CAW LibGuides: Writing a Literature Review

Resource focus 

This aim of this handout is to provide a general guidance to writing a literature review.  It does not cover the systematic literature reviews that form part of the dissertation research project for healthcare students.  You can refer to your course literature, tutor, or the Centre for Academic Writing for guidance on this task.  This resource uses the APA 7^th edition referencing style; however, the guidance applies to writing adhering to any academic referencing requirements.

What is a literature review?

 A literature review is a key component of most academic papers. Some assignments will ask you to provide a separate literature review section, while others will require you to weave a review of important literature on a topic into the introduction or body section of your paper. A literature review should offer an overview of the relevant and significant literature on a research area. It is usually carefully limited to a particular problem, issue or timeframe and should include a description, summary and critical evaluation of the scholarship and research studies you choose to discuss.

What is the purpose of a literature review?

The purpose of a literature review is to convey to your reader a sense of what knowledge and ideas have already been established on a topic, and what the strengths and weaknesses of these contributions are. As a piece of writing, the literature review must be defined by a guiding concept (e.g. your research objective for your own research project, the main problem or issue you are discussing, or the major argument you are exploring). A literature review should show the reader your ability to identify the relevant information and outline existing knowledge on a topic, and to identify the ‘gap’ in the research that your paper or research project will address. The literature review should provide a rationale or justification for your argument or study.

The function of a literature review, therefore, is to:

• Demonstrate to your reader your understanding and awareness of current research in the area;
• Locate your own research within the context of current research and theory;
• Demonstrate your capacity to critically evaluate the research of others;
• Indicate how your own scholarship and research builds on what is already known in the area.

How you write your literature review will depend on your particular topic, the writing conventions of your degree discipline, and your level or year of study. Be sure to check with your department and your supervisor/tutor for the particular requirements appropriate to your discipline.

What counts as ‘literature’?

‘Literature’ covers all relevant and authoritative scholarship and research on a topic. This includes scholarly arguments and research studies discussed in books, journal articles, historical records, government reports, etc., and on scholarly or professional websites. Check with your supervisor or tutor when in doubt of the validity of a research source.

Why write a literature review?

Completing a literature review brings you up to date on the current extent of knowledge and ideas—including contrasting debates, approaches, methodologies, perspectives and viewpoints—that exist in a topic. A well-researched and well-written literature review provides your reader with this knowledge and demonstrates to your reader that you are in command of your subject knowledge. A literature review also provides you with a backdrop against which to define and defend the topic you are discussing, by requiring you to explain how your own research fits into the ‘the bigger picture’ and to justify your own approach to the topic.

Undergraduate literature reviews

A literature review is an essential part of undergraduate dissertations, project reports and long essays, particularly in the final year. At undergraduate level, a literature review is expected to:

• Offer an accurate account of the key points, methodologies and conclusions of current research on your topic;
• Demonstrate your awareness and understanding of the main theoretical approaches and how they relate to your topic;
• Justify why you are taking a particular approach to your chosen topic and possibly to show how your approach adds something that is not already known or understood within the area.

Masters literature reviews

A literature review is an integral component of Masters essays, reports, and dissertations. At Masters level, a literature review will take a substantial amount of time and effort to produce and may, in itself, represent a useful piece of scholarship. A Masters level literature review is expected to:

• Offer a coherent, analytical account of the current state of research in the area that evaluates the relative strengths and weaknesses of various theories and approaches;
• Discuss the advantages/disadvantages of various research methodologies that scholars have applied in the area;
• Provide a reflective consideration of your own methodological criteria;
• Reflect critically upon the assumptions, implications and premises associated with the relevant theoretical approaches adopted by other scholars and by yourself.

Doctoral literature reviews

At the Doctoral level a literature review is expected to be written to a very high standard. It will take a considerable amount of time and effort to produce and will in itself be a definitive piece of scholarship. The literature review you write for your doctoral thesis will be read by experts in your field, and must, therefore, show that you have knowledge of the field in terms of both depth and breadth. A Doctoral literature review is expected to:

• Go beyond recording and evaluating the research of others, to infer the possibility of further possible research approaches to the topic or problem;
• Demonstrate a high level of conceptual understanding within and across theories;
• Demonstrate your capacity to provide an evaluative account of the historical development of scholarship which has led to the current state of research in your field;
• Show that you are an authority on the current state of research in your area, wherever it is published and in whatever language it appears.

Ignorance of a significant piece of research may cast doubt upon your entire research project. For this reason, the writing of your doctoral literature review must be an evolving, ongoing process, which involves adding to and refining your document throughout your doctoral study.

How to conduct a literature review

Whatever level you are working at, writing your literature review will involve selecting the sources you want to write about, analysing them, and presenting your findings in a focused and well-organised manner. Let’s briefly consider what is involved in each of these steps.

Establishing your focus

The sources that you select for your literature review will depend upon the problem that you have formulated and the issues or themes that you intend to examine. Start by considering what components your topic can be divided into. These should be general enough to allow you to compare approaches and points of view, but not so general that they lack any kind of focus. Your initial list will help you select texts that suit your purposes, but you should expect that it will evolve as you analyse them and gain a better understanding of your topic.

Conducting a literature search

As noted above, the sources discussed in your literature review may take a variety of forms, and these will determine where you look for them. For most students, however, a literature review will involve at least some engagement with scholarly books and articles. These can often be found on subject-specific databases (consult your subject librarian if you are unsure about how to use these), but can also be found using Locate and search engines like Google Scholar and Google Books. When sourcing articles via search engines, it is important to ensure that they come from a reputable source. For books, this will include academic publishers. For journal articles, you should look for peer-reviewed published in quality journals. If you are sourcing information from websites, you should prioritise sites with university domain names (sites that end in .co.uk or .edu, for example) or reports drawn directly from the websites of companies you may be investigating.

Selecting sources

Your search will likely turn up many more sources than you could hope to engage with (if this isn’t the case, you may be using overly narrow search criteria). This means that you will need to be selective in your approach. Consider prioritising sources:

• From respected journals and publishers
• Published in the last decade
• Written by established figures in your field
• That have been frequently cited in other work (Google Scholar will tell you how many times an article has been cited and by whom)
• That are drawn directly from an organisation you are investigating or respected third parties (if your literature review is intended to contain company reports, industry studies, etc.)

This initial selection will likely still contain more texts than you can comfortably engage with in the space of your literature review. The next step is to reduce it down to the most pertinent sources. Use something like the following process:

• Read abstracts or executive summaries where available to assess the relevance of a text to your needs
• Read the introductions and conclusions to the sources you have selected (or any texts that do not have abstracts or summaries) and discard any that are not useful
• Skim the body text of the remaining sources to assess their value to you. It is useful here to have a sense of the key phrases or references that you are hoping to find.

Analysing your sources

At this point, you should have established a manageable set of pertinent sources that you can use to inform the rest of your project. The next step is to undertake the analysis that will form the content of your literature review. This will involve reading your sources multiple times, taking notes, and bringing these notes together in a way that facilitates comparison and abstraction. Starting with whatever source you consider easiest to work with, consider the following process:

• Read the whole text through once to establish the basic ‘story’ being told.
• Now answer the following questions:
  • What is the author’s purpose?
  • What is the author’s main point?
  • Who is the author’s intended audience?
  • What arguments does the author use to support the main point?
  • Are they persuasive? If not, could they be made so?
  • What evidence does the author present to support the arguments?
  • Is it adequate? If not, what evidence would be required to support the argument?

Don’t worry if your answers are vague at this point, you can return to them as you re-read the source.

• Re-read the whole text with a pen or keyboard to hand:
  • If the text is difficult, consider writing a descriptive title for each paragraph so that you can track the development of the argument
  • Underline or highlight key claims in the text
  • Note elements of the text that you think are interesting, problematic, or controversial (you might want to use different colours for each)
  • Note points in the text that agree or disagree with other texts in your literature review
• Repeat this process until you feel that you have a command of the text.

Comparing your sources

By this point you will have carefully read through a number of sources. The next step is to establish relationships between them in a way that will facilitate writing your literature review. There are various ways in which you could bring your notes together, but one tried and tested method is a synthesis matrix. This is a table that allows you to compare the position of different sources on various themes of interest. For example:

	Smith, J. (2021). Ethical Dilemmas in End-of-Life Care: A Kantian Perspective. Journal of Bioethics, 15(3), 123-145.	Johnson, A. (2022). Utilitarianism Revisited: A Preference-Based Approach to Euthanasia. Ethics in Action, 42(2), 67-89.	Thompson, L. (2019). Virtue Ethics and Euthanasia: Cultivating Compassion and Autonomy. Journal of Virtue Ethics, 30(4), 789-810.
Moral Theory Used in Article	Deontological: Rational beings are inherently valuable. Morality must be grounded in reason.	Consequentialist: Good actions maximize preference satisfaction or happiness.	Virtue Ethics: The cultivation of virtues leads to moral excellence and guides ethical decision-making.
Position on Voluntary Euthanasia	Rejects voluntary euthanasia, as it “violates the principle of treating all human life as inherently valuable and the duty to not kill” (Smith, 2021, p. 126).	Supports voluntary euthanasia as a means to “maximize preference satisfaction or happiness for the individual and others involved” (Johnson, 2022, pp. 69-70).	Views voluntary euthanasia as context-dependent, with “consideration of virtues like compassion and respect for autonomy guiding decision-making” (Thompson, 2019, p. 804).
Position on Speculative Euthanasia	Rejects speculative euthanasia, as it involves “intentionally causing harm to an individual based on hypothetical future scenarios” (Smith, 2021, p. 126), which goes against the principle of not using individuals as means.	Supports speculative euthanasia as morally permissible if it maximizes overall preference satisfaction or happiness.	Emphasizes the importance of “virtues like prudence and practical wisdom” (Thompson, 2019, 809) in considering the practicalities and potential consequences of speculative euthanasia.
Position on Involuntary Euthanasia	Rejects involuntary euthanasia, as it “violates the principle of respecting individual autonomy and the duty to not kill” (Smith, 2021, p. 126).	Rejects involuntary euthanasia, as it violates the principle of maximizing preference satisfaction or happiness.	Rejects involuntary euthanasia, as it goes against the virtues of compassion, respect for autonomy, and justice.
Criticisms of Article	Debate about potential conflicts between duties in deontological ethics.	Debate about the challenges of measuring and prioritizing preferences, and potential implications for vulnerable populations.	Debate about the subjectivity and contextual nature of virtues, and potential challenges in application and cultural variability.

Example synthesis matrix

The texts listed in the above synthesis matrix have been made up, but the principle should be clear:

• Along the top of the table we have three sources (your table may have considerably more). These are written in full APA 7th edition style to make things easier when we come to write the literature review.
• On the left hand side, we have a list of topics or themes that are of interest for our project.
• The rest of the squares are then filled completed accordingly. Note the following:
  • Most boxes use quotations with accompanying APA citations, although it is also fine to simply summarise a source’s position if there is no obvious quote to use.
  • Key terms have been highlighted.
  • Certain boxes have been colour coded to show whether they completely accept, partially accept, or reject different types of euthanasia. In this way, it is immediately obvious which theory is the most permissive, which is the most restrictive, and which type of euthanasia is the most controversial.

Structuring your literature review

Having worked through your sources and identified common themes and points of interest, you are now in a position to organise and write your literature review. Looking at our example synthesis matrix above, it is clear that we already have a blueprint for what we want to write. Devoting one or more paragraphs to each of the themes listed in the left-most column, we can compare and contrast the various sources in a way that draws out their similarities and differences and presents the reader with a background against which we can develop our own work in later sections. If your own synthesis matrix has many more sources, then it may be necessary to break your discussion down into two or more paragraphs, perhaps grouping sources together in terms of a shared position or focus, or breaking the theme down into components that are exemplified by different sets of texts.

Once you have done this, you will then be able to write an introductory paragraph that tells the reader how you plan to proceed, and a concluding paragraph that draws together your key findings.

An example literature review paragraph

As an example, let’s consider a paragraph developed from one row on our synthesis matrix above:

The term ‘voluntary euthanasia’ refers to ‘those instances of euthanasia in which a clearly competent person makes a voluntary and enduring request to be helped to die’ (Young, 2022). The question of its moral permissibility produces diverse responses from across the spectrum of moral theory that we are considering here. As we might expect from a deontological perspective, Smith (2021) rejects any form of euthanasia on the grounds that it violates two non-negotiable moral duties, namely the duty to treat all human life as inherently valuable, and the duty not to kill. At the other extreme, Johnson’s commitment to the consequentialist position of preference utilitarianism makes him amenable to any meaningfully voluntary request for euthanasia, since he holds this to be the best means to ‘maximise preference satisfaction […] for the individual and others involved’ (Johnson, 2022). Situated between these two poles, virtue ethicists argue that the permissibility is context-dependent, locating the site of ethical concern neither in universal duties, nor in particular satisfactions, but in relation to the virtues of ‘compassion and respect for autonomy guiding decision making’ (Thompson, 2019) exhibited by those who are to facilitate the procedure.

A more complex synthesis matrix will yield a greater number of sources and perspectives, but this example already allows us to note the following:

• The focus of the paragraph is not on any one particular source, but rather on capturing the spectrum of opinion on the moral permissibility of voluntary euthanasia.
• The sources are juxtaposed with one another to produce a sense of what that spectrum might look like.
• The paragraph moves freely between direct quotations and paraphrases with citations to develop this picture.
• The various sources are related back to the various moral theories that they exemplify, which will have been introduced earlier in the essay.

Editing and proofreading your literature review

Once you have a completed draft of your literature review it will be necessary to edit and proofread it before submitting your assignment.

Editing is the process of identifying substantive changes that need to be made to your work. These may include altering, reordering, or removing sections to ensure that your work flows and retains its focus. This is the time to ensure that each part of your review is of a reasonable length and makes a meaningful contribution to the whole. In particular, you will want to revisit your introduction to make sure that your description of what you intend to do matches the edited form of the essay.

Proofreading is the final stage in completing an assignment. The goal is to read over the entire piece of work carefully to remove spelling, grammar and formatting errors. For further advice on proofreading see the Centre for Academic Writing’s resource ‘Tips for Polishing and Proofreading’.

Having considered formal and procedural aspects of literature review writing, it will be useful to consolidate your understanding through some practical exercises. Consider the following:

Exercise 1

Create a synthesis table comparing literature reviews from several sources in your discipline. Consider including rows discussing tone, style, structure, depth of analysis, conclusions, etc.

Exercise 2

Use the synthesis table you made in exercise 2 to practice writing a short literature review using the format set out above.

Further Reading

Students looking for in depth guides to writing literature reviews may find the following books useful:

Ridley, D. (2012). The literature review: A step-by-step guide for students. SAGE Publications.

Efron, S. E. & Ravid, R. (2018). Writing the literature review: A practical guide. Guilford Publications.

Berdanier, C. & Lenart, J. (2020). So, you have to write a literature review: A guided workbook for engineers.  Wiley.

Citing this resource

Coventry University. (2023). Writing a literature review [Resource]. Centre for Academic Writing. https://www.coventry.ac.uk/globalassets/media/global/writing-a-literature-review.pdf

List of References

Hart, C. (1998). Doing a literature review: Releasing the social science imagination. Palgrave Macmillan

CAW offers writing development workshops across all genres of academic writing, including Writing a Literature workshops.  To view available workshops and book online, visit: https://libcal.coventry.ac.uk/calendar/caw 

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