Literature review
Literature Review
– Systematic Literature Review
The literature review is an important component in academic work, where the author defines the scope of their work through their research question(s) and discusses key contributions within this field.
A strong literature review indicates that the author has acknowledged similar works in their field and that their proposed work is a novel contribution.
Systematic Literature Review
The systematic literature review is complete, an exhaustive summary of current evidence relevant to a research question.
As an example, the author may define a period ranging from 2015 to 2021, sourcing all papers written in English from a specific library, and using a set of predefined search terms. All sourced papers are then examined and summarized in a comparative study.
What counts as ‘Literature’
• It’s highly relevant to your chosen topic
• It’s from respectable academic source
– Book, Journal, government website, academic database, google scholar, etc.
• Not Wikipedia, lecture handouts, blogs, random websites, self published books.
What is Literature?
According to Oxford dictionary, it is:
“Written books, especially those considered of superior or lasting artistic merit:
• books and writings published on a particular subject.
Literature Reviews: An Overview for Graduate Students
Video Link:
Learning Activity
• Learners to:
– Think of an area or subject that is of interest to you. Use an online search engine or library to search for scholarly literature in this area (30 minutes).
– Document your process of searching and sourcing for scholarly literature, including the search engine, key terms and method of searching. Read two to five papers and summarize a point or counter-point (60 minutes).