What is a literature review?
Is best to understand what a literature review is first before attempting to write it in your project work
A literature review can be described as an independent paper or a theoretical framework for a research effort. It includes a critical analysis of the links between various works and links the research to your work.
Another significant advantage of conducting a thorough literature review is that it might save you time, it is also an important component of a scientific paper that is submitted to a journal for publication.
A detailed literature review will demonstrate to the journal editor and referees that you have done your investigation and are knowledgeable about current research in your subject.
When conducting research, however, your evaluation of the literature review must give a contemporary picture of the subject topic. So, what should you do if you can’t identify any papers in your field that are relevant to your research?
In writing your literature review, it helps you describe these factors below in clear terms:
- Demonstrate your understanding of the subject and scholarly background.
- Create a theoretical framework and research approach for your study.
- Place yourself in relation to other thinkers and researchers.
- show how your study fills a void or contributes to a discussion.
These guidelines should assist you in getting a good start in writing -awaited literature review:
Extend the scope of your literature review search
For days, if not weeks, you’ve been pondering your research question. and because of these, it becomes conceivable that your thinking is overly restricted. You could have mentally set extremely strict boundaries around your study question. As a result, you may be unable to view additional study fields that are important to your work, even if they do not directly relate to it.
If you extend your search area, you could locate relevant literature to support the hypothetical research topic, as well as to assist you place your unique research topic in a larger conceptual framework and explain your research’s contribution.
Make sure that you’re using the appropriate keywords.
Irrelevant or unrelated terms might be a problem in your search for relevant sources. Your keywords should be well-defined and focused on the research articles you’re looking for. Identify the primary concepts of your research issue and then develop keywords for each idea.
Include keywords that you want to use in your paper to narrow down your search. This will show how important certain words are in your field. It may also reveal whether you need to be more exact in outlining your thoughts as well as your keywords.
Take note of the citations in the papers you come across.
citations point readers to previous study in a certain topic. You acknowledge the other articles you utilized as sources by including a reference or citation.
Forward and backward searching are the two methods for following an article’s citations. You might glance at the reference lists of the articles you found if you were successful in finding a handful of relevant ones. Backward searching is one method of locating more relevant articles in your study field.
Additionally, you might look for journals that have cited the papers you discovered before. This is called as forward searching, and it might help you uncover articles that your keyword search didn’t locate.
Finally, you may look for more papers written by the same authors as the ones you identified. All of this will assist you in expanding on the references you’ve previously accumulated.
Assess and choose resources
You cannot read all the information released on the topic and you will also need to know the sources that are most relevant for your inquiry.
Consider the following questions for each publication:
- what is the question or problem answered by the author?
- How and what are the most significant ideas?
- What are the key theories, models and techniques? Does the study draw on well-established frameworks or is it new?
- Are the study’s findings and conclusions the topic relevant?
- What is the relationship between the publication and other publications in the field? Is it a confirmation, addition, or challenge to previously held beliefs?
- What contribution does the publication make to your understanding of the topic?