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

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

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

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

There are five key steps to writing a literature review:

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

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

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Table of contents

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

• Quick Run-through
• Step 1 & 2

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

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

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

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See an example

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

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

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

Download Word doc Download Google doc

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

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

Make a list of keywords

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

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

Search for relevant sources

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

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

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

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

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

For each publication, ask yourself:

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

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

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

Take notes and cite your sources

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Chronological

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

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

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

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

Methodological

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

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

Theoretical

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

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

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

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

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

As you write, you can follow these tips:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

 Statistics

• Null hypothesis
• Statistical power
• Probability distribution
• Effect size
• Poisson distribution

Research bias

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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Literature Reviews

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• Intro to Renewable Energy Engineering, EN 520.370, Fall 2023
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"Literature review," "systematic literature review," "integrative literature review" -- these are terms used in different disciplines for basically the same thing -- a rigorous examination of the scholarly literature about a topic (at different levels of rigor, and with some different emphases).  

1. Our library's guide to Writing a Literature Review

2. Other helpful sites

• Writing Center at UNC (Chapel Hill) -- A very good guide about lit reviews and how to write them
• Literature Review: Synthesizing Multiple Sources (LSU, June 2011 but good; PDF) -- Planning, writing, and tips for revising your paper

3. Welch Library's list of the types of expert reviews

Doing a good job of organizing your information makes writing about it a lot easier.

You can organize your sources using a citation manager, such as refworks , or use a matrix (if you only have a few references):.

• Use Google Sheets, Word, Excel, or whatever you prefer to create a table
• The column headings should include the citation information, and the main points that you want to track, as shown

Synthesizing your information is not just summarizing it. Here are processes and examples about how to combine your sources into a good piece of writing:

• Purdue OWL's Synthesizing Sources
• Synthesizing Sources (California State University, Northridge)

Annotated Bibliography  

An "annotation" is a note or comment. An "annotated bibliography" is a "list of citations to books, articles, and [other items]. Each citation is followed by a brief...descriptive and evaluative paragraph, [whose purpose is] to inform the reader of the relevance, accuracy, and quality of the sources cited."*

• Sage Research Methods (database) --> Empirical Research and Writing (ebook) -- Chapter 3: Doing Pre-research  
• Purdue's OWL (Online Writing Lab) includes definitions and samples of annotations  
• Cornell's guide * to writing annotated bibliographies  

* Thank you to Olin Library Reference, Research & Learning Services, Cornell University Library, Ithaca, NY, USA https://guides.library.cornell.edu/annotatedbibliography

What does "peer-reviewed" mean?

• If an article has been peer-reviewed before being published, it means that the article has been read by other people in the same field of study ("peers").
• The author's reviewers have commented on the article, not only noting typos and possible errors, but also giving a judgment about whether or not the article should be published by the journal to which it was submitted.

How do I find "peer-reviewed" materials?

• Most of the the research articles in scholarly journals are peer-reviewed.
• Many databases allow you to check a box that says "peer-reviewed," or to see which results in your list of results are from peer-reviewed sources. Some of the databases that provide this are Academic Search Ultimate, CINAHL, PsycINFO, and Sociological Abstracts.

What kinds of materials are *not* peer-reviewed?

• open web pages
• most newspapers, newsletters, and news items in journals
• letters to the editor
• press releases
• columns and blogs
• book reviews
• anything in a popular magazine (e.g., Time, Newsweek, Glamour, Men's Health)

If a piece of information wasn't peer-reviewed, does that mean that I can't trust it at all?

No; sometimes you can. For example, the preprints submitted to well-known sites such as  arXiv  (mainly covering physics) and  CiteSeerX (mainly covering computer science) are probably trustworthy, as are the databases and web pages produced by entities such as the National Library of Medicine, the Smithsonian Institution, and the American Cancer Society.

Is this paper peer-reviewed? Ulrichsweb will tell you.

1) On the library home page , choose "Articles and Databases" --> "Databases" --> Ulrichsweb

2) Put in the title of the JOURNAL (not the article), in quotation marks so all the words are next to each other

3) Mouse over the black icon, and you'll see that it means "refereed" (which means peer-reviewed, because it's been looked at by referees or reviewers). This journal is not peer-reviewed, because none of the formats have a black icon next to it:

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Mechanical Engineering

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Tips on reading articles better

Reading a lot of articles in short period of time is tough! It's important to take breaks, and to take quick notes after each article. Otherwise it will all blend together.

See this article for advice from different STEM researchers on how they read articles: https://www.sciencemag.org/careers/2016/03/how-seriously-read-scientific-paper

Guides to writing articles and literature reviews in STEM

For individual help with your writing, it's best to book an appointment with the Academic Help Writing Centre on campus .

• How to Write a good technical paper Short article from Concrete International magazine.

• Ten Simple Rules for writing a literature review, by Marco Pautasso (2013) A popular article published in PLoS Computational Biology.

Examples of literature reviews

If you're writing a published article or a thesis, it's always good to read different examples in your field. In a research database like Scopus or Web of Science, you can search for review articles on your topic - see the Find Articles tab. You can also see previous theses in your program. Follow this link, and modify the search to find ones from your department.

Here is an example of a review paper written by a uOttawa PhD student in civil engineering, which is structured by analytical approach.

• Example journal article with highlights This is a journal article written by two members of the School of EECS here. I have highlighted key phrases in their lit review in which they synthesize and summarize the previous literature.

Science and Engineering Librarian | Bibliothécaire spécialisé en sciences et génie

Doing a systematic review?

If you've been asked to do a systematic review , we have a guide for doing them . But another type of review might actually be better suited to your project! This chart describes different types of reviews and why you might use them.

What do your professors want in a literature review?

Whether you are doing a topic summary for a term paper, a state-of-the-art survey, or a full literature review for a thesis or article, there are some common expectations that your professors have for graduate student work. They are not looking for you to simply describe some papers that you have read on the topic, one after the other. What they do expect is:

• That you have found and thoroughly read enough papers to have a solid grasp of the particular topic. This is where it's very important to properly define your topic so you can do a good job, and do a structured database search! You should start to encounter some of the same authors and papers repeatedly as you read, indicating that you are finding the major works in this topic. For searching advice, see the Find Articles tab. You should use at least two search tools (Scopus, Web of Science, Google Scholar, etc).
• That you have understood them enough to identify major trends, methods, approaches, and differences . This takes work! You do not want to just re-phrase the abstract. See below for some tips on doing this.
• That you can communicate your own perspective and informed opinion on what is truly important - including where the current research is lacking (where there is a gap). If you are doing your own research, this is a very important part of the literature review as it justifies the rest of your project.

The process of doing a literature review

Source: North Carolina State University. (n.d.). Literature Reviews: An Overview for Graduate Students . https://www.lib.ncsu.edu/tutorials/litreview/

Reading and note-taking efficiently

Getting started.

You want to be organized from the start when doing a literature review, especially for a project that will take a long time. 

• In a Word or Excel file, keep track of your searching - which search databases and tools you use, and paste in all the search queries you run that are useful, with parameters. In Scopus, for example, this might be ' TITLE-ABS-KEY   (   anaerobic   AND  digestion   AND  feedstock   )   AND   PUBYEAR   >   2013'. This will help you avoid duplicating work later.
• Use a citation manager program like Zotero or Mendeley, to keep track of your papers as you find them, and format citations later. See this guide for details on the programs. Save the PDFs to your computer, and attach them to the entries in your citation manager if it isn't added automatically.

Reading and Note-taking on Individual papers

When you actually read the papers that you find, most people take a staged approach to save time:

• Read the abstract fully to determine if it's actually on topic.
• If so, read the discussion and conclusion, and the figures and graphs, to figure out if the results were significant or produced interesting results.
• If so, make sure it is saved. Then read the full article, and annotate the article right away.

What does annotating mean? Take very short notes (on paper or digital) of the most important findings and/or highlight important lines in the paper. You can highlight and annotate the PDF file if you want, or in your citation manager. You don't usually need to summarize the whole article - instead focus on what is important for your research or review, and write it in your own words. This could be the

• whether the study was theoretical, experimental, numerical simulation, etc
• main theoretical approach, model, algorithms, etc
• number of test specimens or subjects
• key assumptions made that might impact its general validity
• key outcome measured, statistical significance of it, etc
• Your own comments - for example, strengths and weaknesses

Synthesizing the papers and structuring your review

Concept mapping.

One technique is to create a concept map or 'mind map' showing the relationships or groupings of the key papers on your topic, with short labels. This way, you can try out different options for how to structure your paper and see which one makes the most sense. You can do this on paper:

You can also do this digitally, using a mind-mapping website. There are some easy-to-use, free tools that are available now. Two that I have used are Coggle and Miro. You can also just sketch on paper.

Created using  Coggle.it, based on a chart in Huang, H. (2018). Methods for Rolling Element Bearing Fault Diagnosis under Constant and Time-varying Rotational Speed Conditions (Ph.D. Thesis, University of Ottawa). http://dx.doi.org/10.20381/ruor-21835

Image: Pacheco-Vega, R. (2016, June 15). How to do a literature review: Citation tracing, concept saturation and results’ mind-mapping. Retrieved from http://www.raulpacheco.org/2016/06/how-to-do-a-literature-review-citation-tracing-concept-saturation-and-results-mind-mapping/

After you have taken notes on individual articles, it can be very helpful to create a chart with key variables that seem important. Not every article will cover the same material. But there should be some common factors, and some differences between them. This chart is called a synthesis matrix.

Example of a 'synthesis matrix'

Source: University of Western Ontario Library (n.d.). “Writing your literature review”. https://guides.lib.uwo.ca/mme9642/litreview

See this blog post by researcher Raul Pacheco-Vega for another example of how he does this.

This chart can help you decide how to organize your review. If it's a very short review, some people write it chronologically - they describe how the topic evolved, one paper at a time. But if you have more than 10 papers, this is not a good approach. Instead, it is best to organize your review thematically . In this approach, you group the papers into several groups or themes, and discuss each theme in a separate section. Usually the groups are major methods of tackling the problem, or concepts, or techniques.

In each section of your paper, you introduce the theme, and then discuss and compare the papers in the group. Using this approach lets you show that you have not just read the papers, but have understood the topic as a whole, and can synthesize the literature.

For example, this paper co-authored by Ping Li , a Civil Engineering PhD graduate of uOttawa, organizes the papers into three categories: ones that used a 'traditional' approach; ones based on characterization of the soil microstructure, and ones that also incorporate soil mechanics. The strengths and weaknesses of category are discussed, and in the conclusion, the authors recommend approaches for future studies. 

You can often include a form of a synthesis chart in your paper or thesis, as a visual summary of your lit review. This is part of a chart included in a Masters' thesis in Computer Science from uOttawa.

From Le Page, S. (2019). Understanding the Phishing Ecosystem (M.Sc. Thesis, University of Ottawa). http://dx.doi.org/10.20381/ruor-23629

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Literature Reviews in Engineering

What is a literature review.

"A literature review is an account of what has been published on a topic by accredited scholars and researchers. Occasionally you will be asked to write one as a separate assignment ... but more often it is part of the introduction to an essay, research report, or thesis. In writing the literature review, your purpose is to convey to your reader what knowledge and ideas have been established on a topic, and what their strengths and weaknesses are. As a piece of writing, the literature review must be defined by a guiding concept (e.g., your research objective, the problem or issue you are discussing, or your argumentative thesis). It is not just a descriptive list of the material available, or a set of summaries."

--Written by Dena Taylor, Health Sciences Writing Centre and available at  http://www.writing.utoronto.ca/advice/specific-types-of-writing/literature-review  (Accessed August 27th, 2019)

What is the purpose of a literature review?

Not to be confused with a book review, a  literature review  surveys scholarly articles, books and other sources (e.g. dissertations, conference proceedings, reports) relevant to a particular issue, area of research, or theory.  Literature reviews provide a description, summary, and critical evaluation of each work. The purpose is to offer an overview of and background on significant literature published on a topic, as well as your own critical thinking on how these works comprise this background, and what questions remain unaddressed by the existing literature.  A literature review's purpose is to:

Place each work in the context of its contribution

Describe the relationship of each work to others under consideration

Identify new ways to interpret and shed light on any gaps in previous research

Resolve conflicts amongst seemingly contradictory previous studies

Identify areas of prior scholarship to prevent duplication of effort (or retest previous effort to confirm or dispute it)

Point the way forward for further research

Place one's original work in the context of existing literature

The Literature Review Process:

Writing a literature review is a non-linear process. You may decide to revise your research question, find more resources and discard resources you've already found, change the way you want to structure your literature review, or how you want to address theories and ideas. Also, as you find resources on your topic, you will find that what you're writing is part of a larger conversation. There are already leading theories and a history on the topic you're pursuing and leaders who are already publishing their ideas. You'll become part of that conversation.

• Choose a topic to explore and develop a research question to focus your research. You may revise this as you go.
• Research and collect information from a variety of sources - books, journal articles, patents, conference proceedings, theses and dissertations, etc.
• Make note of those who are leading the conversation and the main theories in this field of research.
• Make a brief note for each source of information. How do your sources support or contradict your theories?
• Keep track of citations. You may want to use a citation manager such as EndNote or Zotero.
• Organize your thoughts. What do you want to say and how do you want to say it?
• Read sources more completely that fit within the scope of your research question.
• Write, revise, proof-read, and add a bibliography.

Elements of a literature review:

An overview of the subject, issue or theory under consideration, along with the objectives of the literature review

Division of works under review into categories (e.g. those in support of a particular position, those against, and those offering alternative theses entirely)

Explanation of how each work is similar to and how it varies from the others

Conclusions as to which pieces are best considered in their argument, and make the greatest contribution to the understanding and development of their area of research  

The literature review does not present new  primary  scholarship.  That comes in the section of your research that describes your experimentation (see the Research Process tab under Getting Started With Research).

• Literature Reviews: An Overview for Graduate Students Created by the North Caroline State University Libraries
• The Literature Review: A Few Tips on Conducting It Written by Dena Taylor, Health Sciences Writing Centre, University of Toronto
• Tips & Tools on Literature Reviews Created by The Writing Center at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill
• "Learn How" from University of Wisconsin Clear definitions for each section of the lit review

What is a Literature Review and Why is it important?

A literature review not only summarizes the knowledge of a particular area or field of study, it also evaluates what has been done, what still needs to be done and why all of this is important to the subject.  , the stand-alone literature review:.

When a literature review stands alone, it is reviewing what is known about the topic, analyzed for trends, controversial issues, and what still needs to be studied to better understand the topic at hand. A stand-alone literature review can be as short as a few pages or may be more extensive with long bibliographies for in-depth reviews. 

• Three-dimensional display technologies for anatomical education: a literature review
• A systematic literature review of US engineering ethics interventions
• From Bitcoin to cybersecurity: A comparative study of blockchain application and security issues

The Literature Review as a Section:

Literature reviews can be used as part of dissertations, theses, research reports, and scholarly journal articles. They generally discuss what has been done before and how the research being introduced in this document fills a gap in the field's knowledge and why it is an important.  

• Ghost driver: A field study investigating the interaction between pedestrians and driverless vehicles
• An empirical study of wearable technology acceptance in healthcare

Annotated bibliographies

• What is an annotated bibliography?
• Writing an annotated bibliography
• Example annotations

WHAT IS AN ANNOTATED BIBLIOGRAPHY?

An annotated bibliography is a list of citations to books, articles, and documents. Each citation is followed by a brief (usually about 150 words) descriptive and evaluative paragraph, the annotation. The purpose of the annotation is to inform the reader of the relevance, accuracy, and quality of the sources cited.

ANNOTATIONS VS. ABSTRACTS

Abstracts are the purely descriptive summaries often found at the beginning of scholarly journal articles or in periodical indexes. Annotations are descriptive and critical; they may describe the author's point of view, authority, or clarity and appropriateness of expression.

Permission to use all content in the tabs on this page granted from: Olin Library Reference Research & Learning Services Cornell University Library Ithaca, NY, USA

This guide shared under a Creative Commons Commons Deed, version 2.0 regarding attribution, noncommercial use, and "Share Alike" reuse.

WRITING AN ANNOTATED BIBLIOGRAPHY

Creating an annotated bibliography calls for the application of a variety of intellectual skills: concise exposition, succinct analysis, and informed library research.

• First, locate and record citations to books, periodicals, and documents that may contain useful information and ideas on your topic. Briefly examine and review the actual items. Then choose those works that provide a variety of perspectives on your topic.
• Cite the book, article, or document using the appropriate style -- here is a page explaining and offering examples of the different major citation styles.
• Write a concise annotation that summarizes the central theme and scope of the book or article. Include one or more sentences that (a) evaluate the authority or background of the author, (b) comment on the intended audience, (c) compare or contrast this work with another you have cited, or (d) explain how this work illuminates your bibliography topic.

SAMPLE ANNOTATED BIBLIOGRAPHY ENTRY FOR A JOURNAL ARTICLE

The following example uses APA style ( Publication Manual of the American Psychological Association , 6th edition, 2010)  for the journal citation:

Waite, L. J., Goldschneider, F. K., & Witsberger, C. (1986). Nonfamily living and the erosion of traditional family orientations among young adults.  American Sociological Review,   51 , 541-554. The authors, researchers at the Rand Corporation and Brown University, use data from the National Longitudinal Surveys of Young Women and Young Men to test their hypothesis that nonfamily living by young adults alters their attitudes, values, plans, and expectations, moving them away from their belief in traditional sex roles. They find their hypothesis strongly supported in young females, while the effects were fewer in studies of young males. Increasing the time away from parents before marrying increased individualism, self-sufficiency, and changes in attitudes about families. In contrast, an earlier study by Williams cited below shows no significant gender differences in sex role attitudes as a result of nonfamily living.

This example uses MLA style ( MLA Handbook , 8th edition, 2016)  for the journal citation:

Waite, Linda J., et al. "Nonfamily Living and the Erosion of Traditional Family Orientations Among Young Adults."  American Sociological Review,  vol. 51, no. 4, 1986, pp. 541-554. The authors, researchers at the Rand Corporation and Brown University, use data from the National Longitudinal Surveys of Young Women and Young Men to test their hypothesis that nonfamily living by young adults alters their attitudes, values, plans, and expectations, moving them away from their belief in traditional sex roles. They find their hypothesis strongly supported in young females, while the effects were fewer in studies of young males. Increasing the time away from parents before marrying increased individualism, self-sufficiency, and changes in attitudes about families. In contrast, an earlier study by Williams cited below shows no significant gender differences in sex role attitudes as a result of nonfamily living.

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What is a Literature Review and What is its Purpose?

The steps in writing a literature review, examples of literature reviews in the sciences, literature review protips, source for this guide.

• Organizing Your Research with Citation Managers
• American Society of Civil Engineers (ASCE) Citation Style

A literature review is a survey of scholarly sources on a specific topic. Through a literature review, a researcher will identify related research that has been accomplished, and may explore appropriate methodology for that research. It provides an overview of current knowledge, allowing you to identify relevant theories, methods, and gaps in the existing research.

You need to provide context for your research in relation to what is already known. What is the existing knowledge and where does your research sit within this context? How is your project unique from other similar projects? The literature review gives you a chance to:

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

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

Helpful Resources

If you'd like to learn more about best practices in scientific communication, try these resources:

Paeez, V. (2022). I think and write, therefore you are confused : technical writing and the language interface (1st ed.). CRC Press. https://doi.org/10.1201/9781003194835

Kelly, A. (2020).  How scientists communicate : dispatches from the frontiers of knowledge . Oxford University Press.

• Step 1 - Find Literature
• Step 2 - Is it Relevant?
• Step 3 - Themes, Debates, Gaps
• Step 4 - Develop Outline
• Step 5 - Write Review

Step 1 : Search for Relevant Literature

Once you have you have clearly defined your topic and have your keywords/phrases ready, search a wide range of sources to find relevant literature, including: WorldCat Discovery (Library's catalog) to find books and documents, Google Scholar, and core databases in your field. Don't forget to search for technical reports, patents, and government documents too.

Remember to use  Boolean operators  to refine your search.

You can't read everything, so try this approach to make an initial decision on articles:

• Read the article abstract - if it sounds related then
• Read the findings, results, or summary of the research results - if it still sounds relevant, then
• Go back and read the entire article
• If not, discard it and move on

When you find useful book or article, check the bibliography/references to find other relevant sources. The number of of citations an article has (i.e. the number of times other authors have cited a publication) can be an indicator of its importance to the field, but beware of self-citing and ghost citations that can make an article look more critical than it is.

When you get to the point in your search that you are seeing the same articles and authors over and over, you've done a good, comprehensive search.

Step 2 - Evaluate What You Find - Is It Relevant?

As you search,  be thinking about the following questions  as you do your research:

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

Step 3 - Identify Themes, Debates and Gaps in the Literature

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

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

This step will help you work out the structure of your literature review and show how your own research will contribute to existing knowledge or how it fits into the whole.

Step 4 - Develop an Outline for Review

There are various approaches to organizing a literature review:

Chronological

The simplest approach is to trace the development of the topic over time. Make sure you analyze patterns, turning points, and key debates that have shaped the direction of the field. Give your interpretation of how and why certain developments occurred.

You can organize your literature review into subsections that address recurring, central themes or 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.

Or Combine Approaches

You may find it helpful to combine several of these strategies, particularly if your literature review is long. For example, your overall structure might be thematic, but each theme is discussed chronologically.

Step 5: Write your Review

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

As you write:

• 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 draw connections, comparisons and contrasts between sources

Writing a good literature review can be tough. You might want to take a look at examples of literature reviews others have written

• New Advances in Nanographene Chemistry New Advances in Nanographene Chemistry, by Akimitsu Narita, Xiao-Ye Wang, Xinliang Feng and Kalus Mullen. Chemical Society Reviews, 2015, 44, 6616-6643; https://doi.org/10.1039/C5CS00183H
• Girls in the physics classroom Girls in the physics classroom: a review of the research on the participation of girls in physics, by Patricia Murphy and Elizabeth Whitelegg. (2006) Institute of Physics, London, UK; https://oro.open.ac.uk/6499/3/Girls_and_Physics_Report.pdf
• Structural Optimization in Civil Engineering Structural Optimization in Civil Engineering: a Literature Review, by Linfeng Mei and Qian Wang. Buildings, 2021, 11(2), 66; https://doi.org/10.3390/buildings11020066
• Biochemistry and Molecular Biology of Flaviviruses Biochemistry and Molecular Biology of Flaviviruses, by Nicholas J Barrows et al. Chemical Reviews 2018, 118, 8, 4448–4482; https://pubs.acs.org/doi/pdf/10.1021/acs.chemrev.7b00719
• Get to Know Topic
• Find Literature Reviews
• Mine Article References, Search Authors

Become Familiar with your Topic - Handbooks and Specialized Encyclopedias

Finding introductory information for subject areas that are unfamiliar can help you identify appropriate search terms, help you familiarize yourself with materials and chemical properties, and help you focus on issues related to your research process

Handbooks, Encyclopedias and other multi-volume reference works  can help, as can graduate level textbooks. Go to the tab  Find Books, Documents & More on Your T opic  in this guide for how to find these resources.

Find Literature Reviews for an In-Depth Overview

Literature reviews are particularly helpful in finding past research on a specific topic because someone else summarizes the research in an area up to a particular date, essentially doing some of your research for you, and providing some context for that research.

Some databases provide a way to limit a search to reviews in journal articles. The following databases provide access to reviews across a wide range of disciplines:

• Annual reviews
• ProQuest Dissertations and Theses Dissertations from colleges and universities around the world; some master’s theses. Full text available for titles dated 1997 and after.
• OATD - Open Access Theses and Dissertations OATD.org aims to be the best possible resource for finding open access graduate theses and dissertations published around the world

Mine Article References, Use "Cited By" Features, Search Authors

When you find relevant articles, look at the bibliographies - the references the author used to write the article. This will lead you to additional sources. Some databases offer links to these references, and to articles that cite the relevant article you found. For example:

• The  Web of Science  database allows you to link to an authors References and do a "cited reference" search on others who have cited the original article
• SciFinder provides a "Citation Mapping" feature that allows you to search backward into an author's references and forward into articles that cite the original article
• Google Scholar provides a "Cited By" link to articles that cite the original article

Have you found an article that is cited repeatedly or know of key individuals in the field?  Use an author search to find additional sources by these experts.

Some of the materials in this guide originated from How to Write a Literature Review: Guide, Examples, & Templates, by Shona McCombes. Scribbr.com, February 22, 2019. URL: https://www.scribbr.com/dissertation/literature-review/

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What Is A Literature Review?

Steps for conducting a lit review.

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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 82268 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?
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Organizing literature and notes

During this step, find common themes in the works you read, and organize the works into categories. Begin to develop a subject level outline with what studies you’ve found, and consider expanding or limiting your search based on the information you found. Write some brief paragraphs outlining your categories, how in general the works in each category relate to each other, and how the categories relate to each other and to your overall theme.

Available tools:

• Synthesis Matrix The "synthesis matrix" is an approach to organizing, monitoring, and documenting your search activities.
• Concept Mapping Concept Maps are graphic representations of topics, ideas, and their relationships. They allow users to group information in related modules so that the connections between and among the modules become more readily apparent than they might from an examination of a list. It can be done on paper or using specific software.
• Mind Mapping A mind map is a visual representation of hierarchical information that includes a central idea surrounded by connected branches of associated topics.
• NVIVO NVIVO is a qualitative data analysis software that can be applied for engineering literature review.

Synthesis Matrix

• Writing A Literature Review and Using a Synthesis Matrix Writing Center, Florida International University
• The Matrix Method of Literature Reviews Article from Health Promotion Practice journal.

Sample synthesis matrix

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Engineering: The Literature Review Process

• How to Use This Guide
• 1. What is a Literature Review?
• 2. Precision vs Retrieval
• 3. Equip Your Tool Box
• 4. What to look for
• 5. Where to Look for it
• 6. How to Look for it
• 7. Keeping Current
• 8. Reading Tips

Writing Tips

Further readings.

• 10. Checklist

Your review should consists of 3 sections: 

• The Introduction in which you tell the reader what topic you are covering and why.    
• Topic or Issue
• Theory  
• The Summary in which you draw conclusions about the significant events, discoveries, flaws and work that still needs to be done.  

Highly Recommended Viewing ...

Get Lit: The Literature Review Candace Schaefer, Associate Director of the University Writing Center at Texas A&M Although the speaker is addressing a class consisting of graduate students from all subject areas, the advice applies to engineering.    You can skip the first part of this video but do view these sections: 

• 15m 20s What are you looking for when you are reading the literature
• 18m 10s How to organize your review 
• 23m 47s: Placing the literature within the scholarly debate 
• 29m 30s: Attribution, citation, quoting
• 34m 10s: Connecting ideas   
• 38m 30s: Positioning your research in the scholarly debate

The readings and videos listed below also give advice on writing the review. 

• The Writer's Handbook: Learn How to Write a Review of the Literature Created by The Writing Center at the University of Wisconsin - Madison.  
• Literature Reviews The role and structure of a literature review.  Strategies for writing a literature Review. From University of Toronto, Faculty of Applied Science & Engineering.   
• Literature Review  UNC Writing Center

Tutorials ​    

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• Last updated: Jan 2, 2024 8:27 AM
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Starting a Literature Review

If you have never completed a literature review, it can be daunting at first, or tempting to rush through without taking the steps needed to complete the review.  The main point to remember is that you are trying to summarize the current state of research in a specific area/field.  This is done by looking through different sources from different authors/research groups and then putting that information into a single document.

What can be confusing is that literature reviews will vary in length and number of references depending on the topic, field, and depth of research.  For example, a basic literature review for a graduate class might have 15-20 references while a literature review conducted for a dissertation may have 100 or more references.  It is the researcher's job to assess what is needed for their application like any other engineering project.

Finally, be sure to check out the UMD Libraries' Ethical Use of Information Guide to help you through this process!

Literature Review Steps

The basic steps of a literature review include: Search - Record - Evaluate & Analyze - Synthesize.  These can be more explicitly put into the following six steps:

1. Define your topic/research question

2. Search relevant databases, journals, and more (Search)

3. Document references found applicable to topic in a citation manager or similar (Evaluate)

4. Organize references into sub-topics (Analyze)

5. Document results through a summary of the state of research discovered via the steps above (Synthesize)

6. (Recommended) Publish your results!

Examples & Further Information

Literature Review Tips:

• Ten Simple Rules for Literature Reviews
• Avoiding Common Errors
• Case Western Reserve University Engineering Literature Reviews Overview of literature review process for engineers from another engineering school.
• Literature Reviews for Harvard Engineering Graduate Students Library resource for engineering graduate students.

Finally, check out information on systematic reviews - a growing type of scholarly review that contains more analysis as part of the review process:

• Systematic Review by Nedelina Tchangalova Last Updated Mar 4, 2024 15764 views this year
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