Literature Reviews: working systematically

For some dissertations / independent studies you may be given a list of themes or topics to choose from by your lecturer. Often, however, the selection of the topic and its focus will be left up to you.

This is a good time to do a scoping search to make sure that there is enough information out there to do a literature review on. If it's a new or emerging topic then you may find that there's little published information as researchers are still doing the research and haven't yet reached the publication stage.

Searching for literature always takes longer than people think it will. Sometimes your original topic doesn't work out because there isn't enough literature on it, or there's too much literature because you haven't been specific enough - if you leave the searching and everything that follows to the last minute this will cause unneeded stress and you run the risk of running out of time.

You know how you work. So plan backwards from your hand-in date and factor in any potential delays that you know are upcoming. Are you going on holiday? Are you going on placement or doing an internship which will leave you with little time to work on this? Do you have family / carer / other commitments which cut down the amount of time you can block out for each study session?

Planning your timeline from your hand-in date back to your starting point, including any milestones that you want to try and hit (e.g., first draft to be completed by a specific date; proofreading completed by date 'x' and so on) will give you more control over the outcome and make it less likely you'll run out of time. Allow around a month for your literature searching as you may need to request some articles as inter-library loans and they don't always come quickly - some, you will be able to request directly and these often arrive within 24 hours, but for others you may have to wait a few weeks for something to arrive - if you've requested a collection of articles for a conference for instance and it's only available as a hardback book.

You need to factor in how long it takes you to read articles, make notes, track down related or adjacent resources, digest the information, synthesize the content of various articles and then write about that content in your own words.

It's always better to over-estimate how much time it will take at the start as this means you've built in a buffer in the event that things don't go according to plan. If you're wrong, you get extra time to complete the write-up, proofreading, reference checking. If you're right, you won't be rushed close to your hand-in date which will help reduce the stress caused by working to a deadline.

Either way, starting early and planning well is a win-win situation.

Talk to your lecturer

Use Library Search to do your scoping search (little 's') to see what research may be  out there on your chosen topic ( or not). This is also a good way of seeing what other search terms researchers have potentially used when writing about the topic.

Use your topic / assignment title to plan out:

• what key terms you will search for
• how you will search for those key terms
• what limits you want to apply to the results

Do this before you start searching - having a plan removes a lot of uncertainty when searching and also gives you something to work from if you don't get the results you think you should.

This doesn't mean that you have to have your search strategy perfectly done before you search, but you do need to have some of the essentials completed.

As you do some test searching you may come across additional terms relevant to your topic that you want to add to your search strings. If any of the discipline-specific databases have their own subject index then you may also want to include vocabulary from there as part of your search (this is more for PG students doing their thesis but there's certainly nothing wrong in an UG student who is a confident searcher using this method as well).

Note: Your search strategy is more than just the words you want to look for. It is:

• Your search terms
• The search tools you want to use - phrase searching, truncation, proximity
• How you will search (title and abstract / title, abstract, keywords / subjects, other)
• Which resources you'll use: databases, research registers, specific journals, grey literature, experts in a field of research you need / want to contact
• What limits you'll apply - these can be divided into limits that each online resource you use will let you apply, and limits you will self-apply as you read through the papers you've found

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Talk to your Academic Librarian

Don't just go to Library Search or Google!

The Library subscribes to a lot of databases - many of which are discipline specific - that index millions of articles, so make sure that you use them.

If you're not sure which ones are best to use, either for your discipline, or for your specific topic then have a look at the LibGuide for your area as the key subject resources should be listed there. You can also contact your Academic Librarian - their details will be on the LibGuide for your area as well.

For a literature review which is for a dissertation / thesis you should search at least three databases. You don't need to search all databases useful to your discipline as, depending on your topic, some may be more useful / contain more relevant content than others, but you should identify the key ones (and there will usually be more than one or two) that index relevant papers and search them.

You should also consider including search operators / tools specific to the databases you've chosen. This is so that you make the most of the different search options the resources have to offer.

A note about Library Search

Library Search is a resource which searches a lot of our individual databases. But it doesn't search all of them, and some key databases in various disciplines are excluded. The advanced search is also (in comparison to many discipline-specific databases) not very advanced, more at the intermediate level.

What this means for you, the researcher, is that while Library Search is useful for checking there is research out there on your topic, for assessing if there are other search terms related to the ones in your initial strategy that you could add to that strategy to make it better, as a 'one stop shop' to find all relevant material out there on a topic it is (a) not enough, and (b) if you only use Library Search your search cannot be said to have been conducted in a systematic manner due to its inbuilt limitations.

Can you use it? Yes!

Can you only use Library Search? No. Definitely not. (Well, you can but you should not.)

Subject LibGuides Hub

Have a look at the help files for each database you want to search as these will cover what tools that database specifically uses to make your search work 'harder'. 

You may also find some of the databases have instructional videos showing you how they work / how to do particular searches - have a look at those too.

Using the plan you mapped out for searching for key terms, do your search in your chosen databases. Modify your search and redo it if the results don't seem to fit your topic.

Remember to take into account any differences in the way databases search, whether they use specific search functions to look for differences in spelling, whether they have their own, unique subject terms to describe concepts or topics and modify your search to accommodate those differences.

There will be duplicates i.e. an article that came up in the first database you searched may also come up in the second database. That's normal and absolutely fine.

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Contact your Academic Librarian

When you've chosen which papers you want to talk about / use in your work, it's important that you have critically analysed their content. What the authors are saying, the research methods that they've used, their findings and recommendations.

This is a skill that you build up through practice so don't worry if you've never had to do this before as there are a range of resources to help you with this.

There are different levels of reading from skimming and scanning all the way up to focused reading and deep, critical reading and you adopt different approaches depending on they type of reading you need to do. Make the most of your reading time by choosing the appropriate method for the right papers. [And don't try to read everything from start to finish - it won't be necessary.]

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Have a look at the Skills guide for evaluating

Have a look at the D@D guide for critical reading

As you're reading through the literature, if you come across something that you want to cite in your assignment, or that you want to quote, then you should record the relevant information there and then. 

Don't just paraphrase the text or type out the quote and leave it at that. Make sure you record all of the information that you'll need for the citation and reference.

Many programmes use the Harvard style of referencing. Some, like psychology (or programmes which have a psychology module in them) use APA - whichever style of referencing your programme / department uses you will need to follow that accurately and consistently. The library subscribes to the online resource, 'Cite Them Right', which covers the styles mentioned above as well as a few more. Unless your department has given you their own guide / told you to use a specific guide to referencing then you should use Cite Them Right.

Reference management tools are often used when doing a postgraduate thesis as you'll often have more references than in an essay. Some undergraduate students have also used them and it really is up to you and how confident you are with using new-to-you programmes as to which resource you go for.

Whichever you choose, make sure that you use them as you go along - don't wait until you've written your work before noting which references go with which citations.

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Have a look at Cite Them Right (online) our subscription resource on citing and referencing (you will need to be logged in to access this)

Have a look at our Reference Managers LibGuide

One method you can follow is the 'sticky notes' approach. 

As you come across a theme, or key area of interest in a paper, assign it a sticky note of a particular colour. If it's a bit mention you can use a whole note; if it's a partial mention then you could use half of a sticky note. Each time you come across a new theme / topic you can assign it a different coloured note.

Once you've done this for all of your papers you should be able to see where you have clusters of similar topics and the extent to which they've been covered across the papers. You should also be able to spot where you have outliers - articles which cover topics / themes none of the other papers refer to.

This method will help you to prioritise your reading; identify themes; see where gaps may exist and so on.

If you're working digitally rather then in print you could input the article titles into a spreadsheet and in the columns to the right of the papers' titles block fill the box in a colour corresponding to a theme. At the top of each column you could also put the name of the theme for clarity. You can then sort your spreadsheet by which papers cover certain themes and so on to mimic the print-based strategy.

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Critical thinking & reading - Skills guide

Your literature review will often be split into different chapters and it can be useful for you (and your lecturer) if you use the headings function in Word for each of the chapters you have as it makes navigating the document a lot easier. Plus, if you want to create an automated contents list you will need to use Word headings to do this.

Your chapters may have names or numbers but generally you will start with a heading of Introduction, and at the end you'll have a header for conclusions, references (and possibly more). In between, you could just use, Chapter One, or you could use the particular theme you want to talk about as a chapter title.

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Allow yourself enough time, not just for the searching but also for the processes of notetaking, thinking about what you've read, and writing.

Some people write as they go along, so they read a bit, write a bit, read a bit and so on. Others prefer to read everything, make notes, think about it for a bit, make a few more notes and then start writing the whole thing.

Other people write one or more drafts before the final version of their review, others write it all in one go because, in a way, the notes they write are like a first draft.

There isn't really a right or wrong way; it is down to what works for you. If you're struggling with writing the review then try using the 'first draft' approach and give yourself permission to get everything in the right order, to use sentences that are a bit clunky.

Once you have something written you can edit it, improve it.

You can't edit a blank page.

Once you've completed your work, even if you're someone who edits as they go along, you should still proofread the whole document at the end to do a final sweep for errors, clunky bits of writing, missing citations or references and so on.

It can help if you use Word's built-in Read Aloud feature to read the document back to you as this can often make it easier to identify where text doesn't flow well together and could jar the reader out of your work.

It can also make it easier to hear where you may have left words out, or where you've overused specific words in a short space.

If the Read Aloud feature isn't suitable, you could try reading the document in reverse as that can help with identifying problem areas.

Spellcheck can only help so far - you may have spelled a word correctly, but used the wrong one e.g., their instead of there - these homonyms (words with the same spelling or pronunciation but different meanings) can often occur with the 'help' of autocorrect systems so it will take you, as a human, to spot the errors.

If you know that you overuse particular words or phrases in your writing: 'just', 'that is to say', 'it has been said that' etc., then you can search your Word document for those terms and rephrase your sentence / replace those terms with something else. If you get stuck the Academic Phrasebank from Manchester University (link on the right) may have some options you could use.

Have a look at our D@D Proofreading page on the 'Improve Your Marks in Academic Writing' guide

Have a look at the Academic Phrasebank from Manchester University for alternate terms you could use