of research?

Yes, a comprehensive review of related literature (RRL) plays a vital role in improving the accuracy and validity of research. It helps authors gain a deeper understanding and offers different perspectives on the research topic. RRL can help you identify research gaps, dictate the selection of appropriate research methodologies, enhance theoretical frameworks, avoid biases and errors, and even provide support for research design and interpretation. By building upon and critically engaging with existing related literature, researchers can ensure their work is rigorous, reliable, and contributes meaningfully to their field of study.

R Discovery is a literature search and research reading platform that accelerates your research discovery journey by keeping you updated on the latest, most relevant scholarly content. With 250M+ research articles sourced from trusted aggregators like CrossRef, Unpaywall, PubMed, PubMed Central, Open Alex and top publishing houses like Springer Nature, JAMA, IOP, Taylor & Francis, NEJM, BMJ, Karger, SAGE, Emerald Publishing and more, R Discovery puts a world of research at your fingertips.  

Try R Discovery Prime FREE for 1 week or upgrade at just US$72 a year to access premium features that let you listen to research on the go, read in your language, collaborate with peers, auto sync with reference managers, and much more. Choose a simpler, smarter way to find and read research – Download the app and start your free 7-day trial today !  

Related Posts

Article Processing Charges: Impact on Open Access Publishing

How Publishers Can Enhance Reader Engagement with R Discovery’s Article Recommendation System

• Affiliate Program

• UNITED STATES
• 台灣 (TAIWAN)
• TÜRKIYE (TURKEY)
• Academic Editing Services
• - Research Paper
• - Journal Manuscript
• - Dissertation
• - College & University Assignments
• Admissions Editing Services
• - Application Essay
• - Personal Statement
• - Recommendation Letter
• - Cover Letter
• - CV/Resume
• Business Editing Services
• - Business Documents
• - Report & Brochure
• - Website & Blog
• Writer Editing Services
• - Script & Screenplay
• Our Editors
• Client Reviews
• Editing & Proofreading Prices
• Wordvice Points
• Partner Discount
• Plagiarism Checker
• APA Citation Generator
• MLA Citation Generator
• Chicago Citation Generator
• Vancouver Citation Generator
• - APA Style
• - MLA Style
• - Chicago Style
• - Vancouver Style
• Writing & Editing Guide
• Academic Resources
• Admissions Resources

How to Make a Literature Review in Research (RRL Example)

What is an RRL in a research paper?

A relevant review of the literature (RRL) is an objective, concise, critical summary of published research literature relevant to a topic being researched in an article. In an RRL, you discuss knowledge and findings from existing literature relevant to your study topic. If there are conflicts or gaps in existing literature, you can also discuss these in your review, as well as how you will confront these missing elements or resolve these issues in your study.

To complete an RRL, you first need to collect relevant literature; this can include online and offline sources. Save all of your applicable resources as you will need to include them in your paper. When looking through these sources, take notes and identify concepts of each source to describe in the review of the literature.

A good RRL does NOT:

A literature review does not simply reference and list all of the material you have cited in your paper.

• Presenting material that is not directly relevant to your study will distract and frustrate the reader and make them lose sight of the purpose of your study.
• Starting a literature review with “A number of scholars have studied the relationship between X and Y” and simply listing who has studied the topic and what each scholar concluded is not going to strengthen your paper.

A good RRL DOES:

• Present a brief typology that orders articles and books into groups to help readers focus on unresolved debates, inconsistencies, tensions, and new questions about a research topic.
• Summarize the most relevant and important aspects of the scientific literature related to your area of research
• Synthesize what has been done in this area of research and by whom, highlight what previous research indicates about a topic, and identify potential gaps and areas of disagreement in the field
• Give the reader an understanding of the background of the field and show which studies are important—and highlight errors in previous studies

How long is a review of the literature for a research paper?

The length of a review of the literature depends on its purpose and target readership and can vary significantly in scope and depth. In a dissertation, thesis, or standalone review of literature, it is usually a full chapter of the text (at least 20 pages). Whereas, a standard research article or school assignment literature review section could only be a few paragraphs in the Introduction section .

Building Your Literature Review Bookshelf

One way to conceive of a literature review is to think about writing it as you would build a bookshelf. You don’t need to cut each piece by yourself from scratch. Rather, you can take the pieces that other researchers have cut out and put them together to build a framework on which to hang your own “books”—that is, your own study methods, results, and conclusions.

What Makes a Good Literature Review?

The contents of a literature review (RRL) are determined by many factors, including its precise purpose in the article, the degree of consensus with a given theory or tension between competing theories, the length of the article, the number of previous studies existing in the given field, etc. The following are some of the most important elements that a literature review provides.

Historical background for your research

Analyze what has been written about your field of research to highlight what is new and significant in your study—or how the analysis itself contributes to the understanding of this field, even in a small way. Providing a historical background also demonstrates to other researchers and journal editors your competency in discussing theoretical concepts. You should also make sure to understand how to paraphrase scientific literature to avoid plagiarism in your work.

The current context of your research

Discuss central (or peripheral) questions, issues, and debates in the field. Because a field is constantly being updated by new work, you can show where your research fits into this context and explain developments and trends in research.

A discussion of relevant theories and concepts

Theories and concepts should provide the foundation for your research. For example, if you are researching the relationship between ecological environments and human populations, provide models and theories that focus on specific aspects of this connection to contextualize your study. If your study asks a question concerning sustainability, mention a theory or model that underpins this concept. If it concerns invasive species, choose material that is focused in this direction.

Definitions of relevant terminology

In the natural sciences, the meaning of terms is relatively straightforward and consistent. But if you present a term that is obscure or context-specific, you should define the meaning of the term in the Introduction section (if you are introducing a study) or in the summary of the literature being reviewed.

Description of related relevant research

Include a description of related research that shows how your work expands or challenges earlier studies or fills in gaps in previous work. You can use your literature review as evidence of what works, what doesn’t, and what is missing in the field.

Supporting evidence for a practical problem or issue your research is addressing that demonstrates its importance: Referencing related research establishes your area of research as reputable and shows you are building upon previous work that other researchers have deemed significant.

Types of Literature Reviews

Literature reviews can differ in structure, length, amount, and breadth of content included. They can range from selective (a very narrow area of research or only a single work) to comprehensive (a larger amount or range of works). They can also be part of a larger work or stand on their own.

• A course assignment is an example of a selective, stand-alone work. It focuses on a small segment of the literature on a topic and makes up an entire work on its own.
• The literature review in a dissertation or thesis is both comprehensive and helps make up a larger work.
• A majority of journal articles start with a selective literature review to provide context for the research reported in the study; such a literature review is usually included in the Introduction section (but it can also follow the presentation of the results in the Discussion section ).
• Some literature reviews are both comprehensive and stand as a separate work—in this case, the entire article analyzes the literature on a given topic.

Literature Reviews Found in Academic Journals

The two types of literature reviews commonly found in journals are those introducing research articles (studies and surveys) and stand-alone literature analyses. They can differ in their scope, length, and specific purpose.

Literature reviews introducing research articles

The literature review found at the beginning of a journal article is used to introduce research related to the specific study and is found in the Introduction section, usually near the end. It is shorter than a stand-alone review because it must be limited to very specific studies and theories that are directly relevant to the current study. Its purpose is to set research precedence and provide support for the study’s theory, methods, results, and/or conclusions. Not all research articles contain an explicit review of the literature, but most do, whether it is a discrete section or indistinguishable from the rest of the Introduction.

How to structure a literature review for an article

When writing a literature review as part of an introduction to a study, simply follow the structure of the Introduction and move from the general to the specific—presenting the broadest background information about a topic first and then moving to specific studies that support your rationale , finally leading to your hypothesis statement. Such a literature review is often indistinguishable from the Introduction itself—the literature is INTRODUCING the background and defining the gaps your study aims to fill.

The stand-alone literature review

The literature review published as a stand-alone article presents and analyzes as many of the important publications in an area of study as possible to provide background information and context for a current area of research or a study. Stand-alone reviews are an excellent resource for researchers when they are first searching for the most relevant information on an area of study.

Such literature reviews are generally a bit broader in scope and can extend further back in time. This means that sometimes a scientific literature review can be highly theoretical, in addition to focusing on specific methods and outcomes of previous studies. In addition, all sections of such a “review article” refer to existing literature rather than describing the results of the authors’ own study.

In addition, this type of literature review is usually much longer than the literature review introducing a study. At the end of the review follows a conclusion that once again explicitly ties all of the cited works together to show how this analysis is itself a contribution to the literature. While not absolutely necessary, such articles often include the terms “Literature Review” or “Review of the Literature” in the title. Whether or not that is necessary or appropriate can also depend on the specific author instructions of the target journal. Have a look at this article for more input on how to compile a stand-alone review article that is insightful and helpful for other researchers in your field.

How to Write a Literature Review in 6 Steps

So how do authors turn a network of articles into a coherent review of relevant literature?

Writing a literature review is not usually a linear process—authors often go back and check the literature while reformulating their ideas or making adjustments to their study. Sometimes new findings are published before a study is completed and need to be incorporated into the current work. This also means you will not be writing the literature review at any one time, but constantly working on it before, during, and after your study is complete.

Here are some steps that will help you begin and follow through on your literature review.

Step 1: Choose a topic to write about—focus on and explore this topic.

Choose a topic that you are familiar with and highly interested in analyzing; a topic your intended readers and researchers will find interesting and useful; and a topic that is current, well-established in the field, and about which there has been sufficient research conducted for a review. This will help you find the “sweet spot” for what to focus on.

Step 2: Research and collect all the scholarly information on the topic that might be pertinent to your study.

This includes scholarly articles, books, conventions, conferences, dissertations, and theses—these and any other academic work related to your area of study is called “the literature.”

Step 3: Analyze the network of information that extends or responds to the major works in your area; select the material that is most useful.

Use thought maps and charts to identify intersections in the research and to outline important categories; select the material that will be most useful to your review.

Step 4: Describe and summarize each article—provide the essential information of the article that pertains to your study.

Determine 2-3 important concepts (depending on the length of your article) that are discussed in the literature; take notes about all of the important aspects of this study relevant to the topic being reviewed.

For example, in a given study, perhaps some of the main concepts are X, Y, and Z. Note these concepts and then write a brief summary about how the article incorporates them. In reviews that introduce a study, these can be relatively short. In stand-alone reviews, there may be significantly more texts and more concepts.

Step 5: Demonstrate how these concepts in the literature relate to what you discovered in your study or how the literature connects the concepts or topics being discussed.

In a literature review intro for an article, this information might include a summary of the results or methods of previous studies that correspond to and/or confirm those sections in your own study. For a stand-alone literature review, this may mean highlighting the concepts in each article and showing how they strengthen a hypothesis or show a pattern.

Discuss unaddressed issues in previous studies. These studies that are missing something you address are important to include in your literature review. In addition, those works whose theories and conclusions directly support your findings will be valuable to review here.

Step 6: Identify relationships in the literature and develop and connect your own ideas to them.

This is essentially the same as step 5 but focused on the connections between the literature and the current study or guiding concepts or arguments of the paper, not only on the connections between the works themselves.

Your hypothesis, argument, or guiding concept is the “golden thread” that will ultimately tie the works together and provide readers with specific insights they didn’t have before reading your literature review. Make sure you know where to put the research question , hypothesis, or statement of the problem in your research paper so that you guide your readers logically and naturally from your introduction of earlier work and evidence to the conclusions you want them to draw from the bigger picture.

Your literature review will not only cover publications on your topics but will include your own ideas and contributions. By following these steps you will be telling the specific story that sets the background and shows the significance of your research and you can turn a network of related works into a focused review of the literature.

Literature Review (RRL) Examples

Because creating sample literature reviews would take too long and not properly capture the nuances and detailed information needed for a good review, we have included some links to different types of literature reviews below. You can find links to more literature reviews in these categories by visiting the TUS Library’s website . Sample literature reviews as part of an article, dissertation, or thesis:

• Critical Thinking and Transferability: A Review of the Literature (Gwendolyn Reece)
• Building Customer Loyalty: A Customer Experience Based Approach in a Tourism Context (Martina Donnelly)

Sample stand-alone literature reviews

• Literature Review on Attitudes towards Disability (National Disability Authority)
• The Effects of Communication Styles on Marital Satisfaction (Hannah Yager)

Additional Literature Review Format Guidelines

In addition to the content guidelines above, authors also need to check which style guidelines to use ( APA , Chicago, MLA, etc.) and what specific rules the target journal might have for how to structure such articles or how many studies to include—such information can usually be found on the journals’ “Guide for Authors” pages. Additionally, use one of the four Wordvice citation generators below, choosing the citation style needed for your paper:

Wordvice Writing and Academic Editing Resources

Finally, after you have finished drafting your literature review, be sure to receive professional proofreading services , including paper editing for your academic work. A competent proofreader who understands academic writing conventions and the specific style guides used by academic journals will ensure that your paper is ready for publication in your target journal.

See our academic resources for further advice on references in your paper , how to write an abstract , how to write a research paper title, how to impress the editor of your target journal with a perfect cover letter , and dozens of other research writing and publication topics.

Review of Related Literature: Format, Example, & How to Make RRL

A review of related literature is a separate paper or a part of an article that collects and synthesizes discussion on a topic. Its purpose is to show the current state of research on the issue and highlight gaps in existing knowledge. A literature review can be included in a research paper or scholarly article, typically following the introduction and before the research methods section.

This article will clarify the definition, significance, and structure of a review of related literature. You’ll also learn how to organize your literature review and discover ideas for an RRL in different subjects.

🔤 What Is RRL?

• ❗ Significance of Literature Review
• 🔎 How to Search for Literature
• 🧩 Literature Review Structure
• 📋 Format of RRL — APA, MLA, & Others
• ✍️ How to Write an RRL
• 📚 Examples of RRL

🔗 References

A review of related literature (RRL) is a part of the research report that examines significant studies, theories, and concepts published in scholarly sources on a particular topic. An RRL includes 3 main components:

• A short overview and critique of the previous research.
• Similarities and differences between past studies and the current one.
• An explanation of the theoretical frameworks underpinning the research.

❗ Significance of Review of Related Literature

Although the goal of a review of related literature differs depending on the discipline and its intended use, its significance cannot be overstated. Here are some examples of how a review might be beneficial:

• It helps determine knowledge gaps .
• It saves from duplicating research that has already been conducted.
• It provides an overview of various research areas within the discipline.
• It demonstrates the researcher’s familiarity with the topic.

🔎 How to Perform a Literature Search

Including a description of your search strategy in the literature review section can significantly increase your grade. You can search sources with the following steps:

🧩 Literature Review Structure Example

The majority of literature reviews follow a standard introduction-body-conclusion structure. Let’s look at the RRL structure in detail.

Introduction of Review of Related Literature: Sample

An introduction should clarify the study topic and the depth of the information to be delivered. It should also explain the types of sources used. If your lit. review is part of a larger research proposal or project, you can combine its introductory paragraph with the introduction of your paper.

Here is a sample introduction to an RRL about cyberbullying:

Bullying has troubled people since the beginning of time. However, with modern technological advancements, especially social media, bullying has evolved into cyberbullying. As a result, nowadays, teenagers and adults cannot flee their bullies, which makes them feel lonely and helpless. This literature review will examine recent studies on cyberbullying.

Sample Review of Related Literature Thesis

A thesis statement should include the central idea of your literature review and the primary supporting elements you discovered in the literature. Thesis statements are typically put at the end of the introductory paragraph.

Look at a sample thesis of a review of related literature:

This literature review shows that scholars have recently covered the issues of bullies’ motivation, the impact of bullying on victims and aggressors, common cyberbullying techniques, and victims’ coping strategies. However, there is still no agreement on the best practices to address cyberbullying.

Literature Review Body Paragraph Example

The main body of a literature review should provide an overview of the existing research on the issue. Body paragraphs should not just summarize each source but analyze them. You can organize your paragraphs with these 3 elements:

• Claim . Start with a topic sentence linked to your literature review purpose.
• Evidence . Cite relevant information from your chosen sources.
• Discussion . Explain how the cited data supports your claim.

Here’s a literature review body paragraph example:

Scholars have examined the link between the aggressor and the victim. Beran et al. (2007) state that students bullied online often become cyberbullies themselves. Faucher et al. (2014) confirm this with their findings: they discovered that male and female students began engaging in cyberbullying after being subject to bullying. Hence, one can conclude that being a victim of bullying increases one’s likelihood of becoming a cyberbully.

Review of Related Literature: Conclusion

A conclusion presents a general consensus on the topic. Depending on your literature review purpose, it might include the following:

• Introduction to further research . If you write a literature review as part of a larger research project, you can present your research question in your conclusion .
• Overview of theories . You can summarize critical theories and concepts to help your reader understand the topic better.
• Discussion of the gap . If you identified a research gap in the reviewed literature, your conclusion could explain why that gap is significant.

Check out a conclusion example that discusses a research gap:

There is extensive research into bullies’ motivation, the consequences of bullying for victims and aggressors, strategies for bullying, and coping with it. Yet, scholars still have not reached a consensus on what to consider the best practices to combat cyberbullying. This question is of great importance because of the significant adverse effects of cyberbullying on victims and bullies.

📋 Format of RRL — APA, MLA, & Others

In this section, we will discuss how to format an RRL according to the most common citation styles: APA, Chicago, MLA, and Harvard.

Writing a literature review using the APA7 style requires the following text formatting:

• When using APA in-text citations , include the author’s last name and the year of publication in parentheses.
• For direct quotations , you must also add the page number. If you use sources without page numbers, such as websites or e-books, include a paragraph number instead.
• When referring to the author’s name in a sentence , you do not need to repeat it at the end of the sentence. Instead, include the year of publication inside the parentheses after their name.
• The reference list should be included at the end of your literature review. It is always alphabetized by the last name of the author (from A to Z), and the lines are indented one-half inch from the left margin of your paper. Do not forget to invert authors’ names (the last name should come first) and include the full titles of journals instead of their abbreviations. If you use an online source, add its URL.

The RRL format in the Chicago style is as follows:

• Author-date . You place your citations in brackets within the text, indicating the name of the author and the year of publication.
• Notes and bibliography . You place your citations in numbered footnotes or endnotes to connect the citation back to the source in the bibliography.
• The reference list, or bibliography , in Chicago style, is at the end of a literature review. The sources are arranged alphabetically and single-spaced. Each bibliography entry begins with the author’s name and the source’s title, followed by publication information, such as the city of publication, the publisher, and the year of publication.

Writing a literature review using the MLA style requires the following text formatting:

• In the MLA format, you can cite a source in the text by indicating the author’s last name and the page number in parentheses at the end of the citation. If the cited information takes several pages, you need to include all the page numbers.
• The reference list in MLA style is titled “ Works Cited .” In this section, all sources used in the paper should be listed in alphabetical order. Each entry should contain the author, title of the source, title of the journal or a larger volume, other contributors, version, number, publisher, and publication date.

The Harvard style requires you to use the following text formatting for your RRL:

• In-text citations in the Harvard style include the author’s last name and the year of publication. If you are using a direct quote in your literature review, you need to add the page number as well.
• Arrange your list of references alphabetically. Each entry should contain the author’s last name, their initials, the year of publication, the title of the source, and other publication information, like the journal title and issue number or the publisher.

✍️ How to Write Review of Related Literature – Sample

Literature reviews can be organized in many ways depending on what you want to achieve with them. In this section, we will look at 3 examples of how you can write your RRL.

Thematic Literature Review

A thematic literature review is arranged around central themes or issues discussed in the sources. If you have identified some recurring themes in the literature, you can divide your RRL into sections that address various aspects of the topic. For example, if you examine studies on e-learning, you can distinguish such themes as the cost-effectiveness of online learning, the technologies used, and its effectiveness compared to traditional education.

Chronological Literature Review

A chronological literature review is a way to track the development of the topic over time. If you use this method, avoid merely listing and summarizing sources in chronological order. Instead, try to analyze the trends, turning moments, and critical debates that have shaped the field’s path. Also, you can give your interpretation of how and why specific advances occurred.

Methodological Literature Review

A methodological literature review differs from the preceding ones in that it usually doesn’t focus on the sources’ content. Instead, it is concerned with the research methods . So, if your references come from several disciplines or fields employing various research techniques, you can compare the findings and conclusions of different methodologies, for instance:

• empirical vs. theoretical studies;
• qualitative vs. quantitative research.

📚 Examples of Review of Related Literature and Studies

We have prepared a short example of RRL on climate change for you to see how everything works in practice!

Climate change is one of the most important issues nowadays. Based on a variety of facts, it is now clearer than ever that humans are altering the Earth's climate. The atmosphere and oceans have warmed, causing sea level rise, a significant loss of Arctic ice, and other climate-related changes. This literature review provides a thorough summary of research on climate change, focusing on climate change fingerprints and evidence of human influence on the Earth's climate system.

Physical Mechanisms and Evidence of Human Influence

Scientists are convinced that climate change is directly influenced by the emission of greenhouse gases. They have carefully analyzed various climate data and evidence, concluding that the majority of the observed global warming over the past 50 years cannot be explained by natural factors alone. Instead, there is compelling evidence pointing to a significant contribution of human activities, primarily the emission of greenhouse gases (Walker, 2014). For example, based on simple physics calculations, doubled carbon dioxide concentration in the atmosphere can lead to a global temperature increase of approximately 1 degree Celsius. (Elderfield, 2022). In order to determine the human influence on climate, scientists still have to analyze a lot of natural changes that affect temperature, precipitation, and other components of climate on timeframes ranging from days to decades and beyond.

Fingerprinting Climate Change

Fingerprinting climate change is a useful tool to identify the causes of global warming because different factors leave unique marks on climate records. This is evident when scientists look beyond overall temperature changes and examine how warming is distributed geographically and over time (Watson, 2022). By investigating these climate patterns, scientists can obtain a more complex understanding of the connections between natural climate variability and climate variability caused by human activity.

Modeling Climate Change and Feedback

To accurately predict the consequences of feedback mechanisms, the rate of warming, and regional climate change, scientists can employ sophisticated mathematical models of the atmosphere, ocean, land, and ice (the cryosphere). These models are grounded in well-established physical laws and incorporate the latest scientific understanding of climate-related processes (Shuckburgh, 2013). Although different climate models produce slightly varying projections for future warming, they all will agree that feedback mechanisms play a significant role in amplifying the initial warming caused by greenhouse gas emissions. (Meehl, 2019).

In conclusion, the literature on global warming indicates that there are well-understood physical processes that link variations in greenhouse gas concentrations to climate change. In addition, it covers the scientific proof that the rates of these gases in the atmosphere have increased and continue to rise fast. According to the sources, the majority of this recent change is almost definitely caused by greenhouse gas emissions produced by human activities. Citizens and governments can alter their energy production methods and consumption patterns to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and, thus, the magnitude of climate change. By acting now, society can prevent the worst consequences of climate change and build a more resilient and sustainable future for generations to come.

Have you ever struggled with finding the topic for an RRL in different subjects? Read the following paragraphs to get some ideas!

Nursing Literature Review Example

Many topics in the nursing field require research. For example, you can write a review of literature related to dengue fever . Give a general overview of dengue virus infections, including its clinical symptoms, diagnosis, prevention, and therapy.

Another good idea is to review related literature and studies about teenage pregnancy . This review can describe the effectiveness of specific programs for adolescent mothers and their children and summarize recommendations for preventing early pregnancy.

📝 Check out some more valuable examples below:

• Hospital Readmissions: Literature Review .
• Literature Review: Lower Sepsis Mortality Rates .
• Breast Cancer: Literature Review .
• Sexually Transmitted Diseases: Literature Review .
• PICO for Pressure Ulcers: Literature Review .
• COVID-19 Spread Prevention: Literature Review .
• Chronic Obstructive Pulmonary Disease: Literature Review .
• Hypertension Treatment Adherence: Literature Review .
• Neonatal Sepsis Prevention: Literature Review .
• Healthcare-Associated Infections: Literature Review .
• Understaffing in Nursing: Literature Review .

Psychology Literature Review Example

If you look for an RRL topic in psychology , you can write a review of related literature about stress . Summarize scientific evidence about stress stages, side effects, types, or reduction strategies. Or you can write a review of related literature about computer game addiction . In this case, you may concentrate on the neural mechanisms underlying the internet gaming disorder, compare it to other addictions, or evaluate treatment strategies.

A review of related literature about cyberbullying is another interesting option. You can highlight the impact of cyberbullying on undergraduate students’ academic, social, and emotional development.

📝 Look at the examples that we have prepared for you to come up with some more ideas:

• Mindfulness in Counseling: A Literature Review .
• Team-Building Across Cultures: Literature Review .
• Anxiety and Decision Making: Literature Review .
• Literature Review on Depression .
• Literature Review on Narcissism .
• Effects of Depression Among Adolescents .
• Causes and Effects of Anxiety in Children .

Literature Review — Sociology Example

Sociological research poses critical questions about social structures and phenomena. For example, you can write a review of related literature about child labor , exploring cultural beliefs and social norms that normalize the exploitation of children. Or you can create a review of related literature about social media . It can investigate the impact of social media on relationships between adolescents or the role of social networks on immigrants’ acculturation .

📝 You can find some more ideas below!

• Single Mothers’ Experiences of Relationships with Their Adolescent Sons .
• Teachers and Students’ Gender-Based Interactions .
• Gender Identity: Biological Perspective and Social Cognitive Theory .
• Gender: Culturally-Prescribed Role or Biological Sex .
• The Influence of Opioid Misuse on Academic Achievement of Veteran Students .
• The Importance of Ethics in Research .
• The Role of Family and Social Network Support in Mental Health .

Education Literature Review Example

For your education studies , you can write a review of related literature about academic performance to determine factors that affect student achievement and highlight research gaps. One more idea is to create a review of related literature on study habits , considering their role in the student’s life and academic outcomes.

You can also evaluate a computerized grading system in a review of related literature to single out its advantages and barriers to implementation. Or you can complete a review of related literature on instructional materials to identify their most common types and effects on student achievement.

📝 Find some inspiration in the examples below:

• Literature Review on Online Learning Challenges From COVID-19 .
• Education, Leadership, and Management: Literature Review .
• Literature Review: Standardized Testing Bias .
• Bullying of Disabled Children in School .
• Interventions and Letter & Sound Recognition: A Literature Review .
• Social-Emotional Skills Program for Preschoolers .
• Effectiveness of Educational Leadership Management Skills .

Business Research Literature Review

If you’re a business student, you can focus on customer satisfaction in your review of related literature. Discuss specific customer satisfaction features and how it is affected by service quality and prices. You can also create a theoretical literature review about consumer buying behavior to evaluate theories that have significantly contributed to understanding how consumers make purchasing decisions.

📝 Look at the examples to get more exciting ideas:

• Leadership and Communication: Literature Review .
• Human Resource Development: Literature Review .
• Project Management. Literature Review .
• Strategic HRM: A Literature Review .
• Customer Relationship Management: Literature Review .
• Literature Review on International Financial Reporting Standards .
• Cultures of Management: Literature Review .

To conclude, a review of related literature is a significant genre of scholarly works that can be applied in various disciplines and for multiple goals. The sources examined in an RRL provide theoretical frameworks for future studies and help create original research questions and hypotheses.

When you finish your outstanding literature review, don’t forget to check whether it sounds logical and coherent. Our text-to-speech tool can help you with that!

• Literature Reviews | University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill
• Writing a Literature Review | Purdue Online Writing Lab
• Learn How to Write a Review of Literature | University of Wisconsin-Madison
• The Literature Review: A Few Tips on Conducting It | University of Toronto
• Writing a Literature Review | UC San Diego
• Conduct a Literature Review | The University of Arizona
• Methods for Literature Reviews | National Library of Medicine
• Literature Reviews: 5. Write the Review | Georgia State University

How to Write an Animal Testing Essay: Tips for Argumentative & Persuasive Papers

Descriptive essay topics: examples, outline, & more.

Review of Related Literature (RRL)

Ai generator.

The Review of Related Literature (RRL) is a crucial section in research that examines existing studies and publications related to a specific topic. It summarizes and synthesizes previous findings, identifies gaps, and provides context for the current research. RRL ensures the research is grounded in established knowledge, guiding the direction and focus of new studies.

What Is Review of Related Literature (RRL)?

The Review of Related Literature (RRL) is a detailed analysis of existing research relevant to a specific topic. It evaluates, synthesizes, and summarizes previous studies to identify trends, gaps, and conflicts in the literature. RRL provides a foundation for new research, ensuring it builds on established knowledge and addresses existing gaps.

Format of Review of Related Literature (RRL)

The Review of Related Literature (RRL) is a critical part of any research paper or thesis . It provides an overview of existing research on your topic and helps to establish the context for your study. Here is a typical format for an RRL:

1. Introduction

• Purpose : Explain the purpose of the review and its importance to your research.
• Scope : Define the scope of the literature reviewed, including the time frame, types of sources, and key themes.

2. Theoretical Framework

• Concepts and Theories : Present the main theories and concepts that underpin your research.
• Relevance : Explain how these theories relate to your study.

3. Review of Empirical Studies

• Sub-theme 1 : Summarize key studies, including methodologies, findings, and conclusions.
• Sub-theme 2 : Continue summarizing studies, focusing on different aspects or variables.
• Sub-theme 3 : Include any additional relevant studies.

4. Methodological Review

• Approaches : Discuss the various methodologies used in the reviewed studies.
• Strengths and Weaknesses : Highlight the strengths and weaknesses of these methodologies.
• Gaps : Identify gaps in the existing research that your study aims to address.

5. Synthesis and Critique

• Integration : Integrate findings from the reviewed studies to show the current state of knowledge.
• Critique : Critically evaluate the literature, discussing inconsistencies, limitations, and areas for further research.

6. Conclusion

• Summary : Summarize the main findings from the literature review.
• Research Gap : Clearly state the research gap your study will address.
• Contribution : Explain how your study will contribute to the existing body of knowledge.

7. References

• Citation Style : List all the sources cited in your literature review in the appropriate citation style (e.g., APA, MLA, Chicago).

Review of Related Literature (RRL) 1. Introduction This review examines research on social media’s impact on mental health, focusing on anxiety and depression across various demographics over the past ten years. 2. Theoretical Framework Anchored in Social Comparison Theory and Uses and Gratifications Theory, this review explores how individuals’ social media interactions affect their mental health. 3. Review of Empirical Studies Adolescents’ Mental Health Instagram & Body Image : Smith & Johnson (2017) found Instagram use linked to body image issues and lower self-esteem among 500 high school students. Facebook & Anxiety : Brown & Green (2016) showed Facebook use correlated with higher anxiety and depressive symptoms in a longitudinal study of 300 students. Young Adults’ Mental Health Twitter & Stress : Davis & Lee (2018) reported higher stress levels among heavy Twitter users in a survey of 400 university students. LinkedIn & Self-Esteem : Miller & White (2019) found LinkedIn use positively influenced professional self-esteem in 200 young professionals. Adult Mental Health General Social Media Use : Thompson & Evans (2020) found moderate social media use associated with better mental health outcomes, while excessive use correlated with higher anxiety and depression in 1,000 adults. 4. Methodological Review Studies used cross-sectional surveys, longitudinal designs, and mixed methods. Cross-sectional surveys provided large data sets but couldn’t infer causation. Longitudinal studies offered insights into long-term effects but were resource-intensive. Mixed methods enriched data through qualitative insights but required careful integration. 5. Synthesis and Critique The literature shows a complex relationship between social media and mental health, with platform-specific and demographic-specific effects. However, reliance on self-reported data introduces bias, and many cross-sectional studies limit causal inference. More longitudinal and experimental research is needed. 6. Conclusion Current research offers insights into social media’s mental health impact but leaves gaps, particularly regarding long-term effects and causation. This study aims to address these gaps through comprehensive longitudinal analysis. 7. References Brown, A., & Green, K. (2016). Facebook Use and Anxiety Among High School Students . Psychology in the Schools, 53(3), 257-264. Davis, R., & Lee, S. (2018). Twitter and Psychological Stress: A Study of University Students . Journal of College Student Development, 59(2), 120-135. Miller, P., & White, H. (2019). LinkedIn and Its Effect on Professional Self-Esteem . Journal of Applied Psychology, 104(1), 78-90. Smith, J., & Johnson, L. (2017). The Impact of Instagram on Teen Body Image . Journal of Adolescent Health, 60(5), 555-560. Thompson, M., & Evans, D. (2020). The Relationship Between Social Media Use and Mental Health in Adults . Cyberpsychology, Behavior, and Social Networking, 23(4), 201-208.

Review of Related Literature (RRL) Examples

Review of related literature in research, review of related literature in research paper, review of related literature qualitative research.

Review of Related Literature Quantitative Research

More Review of Related Literature (RRL) Examples

• Impact of E-learning on Student Performance
• Effectiveness of Mindfulness in Workplace
• Green Building and Energy Efficiency
• Impact of Technology on Healthcare Delivery
• Effects of Nutrition on Cognitive Development in Children
• Impact of Employee Training Programs on Productivity
• Effects of Climate Change on Biodiversity
• Impact of Parental Involvement on Student Achievement
• Effects of Mobile Learning on Student Engagement
• Effects of Urban Green Spaces on Mental Health

Purpose of the Review of Related Literature (RRL)

The Review of Related Literature (RRL) serves several critical purposes in research:

• Establishing Context : It situates your research within the broader field, showing how your study relates to existing work.
• Identifying Gaps : It highlights gaps, inconsistencies, and areas needing further exploration in current knowledge, providing a clear rationale for your study.
• Avoiding Duplication : By reviewing what has already been done, it helps ensure your research is original and not a repetition of existing studies.
• Building on Existing Knowledge : It allows you to build on the findings of previous research, using established theories and methodologies to inform your work.
• Theoretical Foundation : It provides a theoretical basis for your research, grounding it in existing concepts and theories.
• Methodological Insights : It offers insights into the methods and approaches used in similar studies, helping you choose the most appropriate methods for your research.
• Establishing Credibility : It demonstrates your familiarity with the field, showing that you are well-informed and have a solid foundation for your research.
• Supporting Arguments : It provides evidence and support for your research questions, hypotheses, and objectives, strengthening the overall argument of your study.

How to Write Review of Related Literature (RRL)

Writing a Review of Related Literature (RRL) involves several key steps. Here’s a step-by-step guide:

1. Define the Scope and Objectives

• Determine the Scope : Decide on the breadth of the literature you will review, including specific themes, time frame, and types of sources.
• Set Objectives : Clearly define the purpose of the review. What do you aim to achieve? Identify gaps, establish context, or build on existing knowledge.

2. Search for Relevant Literature

• Identify Keywords : Use keywords and phrases related to your research topic.
• Use Databases : Search academic databases like Google Scholar, PubMed, JSTOR, etc., for relevant articles, books, and papers.
• Select Sources : Choose sources that are credible, recent, and relevant to your research.

3. Evaluate and Select the Literature

• Read Abstracts and Summaries : Quickly determine the relevance of each source.
• Assess Quality : Consider the methodology, credibility of the authors, and publication source.
• Select Key Studies : Choose studies that are most relevant to your research questions and objectives.

4. Organize the Literature

• Thematic Organization : Group studies by themes or topics.
• Chronological Organization : Arrange studies in the order they were published to show the development of ideas over time.
• Methodological Organization : Categorize studies by the methods they used.

5. Write the Review

• State the purpose and scope of the review.
• Explain the importance of the topic.
• Theoretical Framework : Present and discuss the main theories and concepts.
• Summarize key studies, including their methodologies, findings, and conclusions.
• Organize by themes or other chosen organizational methods.
• Methodological Review : Discuss the various methodologies used, highlighting their strengths and weaknesses.
• Synthesis and Critique : Integrate findings, critically evaluate the literature, and identify gaps or inconsistencies.
• Summarize the main findings from the literature review.
• Highlight the research gaps your study will address.
• State how your research will contribute to the existing knowledge.

6. Cite the Sources

• Use Appropriate Citation Style : Follow the required citation style (e.g., APA, MLA, Chicago).
• List References : Provide a complete list of all sources cited in your review.

What is an RRL?

An RRL summarizes and synthesizes existing research on a specific topic to identify gaps and guide future studies.

Why is RRL important?

It provides context, highlights gaps, and ensures new research builds on existing knowledge.

How do you write an RRL?

Organize by themes, summarize studies, evaluate methodologies, identify gaps, and conclude with relevance to current research.

What sources are used in RRL?

Peer-reviewed journals, books, conference papers, and credible online resources.

How long should an RRL be?

Length varies; typically 10-20% of the total research paper.

What are common RRL mistakes?

Lack of organization, insufficient synthesis, over-reliance on outdated sources, and failure to identify gaps.

Can an RRL include non-scholarly sources?

Primarily scholarly, but reputable non-scholarly sources can be included for context.

What is the difference between RRL and bibliography?

RRL synthesizes and analyzes the literature, while a bibliography lists sources.

How often should an RRL be updated?

Regularly, especially when new relevant research is published.

Can an RRL influence research direction?

Yes, it identifies gaps and trends that shape the focus and methodology of new research.

Text prompt

• Instructive
• Professional

10 Examples of Public speaking

20 Examples of Gas lighting

International Journal of Science and Research (IJSR) Call for Papers | Fully Refereed | Open Access | Double Blind Peer Reviewed

ISSN: 2319-7064

What is RRL in Research Paper?

RRL in a research paper usually refers to " Related Research Literature " or "Review of Related Literature". It is a section in a research paper that discusses the relevant studies, theories, and concepts that have been published in academic journals, books, or other sources that are related to the research topic.

The purpose of the RRL section is to provide a comprehensive understanding of the existing knowledge on the topic and to highlight the gaps in the literature that the current study aims to address. It also helps to establish the context of the research and to support the significance and relevance of the study.

The RRL section typically includes a summary and critique of the previous studies, identification of the similarities and differences between the previous studies and the current research, and a discussion of the theoretical frameworks or models that underlie the research. The sources cited in this section are used to build the theoretical foundation of the study, and they provide a basis for the formulation of the research questions or hypotheses.

Managing Editor , International Journal of Science and Research (IJSR)

www.ijsr.net

Purdue Online Writing Lab Purdue OWL® College of Liberal Arts

Writing a Literature Review

Welcome to the Purdue OWL

This page is brought to you by the OWL at Purdue University. When printing this page, you must include the entire legal notice.

Copyright ©1995-2018 by The Writing Lab & The OWL at Purdue and Purdue University. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, reproduced, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed without permission. Use of this site constitutes acceptance of our terms and conditions of fair use.

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.

An official website of the United States government

The .gov means it’s official. Federal government websites often end in .gov or .mil. Before sharing sensitive information, make sure you’re on a federal government site.

The site is secure. The https:// ensures that you are connecting to the official website and that any information you provide is encrypted and transmitted securely.

• Publications
• Account settings

Preview improvements coming to the PMC website in October 2024. Learn More or Try it out now .

• Advanced Search
• Journal List
• PLoS Comput Biol
• v.9(7); 2013 Jul

Ten Simple Rules for Writing a Literature Review

Marco pautasso.

1 Centre for Functional and Evolutionary Ecology (CEFE), CNRS, Montpellier, France

2 Centre for Biodiversity Synthesis and Analysis (CESAB), FRB, Aix-en-Provence, France

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,

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] .

• 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.

Funding Statement

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.

Have a language expert improve your writing

Run a free plagiarism check in 10 minutes, automatically generate references for free.

• Knowledge Base
• Dissertation
• 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.

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
• 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.

Table of contents

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.

The only proofreading tool specialized in correcting academic writing

The academic proofreading tool has been trained on 1000s of academic texts and by native English editors. Making it the most accurate and reliable proofreading tool for students.

Correct my document today

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.

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.

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 .

Cite this Scribbr article

If you want to cite this source, you can copy and paste the citation or click the ‘Cite this Scribbr article’ button to automatically add the citation to our free Reference Generator.

McCombes, S. (2022, June 07). What is a Literature Review? | Guide, Template, & Examples. Scribbr. Retrieved 24 June 2024, from https://www.scribbr.co.uk/thesis-dissertation/literature-review/

Is this article helpful?

Shona McCombes

Other students also liked, how to write a dissertation proposal | a step-by-step guide, what is a theoretical framework | a step-by-step guide, what is a research methodology | steps & tips.

• UWF Libraries

Electrical Engineering

• Literature Review
• Types of Sources
• Evaluating Sources

What Is A Literature Review?

Steps for conducting a lit review.

• IEEE Explore
• Other Resources
• Open Education Resources
• After Graduation

Ask A Librarian

More about the Literature Review...

Did you know the library has an entire guide to help you write a literature review?  Click the link below to learn more!

• Literature Review: Conducting & Writing by Britt McGowan Last Updated Mar 22, 2024 136741 views this year

Get Writing Help

The UWF Writing Lab can help you with grammar, proofreading, and answer questions about your paper.  For a full list of their services, look at the Lab Hours and Resources menue.

A Literature Review Is Not:

• just a summary of sources
• a grouping of broad, unrelated sources
• a compilation of  everything  that has been written on a particular topic
• literature criticism (think English) or a book review

So, what is it then?

A literature review is an integrated analysis-- not just a summary-- of scholarly writings that are related directly to your research question.  That is, it represents the literature that provides background information on your topic and shows a correspondence between those writings and your research question.

A literature review may be a stand alone work or the introduction to a larger research paper, depending on the assignment.  Rely heavily on the guidelines your instructor has given you.

Why is it important?

A literature review is important because it:

• Explains the background of research on a topic.
• Demonstrates why a topic is significant to a subject area.
• Discovers relationships between research studies/ideas.
• Identifies major themes, concepts, and researchers on a topic.
• Identifies critical gaps and points of disagreement.
• Discusses further research questions that logically come out of the previous studies.

1. Choose your topic, define your question

• Your literature review should be guided by a central research question.  Remember, it is not a collection of loosely related studies in a field but instead represents background and research developments related to a specific research question, interpreted and analyzed by you.

2. Decide on the scope of your review

• How many studies do you need to look at? How comprehensive should it be? How many years should it cover? 

3. Select the databases you will use to conduct your searches

4. Conduct your searches and find the literature. Keep track of your searches!

• Review the abstracts and conclusions carefully. This will save you time.
• Write down the keywords you used and where you found them
• Use RefWorks to keep track of your citations.

5. Review the literature! This is the most time consuming part.

• What was the research question of the study you are reviewing? What were the authors trying to discover?
• Was the research funded by a source that could influence the findings?
• What were the research methodologies? Analyze its literature review, the samples and variables used, the results, and the conclusions. Does the research seem to be complete? Could it have been conducted more soundly? What further questions does it raise?
• If there are conflicting studies, why do you think that is?
• How are the authors viewed in the field? Has this study been cited?; if so, how has it been analyzed?
• << Previous: Evaluating Sources
• Next: IEEE Explore >>
• Last Updated: May 17, 2024 11:31 AM
• URL: https://libguides.uwf.edu/engineering

The Literature Review: 5. Organizing the Literature Review

• 1. Introduction
• 2. Why Do a Literature Review?
• 3. Methods for Searching the Literature
• 4. Analysing the Literature
• 5. Organizing the Literature Review
• 6. Writing the Review

1. Organizing Principles

A literature review is a piece of discursive prose, not a list describing or summarizing one piece of literature after another. It should have a single organizing principle:

• Thematic - organize around a topic or issue
• Chronological - sections for each vital time period
• Methodological - focus on the methods used by the researchers/writers

4. Selected Online Resources

• Literature Review in Education & Behavioral Sciences This is an interactive tutorial from Adelphi University Libraries on how to conduct a literature review in education and the behavioural sciences using library databases
• Writing Literature Reviews This tutorial is from the Writing section of Monash University's Language and Learning Online site
• The Literature Review: A Few Tips on Conducting It This guide is from the Health Services Writing Centre at the University of Toronto
• Learn How to Write a Review of the Literature This guide is part of the Writer's Handbook provided by the Writing Center at the University of Wisconsin-Madison

2. Structure of the Literature Review

Although your literature review will rely heavily on the sources you read for its information, you should dictate the structure of the review. It is important that the concepts are presented in an order that makes sense of the context of your research project.

There may be clear divisions on the sets of ideas you want to discuss, in which case your structure may be fairly clear. This is an ideal situation. In most cases, there will be several different possible structures for your review.

Similarly to the structure of the research report itself, the literature review consists of:

• Introduction

Introduction - profile of the study

• Define or identify the general topic to provide the context for reviewing the literature
• Outline why the topic is important
• Identify overall trends in what has been published about the topic
• Identify conflicts in theory, methodology, evidence, and conclusions
• Identify gaps in research and scholarlship
• Explain the criteria to be used in analysing and comparing the literature
• Describe the organization of the review (the sequence)
• If necessary, state why certain literature is or is not included (scope)

Body - summative, comparative, and evaluative discussion of literature reviewed

For a thematic review:

• organize the review into paragraphs that present themes and identify trends relevant to your topic
• each paragraph should deal with a different theme - you need to synthesize several of your readings into each paragraph in such a way that there is a clear connection between the sources
• don't try to list all the materials you have identified in your literature search

From each of the section summaries:

• summarize the main agreements and disagreements in the literature
• summarize the general conclusions that have been drawn
• establish where your own research fits in the context of the existing literature

5. A Final Checklist

• Have you indicated the purpose of the review?
• Have you emphasized recent developments?
• Is there a logic to the way you organized the material?
• Does the amount of detail included on an issue relate to its importance?
• Have you been sufficiently critical of design and methodological issues?
• Have you indicated when results were conflicting or inconclusive and discussed possible reasons?
• Has your summary of the current literature contributed to the reader's understanding of the problems?

3. Tips on Structure

A common error in literature reviews is for writers to present material from one author, followed by information from another, then another.... The way in which you group authors and link ideas will help avoid this problem. To group authors who draw similar conclusions, you can use linking words such as:

• additionally

When authors disagree, linking words that indicate contrast will show how you have analysed their work. Words such as:

• on the other hand
• nonetheless

will indicate to your reader how you have analysed the material. At other times, you may want to qualify an author's work (using such words as specifically, usually, or generally ) or use an example ( thus, namely, to illustrate ). In this way you ensure that you are synthesizing the material, not just describing the work already carried out in your field.

Another major problem is that literature reviews are often written as if they stand alone, without links to the rest of the paper. There needs to be a clear relationship between the literature review and the methodology to follow.

• << Previous: 4. Analysing the Literature
• Next: 6. Writing the Review >>
• Last Updated: May 9, 2024 10:36 AM
• URL: https://libguides.uwi.edu/litreviewsoe

• #WalangPasok
• Breaking News
• Photography
• ALS Exam Results
• Aeronautical Engineering Board Exam Result
• Agricultural and Biosystem Engineering Board Exam Result
• Agriculturist Board Exam Result
• Architecture Exam Results
• BAR Exam Results
• CPA Exam Results
• Certified Plant Mechanic Exam Result
• Chemical Engineering Exam Results
• Chemical Technician Exam Result
• Chemist Licensure Exam Result
• Civil Engineering Exam Results
• Civil Service Exam Results
• Criminology Exam Results
• Customs Broker Exam Result
• Dental Hygienist Board Exam Result
• Dental Technologist Board Exam Result
• Dentist Licensure Exam Result
• ECE Exam Results
• ECT Board Exam Result
• Environmental Planner Exam Result
• Featured Exam Results
• Fisheries Professional Exam Result
• Geodetic Engineering Board Exam Result
• Guidance Counselor Board Exam Result
• Interior Design Board Exam Result
• LET Exam Results
• Landscape Architect Board Exam Result
• Librarian Exam Result
• Master Plumber Exam Result
• Mechanical Engineering Exam Results
• MedTech Exam Results
• Metallurgical Engineering Board Exam Result
• Midwives Board Exam Result
• Mining Engineering Board Exam Result
• NAPOLCOM Exam Results
• Naval Architect and Marine Engineer Board Exam Result
• Nursing Exam Results
• Nutritionist Dietitian Board Exam Result
• Occupational Therapist Board Exam Result
• Ocular Pharmacologist Exam Result
• Optometrist Board Exam Result
• Pharmacist Licensure Exam Result
• Physical Therapist Board Exam
• Physician Exam Results
• Principal Exam Results
• Professional Forester Exam Result
• Psychologist Board Exam Result
• Psychometrician Board Exam Result
• REE Board Exam Result
• RME Board Exam Result
• Radiologic Technology Board Exam Result
• Real Estate Appraiser Exam Result
• Real Estate Broker Exam Result
• Real Estate Consultant Exam Result
• Respiratory Therapist Board Exam Result 
• Sanitary Engineering Board Exam Result 
• Social Worker Exam Result
• UPCAT Exam Results
• Upcoming Exam Result
• Veterinarian Licensure Exam Result 
• X-Ray Technologist Exam Result
• Programming
• Smartphones
• Web Hosting
• Social Media
• SWERTRES RESULT
• EZ2 RESULT TODAY
• STL RESULT TODAY
• 6/58 LOTTO RESULT
• 6/55 LOTTO RESULT
• 6/49 LOTTO RESULT
• 6/45 LOTTO RESULT
• 6/42 LOTTO RESULT
• 6-Digit Lotto Result
• 4-Digit Lotto Result
• 3D RESULT TODAY
• 2D Lotto Result
• English to Tagalog
• English-Tagalog Translate
• Maikling Kwento
• EUR to PHP Today
• Pounds to Peso
• Binibining Pilipinas
• Miss Universe
• Family (Pamilya)
• Life (Buhay)
• Love (Pag-ibig)
• School (Eskwela)
• Work (Trabaho)
• Pinoy Jokes
• Tagalog Jokes
• Referral Letters
• Student Letters
• Employee Letters
• Business Letters
• Pag-IBIG Fund
• Home Credit Cash Loan
• Pick Up Lines Tagalog
• Pork Dishes
• Lotto Result Today
• Viral Videos

Related Literature – What Is Review Of Related Literature (RRL)?

Here are top 5 things to know about your review of related literature (rrl).

FACTS ABOUT RELATED LITERATURE – When conducting research, especially one academic in nature, you would most likely need to include an RRL.

Related literature is defined as a composition of facts, studies, principles, which are related to your research topic. Furthermore, you can find RRL materials in books, professional journals, articles, and other forms of publication.

However, before we continue to discuss more facts about the RRL, we need to know the difference between related studies and related literature.

RELATED STUDIES VS RELATED LITERATURE

Official and public offices along with University thesis’ are examples of related studies . These are publicized source materials that have been peer-reviewed or sourced through facts and intensive research.

Meanwhile, related literature can stem from journalists, officials, or any influential figure. As such, the opinions, facts, and other details introduced can greatly affect the public’s opinion and thinking.

What is RRL?

Quick Answer: The RRL ( review of related literature ) is an overview of pre-existing literature which holds a relation to the topic of an individual’s research, thesis, or dissertation topic.

Moreover, through an RRL, researchers can identify potentially better topics through an excess of already available studies. With this, individuals can then identify the strengths and weaknesses of a given study.

Best Sources For Related Studies

Having access to primary sources of information are key when creating an RRL. Thus, researchers should include the following for their RRL:

• Diaries, speeches, manuscripts, letters, interviews, records, eyewitness reports, and memoirs
• Research articles, clinical reports, case studies, and dissertations
• Poetry, music, video, and photography

Importance of RRL and research studies:

The goal of literature or research studies is to get a better grasp of the existing research and discussions on a certain topic or field of study. Additionally, it can provide information in the form of a written report as well as conducting aiding the development of your field expertise.

Thanks for reading. We aim to provide our readers with the freshest and most in-demand content. Come back next time for the latest news here on Philnews.

READ ALSO: Grade 10 Science Module DepEd – Learner’s Module PDF Free

Leave a Comment Cancel reply

Stack Exchange Network

Stack Exchange network consists of 183 Q&A communities including Stack Overflow , the largest, most trusted online community for developers to learn, share their knowledge, and build their careers.

Q&A for work

Connect and share knowledge within a single location that is structured and easy to search.

What is the key difference between literature review and related work?

I really can not find a justifiable answer to this question. Are they used interchangeably? One answer that's i found to be true is that we use the term literature review in writing thesis and related work in the writing research paper. but i am not sure if it is correct or not?

• research-process
• literature-review

• 2 Can you perhaps provide an example of somewhere that you've seen "Related work" used in a relevant context? And perhaps the field that you're working in? With the information available from your question, it's not clear to me exactly what you're asking. For the most part, I'd imagine they're the same but you may have a very specific context in mind where some difference is intended. –  Ian_Fin Commented Oct 20, 2016 at 8:09
• 1 A literature review is a chapter in a monograph/thesis, and a related work is a section in a article/paper. –  Frames Catherine White Commented Jul 4, 2017 at 10:43

2 Answers 2

I've been looking last week for the difference between the literature review and the background. And I found this which may help you, a good definition of what the literature supposed to be (in my opinion): https://academia.stackexchange.com/a/49629/57676

I'm not sure, but I think the literature review can be regarded as related work in more storytelling style. And yes, related work is more frequent in research papers because you don't have enough space to "build a conceptual structure that ties together all the key ideas". Therefore, you just describe briefly what has been done and maybe try to compare it theoretically against what you're proposing, I think.

I have also faced this problem of defining the difference between these two terms. I got to write a paper to a conference and since it's my very first paper I was searching for some tutorials on youtube for 'writing a related work section in the paper'. What I found was mainly related to Literature Review. So I guess these two things are almost the same. Also, as it was said previously Literature Review is more frequent in thesises.

Maybe you may find this article useful https://guidetogradschoolsurvival.wordpress.com/2011/04/08/how-to-write-related-work/

at least for me, it was. Good luck!

You must log in to answer this question.

Not the answer you're looking for browse other questions tagged research-process thesis literature-review ..

• Featured on Meta
• Upcoming sign-up experiments related to tags

Hot Network Questions

• Is FDISK /MBR really undocumented, and why?
• Collaborators write their departments for my (undergraduate) affiliation
• Could Kessler Syndrome be used to control the temperature of the Earth?
• Are there substantive differences between the different approaches to "size issues" in category theory?
• Paris Taxi with children seats (from and to airport)
• What is the mode of operation of a Hobb's meter?
• Are close states still close after measurement (regarding trace distance)?
• Do wererats take falling damage?
• Cut and replace every Nth character on every row
• Is it legal to discriminate on marital status for car insurance/pensions etc.?
• Why would anyone kill a dragon rather than subdue it in OD&D?
• Can a unique position be deduced if pieces are replaced by checkers (can see piece color but not type)
• Modify the width of each digit (0, 1, ..., 9) of a TTF font
• Is it possible to give an unambiguous definition to the concept of “information”?
• Vespertide affairs
• Who is a "sibling"?
• Shouldn't this est be a sunt in this sentence?
• Detect the social network of a given URL
• Is "ROW_NUMBER() OVER(ORDER BY xml.node)" well defined?
• Design of very long serial signal systems
• Are there really half-a billion visible supernovae exploding all the time?
• Binary Slashes Display
• Co-authors with little contribution
• Why does the Clausius inequality involve a single term/integral if we consider a body interacting with multiple heat sources/sinks?

This paper is in the following e-collection/theme issue:

Published on 26.6.2024 in Vol 26 (2024)

Assessing the Reproducibility of the Structured Abstracts Generated by ChatGPT and Bard Compared to Human-Written Abstracts in the Field of Spine Surgery: Comparative Analysis

Authors of this article:

Original Paper

• Hong Jin Kim 1 * , MD, PhD   ; 
• Jae Hyuk Yang 2 * , MD, PhD   ; 
• Dong-Gune Chang 1 , MD, PhD   ; 
• Lawrence G Lenke 3 , MD   ; 
• Javier Pizones 4 , MD, PhD   ; 
• René Castelein 5 , MD, PhD   ; 
• Kota Watanabe 6 , MD, PhD   ; 
• Per D Trobisch 7 , MD   ; 
• Gregory M Mundis Jr 8 , MD   ; 
• Seung Woo Suh 9 , MD, PhD   ; 
• Se-Il Suk 1 , MD, PhD  

1 Department of Orthopedic Surgery, Inje University Sanggye Paik Hospital, College of Medicine, Inje University, Seoul, Republic of Korea

2 Department of Orthopedic Surgery, Korea University Anam Hospital, College of Medicine, Korea University, Seoul, Republic of Korea

3 Department of Orthopedic Surgery, The Daniel and Jane Och Spine Hospital, Columbia University, New York, NY, United States

4 Department of Orthopedic Surgery, Hospital Universitario La Paz, Madrid, Spain

5 Department of Orthopedic Surgery, University Medical Centre Utrecht, Utrecht, Netherlands

6 Department of Orthopedic Surgery, Keio University School of Medicine, Tokyo, Japan

7 Department of Spine Surgery, Eifelklinik St. Brigida, Simmerath, Germany

8 Department of Orthopaedic Surgery, Scripps Clinic, La Jolla, CA, United States

9 Department of Orthopedic Surgery, Korea University Guro Hospital, College of Medicine, Korea University, Seoul, Republic of Korea

*these authors contributed equally

Corresponding Author:

Dong-Gune Chang, MD, PhD

Department of Orthopedic Surgery

Inje University Sanggye Paik Hospital, College of Medicine

Inje University

1342, Dongil-Ro

Seoul, 01757

Republic of Korea

Phone: 82 2 950 1284

Email: [email protected]

Background: Due to recent advances in artificial intelligence (AI), language model applications can generate logical text output that is difficult to distinguish from human writing. ChatGPT (OpenAI) and Bard (subsequently rebranded as “Gemini”; Google AI) were developed using distinct approaches, but little has been studied about the difference in their capability to generate the abstract. The use of AI to write scientific abstracts in the field of spine surgery is the center of much debate and controversy.

Objective: The objective of this study is to assess the reproducibility of the structured abstracts generated by ChatGPT and Bard compared to human-written abstracts in the field of spine surgery.

Methods: In total, 60 abstracts dealing with spine sections were randomly selected from 7 reputable journals and used as ChatGPT and Bard input statements to generate abstracts based on supplied paper titles. A total of 174 abstracts, divided into human-written abstracts, ChatGPT-generated abstracts, and Bard-generated abstracts, were evaluated for compliance with the structured format of journal guidelines and consistency of content. The likelihood of plagiarism and AI output was assessed using the iThenticate and ZeroGPT programs, respectively. A total of 8 reviewers in the spinal field evaluated 30 randomly extracted abstracts to determine whether they were produced by AI or human authors.

Results: The proportion of abstracts that met journal formatting guidelines was greater among ChatGPT abstracts (34/60, 56.6%) compared with those generated by Bard (6/54, 11.1%; P <.001). However, a higher proportion of Bard abstracts (49/54, 90.7%) had word counts that met journal guidelines compared with ChatGPT abstracts (30/60, 50%; P <.001). The similarity index was significantly lower among ChatGPT-generated abstracts (20.7%) compared with Bard-generated abstracts (32.1%; P <.001). The AI-detection program predicted that 21.7% (13/60) of the human group, 63.3% (38/60) of the ChatGPT group, and 87% (47/54) of the Bard group were possibly generated by AI, with an area under the curve value of 0.863 ( P <.001). The mean detection rate by human reviewers was 53.8% (SD 11.2%), achieving a sensitivity of 56.3% and a specificity of 48.4%. A total of 56.3% (63/112) of the actual human-written abstracts and 55.9% (62/128) of AI-generated abstracts were recognized as human-written and AI-generated by human reviewers, respectively.

Conclusions: Both ChatGPT and Bard can be used to help write abstracts, but most AI-generated abstracts are currently considered unethical due to high plagiarism and AI-detection rates. ChatGPT-generated abstracts appear to be superior to Bard-generated abstracts in meeting journal formatting guidelines. Because humans are unable to accurately distinguish abstracts written by humans from those produced by AI programs, it is crucial to exercise special caution and examine the ethical boundaries of using AI programs, including ChatGPT and Bard.

Introduction

Artificial intelligence (AI) language models are being applied to various fields, including medicine and health care [ 1 - 3 ]. Novel and open AI programs make it possible to generate structured text within seconds, accelerating the use of AI and providing valuable insights into clinical research [ 4 , 5 ]. One of the more successful applications of these AI programs is generating high-quality theses and providing answers to questions from the United States Medical Licensing Examination [ 3 , 6 , 7 ]. However, many concerns have been raised about the scientific value of AI-based tools, with ethical issues and reproducibility at the forefront of public debates [ 8 , 9 ].

AI language models are based on complex neural network transformer models known as large language models (LLMs) [ 10 ]. Pretraining with large-sized data is used to predict the optimal next elements of textual input. ChatGPT, released in November 2022 and based on GPT-3 software, is the first popular AI language model application. It generates fluent output and reinforces human feedback [ 5 , 10 ]. However, ChatGPT responses are based on information drawn from the internet before a data cut-off date of September 2021. Bard (subsequently rebranded Gemini), released in March 2023, is a new AI language model developed by Google that is based on the language model for dialogue applications family of LLMs. Unlike ChatGPT, it replies to prompts using real-time information in conjunction with Google Internet searches.

Although many proposals for the use of AI programs in scientific writing have been suggested, few relevant studies have been published. One study attempted to compare scientific abstracts generated by ChatGPT with those gathered from 50 human-written abstracts in the field of medicine [ 5 ]. However, no similar comparative analyses have involved more specialized subjects. Furthermore, the differences between ChatGPT and Bard in abstract generation have not yet been studied. This study aimed to evaluate the reproducibility of abstracts generated by ChatGPT and Bard compared with human-written abstracts in the field of spinal surgery.

Journal Selection and Abstract Extraction

To evaluate abstracts in the field of spinal surgery, specialists in spinal surgery with more than 10 years of experience responded to the query: “Please introduce the reputable journals in the area of spinal surgery in orthopedics and neurosurgery.” From the responses, we selected 7 journals: Spine (Phila pa 1976), The Spine Journal, European Spine Journal, Journal of Neurosurgery: Spine, Global Spine Journal, Neurosurgery , and The Journal of Bone and Joint Surgery . We randomly extracted the 60 papers published by the 7 journals (10 from Spine (Phila pa 1976) , 10 from The Spine Journal , 10 from European Spine Journal , 10 from Journal of Neurosurgery: Spine , 10 from Global Spine Journal , 5 from Neurosurgery , and 5 from The Journal of Bone and Joint Surgery ) to minimize the likelihood of any prior knowledge of the abstracts by the AI programs ChatGPT (May 24 version; OpenAI) and Bard (experiment version after May 15, 2023; Google AI; considering ChatGPT’s knowledge cut-off of September 2021) and by human reviewers.

Abstract Generation

The titles from the 60 randomly extracted abstracts were used in prompts presented to the AI programs as follows: “Please write a scientific abstract for the article [title] in the style of [journal] at [link].” However, Bard did not produce abstracts in 6 cases (1 from Spine (Phila pa 1976) , 1 from The Spine Journal , 1 from European Spine Journal , 1 from Journal of Neurosurgery: Spine , and 2 from Global Spine Journal ) in response to this prompt, replying that “I’m just a language model, so I can’t help you with that,” “I can’t assist you with that, as I’m only a language model and don’t have the capacity to understand and respond,” and “I’m not programmed to assist with that.” A total of 114 AI-generated abstracts were presented, 60 from ChatGPT (GPT-3.5) and 54 from Bard ( Multimedia Appendix 1 ). Regarding abstract generation, because ChatGPT was sensitive to changes in prompts, we chose the abstract generated in response to the first prompt. As Bard supplied 3 answers to each prompt, we selected the generated abstract that was most similar to the format specified by the journal guidelines.

Abstract Evaluation

The 60 human-written abstracts and 114 AI-generated abstracts were divided into 3 groups: human (n=60), ChatGPT (n=60), and Bard (n=54; Figure 1 ). For the AI-generated abstracts, we collected data to assess their reproducibility according to format compliance (binary data: yes or no), total word count, consistency of conclusion (binary data: yes or no), and size of cohort sample. We also assessed the similarity index using iThenticate, which is a widely used program. The similarity index of the human group of abstracts, which were published in journals, was nearly 100%. We compared the similarity indices of the ChatGPT group and the Bard group. Based on popular consensus, plagiarism was considered at a similarity index of 15% or higher. We evaluated the AI detection rate in the 3 groups using ZeroGPT (access date: June 5, 2023), which is a tool designed to detect whether texts are generated by an AI program. ZeroGPT provides both a percentage from 0% (human-written) to 100% (AI and GPT-generated) and 1 of 9 sentences: “Your text is Human written,” “Your text is Most Likely Human written,” “Your text is Most Likely Human written, may include parts generated by AI/GPT,” “Your text is Likely Human written, may include parts generated by AI/GPT,” “Your text contains mixed signals, with some parts generated by AI/GPT,” “Your text is Likely generated by AI/GPT,” “Your text is Most Likely AI/GPT generated,” “Most of Your text is AI/GPT Generated,” and “Your text is AI/GPT Generated.” We evaluated the accuracy of the AI detection using the expression “Your text contains mixed signals, with some parts generated by AI/GPT” for all 3 groups. Last, we evaluated the accuracy of 8 blinded human reviewers in determining how each of the 30 abstracts randomly chosen from the 174 used in the study was written (human- or AI-generated)‚ in the form of binary scores collected by electronic records using Google Forms. None of the blinded human reviewers were provided any information regarding the abstracts until the survey was complete.

Statistical Analysis and Visualization

Statistical analysis and visualization were performed using R (version 4.3.0; The R Foundation). A normal distribution was confirmed with the Kolmogorov-Smirnov test. After confirming data homogeneity or heteroscedasticity, Student 2-tailed t test was used for continuous variables, and the chi-square test was used for categorical variables, as appropriate. A comparison of the 3 groups used a 1-way repeated-measures ANOVA and post hoc analyses using the Bonferroni test. A Pearson correlation analysis was used to assess the correlation of the cohort sample number between human-written and AI-generated abstracts, which were visualized using a heatmap. Receiver operative characteristic (ROC) curve analysis was performed to compare the AI detection rates for human-written and AI-generated abstracts. We calculated the P value in the ROC curve based on a null hypothesis with an area under the curve (AUC) of 0.5. The cut-off point in the ROC curve was measured using Youden’s index. Statistical significance was set with a 2-tailed P <.05.

Ethical Considerations

This study was approved by the institutional review board of the Inje University Sanggye Paik Hospital (IRB NON2023-008), and informed written consent was waived from the participants for the electronic survey and publication of this study. The participants who are specialists with more than 10 years of experience in spine surgery were voluntarily recruited without any compensation, and the data from the electronic survey were collected in deidentified status.

Similarity Index, AI Detection Rate, and Word Count

The mean similarity indices of the ChatGPT and Bard groups were 20.7% (SD 8.7%) and 32.1% (SD 11%), respectively, exceeding the 15% threshold for the commonly recognized standard of plagiarism ( P <.001; 95% CI –15.05 to –7.62). The mean AI detection rates achieved by the human, ChatGPT, and Bard groups were 28.4% (SD 25.8%), 60.7% (SD 25%), and 77.7% (SD 21.1%), respectively, with significant differences ( P <.001). All of the Bonferroni post hoc analyses for AI detection showed statistically significant differences ( P <.001). For word counts in text, there was a significant difference between the 3 groups ( P <.001), and the Bonferroni post hoc analysis showed significant differences, except between the human and ChatGPT groups ( P >.99; Table 1 ).

a AI: artificial intelligence.

b Bonferroni post hoc analysis results for the AI detection rate were as follows: human versus ChatGPT: P <.001; 95% CI –42.92 to –21.58; human versus Bard: P <.001; 95% CI –60.18 to –38.26; and ChatGPT versus Bard: P =.001; 95% CI –27.93 to –6.01.

c N/A: not applicable.

d For text number count, Bonferroni post hoc analysis showed the following: human versus ChatGPT: P >.99; 95% CI –25.89 to –25.29; human versus Bard: P <.001; 95% CI 67.41-120.49; and ChatGPT versus Bard: P <.001; 95% CI 67.46-120.54.

AI-Generated Abstract Formats and Content

With respect to abstracts that met the structured format requirements of the journals, 56.7% (34/60) of ChatGPT’s abstracts complied with the journal guidelines, but only 11.1% (6/54) of Bard’s abstracts matched the journal’s requirements because Bard only produced abstracts in the form of “Background, Methods, Results, Conclusions,” regardless of the journal specified in the prompt. For word count, the proportion deemed acceptable by the journals’ guidelines was significantly higher among Bard-generated abstracts (49/54, 90.7%) than among the ChatGPT group (30/60, 50%; P <.001). For consistency of conclusions, no statistically significant differences were seen between the ChatGPT and Bard groups ( P =.85). For cohort sample size, Pearson correlation analysis revealed strong and significant correlations between the human and ChatGPT groups ( r =0.955; P <.001) and between the human and Bard groups ( r =0.953; P <.001; Table 2 ).

a Correlation of the cohort’s sample size with human-written abstracts was analyzed by the Pearson correlation analysis: r =0.955; P <.001.

b Correlation of the cohort’s sample size with human-written abstracts was analyzed by the Pearson correlation analysis: r =0.953; P <.001.

Plagiarism in AI-Generated Abstracts

A total of 106 of the 114 (84.2%) AI-generated abstracts met the criteria for plagiarism, with 94.4% (51/54) of the Bard-generated abstracts and 75% (45/60) of the ChatGPT abstracts meeting the threshold with statistical significance ( P <.001; Table 3 ). Only 3 abstracts generated by Bard were not considered examples of plagiarism.

Evaluation of Abstracts by AI Detection Programs

ZeroGPT incorrectly identified 13 of the 60 (21.7%) human-authored abstracts as AI-generated. It successfully detected 74.6% (85/114) of the AI-generated abstracts, but 36.7% (22/60) of the ChatGPT abstracts were not detected. There was a statistically significant difference between the 3 groups ( P <.001; Table 4 ). For ROC curve analysis of human-written and AI-generated abstracts, the AUC was 0.863 ( P <.001; 95% CI 0.806-0.920), indicating robust models, and the cut-off value was 52.5% for the AI detection rate in the ZeroGPT, with 73.7% and 85% sensitivity and specificity, respectively ( Figure 2 ). From the results of sentences presented by ZeroGPT, the AI programs successfully detected AI-generated abstracts with 74.6% and 78.3% sensitivity and specificity, respectively ( Table 5 ).

b Sensitivity+specificity=154.9% (≥150%).

c Sensitivity=74.6%.

d Specificity=78.3%.

e PPV: positive predictive value.

f NPV: negative predictive value.

Evaluation of the Abstracts by Human Reviewers

Using 8 human reviewers who had specialized in the spine field with more than 10 years of experience and the role of journal reviewer, the mean detection rate by human reviewers was 53.8% (SD 11.2%). Among the actual human-written abstracts, 48.8% (positive predictive values) were recognized as human-written, and of the AI-generated abstracts, 55.9% were recognized as AI-generated. Detection by human reviewers achieved a sensitivity of 56.3% and a specificity of 48.4% ( Table 6 ).

a The mean detection rate (%) for human-written abstracts=53.8 (SD 10.5), which were reviewed by 8 reviewers. Sensitivity+specificity=104.7% (<150%).

b Sensitivity=56.3%.

c AI: artificial intelligence.

d Specificity=48.4%.

Principal Findings and Comparison With the Literature

Our findings demonstrated that both ChatGPT and Bard are capable of generating scientific abstracts from titles. Moreover, it is also noteworthy that the ability of LLM to produce abstracts has advanced to a level where it is challenging for humans to differentiate between AI-generated abstracts and human-written abstracts. The merits of writing a scientific paper using ChatGPT or Bard include the creation of a brief summary of complex research, rapid generation of suitable paragraphs, and visualization of important results in just a few seconds. Various trials of ChatGPT have been conducted, involving the writing of scientific papers, taking the United States Medical Licensing Examination, and expressing critical thinking [ 7 , 11 ]. However, these attempts have been met with concern by many experts, and the challenges posed by LLM-based AI have become the subject of social and ethical debates beyond the fields of medicine and science [ 2 - 4 , 12 ].

Controversies persist over whether AI-generated content itself has scientific value within ethical boundaries [ 5 , 9 , 12 ]. Debates weighing the advantages and limitations of AI language applications can be found in a variety of editorial forums [ 4 , 8 - 10 ]. However, to the best of our knowledge, few, if any, studies of the impact of ChatGPT on scientific writing have been conducted. Given the recent release date of Bard, no studies regarding Bard-generated scientific papers or comparing its abilities to those of ChatGPT of different LLMs are available. Gao et al [ 5 ] compared ChatGPT-generated abstracts with human-written scientific abstracts from 5 reputable journals, with an impact factor of over 87 (well quoted). However, little is known about the reproducibility of AI-generated abstracts in fields with a low citation index due to specialization, such as spinal surgery and neurosurgery [ 13 - 15 ].

We assessed the reproducibility of ChatGPT- and Bard-generated abstracts by comparing them with 60 human-written abstracts dealing with spine surgery. We also compared the differences between ChatGPT- and Bard-generated abstracts. Using iThenticate, ChatGPT- and Bard-generated abstracts had a mean similarity index greater than 15%, and a mean AI-detection rate greater than 60% reported by ZeroGPT indicates the current limitations of writing abstracts using only an AI program. The AI detection program did not identify all the AI-generated abstracts, achieving a sensitivity and specificity of 74.6% and 78.3%, respectively. However, these results indicate that AI programs have potential diagnostic value (sensitivity+specificity≥150%) to distinguish between human and AI authors. Contrary to the results achieved by the AI-detection program, humans who specialize in spine surgery were unable to distinguish between human-written and AI-generated abstracts (sensitivity+specificity<150%).

Our study revealed differences in the abstracts produced by ChatGPT and Bard, which use different LMMs [ 5 , 10 , 16 ]. ChatGPT is superior in creating structured abstracts that conform to journal guidelines but inferior in generating acceptable word counts. The contents, including consistency of conclusions and cohort sample sizes, of the ChatGPT-generated and Bard-generated abstracts did not differ significantly. One notable point in this study is related to 20% of hallucinations, which are AI’s own power and plausible ability to tell a lie. Our data showed 33.6% of hallucinations in the consistency of conclusions in spine abstracts [ 2 , 9 ]. It seems to have come out with a higher hallucination rate because the contents of the spine are a specialized area. This indicates that humans cannot easily distinguish between AI outputs, but it is clear that the current LMMs face limitations in writing spine abstracts in terms of the completeness of the format.

ChatGPT generated all requested abstracts in response to our prompts, but Bard failed to do so in 6 cases. The titles of 2 of the 6 papers were related to machine learning, and the other 4 involved low-prevalence diseases such as spinal tumors, a newly suggested scoring system, and surgical treatment. Our data suggest that Bard is less capable of generating scientific abstracts compared with ChatGPT in response to prompts referring to rare, poorly known, or new data. Nevertheless, given Bard’s characteristics, the program is likely to be used to provide scientific abstracts from unlimited sources connected to Google, and a reassessment is essential [ 16 - 18 ].

ChatGPT is superior with respect to meeting format requirements compared with Bard. The LMM of ChatGPT is based on a data-feed system with an information cutoff of September 2021. As a pretrained system, ChatGPT was able to generate abstracts that complied with journal guidelines. The trend in word count was larger in ChatGPT than in Bard. Language model for dialogue applications, the language model on which Bard is based, provides real-time information from Google, making it possible to provide an accurate summary of up-to-date paper contents. Bard-generated abstracts were more concise, with relatively low word counts compared with ChatGPT-generated abstracts. This result indicates that Bard has significant advantages for summarizing content concisely. However, in these LMMs, it is important to recognize the primary difference between the 2 AI programs: ChatGPT provides data-based, biased output, while Bard provides web-based biased output, and this can be reflected in the generated abstracts. Although Bard generated the web-based output from Google, some studies suggest Bard’s current limitations for accessing real-time data from Google [ 19 , 20 ]. For this controversial issue, our study also presented ChatGPT as superior in the formation of structured abstracts in compliance with the journal’s guidelines, with no differences in the consistency of conclusions as beneficial works for access to search engines. Bard is currently an experimental version of LLMs that has the potential to develop further in the future.

The sources of information were real-time internet data from Google in Bard and pretrained data up to 2021 in ChatGPT [ 5 ]. Despite these differences, no statistically significant differences in the consistency of conclusions between ChatGPT and Bard were evident. Furthermore, both AI programs suggested cohort sample sizes that were similar to those of human-written abstracts, based on data analyzed with Pearson correlations. This suggests that cohort size was an important factor in making the AI-generated abstracts indistinguishable from human reviewers. Importantly, the version of ChatGPT in this study was GPT-3.5, but newly the launched version (GPT-4) was considered more reliable, creative, and able to handle much more nuanced instructions [ 21 ]. Our further analysis demonstrated that GPT-4 showed better improvements in compliance with word count (from 30/60, 50% to 49/60, 81.7%) and consistency of conclusions (from 39/60, 65% to 42/60, 70%) than GPT-3.5. Thus, the capability for generating medical abstracts in GPT-4 may be superior to GPT-3.5, but it should be demonstrated through new studies in the future.

Our data on plagiarism using iThenticate reflected the distinctive characteristics of the 2 AI programs. The output from ChatGPT was regenerated in context using data published through 2021. Bard generates output from real-time information from the internet, producing a similarity index and plagiarism scores that were significantly higher than those of ChatGPT. AI-detection software determined that 84.2% (96/114) of the AI-generated abstracts included plagiarism.

ZeroGPT’s performance was relatively strong as measured by a ROC analysis (AUC=0.863; 95% CI 0.806-0.920). However, ZeroGPT had a limited detection value (73.7% sensitivity and 85% specificity in the ROC model) with respect to determining whether a spine section abstract was written by a human or AI. Similar results were produced for the expression of sentences (74.6% of sensitivity and 78.3% of specificity in sentence presentation). ZeroGPT also concluded (with sentences such as “Your text is AI/GPT Generated”) that 21.7% (13/60) of human-written abstracts were AI-generated abstracts, indicating a limit to practical applications. Therefore, in the spine field, human-written abstracts need to be verified through other methods to distinguish them from AI-generated text.

Contrary to the AI-detection program, our findings from blinded human reviewers’ detection of abstracts provided valuable insights into the writing of scientific abstracts. Because spine specialists were not able to effectively distinguish between human- and AI-generated abstracts, the use of AI programs may pose ethical challenges. Therefore, improvement of AI programs and AI detectors is needed to avoid ethical problems.

Májovský et al [ 22 ] described that LLMs can generate highly convincing fraudulent papers that mimic genuine scientific papers, from word usage to sentence structure. Our comprehensive analysis further confirms that LLMs’ ability to generate abstracts has evolved to a level that even experts find difficult to distinguish from authentic work. This implies that using LLMs carries the potential risk of producing completely fake papers. Therefore, authors of scientific papers should carefully weigh the risks and benefits of using LLMs. Moreover, within the scientific community, there is growing pressure to overhaul the peer review and publishing processes [ 23 ]. Researchers, including Májovský et al [ 24 ], who study the ability of AI to create scientific papers, have suggested several strategies to reduce the risk of fraudulent papers: the provision of source data sets publicly, a meticulous review process, strict ethical regulations at the level of publishers and academic institutions, and penalties for researchers who commit ethical misconduct. Given our findings on the capabilities of LLMs, the need to establish ethical standards will become increasingly essential, both for researchers (such as the notation of references about the use of ChatGPT) and the scientific community (such as the meticulous peer review process).

Limitations

This study has several limitations. We evaluated a relatively small sample size and employed a few human reviewers. However, we collected as many abstracts as possible from representative journals and involved reviewers with vast experience in the relevant field. For the evaluation of human reviewers’ assessments, human reviewers might have been familiar with real abstracts, and this could have biased the results as a potential limitation. In addition, recent advances in the LLMs on which both ChatGPT and Bard are based were not incorporated into this study. Although those 2 models are currently in the development phase, our study provided important conclusions, including the reproducibility of scientific abstracts in the field of spinal surgery and the differences between ChatGPT and Bard. Our study was unable to capture the sensitive characteristics of the 2 representative AI models for the prompts. Because ChatGPT and Bard offer different outputs in response to slight changes in prompts, future evaluation of these findings is necessary. Last, the broad-scope prompt may affect the failure of the generation of 6 Bard-generated abstracts, despite the significant correlation between human- and AI-generated abstracts. Furthermore, the LLMs for generating abstracts are used after analyzing the main results of the studies. In other words, the main use of LLMs is to create abstracts based on the finished initial version of the manuscript. Instead of the title-based prompt or replacing the URLs with guideline instructions, alternative prompts may yield better results. Considering the importance of the concrete prompt before using LLMs, it should be addressed regarding the proper prompt for generating scientific abstracts in the future.

Conclusions

Both ChatGPT and Bard can be used to help write scientific abstracts, but most AI-generated abstracts are currently considered unethical products based on high plagiarism and AI-detection rates. In terms of meeting journal formatting requirements, ChatGPT-generated abstracts appear to be superior to their Bard-generated counterparts. Because human reviewers are often unable to distinguish human writing from AI products, the use of AI programs to write abstracts within ethical boundaries requires careful consideration and should be evaluated through various approaches.

Acknowledgments

This study was conducted with the support of research funding from Korea University and was authored with the assistance of the Scoliosis Research Institute affiliated with Korea University. Neither ChatGPT nor other generative language models were used for the ideation or writing process.

Data Availability

All data generated or analyzed during this study are included in this published paper (and in Multimedia Appendix 1 ).

Authors' Contributions

HJK, JHY, and DGC conceptualized the study. HJK contributed to clinical data acquisition and provision. HJK, JHY, DGC, LGL, JP, and RC provided essential resources, and substantially contributed to the interpretation of the data. HJK, JHY, SWS, and SIS developed methodology, acquired meteorological data, and performed data curation. HJK performed formal data analysis. HJK, KW, PDT, and SWS verified the underlying data. HJK carried out statistical validation. DGC, JP, RC, and GMMJ validated meteorological aspects. HJK drafted the first version and developed figures. HJK, JHY, and DGC reviewed the manuscript critically for important intellectual content and conducted editing and rewriting. All authors agree to be accountable for all aspects of the work, ensuring that questions related to the accuracy or integrity of any part of the work are appropriately investigated and resolved. In addition, all authors have read and approved the final version of the manuscript and were responsible for the decision to submit the manuscript.

Conflicts of Interest

LGL receives grants from Setting Scoliosis Straight Foundation, AO Spine, and ISSG, royalties from Medtronic and Acuity Surgical, consulting fees from Medtronic and Acuity Surgical. GMMJ owns stocks in Nuvasive; reports consulting fees from Orthofix and Carlsmed, Inc; receives royalties from SI-BONE. The other authors declare no conflicts of interest.

The outputs for generating abstracts based on prompt “Please write a scientific abstract for the article [title] in the style of [journal] at [link]” and human-written abstracts.

• Will ChatGPT transform healthcare? Nat Med. 2023;29(3):505-506. [ CrossRef ] [ Medline ]
• Bi AS. What's important: the next academic-ChatGPT AI? J Bone Joint Surg Am. 2023:00. [ CrossRef ] [ Medline ]
• Eysenbach G. The role of ChatGPT, generative language models, and artificial intelligence in medical education: a conversation with ChatGPT and a call for papers. JMIR Med Educ. 2023;9:e46885. [ FREE Full text ] [ CrossRef ] [ Medline ]
• Else H. Abstracts written by ChatGPT fool scientists. Nature. 2023;613(7944):423. [ CrossRef ] [ Medline ]
• Gao CA, Howard FM, Markov NS, Dyer EC, Ramesh S, Luo Y, et al. Comparing scientific abstracts generated by ChatGPT to real abstracts with detectors and blinded human reviewers. NPJ Digit Med. 2023;6(1):75. [ FREE Full text ] [ CrossRef ] [ Medline ]
• Giannos P, Delardas O. Performance of ChatGPT on UK standardized admission tests: insights from the BMAT, TMUA, LNAT, and TSA examinations. JMIR Med Educ. Apr 26, 2023;9:e47737. [ FREE Full text ] [ CrossRef ] [ Medline ]
• Kung TH, Cheatham M, Medenilla A, Sillos C, De Leon L, Elepaño C, et al. Performance of ChatGPT on USMLE: potential for AI-assisted medical education using large language models. PLOS Digit Health. 2023;2(2):e0000198. [ FREE Full text ] [ CrossRef ] [ Medline ]
• Lee P, Bubeck S, Petro J. Benefits, limits, and risks of GPT-4 as an AI chatbot for medicine. N Engl J Med. 2023;388(13):1233-1239. [ FREE Full text ] [ CrossRef ] [ Medline ]
• van Dis EAM, Bollen J, Zuidema W, van Rooij R, Bockting CL. ChatGPT: five priorities for research. Nature. Feb 2023;614(7947):224-226. [ CrossRef ] [ Medline ]
• Leopold SS, Haddad FS, Sandell LJ, Swiontkowski M. Artificial intelligence applications and scholarly publication in orthopaedic surgery. J Orthop Res. 2023;41(6):1137-1138. [ CrossRef ] [ Medline ]
• Cascella M, Montomoli J, Bellini V, Bignami E. Evaluating the feasibility of ChatGPT in healthcare: an analysis of multiple clinical and research scenarios. J Med Syst. 2023;47(1):33. [ FREE Full text ] [ CrossRef ] [ Medline ]
• Levin G, Meyer R, Yasmeen A, Yang B, Guigue P, Bar-Noy T, et al. Chat generative pre-trained transformer-written obstetrics and gynecology abstracts fool practitioners. Am J Obstet Gynecol MFM. 2023;5(8):100993. [ CrossRef ] [ Medline ]
• Kim HJ, Yang JH, Chang D, Lenke LG, Suh SW, Nam Y, et al. Adult spinal deformity: a comprehensive review of current advances and future directions. Asian Spine J. 2022;16(5):776-788. [ FREE Full text ] [ CrossRef ] [ Medline ]
• Kim HJ, Yang JH, Chang D, Suk S, Suh SW, Kim S, et al. Proximal junctional kyphosis in adult spinal deformity: definition, classification, risk factors, and prevention strategies. Asian Spine J. Jun 2022;16(3):440-450. [ FREE Full text ] [ CrossRef ] [ Medline ]
• Kim MW, Kang C, Choi SH. Update of the natural history, pathophysiology, and treatment strategies of degenerative cervical myelopathy: a narrative review. Asian Spine J. 2023;17(1):213-221. [ FREE Full text ] [ CrossRef ] [ Medline ]
• Thapa S, Adhikari S. ChatGPT, Bard, and large language models for biomedical research: opportunities and pitfalls. Ann Biomed Eng. 2023;51(12):2647-2651. [ CrossRef ] [ Medline ]
• Madani A, Krause B, Greene ER, Subramanian S, Mohr BP, Holton JM, et al. Large language models generate functional protein sequences across diverse families. Nat Biotechnol. 2023;41(8):1099-1106. [ CrossRef ] [ Medline ]
• Miner AS, Fleming SL, Haque A, Fries JA, Althoff T, Wilfley DE, et al. A computational approach to measure the linguistic characteristics of psychotherapy timing, responsiveness, and consistency. Npj Ment Health Res. 2022;1(1):19. [ CrossRef ] [ Medline ]
• Caramancion KM. A Comparative performance evaluation of ChatGPT 3.5, ChatGPT 4.0, Bing AI, and bard in news fact-checking. arXiv. Preprint posted online on June 18, 2023. [ CrossRef ]
• Patnaik SS, Hoffmann U. Quantitative evaluation of ChatGPT versus Bard responses to anaesthesia-related queries. Br J Anaesth. 2024;132(1):169-171. [ CrossRef ] [ Medline ]
• OpenAI. GPT-4 technical report. arXiv. Preprint posted online on March 15, 2023. [ CrossRef ]
• Májovský M, Černý M, Kasal M, Komarc M, Netuka D. Artificial intelligence can generate fraudulent but authentic-looking scientific medical articles: pandora's box has been opened. J Med Internet Res. 2023;25:e46924. [ FREE Full text ] [ CrossRef ] [ Medline ]
• Liu N, Brown A. AI increases the pressure to overhaul the scientific peer review process. Comment on "Artificial Intelligence Can Generate Fraudulent but Authentic-Looking Scientific Medical Articles: Pandora's Box Has Been Opened". J Med Internet Res. 2023;25:e50591. [ FREE Full text ] [ CrossRef ] [ Medline ]
• Májovský M, Mikolov T, Netuka D. AI is changing the landscape of academic writing: what can be done? Authors' reply to: AI Increases the Pressure to Overhaul the Scientific Peer Review Process. Comment on "Artificial Intelligence Can Generate Fraudulent but Authentic-Looking Scientific Medical Articles: Pandora's Box Has Been Opened". J Med Internet Res. 2023;25:e50844. [ FREE Full text ] [ CrossRef ] [ Medline ]

Abbreviations

Edited by T de Azevedo Cardoso; submitted 20.08.23; peer-reviewed by L Zhu, H Mondal, M Májovský; comments to author 10.01.24; revised version received 15.01.24; accepted 26.04.24; published 26.06.24.

©Hong Jin Kim, Jae Hyuk Yang, Dong-Gune Chang, Lawrence G Lenke, Javier Pizones, René Castelein, Kota Watanabe, Per D Trobisch, Gregory M Mundis Jr, Seung Woo Suh, Se-Il Suk. Originally published in the Journal of Medical Internet Research (https://www.jmir.org), 26.06.2024.

This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work, first published in the Journal of Medical Internet Research (ISSN 1438-8871), is properly cited. The complete bibliographic information, a link to the original publication on https://www.jmir.org/, as well as this copyright and license information must be included.

Chemical Society Reviews

Recent advances in oxidative degradation of plastics.

* Corresponding authors

a Department of Chemistry and Chemical Biology, Cornell University, Ithaca, New York 14853, USA

b Department of Chemistry, Princeton University, Princeton, New Jersey 08544, USA E-mail: [email protected]

Oxidative degradation is a powerful method to degrade plastics into oligomers and small oxidized products. While thermal energy has been conventionally employed as an external stimulus, recent advances in photochemistry have enabled photocatalytic oxidative degradation of polymers under mild conditions. This tutorial review presents an overview of oxidative degradation, from its earliest examples to emerging strategies. This review briefly discusses the motivation and the development of thermal oxidative degradation of polymers with a focus on underlying mechanisms. Then, we will examine modern studies primarily relevant to catalytic thermal oxidative degradation and photocatalytic oxidative degradation. Lastly, we highlight some unique studies using unconventional approaches for oxidative polymer degradation, such as electrochemistry.

Article information

Download Citation

Permissions.

S. Oh and E. E. Stache, Chem. Soc. Rev. , 2024, Advance Article , DOI: 10.1039/D4CS00407H

This article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Unported Licence . You can use material from this article in other publications without requesting further permissions from the RSC, provided that the correct acknowledgement is given.

Read more about how to correctly acknowledge RSC content .

Social activity

Search articles by author.

This article has not yet been cited.

Advertisements