Research and Course Guides: Biological Literature: Creating a Literature Review

What is a Literature Review?

A literature review is both a summary and explanation of the complete and current state of knowledge on a limited topic as found in academic books and journal articles. There are two kinds of literature reviews you might write at university: one that students are asked to write as a stand-alone assignment in a course, often as part of their training in the research processes in their ﬁeld, and the other that is written as part of an introduction to, or preparation for, a longer work, usually a thesis or research report. The focus and perspective of your review and the kind of hypothesis or thesis argument you make will be determined by what kind of review you are writing. One way to understand the differences between these two types is to read published literature reviews or the ﬁrst chapters of theses and dissertations in your own subject area. Analyse the structure of their arguments and note the way they address the issues.

Literature Review Definition and Purpose

The Doctoral Journey YouTube Channel - provides tutorials and videos to support students in thinking about and developing their research plans for their thesis and dissertations.

Purpose of the Literature Review

It gives readers easy access to research on a particular topic by selecting high quality articles or studies that are relevant, meaningful, important and valid and summarizing them into one complete report
It provides an excellent starting point for researchers beginning to do research in a new area by forcing them to summarize, evaluate, and compare original research in that speciﬁc area
It ensures that researchers do not duplicate work that has already been done
It can provide clues as to where future research is heading or recommend areas on which to focus
It highlights key ﬁndings
It identiﬁes inconsistencies, gaps and contradictions in the literature
It provides a constructive analysis of the methodologies and approaches of other researchers