1. Introduction

If you search online, you will find almost as many different guides to literature reviews as there are academics in the world. And they all say very very different things. This can be endlessly confusing for students.

2. What a literature review IS NOT

Some key mistakes students make with literature reviews are:

• they just summarise articles
• they summarise articles, putting one article per paragraph
• they review non-academic (not peer reviewed) literature
• they review irrelevant literature
• they get overwhelmed with reading and note taking
• they organise the literature review chronologically
• they can’t find literature on their highly specific topic
• they don’t focus on explanations.

3. What a literature view IS

For an empirical, academic research study - one that involves reporting the results of original data collection and analysis, and is attempting to contribute to generalised knowledge (theory/explanations) - then the literature review has four key parts (credit to John Donaldson for this formulation):

• Motivation: An introduction to the research question and why it is compelling or puzzling.
• Background/Context: Background or context information needed to understand this problem.
• Alternative explanations, organised as themes: Different answers to your question, as found in the literature, are introduced, one answer at a time (generally a paragraph), with an overview of what the literature says about this explanation. This is the majority (perhaps 3/4th) of your literature review.
• Linking to your method: A conclusion of the literature review, which links to your method. Generally explaining how there is a gap/puzzle in the literature, and how you proposed to collect new data to test between these different explanations.

4. Steps in a literature review: Neuman

The textbook for this course has a recommended process for doing a literature review.

I think it isn’t a very good one, but it certainly is the classic method.

The steps it recommends are:

• STEP 1: Refine the Topic
  • Go from research question to narrowed topic
• STEP 2: Design Your Search
  • Decide on the review’s extensiveness
  • Decide which article search tools to use
  • Decide how to record bibliographic information and take notes
• STEP 3: Locate the Research Reports
  • Articles in scholarly journals
  • Books
  • Other outlets
• STEP 4: Read & Take Notes on the Reports Found
  • Create source and content files
  • What to record in notes
• STEP 5: Organize Notes, Synthesize & Write the Review
• STEP 6: Create the Reference List

5. Steps in a literature review: Belcher

An alternative approach is proposed by Wendy Belcher in her book Writing your Journal Article in Twelve Weeks.

I think it is a much better method.

1. Ask people (profs, friends) for recommendations, including looking through reference lists of articles you like or which got you interested in this topic.

2. Search using classic electronic resources, and in the process…

3. Draft a reading list. Make this very simple and rough.

4. Winnow your reading list. Use the title, and possibly the abstract to decide which ones you are going to read (actually you aren’t going to read them, you are going to skim them).

5. Prioritize the reading list from most to least important. Ideally it should be no more than 12 items. Have a MAXIMUM 24 article length items on the list.

6. Skim the materials, ideal under uncomfortable circumstances: standing up, in the library. Just read the relevant bits. Just use the index to find the relevant parts.

7. Note take: Three different strategies for note taking:

   1. Take notes sparingly: Write like it is already the literature review: “The author argues…”, “The weakness of this article…”. Do a book review, not a summary. Evaluate, don’t describe.
   2. Use the three-ticks rule: One tick for interesting, two ticks for useful, and three ticks for ‘must include’. When you finish, go back and type up JUST the three tick sections as notes. It is almost always all you need.
   3. Read and insert: Simply write the relevant material into your article with the reference as soon as you find it. << I RECOMMEND THIS <<
      
      

8. Model your literature review on someone else’s: Find a literature review from a highly cited article or publication. Try to mimic (or at least take notice of):

   • it’s organisation
   • the number of citations
   • the percent of the article that is literature review
   • is it chronological, alphabetical, thematic, or based around a debate?
     
     

9. Write/Revise your literature review: Remember your argument should organise the literature, not the other way around. Also remember that it is almost always best to organise the literature by the debate (i.e. different sides of the argument), not chronologically, or on the basis of vague themes. Some questions you might ask yourself:

   • What is the relationship between the articles?
   • How do the articles display allegiances, debts, or novelty?
   • What remains unknown?
   • Which variables are important? Which haven’t been explained?
   • How are key concepts defined?
   • What are the blind spots in the literature?
   • Is there a narrative?

6. Article search tools

To find academic articles, the main method we use in the current decade is the article search tool.

This is basically a search engine.

7. Tips for refining search terms

One of the hardest thing to do when searching for literature is to find the best search terms to use.

A few tips I use are:

• Read titles and abstracts for alternative words for your search terms. Often you will start looking for a word or phrase like “relationship break up”, and then find that other words are used more commonly in the academic literature, such as “separation” “divorce” or “relationship termination” (I am making this up).
• Thinking at a higher level of abstraction. The most common problem students have when doing literature review is not being able to find literature related to their topic. My first comment about this is: don’t let yourself believe this is true. There is always related literature. If you can’t find the literature, then you aren’t using the correct search terms, and you are probably thinking about the problem in a too concrete way, without enough abstraction. For example, if you are doing research on ‘anti-coal protests’, you probably won’t find many articles, but you might find articles on “environmental movements” or “social movements” or “social movement strategies” or “environmental movement tactics”.
• Thinking about analogous or similar processes. Often it can be helpful to think about literature that is related to our topic, but not directly. You might do a project on ‘stay at home dads’. At a higher level of abstraction, this is about gender roles and gender norms. However, it could also be thought of as analogous to ‘women in the construction industry’. And even to ‘soldiers who refuse to fight’ (non-conforming behaviour/anti-normative behaviour/people who refuse to fulfil a socially assigned role).