What Is the Format for Writing Up a Scientific Literature Review
What is a Literature Review
A literature review is an objective, curtailed, critical summary of published research literature relevant to a topic being researched in an commodity.
A literature review does NOT:
A literature review does not simply reference and list all of the material you have cited in your paper.
- Presenting material that is non straight relevant to your written report will distract and frustrate the reader and make them lose sight of the purpose of your study.
- Starting a literature review with "A number of scholars have studied the relationship between X and Y" and simply list who has studied the topic and what each scholar ended is non going to strengthen your paper.
A practiced literature review DOES:
- Present a brief typology that orders articles and books into groups to assistance readers focus on unresolved debates, inconsistencies, tensions, and new questions nearly a inquiry topic.
- Summarize the nearly relevant and of import aspects of the scientific literature related to your area of research
- Synthesize what has been done in this expanse of enquiry and by whom, highlight what previous research indicates about a topic, and identify potential gaps and areas of disagreement in the field
- Give the reader an agreement of the background of the field and prove which studies are important—and highlight errors in previous studies
Building Your Literature Review Bookshelf
One style to conceive of a literature review is to think about writing information technology as y'all would build a bookshelf. You don't need to cut each slice by yourself from scratch. Rather, you can take the pieces that other researchers have cut out and put them together to build a framework on which to hang your own "books"—that is, your own study methods, results, and conclusions.
What Makes a Good Literature Review?
The contents of a literature review are determined by many factors, including its precise purpose in the commodity, the degree of consensus with a given theory or tension betwixt competing theories, the length of the commodity, the number of previous studies existing in the given field, etc. The post-obit are some of the almost important elements that a literature review provides.
- A historical groundwork for your research: Clarify what has been written about your field of enquiry to highlight what is new and significant in your written report—or how the analysis itself contributes to the understanding of this field, even in a small mode. Providing a historical groundwork also demonstrates to other researchers and periodical editors your competency in discussing theoretical concepts. You should also make sure to understand how to paraphrase scientific literature to avoid plagiarism in your work.
- The current context in which your research is situated: Discuss central (or peripheral) questions, issues, and debates in the field. Because a field is constantly existence updated by new work, you can show where your research fits into this context and explicate developments and trends in research.
- A discussion of relevant theories and concepts that provide the foundation for your enquiry: For example, if you are researching the relationship betwixt ecological environments and homo populations, provide models and theories that focus on specific aspects of this connection to contextualize your study. If your written report asks a question concerning sustainability, mention a theory or model that underpins this concept. If it concerns invasive species, cull material that is focused in this direction.
- A definition of the relevant terminology: In the natural sciences, the significant of terms is relatively straightforward and consistent. But if you present a term that is obscure or context-specific, y'all should define the pregnant of the term in the Introduction section (if yous are introducing a study) or in the summary of the literature being reviewed.
- A description of related research that shows how your work expands or challenges earlier studies or fills in gaps in previous work: You can use your literature review as show of what works, what doesn't, and what is missing in the field.
- Supporting evidence for a practical trouble or upshot your research is addressing that demonstrates its importance: Referencing related research establishes your area of research equally reputable and shows you are edifice upon previous work that other researchers take deemed meaning.
Types of Literature Reviews
Literature reviews can differ in construction, length, and amount and breadth of content included. They can range from the selective (a very narrow area of inquiry or only a single work) to the comprehensive (a larger corporeality or range of works). They can also exist part of a larger work or stand up on their own.
- A course consignment is an example of a selective, stand-alone work. It focuses on a small segment of the literature on a topic and makes up an entire work on its own.
- The literature review in a dissertation or thesis is both comprehensive and helps brand up a larger work.
- A bulk of periodical articles first with a selective literature review to provide context for the inquiry reported in the study; such a literature review is commonly included in the Introduction section (but it can also follow the presentation of the results in the Word section).
- Some literature reviews are both comprehensive and stand as a separate work—in this instance, the entire commodity analyzes the literature on a given topic.
Type of Literature Reviews Plant in Journals
The two types of literature reviews commonly establish in journals are those introducing research manufactures (studies and surveys) and stand up-alone literature analyses. They can differ in their scope, length, and specific purpose.
Literature reviews introducing research manufactures
The literature review institute at the beginning of a periodical article is used to introduce inquiry related to the specific report and is found in the Introduction section, usually near the end. Information technology is shorter than a stand-solitary review considering information technology must be limited to very specific studies and theories that are directly relevant to the electric current study. Its purpose is to ready research precedence and provide support for the study'southward theory, methods, results, and/or conclusions. Non all inquiry articles contain an explicit review of the literature, but nearly do, whether it is a discrete section or duplicate from the remainder of the Introduction.
How to construction a literature review for an article
When writing a literature review as part of an introduction to a study, simply follow the structure of the Introduction and movement from the general to the specific—presenting the broadest background information about a topic first and then moving to specific studies that support your rationale, finally leading to your hypothesis statement. Such a literature review is often duplicate from the Introduction itself—the literature is INTRODUCING the background and defining the gaps your study aims to fill up.
The stand-solitary literature review
The literature review published as a stand up-alone article presents and analyzes as many of the important publications in an area of study equally possible to provide groundwork information and context for a current area of research or a report. Stand up-lone reviews are an fantabulous resources for researchers when they are offset searching for the most relevant information on an expanse of study.
Such literature reviews are generally a scrap broader in scope and can extend farther back in time. This means that sometimes a scientific literature review tin can be highly theoretical, in addition to focusing on specific methods and outcomes of previous studies. In improver, all sections of such a "review commodity" refer to existing literature rather than describing the results of the authors' own study.
In add-on, this type of literature review is usually much longer than the literature review introducing a study. At the end of the review follows a conclusion that once once more explicitly ties all of the cited works together to show how this assay is itself a contribution to the literature. While non absolutely necessary, such articles often include the terms "Literature Review" or "Review of the Literature" in the title. Whether or not that is necessary or appropriate can besides depend on the specific author instructions of the target periodical. Have a look at this article for more input on how to compile a stand-alone review commodity that is insightful and helpful for other researchers in your field.
Writing a Literature Review in half-dozen Steps
So how do authors turn a network of manufactures into a coherent review of relevant literature?
Writing a literature review is non usually a linear procedure—authors oft go back and check the literature while reformulating their ideas or making adjustments to their study. Sometimes new findings are published before a study is completed and need to be incorporated into the current work. This likewise means you lot will non be writing the literature review at whatsoever one fourth dimension, but constantly working on it before, during, and afterwards your study is consummate.
Here are some steps that will help you begin and follow through on your literature review.
Step 1: Choose a topic to write most—focus on and explore this topic.
Choose a topic that yous are familiar with and highly interested in analyzing; a topic your intended readers and researchers volition find interesting and useful; and a topic that is current, well-established in the field, and well-nigh which there has been sufficient research conducted for a review. This volition aid you observe the "sweet spot" for what to focus on.
Step ii: Research and collect all the scholarly information on the topic that might be pertinent to your study.
This includes scholarly articles, books, conventions, conferences, dissertations and theses—these and whatsoever other academic piece of work related to your area of study is called "the literature."
Step iii: Analyze the network of data that extends or responds to the major works in your surface area; select the material that is most useful.
Apply thought maps and charts to identify intersections in the research and to outline important categories; select the material that volition be about useful to you review.
Step iv: Describe and summarize each commodity—provide the essential information of the commodity that pertains to your study.
Determine 2-3 important concepts (depending on the length of your article) that are discussed in the literature; take notes well-nigh all of the important aspects of this written report relevant to your topic being reviewed.
For example, in a given study, perhaps some of the primary concepts are Ten, Y, and Z. Note these concepts and and so write a brief summary well-nigh how the article incorporates them. In reviews that introduce a study, these can be relatively short. In stand-alone reviews, there may be significantly more texts and more concepts.
Step 5: Demonstrate how these concepts in the literature relate to what you discovered in your report or how the literature connects the concepts or topics being discussed.
In a literature review intro for an article, this information might include a summary of the results or methods of previous studies that correspond and/or ostend to those sections in your ain study. For a stand-solitary literature review, this may hateful highlighting the concepts in each article and showing how they strengthen a hypothesis or testify a blueprint.
Discuss unaddressed issues in previous studies. These studies that are missing something you lot address are of import to include in your literature review. In improver, those works whose theories and conclusions straight support your findings will exist valuable to review here.
Stride 6: Identify relationships in the literature and develop and connect your own ideas to them.
This is essentially the same equally stride 5, but focused on the connections between the literature and the electric current study or guiding concepts or arguments of the paper, not only on the connections betwixt the works themselves.
Your hypothesis, statement, or guiding concept is the "golden thread" that will ultimately tie the works together and provide readers with specific insights they didn't have earlier reading your literature review. Brand sure yous know where to put the research question, hypothesis, or statement of the trouble in your inquiry paper so that you guide your readers logically and naturally from your introduction of before piece of work and evidence to the conclusions you lot want them to describe from the bigger movie.
Your review will not merely cover publications on your topics just volition include your own ideas and contributions. Past following these steps you will be telling the specific story that sets the background and shows the significance of your research and you can turn a network of related works into a focused review of the literature.
In add-on to these guidelines, authors also demand to cheque which style guidelines to utilise (APA, AMA, MLA, etc.) and what specific rules the target journal might take for how to construction such articles or how many studies to include—such data can usually exist found on the journals' "Guide for Authors" pages.
Finally, after yous have finished drafting your literature review, be sure to receive proofreading and language editing for your academic work. A competent proofreader who understands academic writing conventions and the specific style guides used past bookish journals will ensure that your paper is ready for publication in your target periodical.
Wordvice Resource
If you need more than advice on how many references to include in your paper, how to write the abstract or title for your manuscript, or how to impress the editor of your target journal with a perfect cover letter of the alphabet, then head over to the Wordvice bookish resources website.
Source: https://blog.wordvice.com/how-to-write-a-literature-review/
0 Response to "What Is the Format for Writing Up a Scientific Literature Review"
Post a Comment