For more information and guidelines regarding the Literature Review refer to the following libguide Literature Review Survival Library Guide: What is a literature review? created by Alex D'Angelo
A literature review is:
A list of books and journal articles, on a specific topic, grouped by theme, and evaluated with regard to your research. This evaluation would identify connections, contradictions and gaps in the literature you have found.
The purpose of a literature review, therefore, is:
Research Methodology: A Step by Step Guide for Beginners has been written specifically for those with no previous experience of research or research methodology. Written in a logical and accessible style and providing helpful techniques and examples, it breaks the process of designing and doing a research project into eight manageable operational steps. The book guides you through your project from beginning to end by offering practical advice on:
Providing readers with an accessible, in-depth look at how to synthesize research literature, Conducting Research Literature Reviews: From the Internet to Paper is perfect for students, researchers, marketers, planners, and policymakers who design and manage public and private agencies, conduct research studies, and prepare strategic plans and grant proposals. Bestselling author Arlene Fink shows readers how to explain the need for and significance of research, as well as how to explain a study's findings. Offering a step-by-step approach to conducting literature reviews, the Fifth Edition features new research, examples, and references from the social, behavioral, and health sciences, expanded coverage of qualitative research, updated and revised meta-analysis procedures, a brand new glossary of key terms, double the number of exercises, and additional examples of how to write reviews.
From daunting to doable in six steps Graduate students who turn in exceptional literature reviews are recognized as excellent critical thinkers, as well as masters of academic argumentation, research writing and writing academic papers. But literature searches and composing the review itself can be intimidating and frustrating. The six-step process pioneered by this book has made the task flowing and seamless for masters and doctoral candidates in Education and related fields. This updated third edition features a wealth of all-new content including:
• A flowchart that graphically illustrates Machi and McEvoys process.
• Reflective Oversight boxes in each chapter that prompt readers to direct metacognitive activities.
• Links to online guides and resources.
• Expanded examples illustrating theoretical concepts. When you apply this system to your next literature review the work will be intuitive and enjoyable for you, and the results will impress your teachers and fellow researchers.
Designing a research project is possibly the most difficult task a dissertation writer faces. It is fraught with uncertainty: what is the best subject? What is the best method? For every answer found, there are often multiple subsequent questions, so it’s easy to get lost in theoretical debates and buried under a mountain of literature.
This book looks at literature review in the process of research design, and how to develop a research practice that will build skills in reading and writing about research literature—skills that remain valuable in both academic and professional careers. Literature review is approached as a process of engaging with the discourse of scholarly communities that will help graduate researchers refine, define, and express their own scholarly vision and voice. This orientation on research as an exploratory practice, rather than merely a series of predetermined steps in a systematic method, allows the researcher to deal with the uncertainties and changes that come with learning new ideas and new perspectives.
How to Do Your Research Project: A Guide for Students provides easy to follow advice to navigate every step of your research project, from choosing your research question, deciding on your research design and methodology, collecting and analysing your data, and writing up your finished project.
Presenting a clear and detailed roadmap to ensure you don’t miss a step, the book includes:
• Case studies and real-life examples from a range of disciplines so you can learn from other researchers who have been in your shoes
• DIY activities so you can practise your skills and get to grips with key concepts
• Practical advice on how to organise your writing, develop your flow and build strong arguments
• Further guidance on assessing ethical risk, including examples of high, medium, and low risk projects
Asserting that the qualitative research paradigm is entrenched in the social sciences as a discipline in its own right, this book brings together finance and qualitative research to encourage researchers to expand their respective bodies of knowledge. In doing so, it promotes a synergy of insights through the mixing of perspectives. Providing a comprehensive guide for finance researchers on how to produce impactful qualitative research, this book is a vital resource for teaching as well as one’s own research.
Frequently students confuse literature reviews with summaries of existing research, and they can easily get overwhelmed by the amount of material they have to consider and filter as part of their review. Likewise, they don’t often realize that a considered, planned, structured and balanced argument forms the bedrock of a successful research project. Outlining what a literature review is - and isn’t - and showcasing how to use the literature to your advantage to construct a strong academic argument, this Little Quick Fix answers important questions like
- What is the purpose of a literature review?
- How can I tell the difference between an argument and an academic argument?
- What do I need to create my argument?
- What do I need from an article to support my argument?
- How do I create a counterargument?
- How can I make sure I’m creating a strong argument and plausible counterargument?
- How can I win my argument?
The classic pattern of academic arguments is THESIS, ANTITHESIS, SYNTHESIS
An Idea (Thesis) is proposed, an opposing Idea (Antithesis) is proposed, and a revised Idea incorporating (Synthesis) the opposing Idea is arrived at. This revised idea sometimes sparks another opposing idea, another synthesis, and so on…
If you can show this pattern at work in your literature review, and, above all, if you can suggest a new synthesis of two opposing views, or demolish one of the opposing views, then you are almost certainly on the right track.
Steps in compiling a literature review are:
Choosing your topic
Seek advice from a lecturer or tutor on this, if a topic is not already assigned. It is very common for students to bite off more than they can chew, simply because they have not realised the full breadth and complexity of an apparently simple topic. It is better to cover a tiny topic perfectly, than a huge topic superficially.
Look for a topic on which there is polarised opinion. It often helps to pick one in which a question is being asked, for example: Is a particular taxation policy beneficial or disadvantageous to a developing country?
When authors disagree, this provides an opportunity for you to enter the debate and argue for one side or another in your essay. Taking a hatchet to someone’s opinions (a) gives you something to write about, (b) is fun, (c) is the foundation of much modern scholarly writing.
Collect the most relevant (usually “peer reviewed”) articles and books
Terms
Before you search them, spend a minute thinking about the best terms to use. Make a list of alternative words that describe your subject, and also think about general terms and more specific terms. This is important because the journal databases are good for finding very specific terms in articles, but the library catalogue tends to use more general terms.
The two tools for finding these books and articles are (a) the library catalogue and (b) the library databases of electronic journal articles.
Library catalogue
To access the library catalogue go to www.lib.uct.ac.za.
If you find a good book reference, scroll down to the bottom of the reference and you will find the subject terms the library cataloguers have assigned to it. Click on that term to call up more books just like the one you have found.
A quick way to check the relevance of any books you find is to glance at the table of contents, the introduction and any descriptive blurbs on the back cover. The index at the back of the book not only helps you dive to very narrow topics in the book, but also gives you an indication of how much attention (i.e. how many pages) the book spends on that specific topic.
If you are satisfied with the book, look at the bibliography in the back – this can help identify other relevant sources. Following a chain of references in a bibliography like this, whether in a book or a journal article, is one of the most basic techniques of scholarship – find something that is relevant and look at the sources it used.
Databases and electronic journal articles
The library’s databases are particularly helpful for literature reviews. Journal articles are short and cover very specific topics, so they are more digestible than books and more likely to deal exactly with your topic. They are also quicker to publish than books and so are more likely to be up to date.
To find journal articles by subject go to the library home page at www.lib.uct.ac.za and select “Databases.”
Many of these databases allow you to restrict your search to “Peer Reviewed” journals only – these are the most scholarly journals, for which each article has to be vetted by other academics before it is accepted.
Many of our databases are Full Text – so you can usually get the whole article on your desktop for downloading, e-mailing or printing – you don’t have to find it in print on the shelves.
While you can search the Research Portal, or individual journal databases, as simply as you search Google, you can also type in very precise searches by using AND, OR, NOT operators, Wildcards and Logical Brackets.
An example of such a search would be:
Information Technology AND Brain Drain AND (Employ* OR Jobs OR Labo?r) NOT United States
The AND operator narrows a search – all listed elements must be mentioned in each article: in this example we want articles that cover both Information Technology AND the Brain Drain.
The OR operator expands a search – any of the listed elements must be mentioned in each article: in this example we wanted Information Technology Brain Drain articles that discussed either Employment or Jobs or Labour. The OR operator is useful for dealing with alternative terms which different authors might use when writing on a similar topic.
The NOT operator weeds out anything you’ve got too much of. Many of our databases are American products, for example, and you can often be flooded with reports on the American situation unless you weed it out.
Read/Skim the articles, using their abstracts
Most of the articles will have an abstract. This is a short paragraph at the head of the article that lists the main facts and arguments in each article. By reading these you will quickly get the gist of what each article is about and where it fits into the pattern you are building up in your literature survey.
How many books and articles should you have? It’s wise to check this with your lecturer or tutor. In general, though, your aim is not to cover every single book or article, but every major opinion or theme on the topic. Many of the books or articles will add very little that is new.
Therefore a short list of really scholarly, relevant, comprehensive articles is often more effective than a list of hundreds of superficial or tangential articles.
What you are ideally looking for are the “seminal” articles (seed articles) on which most of the other authors are basing their work.
Group the Articles into the themes and sub-themes of your topic
Obviously, it helps to have a structure in mind already, but the articles you find will often help to suggest a structure or cause you to redesign your existing one.
Herewith a hard-learned tip:
There are tides and seasons in academic publishing – a topic is often hot for a few months, then dies, then is revived to be attacked from a different angle, then dies, then is revived again to be discussed from a third angle… remember, Thesis, Antithesis and Synthesis?
This has two implications for studying the results on a database search:
Just because there is nothing much in the recent articles does not mean that it was not hot a few months or years ago, so scroll back in time down the list, or jump right to the earliest reference and scroll up through time to look for a hot spot.
The tides of article titles often tell a story that can help you shape your literature review. For example, in a list of journal articles on Information Technology and Employment you might find that:
The earliest articles are all about how hard it is to find skilled IT workers.
See? Story!
Many database lists of academic articles tell this sort of story when they are looked at in date order. Either they reflect swings in world events or they are reflecting swings in academic debate and opinion. Seeing such a story in the literature is a great help in structuring any literature review.
In particular, look out for the major triggers of such changes: When did the first swing to a new track happen, and what event or article provoked it?
When you find an article that has provoked a major swing, or started a whole new debate, then you are looking at the “Seminal” (Seed) article that I mentioned earlier. This sort of article is often the best sort of article to identify in a literature review – many of the other articles will just build on, comment on, or attack its basic arguments.
Using a Citation Database
If you find a seed article, or any other really good article, we have a magic database, called the ISI Citation Database, which can find all the other articles which have cited that article, either because they support it or because they disagree with it.
The ISI Citation Database is on our database list under ISI WEB OF SCIENCE. There are three versions of it, covering the Sciences, Social Sciences, and Arts and Humanities. You can search all three at once.
Go to “Cited Ref Search” and type in the author’s last name, the journal in which his article appeared and the year it appeared in the appropriate boxes. This will bring up the authors and articles that have followed or disagreed with that author.
Unfortunately this database is not full text, but you can often get the full text of the articles off one or other of our alternative databases.
Identify within each sub-theme those points on which the articles agree, those points on which they disagree, and those points which they don’t cover at all.
The abstracts can help with this, of course. The main trick is coming up with, or spotting, the sub themes and that is simply a matter of brain work. But if it is done well, and you have taken the trouble to find good sources, then you will find, quite magically, that you have constructed the skeleton and a good bit of the flesh and blood of your essay or research project.
In fact, a good literature review can result in an essay that virtually writes itself.