Understanding the Literature Review (original) (raw)

The Science of Literature Reviews: Searching, Identifying, Selecting, and Synthesising

Publications, 2023

The ability to conduct an explicit and robust literature review by students, scholars or scientists is critical in producing excellent journal articles, academic theses, academic dissertations or working papers. A literature review is an evaluation of existing research works on a specific academic topic, theme or subject to identify gaps and propose future research agenda. Many postgraduate students in higher education institutions lack the necessary skills and understanding to conduct in-depth literature reviews. This may lead to the presentation of incorrect, false or biased inferences in their theses or dissertations. This study offers scientific knowledge on how literature reviews in different fields of study could be conducted to mitigate against biased inferences such as unscientific analogies and baseless recommendations. The literature review is presented as a process that involves several activities including searching, identifying, reading, summarising, compiling, analysing, interpreting and referencing. We hope this article serves as reference material to improve the academic rigour in the literature review chapters of postgraduate students' theses or dissertations. This article prompts established scholars to explore more innovative ways through which scientific literature reviews can be conducted to identify gaps (empirical, knowledge, theoretical, methodological, application and population gap) and propose a future research agenda.

Conceptualizing the Pathways of Literature Review in Research

Since research work is an adventurous expedition, one requires clear pathways, without which the researcher can be lost in the foggy way. To develop a good roadmap is, thus, a crucial task on the part of the researcher. Based on this assumption, this study aimed to conceptualize the notions, functions, and components of literature review that subsumes developing a conceptual framework, an outline of a research work. To achieve this objective, I adopted descriptive-interpretive design of research. Basing my study on theoretical and conceptual insights from different theoreticians' and researchers' works, I analyzed and interpreted the information obtained from the templates used by the previous researchers. I have inferred that literature review, which is indispensable in research process, functions like a beacon light for safe harbouring the research work. I have also inferred, like many have done, that the basic components of literature review consist of introduction, review of theoretical and empirical literature, implication of the review, and theoretical and/or conceptual framework/s. Its implication is that any research work needs to pave its pathways distinctly for its successful execution.

The nature and purpose of a literature review

• Learning outcomes • The nature of a literature review • Identifying the main subject and themes • Reviewing previous research • Emphasizing leading research studies • Exploring trends in the literature • Summarizing key ideas in a subject area • Summary A literature review is usually regarded as being an essential part of student projects, research studies and dissertations. This chapter examines the reasons for the importance of the literature review, and the things which it tries to achieve. It also explores the main strategies which you can use to write a good literature review.

Constructing a Literature Review

With a view to examining the entire proposed structure for an empirical article, this editorial focuses on the Literature Review, also known as the Theoretical Framework. The literature review may be defined as “a documented review of published or unpublished works (articles, books, etc.) in specific fields of interest to the work of the researcher” (Ferreira, 2015: 36). It is to be found in conceptual articles such as empirical articles, whether qualitative or quantitative. It has a clear link to the article as a whole and provides support for the section on the development of the concept and the hypotheses/propositions that follow it in the structure of an empirical article.

Art and Science of Review of Literature

Review of literature is an integral part of any research. However, the scope and purpose of review of literature vary with the context. The most common contexts in which review of literature is demanded are - - (1) A course assignment, (2) A short review for a research article, (3) A review for research proposal, (4) A stand alone review article and (5) A chapter-length review for thesis/dissertation. There are seven important steps in the task of review of literature. They are - - (1) How to search for studies? (2) How to select studies? (3) How to analyze studies? (4) Which scheme is appropriate for analysis? (5) How to compose/organize review of literature? (6) Scheme of presentation of review and (7) Conclusion.

Writing Matrix and Assessing Literature Review: A Methodological Element of a Scientific Project

Journal of Asian Development, 2018

A debatable consensus on and appropriate approaches to literature review function as the theoretical background of the paper. It redefines the literature review substance, synthesis, and procedure to literature matrix, and literature review assessment. In addition, some implications are to interpret the discussion. Finally, finding of the present study is applicable to any study fields at it generally provides matrix for which writing literature review can be easily conducted. Suggestions, identical to the potential of further studies and its application by ongoing researcher and writer, are holistically provided.

A Model for Handling Overloading of Literature Review Process for Social Science

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, commonly known as ‘gap’ in research. Searching and locating most appropriate literature is 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, what if, literature referred is published in the language other than researchers’ language? In 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.