Researching & Writing
a Literature Review
NCSU Libraries
Expectations of graduate students

Grad students have different backgrounds
◦ Not every grad student has done research
◦ Not everyone has experience reading the
literature

No problem.
 You are learning to ask questions
 Do so! No one expects you to know
everything.Your job is to learn to seek out
answers
 Knowing that information is out there can be
empowering!
Talking about the literature…
◦ “What does the literature show us?”
◦ “Connect your ideas to the literature.”
◦ “Survey the literature on the topic.”
Talking about the
literature…
 What
it IS:
◦ Scholarly communication
◦ A published record of
research
◦ Challenging to read and
digest
◦ Indexed, searchable with
research databases
Talking about the
literature…

What it IS NOT:
◦ Common knowledge
 i.e., handily summarized in Wikipedia
◦ Easy to find
 If you just Googled it, you
overlooked something.
◦ Available freely online (mostly)
 This distinction can be transparent
on campus: the “free” internet vs.
library subscriptions
X
X
Talking about the literature…
◦ Let’s focus on “What are lit reviews?” and
“Why?” and the conceptual approach first…
◦ Follow-up workshops will tackle the “How?”
 But we’ll look at a examples as we go
What is a Literature Review?
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A literature review
Surveys scholarly sources relevant to a particular issue,
area of research, or theory
Provides a description, summary, and critical evaluation
of each work
Offers an overview of significant literature published on
a topic
Gives future research context by telling the story of
work done so far
(adapted from http://library.ucsc.edu/ref/howto/ literaturereview.html)
Functions of Literature Reviews
 Establish
 Show
research context
why the question is significant
 Illustrate
and describe previous research, including
gaps and flaws
 Ensure
that research has not been done before
Hey, did you notice that the bullets here are checkboxes?
Functions of Literature Reviews
 Understand
the structure of the problem
 Demonstrate
your knowledge of the field
 Synthesize
previous perspectives and develop your
own perspective
 Point
the way to future research
Review article examples:
http://go.ncsu.edu/litrev1
http://go.ncsu.edu/litrev2
Digging Into the Literature
= Major works
B
A
C
Digging Into the Literature
= Major works
= Studies that rely on major works
B
A
C
Digging Into the Literature
= Major works
= Something new!
= Studies that rely on major works
B
C
A
New!
Digging Into the Literature – How?
Aspect
Major works
Related works
New information
How?
•Literature databases
•Colleague recommendations
•Cited work
Citation searching:
•Web of Science
•Google Scholar
•Articles alerts/RSS feeds
•Tables of Contents
Put it all together, you have a literature review!
Overview of the Process
Topic
Writing
and
revision
Research and
Collect Information
RefWorks
Work with Articles
and Brain
Overview of the Process
Topic
Initial topic won’t be your final topic!
Choose, explore, focus
Refine as you go based on:
Availability of research – too much? too
little?
Discovering new ideas
Writing progress
Overview of the Process
Topic
Research and
Collect Information
Search databases
Find, evaluate, and select articles
Overview of the Process
Topic
Save your work
in a citation mgr.
Read, analyze,
synthesize
Develop your
conceptual
framework
Research and
Collect Information
RefWorks
Work with Articles
and Brain
Overview of the Process
Topic
Refine topic?
Use your citation
manager to stay
organized
Research and
Collect Information
RefWorks
Work with Articles
and Brain
Overview of the Process
Topic
Writing
and
revision
Research and
Collect Information
RefWorks
Work with Articles
and Brain
Proceeding…(use worksheet handout)
Develop draft topic
Discuss with advisor, colleagues

Find a literature review (or book/chapter)
Identify key terms and concepts
Use bibliography to find sources


Search the major disciplinary database
Check with colleagues, a librarian

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Each will have different ideas of where to search!
Determine scope and facets of topic
Collect useful, current sources
Proceeding…
Search other key databases (another
discipline?)
Round out understanding of scope, facets, terms,
concepts

Search a Citation database
Best ones: Web of Science, Google Scholar
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Web of Science has better tools
Scholar can complete picture
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Identify key/seminal papers/research
Identify key researchers, research centers, journals

Trace citations back and forward
Questions that come up…
◦ How do I know I have the “right stuff”?
◦ How do I know when I’m done?
◦ How do know what’s important?
◦ No set answers…for each individual to
decide.
Housekeeping Tips

Use a citation management system
◦ Such as RefWorks, Zotero, Mendeley, etc.
◦ One word for these: invaluable. You are absolutely
doing more work in NOT learning about these.

Always get the complete citation information
◦ Article title, journal title, author, year/volume, pages,
abstract
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Keep track of searches, notes, ideas, etc. (back to
the worksheets)
Fully citing sources = avoiding plagiarism
Read Synthetically: Pull it All Together
Look at all articles to identify relationships
 Classify or group papers, or paper sections, by
topic, method, theme
 Compare and contrast papers addressing similar
questions

◦ Discover relationships between sources
◦ Discover critical gaps and disagreements

Fit within the generated outline, or adapt
outline
The Synthesis Matrix
Tool to aid in writing a document showing
synthesis
 Based on a grid

James, et
al.
Concept 1
Concept 2
xxxxx
xxxxx
Chung
Levy
Concept 3
xxxxx
xxxx
Concept 4
xxxxx
xxxxx
Models of Paper Structures
“Stringing” Model:
Organization of a Simple
Summary Paper
Introduction
 Paragraph 1: Summary or
description of article 1
 Paragraph 2: Summary or
description of article 2
 Paragraph 3: Summary or
description of article 3
 …and on…
 Summary and conclusions

“Synthesis” Model:
Paper showing Synthesis of Sources
and Sequencing by Theme
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Introduction--Introduce context, topic,
importance, research questions,
overview
Theme A: Introduce concept or theme,
discuss/compare the relevant parts of
papers 1, 3, and 4
Theme B: Introduce concept or theme,
discuss/compare the relevant parts of
papers 2,4, and 5
Theme C: Introduce concept or theme,
discuss/compare the relevant parts of
papers 5 and 6
Final paragraphs --Summarize and
highlight conclusions, unresolved issues,
identify possible next steps in research
and/or practice.
Some Tips for Writing
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Write as you go: don’t wait until you’ve finished
searching the literature
Set some times to write regularly, and do it!
Start with the easier sections (probably not the
introduction)
Jot down notes and ideas and keep them handy
Get feedback, and don’t take it too personally
Aim for a style that is clear, simple, and
straightforward
Moving forward

Other library workshops on:
Doing Literature Searching
◦ How to identify good databases
◦ Maximizing your use of them
 Citation management
◦ How to save all of this work
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