Honors College

A literature review is a dedicated space within a larger research paper to establish the larger scope of knowledge on your topic. You can demonstrate what information is already well-known, highlight areas of disagreement among professionals, establish patterns/themes among professionals, and identify gaps in the field to justify the research that you are undertaking. You are synthesizing and analyzing the information; that is, you should be discussing the relationships between the different research sources to arrive at the previously mentioned conclusions.

Do not merely summarize your sources - You should only provide as much summary as needed to contextualize your conclusions.

Be careful not to just "take sides" - Your sources should be helping you round out an independent conclusion, in most scenarios. Your objective is to use all points of view to contextualize your research. You may ultimately choose a specific side, but your research should maintain due respect for variations in understanding of the topic.

Begin with your own research question. I recommend a research question that has implicit complexity ("Why" or "How" questions), though any questions will do to get you started. Break that question into key terms, and begin browsing a database of your choice. While browsing, you should consider how the items you find may help you answer some of the following questions:

• What is already known about the subject?
• Are there any gaps in the knowledge of the subject that may justify your research?
• Have areas of further study been identified by other researchers that you may want to consider?
• Are there any primary contributors to this field?
• Are there areas of agreement from different researchers about the topic?
• Are there areas of disagreement?
• What methods or problems were identified by others studying in the field and how might they impact your research?
• What is the most current information about the state of research on this topic?
• What sources of information or data were identified that might be useful to you?
• Are you focusing on methodological approaches; on theoretical issues; on qualitative or quantitative research?

 Questions were remixed from: https://pitt.libguides.com/c.php?g=1172750&p=8567945#s-lg-box-27181764

The short answer: You need exactly enough sources.

You should strive to find a balance between providing a thorough understanding of your research topic and keeping the literature review short enough to focus on your own contribution to the topic. Too many sources will inevitably make your literature review too long; Too few sources, and you won't be providing enough insight into the current state of research.

The exact number is hard to pin down. The complexity of your topic and the total possible length of your research paper will often be the deciding factor. As you are doing your research, I strongly recommend comparing your list of sources to the listed sources within the papers you are reading. This can help give you a sense of how much information you need, as well as how that quantity of information translates into a literature review.

You do not need to read a full article to determine it's viability for your research. Instead, read the following before committing to reading an entire article:

1. The Abstract - this will give you a broad overview of the article and its findings.

2. The Introduction - Pay special attention to the thesis or claim, as this will inform you about the purpose of the article, which can help you determine its usefulness.

3. The Conclusion - The final paragraph will give you some additional clarity on whether or not the thesis or claim was viable based on the findings, which can again help you make your decisions.

If all three of those sections of the research article are promising, then it is highly likely that the full article will be of use to you!

Managing your sources is crucial to making sure you don't spend excess time in the literature review process.

I highly recommend Zotero (https://libguides.uta.edu/zotero) as a way to manage sources. It take a few minutes to set up, but then it will allow you to easily organize your sources into folders, add notes/annotations to items, and embed citations automatically when you are writing your paper. Even if you don't use Zotero, creating folders on your computer or in One Drive that are clearly labeled and easy to navigate is essential to successfully completing your literature review.

In general, as you are reading your sources, you should be taking brief notes that outline the following:

• The central claim or thesis
• The findings
• The conclusion

You can use these notes to help group your articles together by common ideas, which will expedite synthesis when you are writing later.

A literature review is either one component of a broader study, or an entire study can be based on existing literature. You can follow the links below to see the variations in how a paper is constructed to support these different review types.

Here is an article where a Literature Review is a component of the overall study: https://go.exlibris.link/sSMmvjtc

Here is an article where the entirety of the publication is a Literature Review: https://go.exlibris.link/2yRCnJTP