Literature review is an excruciating part in the process of research. It requires an analysis of published material on the topic on interest. Moreover, for a new researcher, it is challenging extract a great number of required objectives, including the problem identification, no more great deal in this era of Information and Communication Technology (ICT), instead overloading of the literature is a major problem and the great change to be handle. Often postgraduate research students raise three questions to their peers and supervisors. First, how many articles are sufficed for a good literature review? Second, how many past years literature will be enough to meet the required level for a good literature review? And third, this research paper a novel hypothetical model is proposed to answer first two questions; the number of articles required for a good and reasonable literature review and number of years backward the analysis of articles required for the same. Our results indicate that analysis of data partially support our hypothetical model and its assumptions. Keywords: literature review; hypothetical model; load reduction; proposal writing; information systems.

1. See discussions, stats, and author profiles for this publication at: https://www.researchgate.net/publication/283268785
A MODEL FOR HANDLING OVERLOADING OF
LITERATURE REVIEW PROCESS FOR SOCIAL
SCIENCE
CONFERENCE PAPER · SEPTEMBER 2015
READS
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3 AUTHORS, INCLUDING:
Asadullah Shah
International Islamic University Malaysia
97 PUBLICATIONS 104 CITATIONS
SEE PROFILE
Kamran Khowaja
University of Malaya
12 PUBLICATIONS 34 CITATIONS
SEE PROFILE
Available from: Kamran Khowaja
Retrieved on: 01 February 2016

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A MODEL FOR HANDLING OVERLOADING OF LITERATURE
REVIEW PROCESS FOR SOCIAL SCIENCE
Asadullah Shah1, Kamran Khowaja2 and Abdul Salam Shah3
1Department of Information Systems
Kulliyyah of Information and Communication Technology
International Islamic University Malaysia
Telephone office: +60361965627
Mobile: +60143207418
asadullah@iium.edu.my, dr.asadullah.shah@gmail.com
2Department of Software Engineering
Faculty of Computer Science and Information Technology
University of Malaya (UM), Malaysia
Mobile: +923332774879, +60123402341
kamran.khowaja@gmail.com
3Department of Computer Science, SZABIST, Islamabad, Pakistan
Mobile: +923015550455
shahsalamss@gmail.com
ABSTRACT
Literature review is an excruciating part in the process of research. It requires an analysis of
published material on the topic on interest. Moreover, for a new researcher, it is challenging
extract a great number of required objectives, including the problem identification,
no more great deal in this era of Information and Communication Technology (ICT), instead
overloading of the literature is a major problem and the great change to be handle. Often
postgraduate research students raise three questions to their peers and supervisors. First, how
many articles are sufficed for a good literature review? Second, how many past years
literature will be enough to meet the required level for a good literature review? And third,
this research paper a novel hypothetical model is proposed to answer first two questions; the
number of articles required for a good and reasonable literature review and number of years
backward the analysis of articles required for the same. Our results indicate that analysis of
data partially support our hypothetical model and its assumptions.
Keywords: literature review; hypothetical model; load reduction; proposal writing;
information systems.
INTRODUCTION
Literature is defined as a published scholarly material produced by the researchers in their
field of research. The review of the literature is an analysis of the content reported in
published material (articles, reports and others). It is also a methodology itself used to

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and weaknesses of the reported work.
There are many objectives of a literature review to be obtained when it is carried out through
an extra care and vigilance. Literature review is a part of a bigger process of research that
plays pivotal role to establish some facts before any foundation for a new project can be built
for researcher in the same field. A good review can also provide deep insights on work that
has been reported and need further to be improved upon.
The process of review originates from a bigger research questions. The literature review
process in next to build close and focused understanding around the bigger question. To do
so, one has to review a large number of articles to have a body of knowledge. The review
process has three stages, first stage is searching an appropriate literature in breadth and depth,
second stage is reviewing the same, considering some targeted outcomes of the review and
finally writing the information extracted in a most appropriate manner in the body of the
literature review of the report, paper, thesis and or dissertation. Each step in this three step
process is of a great importance and needs extra care, else it adds up complexity in the
process, and thus, increases frustration and wastage of time for the researchers. To avoid the
same, there are some suggestions provided by (Canbera, 2014) and (Cronin, Ryan, &
Coughlan, 2008) to handle the process and reduce much of the burden of the process. This
paper proposes a hypothetical model to handle literature review and avoid overburden the
same. The research will try to support the model and compare outcomes with previous
researchers work in this regard.
PROBLEM STATEMENT
Literature review is a rigorous exercise that every researcher has to experience. The proper
review of large amount of published articles, and reports is never an easy task. Researchers
from all over the fields feel chaotic and muddled at this stage of the research process and
often need answers for certain specific questions related to literature review. First, how many
articles and reports are sufficient for a good literature review? And second, how many years
backward reading articles and referring the same fulfill the desired objectives for a good
literature review? In this paper hypothetical model is proposed that answers adequately both
the questions as given above.
LITERATURE REVIEW
Literature is defined as published material available for reading and referring in research
work. And review of literature is critical reading articles, reports and some cases books, to
build the foundation for research project. It is a sub-process of a bigger process of the research
and having multiple phases. In phase one, articles are searched and collected using key word
using various sources, digital libraries and other places. In second phase, articles and other
reports are arranged by chronologically, methodologically, thematically or even one suitable
to the research questions. Third phase is reading, analyzing, and synthesizing the same and
the last, fourth phase is writing the literature in a document.
Literature appears in various documents in different forms. For example, in Thesis, and
dissertations, a complete chapter is dedicated for it, in reports, paper and articles and in some
cases proposals, it is a topic headings. It also can be a paper itself in review research and
called review papers in this case a almost complete document is only on literature review.

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No matter what ways and where literature review appears in research documents, the process
of literature review is to reveal and discover a great number of objectives and outcomes.
Given below are the objectives that a reviewer must attempt to achieve. As given in
(NoName, 2014) and (Levy & Ellis, 2006):
Compare and contrast different authors views on an issue
Groups authors who drew similar conclusions
Criticize aspects of methodology
Note areas in which authors are in disagreement
Highlight exemplary studies
Highlight gaps in research
Helping the researcher understanding the existing body of knowledge. Including what
is already known and where new research is needed? That is what is needed to be
known?
o be
Justifying the proposed study as one that contributes something new to the Body of
Knowledge (BoK)
Framing the valid research methodology, approaches, goals and research questions
for the proposed study.
Gives credit
Demonstrates understanding of theoretical and research issues
Provides a critical evaluation of relevant literature
Provides an integration and synthesis of existing literature
Provides new theoretical insights or develop a new model as the conceptual
framework for your research
Illustrate significant and substantial contribution and a few more
Canbera (2014) suggest that when proposing a new study or a new theory, researchers should
ensure the validity of the study and reliability of the results by making use of quality literature
to serve as the foundation for their research.
Testing for applicability of research study, Levy and Ellis (2006) in the paper says that
l, it is also important to identify articles that
are applicable to the proposed study. This issue of testing for applicability of research
literature to the proposed study has two critical facets. The first deals with the inclusion or
exclusion of articles from the literature review, and the second deals with ethical and
unethical use of references. Both facets should be addressed during the literature search and
More on applicability can be seen (Davis, 1989; Davis, Bagozzi, & Warshaw, 1989;
Venkatesh & Davis, 1996, 2000) and ethical or unethical use of reference issues (Davison,

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Clarke, Loch, & Chairman-Kock, 2000; Laband & Piette, 2000) are beyond the scope of our
proposed model.
PROPOSED HYPOTHETICAL MODEL
The proposed hypothetical model is given in Figure 1. It is assumed that for an effective
literature review, articles of past five years contribute 90% to the most important outcomes
of the literature review. The remaining 10% outcomes may come from articles between past
5 and 10 years. The literature beyond past 10 year contribute most to the background and
history of the topic under research, no contribution come from old articles as major outcomes
of any effective literature review.
Figure 1. Hypothetical model for literature review
The proposed model is designs to answer two research questions related to literature reviews
for a research proposal of postgraduate studies. This study currently include Information
systems discipline to prove hypothetical model assumptions to answer following two
questions:
How many articles to be referred for a quality research proposal?
How many backward years one might refer for a quality research proposal e.g. (5, 10, 15 or
more) years?
As stated in (Canbera, 2014), this depends on what the literature review is for and at what
stage of researcher is at in the process. Table 1, is a reproduction of data given by the authors.
Table 1. Literature review suggested by (Canbera, 2014)
Undergraduate 5-20 titles

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Honors dissertation 20 + titles
40+ titles
50+ titles
Cronin et al. (2008) suggest a maximum frame of 5-10 years is usually placed on the age of
the works to be included. In conducting the literature search it is important to keep a record
of the keywords and methods suggested by (Timmins & McCabe, 2005) used in searching,
as these are needed to be identified later when describing how search was conducted.
DATA COLLECTION
For this research, data has been collected from postgraduate research proposals of students
who have defended their thesis proposals successfully. Furthermore, the proposals are
considered for IT field. For each proposal, the literature review and references are noted for
their count and years backward they have been referred for. Total 25 proposals were taken,
including the ones who qualified proposal in years, 2014, 2013 and 2012. Also, these
proposals include students of computer science, information systems and library &
information sciences; for both postgraduate masters and PhD student proposal.
RESEARCH RESULTS
The result of data collected is provided in Figure 2. The graphs shows a breakup of papers
from all three years (2012-2014) data in three groups, papers referred in past 5 years, papers
referred from past 10 years and beyond 10 years; considering time line from the date of
proposal defense for all years (2012, 2013 & 2014) respectively. Analysis indicates that
papers referred from past 5 years are 50% of the total, assumed paper in hypothetical model
were 90%. From past ten years, assumed percentage of papers was 10% as shown in Figure
1, it turned out to be 25%. It was also assumed that beyond 10 years of the literature,
contribution to the body of literature is 0% or negligible. However, it turned out to be 25%.
Combined result of 5 and 10 years contribution to the body of literature is 75% as shown in
Figure 2 as well as in Figure 3.
0
100
200
300
400
500
Papers from past
5 years
Papers from past
10 years
Papers from past
15 years
Total 5 years and
10 Years
Papers referred
in literature
review
Total
Year wise statistics of references used in literature review (2012-
2014)
2014 2013 2012

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Figure 2. Histograms showing percentage of articles reffered in literature review part of a
proposal
Figure 3. Percentage of literature from past 5-10 years referred in literature review
DISCUSSION
The analysis to support hypothetical model for an effective literature review face some
pitfalls. These snags are due to various reasons. First, the data set considered was not
sufficient enough to support the assumed model. Second, the data set consists three different,
though intertwined disciples, IS, CS and Library Science. Both IS and Library science falls
in social sciences field, whereas CS, does not fall into social science category, rather it falls
into a field of mathematics and logic. Third, there was no equal number of proposals taken
for corresponding years. For example, for year 2013, a maximum number of proposal was
taken and same is not true for years 2012 and 2014, number of the proposals taken was so
less, the reason was non-availability of the proposals and finally, postgraduate Masters and
PhD proposal were considered indiscriminately, this might have an influence upon the data
taking proposals from same level might have a different results then the present results. The
data collected from just one method that is proposal only might have effect on the results.
CONCLUSION
Preliminary investigations and results indicate that for a research proposal at post-graduate
studies needs to have sufficient articles to study and provide evidence for a depth-breath of
the literature covered. Form current data set the assumed number for a good literature review
as suggested by (Canbera, 2014) cannot be supported. This does not mean that the suggested
figure are assumed and not empirically sup`orted. It may all be because of insufficient data
set considered for this study. The proposed study found that in practice 50% articles may be
a reasonable number if considered for a research proposal literature review part. Our
hypothetical model is not yet completely proved, this needs a better strategy and higher data

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samples to be supported. We still believe that the model may be a stepping stone to guide
fresh researchers for reducing overloading of literature review part of their research process.
FUTURE WORK
To support model given in Figure 1 data sample need to be considered higher, and assumed
number may well be above 100 proposals, the greater the number, better the accuracy of the
results is expected. Proposals from one disciple at a time may be considered due to the fact
that each disciple may have its own requirements. Variety of instruments may be used for
data collection including interviews to fetch the accurate facts. The work can be extended by
measuring outcomes of a literature review and in this regard survey may be conducted to
explore and describe new facts and measure set outcomes of a good literature review.
REFERENCES