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LHS Reusable Content: Literature Review

Literature Review

  • A literature review is an overview of previously published material on a given topic area.
  • No definitive type of study is looked at.
  • Describes and appraises previous work but does not describe specific methods by which the reviewed studies were identified, selected and evaluated- therefore it cannot be replicated and can give way to bias.
  • Often used as rationale for new research, as it identifies gaps in the research.

  • Review articles can cover a wide range of subject matter at various levels of completeness and comprehensiveness based on analyses of literature. 

Information Skills Guide

Find out more about searching, using our guide to help you search effectively for information for your assignments and projects.  In other words, it will show you how to carry out a successful literature search.  It has been designed to cover all aspects of searching and allows you to focus on particular parts of searching as follows:
 

1.     Define your research topic.

2.     Identify your search terms (keywords).

3.     Combine search terms to improve your search.

4.     Short cuts (phrase search, truncation, wildcards)

5.     Choose relevant sources.

6.     Browse and  evaluate your results.

7.     Record your progress

8.     Identify sources to keep you up to date.

To get the most from the guide, we recommend that you work through all the topics displayed on the tabs  above.
 

The search...

 

  1. Identify main search terms (listing synonyms/alternative terms). 
    See our Information Skills Tutorial for more information on choosing search terms, and searching
  2. Create and record a search strategy (see worksheet below), combine search terms and employ advanced search techniques
  3. Carry out the search in subject databases
  4. Save the search strategies (for each database).
  5. Remove duplicate papers if saving results from several databases (RefWorks can help with this).
  6. Refine the search by date, geographical area to increase relevancy of results
  7. Save all relevant papers.