A literature review is a logical and methodical way of organizing what has been written about a topic by scholars and researchers. Literature reviews can normally be found at the beginning of many essays, research reports, or theses. In writing the literature review, the purpose is to convey what a researcher has learned through a careful reading of a set of articles, books, and other relevant forms of scholarship related to the research question. Furthermore, creating a literature review allows researchers to demonstrate the ability to find significant articles, valid studies, or seminal books that are related to their topic as well as the analytic skill to synthesize and summarize different views on a topic or issue .
Library Research
Good literature reviews require exhaustive research. Online resources make this process easier, but researchers must still sift through stacks in libraries.
A strong literature review has the following properties:
- It is organized around issues, themes, factors, or variables that are related directly to the thesis or research question.
- It demonstrates the researcher's familiarity with the body of knowledge by providing a good synthesis of what is and is not known about the subject in question, while also identifying areas of controversy and debate, or limitations in the literature sharing different perspectives.
- It indicates the theoretical framework that the researcher is working with.
- It places the formation of research questions in their historical and disciplinary context.
- It identifies the most important authors engaged in similar work.
- It offers an explanation of how the researcher can contribute toward the existing body of scholarship by pursuing their own thesis or research question .