Literature reviews are in great demand in most scientific fields. A literature review is a piece of academic writing demonstrating knowledge and understanding of the academic literature on a specific topic placed in context. A literature review also includes a critical evaluation of the material. It provides an overview of current knowledge, allowing researcher to identify relevant theories, methods, and gaps in the existing research. The purpose of literature review is to introduce the reader to what has gone before and to provide you with a foundation that you can build on with your own research.
After having taken notes while reading the literature, you will have a rough idea of the amount of material available for the review. Based on this idea, you may start to conduct your literature review and the key steps to writing a literature review are:
- Define the research question (for more)
- Determine inclusion/exclusion criteria.
- Choose databases and conduct the search.
- Review your results.
- Synthesize the information gathered.
- Analyze the information gathered.
- Write the literature review.
Be remember, a good literature review doesn’t just summarise sources because literature review is not stamp collecting. A good review should analyses, synthesises, and critically evaluates to give a clear picture of the state of knowledge on the subject.
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