literature review

1. Literature Review
A literature review is an account of what has been published on a topic by accredited scholars and
researchers.
In writing the literature review, your purpose is to convey to your reader what knowledge and ideas
have been established on a topic, and what their strengths and weaknesses are.
It explains and justifies the present investigation.
It is not just a descriptive list of the material available, or a set of summaries.
A literature review also includes a critical evaluation of the material; this is why it is called a
literature review rather than a literature report.
Writing a literature review involves finding relevant publications (such as books and journal articles),
critically analyzing them, and explaining what you found.
There are five key steps:
Search for relevant literature
Evaluate sources
Identify themes, debates and gaps
Outline the structure
Write your literature review
A good literature review doesn’t just summarize sources.
It analyses, synthesizes, and critically evaluates to give a clear picture of the state of knowledge on
the subject.
Need for Review of Literature
Review of literature is used/needed for the following purposes:
Identifies gaps in knowledge as well as weakness in previous research.
Avoids reinventing the wheel – i.e. it saves you wasting time researching something that’s already
been done.
Identifies opposing views.
Identifies other people working in the same field. Knowing who’s already working in your area and
getting in touch with them can be an invaluable source of knowledge and support.
Demonstrates the depth of your knowledge about your research.
Identifies the important works in your area and shows that you’ve read them.
Provides an intellectual context for your own work, and enables you to position your project in

2. relation to others in the field.
Allows you to show that you are building on a foundation of existing knowledge and ideas – i.e.
carrying on from where others have already reached.
Demonstrates your research skills – i.e. you not only know about work in your area, you also know
how to access it.
Identifies information, methods and ideas that may be relevant to your project.
Key points to remember
Here are some things to bear in mind when researching and writing your literature review.
It is not a descriptive list.
It is not a book by book and article by article summary.
It is not a survey of every single thing that’s ever been written about your topic.
It must tell the reader what knowledge and ideas have been established and agreed in your area and
outline their strengths and weaknesses
How to do a literature search
Define your terms. The first thing to do is to define your topic or research project.
Search creatively. Identify all the relevant information sources. This may include: libraries, indexes
and electronic databases, and the Internet.
Use the library. Search in your institution’s library that is relevant to your topic.
Journals. Remember that journals are the best place to find the most recently published research.
And don’t forget that many journals are now online only publications.
Newspapers and magazines are a good source for current issues, although they are not always very
useful for in-depth analysis.
Don’t limit yourself to obvious sources. For example, libraries contain books and journals but they
also contain unpublished MA and PhD theses that may contain research relevant to your topic.
Other less obvious sources also include:
Conference papers. These are collections of papers presented at conferences and, like journals,
often contain ‘cutting edge’ research. These collections are published on the Internet, in special
editions of relevant journals and in one-off books.
National and local Government publications. These include reports, yearbooks, documents, manuals
and statistical surveys.

3. Publishers’ websites. These sites often contain summaries of recent publications and the full-text
electronic journals.
You should also identify and join online discussion lists relevant to your topic.
Databases. For many subject areas – particularly sciences and social sciences – there are online
databases listing current articles
Google Scholar
You can find out how many times an article has been cited on Google Scholar—a high citation count
means the article has been influential in the field, and should certainly be included in your literature
review.
You can use Boolean operators to help narrow down your search:
AND: to find sources that contain more than one keyword (e.g. dengue AND malaria AND zika)
OR: to find sources that contain one of a range of synonyms (e.g. dengue OR malaria OR zika)
NOT: to exclude results containing certain terms (e.g. malaria NOT zika)
Read the abstract to find out whether an article is relevant to your topic.
To identify the most important publications on your topic, take note of recurring citations.
Proof reading not only corrects grammar and spelling mistakes, but also strengthens your writing by
making sure your paper is free of vague language, redundant words and awkward phrasing.
The scope of your review will depend on your topic and discipline.
It is important to keep track of your sources with citations to avoid plagiarism.
The sources of literature collection can be broadly divided into 3 groups,
Primary
Secondary
Tertiary
Primary Sources
It is a reference written during the time of the original research.
They are original materials.
Have not been filtered through interpretation or evaluation.
Original thinking or new discovery
Primary materials can be written or non-written.
Secondary Sources
A secondary source is a reference or recording that relates or discusses information originally
presented elsewhere.
It is a description or summary by somebody other than the original researcher. E.g. a review article.
It is not an original source, often lacking freshness of the original material.
It will collect organize and repackage primary source information to increase usability & speed of
delivery.

4. Tertiary Sources
A tertiary source is a review of literature of textual consolidation of primary and secondary sources.
It consists of information which is a distillation and collection of primary & secondary sources.
It often provides data in a convenient form
Types of Literature Review
The purpose of a literature review is simple:
To educate oneself in the topic area &
To understand the literature before shaping an argument or
justification.
Over the years, numerous types of literature reviews have emerged, but the
main types are:
Traditional or Narrative &
Systematic.
There are also many other types of literature review. The choice of a specific
type depends on your research approach and design.