The Literature Review
CSE/ISE 300 Spring 2011
Tony Scarlatos
What is a Literature Review?
“... a literature review uses as its database
reports of primary or original scholarship, and
does not report new primary scholarship
itself.”
“Second a literature review seeks to describe,
summarize, evaluate, clarify and/or integrate
the content of primary reports.”
- Cooper (1988)
The Purpose of a Literature Review
“The review of relevant literature is nearly
always a standard chapter of a thesis or
dissertation. The review forms an important
chapter in a thesis where its purpose is to
provide the background to and justification for
the research undertaken.”
- Bruce (1994)
What a Literature Review is not:
• A Literature Review is not a book report…
• It is not an Annotated Bibliography – a list of papers with a summary of
their contents and a bibliography.
• Annotated Bibliographies may be organized alphabetically by title or
author, or chronologically by publication date; and such a list can be
useful to a researcher to organize the works they have read for future
reference. But the papers are not organized around a unifying theme
that addresses a central question posed by the reviewer.
• It is not a collection of papers that necessarily all reach the same
conclusions about a particular topic. Instead the papers reviewed
represent a summary of the approaches and solutions to a given
problem defined by the reviewer. Critical evaluation by the reviewer is
required.
Types of Literature Reviews
• Summary Paper:
– For professional journals; its value is to summarize an area of research
of interest to the readers.
• Embedded in a research paper:
– Used as background or context for the research problem posed by the
author. Demonstrates the “state-of-the-art” of current approaches.
Helps to explain why the author favors a particular solution to a
research problem, and why the researcher is pursuing it.
• Embedded in a grant application:
– A background that helps to show why the researcher’s approach is
novel, and why it will attain results not previously reached.
• A chapter in a thesis.
– Sets the author’s work in the context of prior research.
Information Sources
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Peer-reviewed journal papers
Conference proceedings
Books (but not textbooks)
Talks (transcript)
Dissertations
Government, institutional, and corporate data
– For example NASA, NOAA, EPA, NIH, National Academies
– Pew Research, MacArthur Foundation
• Newspaper and magazine articles
• Other media… (Internet, broadcast)
• But not encyclopedic sources, such as Wikipedia, Britannica, Webster’s
Dictionary, etc.
Assessing the Data
• Provenance—What are the author’s credentials? Are the
author’s arguments supported by evidence (e.g. case studies,
statistics, recent scientific findings)?
• Objectivity—Is the author’s perspective even-handed or
prejudicial? Is contrary data considered or is certain pertinent
information ignored to prove the author’s point?
• Persuasiveness—Which of the author’s theses are most/least
convincing?
• Value—Are the author’s arguments and conclusions
convincing? Does the work ultimately contribute in any
significant way to an understanding of the subject?
The process of writing
a Literature Review
• Formulate a question, or postulate a thesis.
• Search for relevant, pertinent articles.
• Gather the most authoritative data you can find.
– Quality (prestige) of the source (such as the publication or conference)
– Reputation of the author
– Number of citations for the paper
• Analyze and evaluate the data.
• Create an outline that includes an introduction, the body of the paper, and
a conclusion.
• Write a draft including the bibliography.
• Proofread and write the final draft, paying attention to proper formatting
(i.e. citations, etc.)
Some Questions To Ask
1. What do we already know in the immediate area concerned?
2. What are the key concepts or the main factors or variables?
3. What are the relationships between the key concepts or variables?
4. What are the existing theories?
5. Where are the inconsistencies in our knowledge and understanding?
6. What views need to be (further) tested?
7. What evidence is lacking, inconclusive, contradictory, or too limited?
8. Why study (further) the research problem?
9. What contribution can the present study be expected to make?
10. What research designs or methods seem unsatisfactory?
Literature Review: Introduction
• Define or identify the general topic, issue, or area of concern,
thus providing an appropriate context for reviewing the
literature.
• Point out overall trends in what has been published about the
topic; or conflicts in theory, methodology, evidence, and
conclusions; or gaps in research and scholarship; or a single
problem or new perspective of immediate interest.
• Establish the writer's reason (point of view) for reviewing the
literature; explain the criteria to be used in analyzing and
comparing literature and the organization of the review
(sequence); and, when necessary, state why certain literature
is or is not included (scope).
Literature Review: Body
• Group research studies and other types of literature according
to common denominators (such as qualitative versus
quantitative approaches, conclusions of authors, specific
purpose or objective, etc.)
• Summarize individual studies or articles with as much or as
little detail as each merits according to its comparative
importance in the literature, remembering that space (length)
denotes significance.
• Provide the reader with strong “umbrella” sentences at
beginnings of paragraphs, “signposts” throughout, and brief
“so what” summary sentences at intermediate points in the
review to aid in understanding comparisons and analyses.
Literature Review: Conclusion
• Summarize the major contributions of significant studies and
articles to the body of knowledge under review, maintaining
the focus established in the introduction.
• Evaluate the current “state of the art” for the body of
knowledge reviewed, pointing out major methodological
flaws or gaps in research, inconsistencies in theory and
findings, and areas or issues pertinent to future study.
• Conclude by providing some insight into the relationship
between the central topic of the literature review and a larger
area of study such as a discipline, a scientific endeavor, or a
profession.
Formatting
• Every publication has its own requirements for submission. The
ACM has published its requirements (and templates) at:
http://www.acm.org/publications/word_style/word-style-toc/
(We will use the ACM Small Standard Format)
• There are a number of citation formats: AMA, APA, MLA, etc. We
will use the Chicago Style Author Date format. The ACM provides
this example:
ZHOU, G., LU, J., WAN, C. Y., YARVIS, M. D., AND STANKOVIC, J.
A. 2008. Body Sensor Networks. MIT Press, Cambridge, MA.
Literature Review Tips
• If you are having difficulty thinking of a topic, ask a
faculty member whose research you admire. In
addition to suggesting a topic, they may be able to
point you to some of the relevant scholarship for that
topic.
• Print out the papers that are of interest to you and
keep them in a binder. It will be easier to annotate
them by writing notes in the margins (or by attaching
post-its). And it will also be easier to sort, find, and
review them.