lit review for phd

• What Is a PhD Literature Review?
• Doing a PhD

A literature review is a critical analysis of published academic literature, mainly peer-reviewed papers and books, on a specific topic. This isn’t just a list of published studies but is a document summarising and critically appraising the main work by researchers in the field, the key findings, limitations and gaps identified in the knowledge.

• The aim of a literature review is to critically assess the literature in your chosen field of research and be able to present an overview of the current knowledge gained from previous work.
• By the conclusion of your literature review, you as a researcher should have identified the gaps in knowledge in your field; i.e. the unanswered research questions which your PhD project will help to answer.
• Quality not quantity is the approach to use when writing a literature review for a PhD but as a general rule of thumb, most are between 6,000 and 12,000 words.

What Is the Purpose of a Literature Review?

First, to be clear on what a PhD literature review is NOT: it is not a ‘paper by paper’ summary of what others have done in your field. All you’re doing here is listing out all the papers and book chapters you’ve found with some text joining things together. This is a common mistake made by PhD students early on in their research project. This is a sign of poor academic writing and if it’s not picked up by your supervisor, it’ll definitely be by your examiners.

The biggest issue your examiners will have here is that you won’t have demonstrated an application of critical thinking when examining existing knowledge from previous research. This is an important part of the research process as a PhD student. It’s needed to show where the gaps in knowledge were, and how then you were able to identify the novelty of each research question and subsequent work.

The five main outcomes from carrying out a good literature review should be:

• An understanding of what has been published in your subject area of research,
• An appreciation of the leading research groups and authors in your field and their key contributions to the research topic,
• Knowledge of the key theories in your field,
• Knowledge of the main research areas within your field of interest,
• A clear understanding of the research gap in knowledge that will help to motivate your PhD research questions .

When assessing the academic papers or books that you’ve come across, you must think about the strengths and weaknesses of them; what was novel about their work and what were the limitations? Are different sources of relevant literature coming to similar conclusions and complementing each other, or are you seeing different outcomes on the same topic by different researchers?

When Should I Write My Literature Review?

In the structure of your PhD thesis , your literature review is effectively your first main chapter. It’s at the start of your thesis and should, therefore, be a task you perform at the start of your research. After all, you need to have reviewed the literature to work out how your research can contribute novel findings to your area of research. Sometimes, however, in particular when you apply for a PhD project with a pre-defined research title and research questions, your supervisor may already know where the gaps in knowledge are.

You may be tempted to skip the literature review and dive straight into tackling the set questions (then completing the review at the end before thesis submission) but we strongly advise against this. Whilst your supervisor will be very familiar with the area, you as a doctoral student will not be and so it is essential that you gain this understanding before getting into the research.

How Long Should the Literature Review Be?

As your literature review will be one of your main thesis chapters, it needs to be a substantial body of work. It’s not a good strategy to have a thesis writing process here based on a specific word count, but know that most reviews are typically between 6,000 and 12,000 words. The length will depend on how much relevant material has previously been published in your field.

A point to remember though is that the review needs to be easy to read and avoid being filled with unnecessary information; in your search of selected literature, consider filtering out publications that don’t appear to add anything novel to the discussion – this might be useful in fields with hundreds of papers.

How Do I Write the Literature Review?

Before you start writing your literature review, you need to be clear on the topic you are researching.

1. Evaluating and Selecting the Publications

After completing your literature search and downloading all the papers you find, you may find that you have a lot of papers to read through ! You may find that you have so many papers that it’s unreasonable to read through all of them in their entirety, so you need to find a way to understand what they’re about and decide if they’re important quickly.

A good starting point is to read the abstract of the paper to gauge if it is useful and, as you do so, consider the following questions in your mind:

• What was the overarching aim of the paper?
• What was the methodology used by the authors?
• Was this an experimental study or was this more theoretical in its approach?
• What were the results and what did the authors conclude in their paper?
• How does the data presented in this paper relate to other publications within this field?
• Does it add new knowledge, does it raise more questions or does it confirm what is already known in your field? What is the key concept that the study described?
• What are the strengths and weaknesses of this study, and in particular, what are the limitations?

2. Identifying Themes

To put together the structure of your literature review you need to identify the common themes that emerge from the collective papers and books that you have read. Key things to think about are:

• Are there common methodologies different authors have used or have these changed over time?
• Do the research questions change over time or are the key question’s still unanswered?
• Is there general agreement between different research groups in the main results and outcomes, or do different authors provide differing points of view and different conclusions?
• What are the key papers in your field that have had the biggest impact on the research?
• Have different publications identified similar weaknesses or limitations or gaps in the knowledge that still need to be addressed?

Structuring and Writing Your Literature Review

There are several ways in which you can structure a literature review and this may depend on if, for example, your project is a science or non-science based PhD.

One approach may be to tell a story about how your research area has developed over time. You need to be careful here that you don’t just describe the different papers published in chronological order but that you discuss how different studies have motivated subsequent studies, how the knowledge has developed over time in your field, concluding with what is currently known, and what is currently not understood.

Alternatively, you may find from reading your papers that common themes emerge and it may be easier to develop your review around these, i.e. a thematic review. For example, if you are writing up about bridge design, you may structure the review around the themes of regulation, analysis, and sustainability.

As another approach, you might want to talk about the different research methodologies that have been used. You could then compare and contrast the results and ultimate conclusions that have been drawn from each.

As with all your chapters in your thesis, your literature review will be broken up into three key headings, with the basic structure being the introduction, the main body and conclusion. Within the main body, you will use several subheadings to separate out the topics depending on if you’re structuring it by the time period, the methods used or the common themes that have emerged.

The important thing to think about as you write your main body of text is to summarise the key takeaway messages from each research paper and how they come together to give one or more conclusions. Don’t just stop at summarising the papers though, instead continue on to give your analysis and your opinion on how these previous publications fit into the wider research field and where they have an impact. Emphasise the strengths of the studies you have evaluated also be clear on the limitations of previous work how these may have influenced the results and conclusions of the studies.

In your concluding paragraphs focus your discussion on how your critical evaluation of literature has helped you identify unanswered research questions and how you plan to address these in your PhD project. State the research problem you’re going to address and end with the overarching aim and key objectives of your work .

When writing at a graduate level, you have to take a critical approach when reading existing literature in your field to determine if and how it added value to existing knowledge. You may find that a large number of the papers on your reference list have the right academic context but are essentially saying the same thing. As a graduate student, you’ll need to take a methodological approach to work through this existing research to identify what is relevant literature and what is not.

You then need to go one step further to interpret and articulate the current state of what is known, based on existing theories, and where the research gaps are. It is these gaps in the literature that you will address in your own research project.

• Decide on a research area and an associated research question.
• Decide on the extent of your scope and start looking for literature.
• Review and evaluate the literature.
• Plan an outline for your literature review and start writing it.

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How To Structure Your Literature Review

3 options to help structure your chapter.

By: Amy Rommelspacher (PhD) | Reviewer: Dr Eunice Rautenbach | November 2020 (Updated May 2023)

Writing the literature review chapter can seem pretty daunting when you’re piecing together your dissertation or thesis. As  we’ve discussed before , a good literature review needs to achieve a few very important objectives – it should:

• Demonstrate your knowledge of the research topic
• Identify the gaps in the literature and show how your research links to these
• Provide the foundation for your conceptual framework (if you have one)
• Inform your own  methodology and research design

To achieve this, your literature review needs a well-thought-out structure . Get the structure of your literature review chapter wrong and you’ll struggle to achieve these objectives. Don’t worry though – in this post, we’ll look at how to structure your literature review for maximum impact (and marks!).

But wait – is this the right time?

Deciding on the structure of your literature review should come towards the end of the literature review process – after you have collected and digested the literature, but before you start writing the chapter. 

In other words, you need to first develop a rich understanding of the literature before you even attempt to map out a structure. There’s no use trying to develop a structure before you’ve fully wrapped your head around the existing research.

Equally importantly, you need to have a structure in place before you start writing , or your literature review will most likely end up a rambling, disjointed mess. 

Importantly, don’t feel that once you’ve defined a structure you can’t iterate on it. It’s perfectly natural to adjust as you engage in the writing process. As we’ve discussed before , writing is a way of developing your thinking, so it’s quite common for your thinking to change – and therefore, for your chapter structure to change – as you write. 

Need a helping hand?

Like any other chapter in your thesis or dissertation, your literature review needs to have a clear, logical structure. At a minimum, it should have three essential components – an  introduction , a  body   and a  conclusion . 

Let’s take a closer look at each of these.

1: The Introduction Section

Just like any good introduction, the introduction section of your literature review should introduce the purpose and layout (organisation) of the chapter. In other words, your introduction needs to give the reader a taste of what’s to come, and how you’re going to lay that out. Essentially, you should provide the reader with a high-level roadmap of your chapter to give them a taste of the journey that lies ahead.

Here’s an example of the layout visualised in a literature review introduction:

Your introduction should also outline your topic (including any tricky terminology or jargon) and provide an explanation of the scope of your literature review – in other words, what you  will   and  won’t   be covering (the delimitations ). This helps ringfence your review and achieve a clear focus . The clearer and narrower your focus, the deeper you can dive into the topic (which is typically where the magic lies). 

Depending on the nature of your project, you could also present your stance or point of view at this stage. In other words, after grappling with the literature you’ll have an opinion about what the trends and concerns are in the field as well as what’s lacking. The introduction section can then present these ideas so that it is clear to examiners that you’re aware of how your research connects with existing knowledge .

2: The Body Section

The body of your literature review is the centre of your work. This is where you’ll present, analyse, evaluate and synthesise the existing research. In other words, this is where you’re going to earn (or lose) the most marks. Therefore, it’s important to carefully think about how you will organise your discussion to present it in a clear way. 

The body of your literature review should do just as the description of this chapter suggests. It should “review” the literature – in other words, identify, analyse, and synthesise it. So, when thinking about structuring your literature review, you need to think about which structural approach will provide the best “review” for your specific type of research and objectives (we’ll get to this shortly).

There are (broadly speaking)  three options  for organising your literature review.

Option 1: Chronological (according to date)

Organising the literature chronologically is one of the simplest ways to structure your literature review. You start with what was published first and work your way through the literature until you reach the work published most recently. Pretty straightforward.

The benefit of this option is that it makes it easy to discuss the developments and debates in the field as they emerged over time. Organising your literature chronologically also allows you to highlight how specific articles or pieces of work might have changed the course of the field – in other words, which research has had the most impact . Therefore, this approach is very useful when your research is aimed at understanding how the topic has unfolded over time and is often used by scholars in the field of history. That said, this approach can be utilised by anyone that wants to explore change over time .

For example , if a student of politics is investigating how the understanding of democracy has evolved over time, they could use the chronological approach to provide a narrative that demonstrates how this understanding has changed through the ages.

Here are some questions you can ask yourself to help you structure your literature review chronologically.

• What is the earliest literature published relating to this topic?
• How has the field changed over time? Why?
• What are the most recent discoveries/theories?

In some ways, chronology plays a part whichever way you decide to structure your literature review, because you will always, to a certain extent, be analysing how the literature has developed. However, with the chronological approach, the emphasis is very firmly on how the discussion has evolved over time , as opposed to how all the literature links together (which we’ll discuss next ).

Option 2: Thematic (grouped by theme)

The thematic approach to structuring a literature review means organising your literature by theme or category – for example, by independent variables (i.e. factors that have an impact on a specific outcome).

As you’ve been collecting and synthesising literature , you’ll likely have started seeing some themes or patterns emerging. You can then use these themes or patterns as a structure for your body discussion. The thematic approach is the most common approach and is useful for structuring literature reviews in most fields.

For example, if you were researching which factors contributed towards people trusting an organisation, you might find themes such as consumers’ perceptions of an organisation’s competence, benevolence and integrity. Structuring your literature review thematically would mean structuring your literature review’s body section to discuss each of these themes, one section at a time.

Here are some questions to ask yourself when structuring your literature review by themes:

• Are there any patterns that have come to light in the literature?
• What are the central themes and categories used by the researchers?
• Do I have enough evidence of these themes?

PS – you can see an example of a thematically structured literature review in our literature review sample walkthrough video here.

Option 3: Methodological

The methodological option is a way of structuring your literature review by the research methodologies used . In other words, organising your discussion based on the angle from which each piece of research was approached – for example, qualitative , quantitative or mixed  methodologies.

Structuring your literature review by methodology can be useful if you are drawing research from a variety of disciplines and are critiquing different methodologies. The point of this approach is to question  how  existing research has been conducted, as opposed to  what  the conclusions and/or findings the research were.

For example, a sociologist might centre their research around critiquing specific fieldwork practices. Their literature review will then be a summary of the fieldwork methodologies used by different studies.

Here are some questions you can ask yourself when structuring your literature review according to methodology:

• Which methodologies have been utilised in this field?
• Which methodology is the most popular (and why)?
• What are the strengths and weaknesses of the various methodologies?
• How can the existing methodologies inform my own methodology?

3: The Conclusion Section

Once you’ve completed the body section of your literature review using one of the structural approaches we discussed above, you’ll need to “wrap up” your literature review and pull all the pieces together to set the direction for the rest of your dissertation or thesis.

The conclusion is where you’ll present the key findings of your literature review. In this section, you should emphasise the research that is especially important to your research questions and highlight the gaps that exist in the literature. Based on this, you need to make it clear what you will add to the literature – in other words, justify your own research by showing how it will help fill one or more of the gaps you just identified.

Last but not least, if it’s your intention to develop a conceptual framework for your dissertation or thesis, the conclusion section is a good place to present this.

Example: Thematically Structured Review

In the video below, we unpack a literature review chapter so that you can see an example of a thematically structure review in practice.

Let’s Recap

In this article, we’ve  discussed how to structure your literature review for maximum impact. Here’s a quick recap of what  you need to keep in mind when deciding on your literature review structure:

• Just like other chapters, your literature review needs a clear introduction , body and conclusion .
• The introduction section should provide an overview of what you will discuss in your literature review.
• The body section of your literature review can be organised by chronology , theme or methodology . The right structural approach depends on what you’re trying to achieve with your research.
• The conclusion section should draw together the key findings of your literature review and link them to your research questions.

If you’re ready to get started, be sure to download our free literature review template to fast-track your chapter outline.

Psst… there’s more!

This post is an extract from our bestselling short course, Literature Review Bootcamp . If you want to work smart, you don't want to miss this .

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27 Comments

Great work. This is exactly what I was looking for and helps a lot together with your previous post on literature review. One last thing is missing: a link to a great literature chapter of an journal article (maybe with comments of the different sections in this review chapter). Do you know any great literature review chapters?

I agree with you Marin… A great piece

I agree with Marin. This would be quite helpful if you annotate a nicely structured literature from previously published research articles.

Awesome article for my research.

I thank you immensely for this wonderful guide

It is indeed thought and supportive work for the futurist researcher and students

Very educative and good time to get guide. Thank you

Great work, very insightful. Thank you.

Thanks for this wonderful presentation. My question is that do I put all the variables into a single conceptual framework or each hypothesis will have it own conceptual framework?

Thank you very much, very helpful

This is very educative and precise . Thank you very much for dropping this kind of write up .

Pheeww, so damn helpful, thank you for this informative piece.

I’m doing a research project topic ; stool analysis for parasitic worm (enteric) worm, how do I structure it, thanks.

comprehensive explanation. Help us by pasting the URL of some good “literature review” for better understanding.

great piece. thanks for the awesome explanation. it is really worth sharing. I have a little question, if anyone can help me out, which of the options in the body of literature can be best fit if you are writing an architectural thesis that deals with design?

I am doing a research on nanofluids how can l structure it?

Beautifully clear.nThank you!

Lucid! Thankyou!

Brilliant work, well understood, many thanks

I like how this was so clear with simple language 😊😊 thank you so much 😊 for these information 😊

Insightful. I was struggling to come up with a sensible literature review but this has been really helpful. Thank you!

You have given thought-provoking information about the review of the literature.

Thank you. It has made my own research better and to impart your work to students I teach

I learnt a lot from this teaching. It’s a great piece.

I am doing research on EFL teacher motivation for his/her job. How Can I structure it? Is there any detailed template, additional to this?

You are so cool! I do not think I’ve read through something like this before. So nice to find somebody with some genuine thoughts on this issue. Seriously.. thank you for starting this up. This site is one thing that is required on the internet, someone with a little originality!

I’m asked to do conceptual, theoretical and empirical literature, and i just don’t know how to structure it

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Writing a Literature Review

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A literature review is a document or section of a document that collects key sources on a topic and discusses those sources in conversation with each other (also called synthesis ). The lit review is an important genre in many disciplines, not just literature (i.e., the study of works of literature such as novels and plays). When we say “literature review” or refer to “the literature,” we are talking about the research ( scholarship ) in a given field. You will often see the terms “the research,” “the scholarship,” and “the literature” used mostly interchangeably.

Where, when, and why would I write a lit review?

There are a number of different situations where you might write a literature review, each with slightly different expectations; different disciplines, too, have field-specific expectations for what a literature review is and does. For instance, in the humanities, authors might include more overt argumentation and interpretation of source material in their literature reviews, whereas in the sciences, authors are more likely to report study designs and results in their literature reviews; these differences reflect these disciplines’ purposes and conventions in scholarship. You should always look at examples from your own discipline and talk to professors or mentors in your field to be sure you understand your discipline’s conventions, for literature reviews as well as for any other genre.

A literature review can be a part of a research paper or scholarly article, usually falling after the introduction and before the research methods sections. In these cases, the lit review just needs to cover scholarship that is important to the issue you are writing about; sometimes it will also cover key sources that informed your research methodology.

Lit reviews can also be standalone pieces, either as assignments in a class or as publications. In a class, a lit review may be assigned to help students familiarize themselves with a topic and with scholarship in their field, get an idea of the other researchers working on the topic they’re interested in, find gaps in existing research in order to propose new projects, and/or develop a theoretical framework and methodology for later research. As a publication, a lit review usually is meant to help make other scholars’ lives easier by collecting and summarizing, synthesizing, and analyzing existing research on a topic. This can be especially helpful for students or scholars getting into a new research area, or for directing an entire community of scholars toward questions that have not yet been answered.

What are the parts of a lit review?

Most lit reviews use a basic introduction-body-conclusion structure; if your lit review is part of a larger paper, the introduction and conclusion pieces may be just a few sentences while you focus most of your attention on the body. If your lit review is a standalone piece, the introduction and conclusion take up more space and give you a place to discuss your goals, research methods, and conclusions separately from where you discuss the literature itself.

Introduction:

• An introductory paragraph that explains what your working topic and thesis is
• A forecast of key topics or texts that will appear in the review
• Potentially, a description of how you found sources and how you analyzed them for inclusion and discussion in the review (more often found in published, standalone literature reviews than in lit review sections in an article or research paper)
• Summarize and synthesize: Give an overview of the main points of each source and combine them into a coherent whole
• Analyze and interpret: Don’t just paraphrase other researchers – add your own interpretations where possible, discussing the significance of findings in relation to the literature as a whole
• Critically Evaluate: Mention the strengths and weaknesses of your sources
• Write in well-structured paragraphs: Use transition words and topic sentence to draw connections, comparisons, and contrasts.

Conclusion:

• Summarize the key findings you have taken from the literature and emphasize their significance
• Connect it back to your primary research question

How should I organize my lit review?

Lit reviews can take many different organizational patterns depending on what you are trying to accomplish with the review. Here are some examples:

• Chronological : The simplest approach is to trace the development of the topic over time, which helps familiarize the audience with the topic (for instance if you are introducing something that is not commonly known in your field). If you choose this strategy, be careful to avoid simply listing and summarizing sources in order. Try to analyze the patterns, turning points, and key debates that have shaped the direction of the field. Give your interpretation of how and why certain developments occurred (as mentioned previously, this may not be appropriate in your discipline — check with a teacher or mentor if you’re unsure).
• Thematic : If you have found some recurring central themes that you will continue working with throughout your piece, you can organize your literature review into subsections that address different aspects of the topic. For example, if you are reviewing literature about women and religion, key themes can include the role of women in churches and the religious attitude towards women.
• Qualitative versus quantitative research
• Empirical versus theoretical scholarship
• Divide the research by sociological, historical, or cultural sources
• Theoretical : In many humanities articles, the literature review is the foundation for the theoretical framework. You can use it to discuss various theories, models, and definitions of key concepts. You can argue for the relevance of a specific theoretical approach or combine various theorical concepts to create a framework for your research.

What are some strategies or tips I can use while writing my lit review?

Any lit review is only as good as the research it discusses; make sure your sources are well-chosen and your research is thorough. Don’t be afraid to do more research if you discover a new thread as you’re writing. More info on the research process is available in our "Conducting Research" resources .

As you’re doing your research, create an annotated bibliography ( see our page on the this type of document ). Much of the information used in an annotated bibliography can be used also in a literature review, so you’ll be not only partially drafting your lit review as you research, but also developing your sense of the larger conversation going on among scholars, professionals, and any other stakeholders in your topic.

Usually you will need to synthesize research rather than just summarizing it. This means drawing connections between sources to create a picture of the scholarly conversation on a topic over time. Many student writers struggle to synthesize because they feel they don’t have anything to add to the scholars they are citing; here are some strategies to help you:

• It often helps to remember that the point of these kinds of syntheses is to show your readers how you understand your research, to help them read the rest of your paper.
• Writing teachers often say synthesis is like hosting a dinner party: imagine all your sources are together in a room, discussing your topic. What are they saying to each other?
• Look at the in-text citations in each paragraph. Are you citing just one source for each paragraph? This usually indicates summary only. When you have multiple sources cited in a paragraph, you are more likely to be synthesizing them (not always, but often
• Read more about synthesis here.

The most interesting literature reviews are often written as arguments (again, as mentioned at the beginning of the page, this is discipline-specific and doesn’t work for all situations). Often, the literature review is where you can establish your research as filling a particular gap or as relevant in a particular way. You have some chance to do this in your introduction in an article, but the literature review section gives a more extended opportunity to establish the conversation in the way you would like your readers to see it. You can choose the intellectual lineage you would like to be part of and whose definitions matter most to your thinking (mostly humanities-specific, but this goes for sciences as well). In addressing these points, you argue for your place in the conversation, which tends to make the lit review more compelling than a simple reporting of other sources.

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• What is a Literature Review? | Guide, Template, & Examples

What is a Literature Review? | Guide, Template, & Examples

Published on 22 February 2022 by Shona McCombes . Revised on 7 June 2022.

What is a literature review? A literature review is a survey of scholarly sources on a specific topic. It provides an overview of current knowledge, allowing you to identify relevant theories, methods, and gaps in the existing research.

There are five key steps to writing a literature review:

• Search for relevant literature
• Evaluate sources
• Identify themes, debates and gaps
• Outline the structure
• Write your literature review

A good literature review doesn’t just summarise sources – it analyses, synthesises, and critically evaluates to give a clear picture of the state of knowledge on the subject.

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Table of contents

Why write a literature review, examples of literature reviews, step 1: search for relevant literature, step 2: evaluate and select sources, step 3: identify themes, debates and gaps, step 4: outline your literature review’s structure, step 5: write your literature review, frequently asked questions about literature reviews, introduction.

• Quick Run-through
• Step 1 & 2

When you write a dissertation or thesis, you will have to conduct a literature review to situate your research within existing knowledge. The literature review gives you a chance to:

• Demonstrate your familiarity with the topic and scholarly context
• Develop a theoretical framework and methodology for your research
• Position yourself in relation to other researchers and theorists
• Show how your dissertation addresses a gap or contributes to a debate

You might also have to write a literature review as a stand-alone assignment. In this case, the purpose is to evaluate the current state of research and demonstrate your knowledge of scholarly debates around a topic.

The content will look slightly different in each case, but the process of conducting a literature review follows the same steps. We’ve written a step-by-step guide that you can follow below.

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Writing literature reviews can be quite challenging! A good starting point could be to look at some examples, depending on what kind of literature review you’d like to write.

• Example literature review #1: “Why Do People Migrate? A Review of the Theoretical Literature” ( Theoretical literature review about the development of economic migration theory from the 1950s to today.)
• Example literature review #2: “Literature review as a research methodology: An overview and guidelines” ( Methodological literature review about interdisciplinary knowledge acquisition and production.)
• Example literature review #3: “The Use of Technology in English Language Learning: A Literature Review” ( Thematic literature review about the effects of technology on language acquisition.)
• Example literature review #4: “Learners’ Listening Comprehension Difficulties in English Language Learning: A Literature Review” ( Chronological literature review about how the concept of listening skills has changed over time.)

You can also check out our templates with literature review examples and sample outlines at the links below.

Download Word doc Download Google doc

Before you begin searching for literature, you need a clearly defined topic .

If you are writing the literature review section of a dissertation or research paper, you will search for literature related to your research objectives and questions .

If you are writing a literature review as a stand-alone assignment, you will have to choose a focus and develop a central question to direct your search. Unlike a dissertation research question, this question has to be answerable without collecting original data. You should be able to answer it based only on a review of existing publications.

Make a list of keywords

Start by creating a list of keywords related to your research topic. Include each of the key concepts or variables you’re interested in, and list any synonyms and related terms. You can add to this list if you discover new keywords in the process of your literature search.

• Social media, Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, Snapchat, TikTok
• Body image, self-perception, self-esteem, mental health
• Generation Z, teenagers, adolescents, youth

Search for relevant sources

Use your keywords to begin searching for sources. Some databases to search for journals and articles include:

• Your university’s library catalogue
• Google Scholar
• Project Muse (humanities and social sciences)
• Medline (life sciences and biomedicine)
• EconLit (economics)
• Inspec (physics, engineering and computer science)

You can use boolean operators to help narrow down your search:

Read the abstract to find out whether an article is relevant to your question. When you find a useful book or article, you can check the bibliography to find other relevant sources.

To identify the most important publications on your topic, take note of recurring citations. If the same authors, books or articles keep appearing in your reading, make sure to seek them out.

You probably won’t be able to read absolutely everything that has been written on the topic – you’ll have to evaluate which sources are most relevant to your questions.

For each publication, ask yourself:

• What question or problem is the author addressing?
• What are the key concepts and how are they defined?
• What are the key theories, models and methods? Does the research use established frameworks or take an innovative approach?
• What are the results and conclusions of the study?
• How does the publication relate to other literature in the field? Does it confirm, add to, or challenge established knowledge?
• How does the publication contribute to your understanding of the topic? What are its key insights and arguments?
• What are the strengths and weaknesses of the research?

Make sure the sources you use are credible, and make sure you read any landmark studies and major theories in your field of research.

You can find out how many times an article has been cited on Google Scholar – a high citation count means the article has been influential in the field, and should certainly be included in your literature review.

The scope of your review will depend on your topic and discipline: in the sciences you usually only review recent literature, but in the humanities you might take a long historical perspective (for example, to trace how a concept has changed in meaning over time).

Remember that you can use our template to summarise and evaluate sources you’re thinking about using!

Take notes and cite your sources

As you read, you should also begin the writing process. Take notes that you can later incorporate into the text of your literature review.

It’s important to keep track of your sources with references to avoid plagiarism . It can be helpful to make an annotated bibliography, where you compile full reference information and write a paragraph of summary and analysis for each source. This helps you remember what you read and saves time later in the process.

You can use our free APA Reference Generator for quick, correct, consistent citations.

Prevent plagiarism, run a free check.

To begin organising your literature review’s argument and structure, you need to understand the connections and relationships between the sources you’ve read. Based on your reading and notes, you can look for:

• Trends and patterns (in theory, method or results): do certain approaches become more or less popular over time?
• Themes: what questions or concepts recur across the literature?
• Debates, conflicts and contradictions: where do sources disagree?
• Pivotal publications: are there any influential theories or studies that changed the direction of the field?
• Gaps: what is missing from the literature? Are there weaknesses that need to be addressed?

This step will help you work out the structure of your literature review and (if applicable) show how your own research will contribute to existing knowledge.

• Most research has focused on young women.
• There is an increasing interest in the visual aspects of social media.
• But there is still a lack of robust research on highly-visual platforms like Instagram and Snapchat – this is a gap that you could address in your own research.

There are various approaches to organising the body of a literature review. You should have a rough idea of your strategy before you start writing.

Depending on the length of your literature review, you can combine several of these strategies (for example, your overall structure might be thematic, but each theme is discussed chronologically).

Chronological

The simplest approach is to trace the development of the topic over time. However, if you choose this strategy, be careful to avoid simply listing and summarising sources in order.

Try to analyse patterns, turning points and key debates that have shaped the direction of the field. Give your interpretation of how and why certain developments occurred.

If you have found some recurring central themes, you can organise your literature review into subsections that address different aspects of the topic.

For example, if you are reviewing literature about inequalities in migrant health outcomes, key themes might include healthcare policy, language barriers, cultural attitudes, legal status, and economic access.

Methodological

If you draw your sources from different disciplines or fields that use a variety of research methods , you might want to compare the results and conclusions that emerge from different approaches. For example:

• Look at what results have emerged in qualitative versus quantitative research
• Discuss how the topic has been approached by empirical versus theoretical scholarship
• Divide the literature into sociological, historical, and cultural sources

Theoretical

A literature review is often the foundation for a theoretical framework . You can use it to discuss various theories, models, and definitions of key concepts.

You might argue for the relevance of a specific theoretical approach, or combine various theoretical concepts to create a framework for your research.

Like any other academic text, your literature review should have an introduction , a main body, and a conclusion . What you include in each depends on the objective of your literature review.

The introduction should clearly establish the focus and purpose of the literature review.

If you are writing the literature review as part of your dissertation or thesis, reiterate your central problem or research question and give a brief summary of the scholarly context. You can emphasise the timeliness of the topic (“many recent studies have focused on the problem of x”) or highlight a gap in the literature (“while there has been much research on x, few researchers have taken y into consideration”).

Depending on the length of your literature review, you might want to divide the body into subsections. You can use a subheading for each theme, time period, or methodological approach.

As you write, make sure to follow these tips:

• Summarise and synthesise: give an overview of the main points of each source and combine them into a coherent whole.
• Analyse and interpret: don’t just paraphrase other researchers – add your own interpretations, discussing the significance of findings in relation to the literature as a whole.
• Critically evaluate: mention the strengths and weaknesses of your sources.
• Write in well-structured paragraphs: use transitions and topic sentences to draw connections, comparisons and contrasts.

In the conclusion, you should summarise the key findings you have taken from the literature and emphasise their significance.

If the literature review is part of your dissertation or thesis, reiterate how your research addresses gaps and contributes new knowledge, or discuss how you have drawn on existing theories and methods to build a framework for your research. This can lead directly into your methodology section.

A literature review is a survey of scholarly sources (such as books, journal articles, and theses) related to a specific topic or research question .

It is often written as part of a dissertation , thesis, research paper , or proposal .

There are several reasons to conduct a literature review at the beginning of a research project:

• To familiarise yourself with the current state of knowledge on your topic
• To ensure that you’re not just repeating what others have already done
• To identify gaps in knowledge and unresolved problems that your research can address
• To develop your theoretical framework and methodology
• To provide an overview of the key findings and debates on the topic

Writing the literature review shows your reader how your work relates to existing research and what new insights it will contribute.

The literature review usually comes near the beginning of your  dissertation . After the introduction , it grounds your research in a scholarly field and leads directly to your theoretical framework or methodology .

Cite this Scribbr article

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How to Conduct a Literature Review: A Guide for Graduate Students

• Let's Get Started!
• Traditional or Narrative Reviews
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• What Literature to Search
• Where to Search: Indexes and Databases
• Finding articles: Libkey Nomad
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• Extending Your Searching with Citation Chains
• Forward Citation Chains - Cited Reference Searching
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Where to Get Help

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Find Your Librarian

   “Google can bring you back 100,000 answers. A librarian can bring you back the right one.” - Neil Gaiman

The literature review is an important part of your thesis or dissertation. It is a survey of existing literature that provides context for your research contribution, and demonstrates your subject knowledge. It is also the way to tell the story of how your research extends knowledge in your field.

The first step to writing a successful literature review is knowing how to find and evaluate literature in your field. This guide is designed to introduce you to tools and give you skills you can use to effectively find the resources needed for your literature review.

Before getting started, familiarize yourself with some essential resources provided by the Graduate College:

• Dissertation and Thesis Information
• Center for Communication Excellence
• Graduate College Handbook

Below are some questions that you can discuss with your advisor as you begin your research:

Questions to ask as you think about your literature review:

What is my research question.

Choosing a valid research question is something you will need to discuss with your academic advisor and/or POS committee. Ideas for your topic may come from your coursework, lab rotations, or work as a research assistant. Having a specific research topic allows you to focus your research on a project that is manageable. Beginning work on your literature review can help narrow your topic.

What kind of literature review is appropriate for my research question?

Depending on your area of research, the type of literature review you do for your thesis will vary. Consult with your advisor about the requirements for your discipline. You can view theses and dissertations from your field in the library's Digital Repository can give you ideas about how your literature review should be structured.

What kind of literature should I use?

The kind of literature you use for your thesis will depend on your discipline. The Library has developed a list of Guides by Subject with discipline-specific resources. For a given subject area, look for the guide titles "[Discipline] Research Guide." You may also consult our liaison librarians for information about the literature available your research area.

How will I make sure that I find all the appropriate information that informs my research?

Consulting multiple sources of information is the best way to insure that you have done a comprehensive search of the literature in your area. The What Literature to Search tab has information about the types of resources you may need to search. You may also consult our liaison librarians for assistance with identifying resources..

How will I evaluate the literature to include trustworthy information and eliminate unnecessary or untrustworthy information?

While you are searching for relevant information about your topic you will need to think about the accuracy of the information, whether the information is from a reputable source, whether it is objective and current. Our guides about Evaluating Scholarly Books and Articles and Evaluating Websites will give you criteria to use when evaluating resources.

How should I organize my literature? What citation management program is best for me?

Citation management software can help you organize your references in folders and/or with tags. You can also annotate and highlight the PDFs within the software and usually the notes are searchable. To choose a good citation management software, you need to consider which one can be streamlined with your literature search and writing process. Here is a guide page comparing EndNote, Mendeley & Zotero. The Library also has guides for three of the major citation management tools:

• EndNote & EndNote Web Guide
• Mendeley Guide
• Getting Started with Zotero

What steps should I take to ensure academic integrity?

The best way to ensure academic integrity is to familiarize yourself with different types of intentional and unintentional plagiarism and learn about the University's standards for academic integrity. Start with this guide . The Library also has a guide about your rights and responsibilities regarding copyrighted images and figures that you include in your thesis.

Where can I find writing and editing help?

Writing and editing help is available at the Graduate College's Center for Communication Excellence . The CCE offers individual consultations, peer writing groups, workshops and seminars to help you improve your writing.

Where can I find I find formatting standards? Technical support?

The Graduate College has a Dissertation/ Thesis website with extensive examples and videos about formatting theses and dissertations. The site also has templates and formatting instructions for Word and LaTex .

What citation style should I use?

The Graduate College thesis guidelines require that you "use a consistent, current academic style for your discipline." The Library has a Citation Style Guides resource you can use for guidance on specific citation styles. If you are not sure, please consult your advisor or liaison librarians for help.

Adapted from The Literature Review: For Dissertations, by the University of Michigan Library. Available: https://guides.lib.umich.edu/dissertationlitreview

Center for Communication Excellence/ Library Workshop Slides

Slides from the CCE/ Library Workshop "A Citation Here...A Citation There...Pretty Soon You'll Have a Lit Review" held on February 21, 2024 are below:

• CCE Workshop February 21, 2024
• Next: Types of Literature Reviews >>

The library's collections and services are available to all ISU students, faculty, and staff and Parks Library is open to the public .

• Last Updated: Mar 14, 2024 12:15 PM
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The Sheridan Libraries

• Write a Literature Review
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What Will You Do Differently?

Please help your librarians by filling out this two-minute survey of today's class session..

Professor, this one's for you .

Introduction

Literature reviews take time. here is some general information to know before you start.  .

•  VIDEO -- This video is a great overview of the entire process.  (2020; North Carolina State University Libraries) --The transcript is included --This is for everyone; ignore the mention of "graduate students" --9.5 minutes, and every second is important  
• OVERVIEW -- Read this page from Purdue's OWL. It's not long, and gives some tips to fill in what you just learned from the video.  
• NOT A RESEARCH ARTICLE -- A literature review follows a different style, format, and structure from a research article.  

Steps to Completing a Literature Review

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Literature reviews

Writing a literature review.

The following guide has been created for you by the  Student Learning Advisory Service . For more detailed guidance and to speak to one of our advisers, please book an  appointment  or join one of our  workshops . Alternatively, have a look at our  SkillBuilder  skills videos.   

Preparing a literature review involves:

• Searching for reliable, accurate and up-to-date material on a topic or subject
• Reading and summarising the key points from this literature
• Synthesising these key ideas, theories and concepts into a summary of what is known
• Discussing and evaluating these ideas, theories and concepts
• Identifying particular areas of debate or controversy
• Preparing the ground for the application of these ideas to new research

Finding and choosing material

Ensure you are clear on what you are looking for. ask yourself:.

• What is the specific question, topic or focus of my assignment?
• What kind of material do I need (e.g. theory, policy, empirical data)?
• What type of literature is available (e.g. journals, books, government documents)?

What kind of literature is particularly authoritative in this academic discipline (e.g. psychology, sociology, pharmacy)?

How much do you need?

This will depend on the length of the dissertation, the nature of the subject, and the level of study (undergraduate, Masters, PhD). As a very rough rule of thumb – you may choose 8-10 significant pieces (books and/or articles) for an 8,000 word dissertation, up to 20 major pieces of work for 12-15,000 words, and so on. Bear in mind that if your dissertation is based mainly around an interaction with existing scholarship you will need a longer literature review than if it is there as a prelude to new empirical research. Use your judgement or ask your supervisor for guidance.

Where to find suitable material

Your literature review should include a balance between substantial academic books, journal articles and other scholarly publications. All these sources should be as up-to-date as possible, with the exception of ‘classic texts’ such as major works written by leading scholars setting out formative ideas and theories central to your subject. There are several ways to locate suitable material:

Module bibliography: for undergraduate dissertations, look first at the bibliography provided with the module documentation. Choose one or two likely looking books or articles and then scan through the bibliographies provided by these authors. Skim read some of this material looking for clues: can you use these leads to identify key theories and authors or track down other appropriate material?

Library catalogue search engine: enter a few key words to capture a range of items, but avoid over-generalisations; if you type in something as broad as ‘social theory’ you are likely to get several thousand results. Be more specific: for example, ‘Heidegger, existentialism’. Ideally, you should narrow the field to obtain just a few dozen results. Skim through these quickly to identity texts which are most likely to contribute to your study.

Library bookshelves: browse the library shelves in the relevant subject area and examine the books that catch your eye. Check the contents and index pages, or skim through the introductions (or abstracts, in the case of journal articles) to see if they contain relevant material, and replace them if not. Don’t be afraid to ask one of the subject librarians for further help. Your supervisor may also be able to point you in the direction of some of the important literature , but remember this is your literature search, not theirs.

Online: for recent journal articles you will almost certainly need to use one of the online search engines. These can be found on the ‘Indexing Services’ button on the Templeman Library website. Kent students based at Medway still need to use the Templeman pages to access online journals, although you can get to these pages through the Drill Hall Library catalogue. Take a look as well at the Subject Guides on both the Templeman and DHL websites.

Check that you have made the right selection by asking:

• Has my search been wide enough to ensure that I have identified all the relevant material, but narrow enough to exclude irrelevant material?
• Is there a good enough sample of literature for the level (PhD, Masters, undergraduate) of my dissertation or thesis?
• Have I considered as many alternative points of view as possible?
• Will the reader find my literature review relevant and useful?

Assessing the literature

Read the material you have chosen carefully, considering the following:

• The key point discussed by the author: is this clearly defined
• What evidence has the author produced to support this central idea?
• How convincing are the reasons given for the author’s point of view?
• Could the evidence be interpreted in other ways?
• What is the author's research method (e.g. qualitative, quantitative, experimental, etc.)?
• What is the author's theoretical framework (e.g. psychological, developmental, feminist)?
• What is the relationship assumed by the author between theory and practice?
• Has the author critically evaluated the other literature in the field?
• Does the author include literature opposing their point of view?
• Is the research data based on a reliable method and accurate information?
• Can you ‘deconstruct’ the argument – identify the gaps or jumps in the logic?
• What are the strengths and limitations of this study?
• What does this book or article contribute to the field or topic?
• What does this book or article contribute to my own topic or thesis?

As you note down the key content of each book or journal article (together with the reference details of each source) record your responses to these questions. You will then be able to summarise each piece of material from two perspectives:     

Content: a brief description of the content of the book or article. Remember, an author will often make just one key point; so, what is the point they are making, and how does it relate to your own research project or assignment?

Critical analysis: an assessment of the relative strengths and weaknesses of the evidence used, and the arguments presented. Has anything conveniently been left out or skated over? Is there a counter-argument, and has the author dealt with this adequately? Can the evidence presented be interpreted another way? Does the author demonstrate any obvious bias which could affect their reliability? Overall, based on the above analysis of the author’s work, how do you evaluate its contribution to the scholarly understanding and knowledge surrounding the topic?    

Structuring the literature review

In a PhD thesis, the literature review typically comprises one chapter (perhaps 8-10,000 words), for a Masters dissertation it may be around 2-3,000 words, and for an undergraduate dissertation it may be no more than 2,000 words. In each case the word count can vary depending on a range of factors and it is always best, if in doubt, to ask your supervisor.

The overall structure of the section or chapter should be like any other: it should have a beginning, middle and end. You will need to guide the reader through the literature review, outlining the strategy you have adopted for selecting the books or articles, presenting the topic theme for the review, then using most of the word limit to analyse the chosen books or articles thoroughly before pulling everything together briefly in the conclusion.

Some people prefer a less linear approach. Instead of simply working through a list of 8-20 items on your book review list, you might want to try a thematic approach, grouping key ideas, facts, concepts or approaches together and then bouncing the ideas off each other. This is a slightly more creative (and interesting) way of producing the review, but a little more risky as it is harder to establish coherence and logical sequencing.

Whichever approach you adopt, make sure everything flows smoothly – that one idea or book leads neatly to the next. Take your reader effortlessly through a sequence of thought that is clear, accurate, precise and interesting. 

Writing up your literature review

As with essays generally, only attempt to write up the literature review when you have completed all the reading and note-taking, and carefully planned its content and structure. Find an appropriate way of introducing the review, then guide the reader through the material clearly and directly, bearing in mind the following:

• Be selective in the number of points you draw out from each piece of literature; remember that one of your objectives is to demonstrate that you can use your judgement to identify what is central and what is secondary.
• Summarise and synthesise – use your own words to sum up what you think is important or controversial about the book or article.
• Never claim more than the evidence will support. Too many dissertations and theses are let down by sweeping generalisations. Be tentative and careful in the way you interpret the evidence.
• Keep your own voice – you are entitled to your own point of view provided it is based on evidence and clear argument.
• At the same time, aim to project an objective and tentative tone by using the 3rd person, (for example, ‘this tends to suggest’, ‘it could be argued’ and so on).
• Even with a literature review you should avoid using too many, or overlong, quotes. Summarise material in your own words as much as possible. Save the quotes for ‘punch-lines’ to drive a particular point home.
• Revise, revise, revise: refine and edit the draft as much as you can. Check for fluency, structure, evidence, criticality and referencing, and don’t forget the basics of good grammar, punctuation and spelling.

• Harvard Library
• Research Guides
• Faculty of Arts & Sciences Libraries

Chemistry and Chemical Biology Resources

Literature review.

• Getting Started
• Chemistry journals and databases
• Find Dissertations and Theses
• Find Conference Proceedings
• Find Technical Reports
• Managing Citations
• Research Data Management
• Managing Your Academic Identity  
• Helpful Tools

Reviewing the Literature: Why do it?

• Personal: To familiarize yourself with a new area of research, to get an overview of a topic, so you don't want to miss something important, etc.
• Required writing for a journal article, thesis or dissertation, grant application, etc.

Literature reviews vary; there are many ways to write a literature review based on discipline, material type, and other factors.

Background:

• Literature Reviews - UNC Writing Center
• Literature Reviews: An Overview for Graduate Students  - What is a literature review? What purpose does it serve in research? What should you expect when writing one? - NCSU Video

Where to get help (there are lots of websites, blogs , articles,  and books on this topic) :

• The Center for writing and Communicating Ideas (CWCI)
• (these are non-STEM examples: dissertation guidance , journal guidelines )
• How to prepare a scientific doctoral dissertation based on research articles (2012)
• Writing a graduate thesis or dissertation (2016)
• The good paper : a handbook for writing papers in higher education (2015)
• Proposals that work : a guide for planning dissertations and grant proposals (2014)
• Theses and dissertations : a guide to planning, research, and writing (2008)
• Talk to your professors, advisors, mentors, peers, etc. for advice

READ related material and pay attention to how others write their literature reviews:

• Dissertations
• Journal articles
• Grant proposals
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Lincoln C Wood

9 Secrets to Writing a Winning Literature Review for your PhD Thesis

Are you ready to embark on the thrilling journey of writing your PhD thesis? The literature review is an essential part of this quest, serving as a gateway into the vast realm of knowledge that has come before you. It can be daunting, trying to synthesize years of research and countless publications into one cohesive narrative that not only showcases your expertise but also highlights the significance and originality of your work.

Fear not, fellow scholars! I’m here to share nine coveted secrets that will help you create a winning literature review for your PhD thesis. With these tips at hand, you’ll learn how to navigate through waves of information gracefully, ensure every source is analyzed with purpose and precision, and weave together distinct threads in ways that captivate both readers and reviewers alike.

So buckle up; it’s time we unlock the secrets behind crafting an unforgettable literary odyssey in your academic journey!

Photo by Claudia Wolff  on Unsplash

Table of Contents

Steps in Writing a Literature Review

Conducting a literature review is an essential part of your PhD thesis, as it helps you critically assess the existing body of knowledge related to your research topic. To write a comprehensive and well-structured literature review, follow these steps:

Step 1: Select a topic Choose a research topic that interests you and is relevant to your field of study. Make sure it’s specific enough but also has room for exploring different perspectives.

Step 2: Identify the main themes As you start reading articles and books on your chosen topic, take note of recurring themes or debates in the field. This will help you understand key issues and trends within your subject.

Step 3: Find sources and review Gather quality academic sources such as journal articles, books, conference papers, and dissertations that are specifically related to your research question. Use snowball sampling by identifying key authors or works cited in other texts so that you can expand your search.

Step 4: Synthesize the literature Analyze the collected material by comparing different studies’ methodologies, results, conclusions, gaps/weaknesses. Take detailed notes on each source’s relevance to your own research questions and identify patterns or relationships among them.

Step 5: Structure and write the literature review Organize all information gathered into coherent sections based on themes identified earlier. Write clear summaries for each section using concise language while maintaining objectivity throughout.

Remember that writing a literature review is an iterative process; don’t be afraid to revise at various stages along the way! In our next section “Secrets for Writing a Good Literature Review,” we’ll explore some useful tips that can make this task easier for aspiring researchers like yourself!

Step 1: Select a topic

Choosing the right topic is crucial for writing a successful literature review. Start by selecting a general subject related to your field of study and define the purpose of your literature review. This will help you stay focused and streamline your search for relevant sources.

When choosing your topic, ask yourself these questions:

Is it interesting to me?

Does it fill a gap in existing knowledge?

Is there enough research available on this subject?

Remember that the goal of a literature review is to provide an overview, critique, and synthesis of the existing literature on a specific research question or problem. Understanding your topic beforehand will ensure you can identify key theories, concepts, and researchers in the area.

Also, be open to refining or changing your topic as you dive deeper into reading different articles and papers – sometimes narrowing down or expanding depending on what you find most important during this process. In essence, selecting an engaging topic is just the first step towards writing an outstanding PhD thesis literature review!

Step 2: Identify the main themes

The identification of main themes is a pivotal step in crafting your literature review. These themes serve as the framework through which you will organize, analyze, and present the wealth of research available on your chosen topic. To begin this process, take a closer look at your research question or problem statement.

Start by asking yourself: What are the key concepts and issues being explored in my thesis? Jot down these ideas and use them to guide your search for relevant literature. Make sure to consider not only empirical findings but also theoretical frameworks and methodologies used in each study.

As you delve deeper into the existing body of knowledge on your topic, you may notice recurring patterns or connections between various studies; these shared elements can help inform new themes! Remember that effective themes are broad enough to encompass multiple studies while also specific enough to differentiate from other topics within your field.

Visualizing relationships between identified themes can prove invaluable throughout this process—consider constructing mind maps or diagrams to better understand how they intersect with one another. This exercise will also prepare you for synthesizing evidence from diverse sources when writing up each theme later on. I find many students enjoy using causal loop diagrams to make sense of the concepts.

Lastly, don’t forget that identifying gaps or inconsistencies within existing literature is just as important as pinpointing recurrent trends. Keep an eye out for underexplored areas related to each theme; doing so will inform potential avenues of future research and strengthen the overall impact of your PhD thesis.

Step 3: Find sources and review

Diving into a world of literature can be overwhelming, but it is essential for constructing a thorough review. When embarking on this journey, keep these points in mind to ensure you find the most relevant and credible sources.

Firstly, explore a variety of sources such as books, academic journals, and online databases. This eclectic mix will help you gain diverse perspectives and avoid any potential biases present in a single type of source.

Next, consider the relevance, credibility, and publication date while reviewing each source. Prioritize recent publications to stay up-to-date with current research; however, don’t disregard older articles if they are still cited frequently or have had significant impact in your field.

To maintain organization throughout your research process, take detailed notes on each source’s strengths and weaknesses. You can develop a system that tags sources based on their relevance (must read, may read or probably won’t read). This will help streamline your reading list according to priority.

Don’t forget to analyze and compare sources for similarities, differences and gaps in existing research. Identifying key debates within your field will make it easier to focus the review around them. Make sure you’re taking organized notes about author’s relevance as well as their key references that could guide future exploration within the topic.

This step plays an integral role in developing the foundation upon which your PhD thesis’ literature review will stand firm – so give it due importance!

Photo by Elisa Calvet B.  on Unsplash

Step 4: Synthesize the literature

Synthesizing the literature is a crucial step in writing your PhD thesis’ literature review, as it requires you to compare and contrast different research studies. This process helps you identify patterns, knowledge gaps, and areas of consensus within your chosen topic.

Start by grouping similar studies together based on their themes or methodologies. Analyze each study’s findings carefully, noting contradictions or consistencies between them. Pay close attention to the authors’ conclusions and their interpretations of other related research.

It’s essential to maintain an analytical and evaluative approach throughout this process, rather than simply describing each piece of literature. Draw conclusions from the existing body of work by identifying recurring trends or missing information that could be addressed in your own study.

Remember that synthesizing the literature also involves considering various theoretical perspectives and methods used in prior studies. Make sure to discuss any inconsistencies between these approaches while incorporating diverse viewpoints into your analysis.

Finally, as you work through this step-by-step synthesis process, don’t hesitate to revisit earlier stages if needed. Adjusting your focus or uncovering new sources is common when working with complex academic material – embrace this iterative aspect of writing a winning literature review!

Step 5: Structure and write the literature review

During this step, you’ll start to bring together all that you’ve gathered from the literature search and analysis. A well-structured literature review goes beyond simply summarizing individual sources; it demonstrates your understanding of the existing knowledge in your research field.

Begin by organizing your findings thematically or by subtopic. This helps provide a logical flow and allows for easier comparison across studies. Remember to prioritize analysis over description as you write, focusing on how each piece of literature contributes to the broader context of your research.

Using linguistic markers such as “however” and “moreover,” signal connections between various studies, showing where they agree or diverge in their conclusions. Your goal is to synthesize knowledge by comparing and contrasting research while addressing any gaps or controversies within the field.

As you write about each theme or subtopic, make sure that your arguments are objective, clear, concise, and coherent. Present relevant theories and methodologies used in previous studies without getting bogged down in excessive detail.

In conclusion, crafting a well-structured literature review requires careful organization around themes or subtopics within your research area. By thoughtfully analyzing existing knowledge and synthesizing key points from various sources, you lay the foundation for presenting an original contribution through your PhD thesis work.

Secrets for Writing a Good Literature Review

Delving into the world of literature reviews can be overwhelming, but with these secrets on your side, you’ll be able to create a captivating and comprehensive piece for your PhD thesis.

1. Choose a Topic That Interests You

One of the secrets to writing a winning literature review is selecting a topic that genuinely interests you. Your passion for the subject will not only make the research and writing process more enjoyable, but it can also lead to higher quality work. A captivating topic contributes significantly to sustaining motivation throughout your PhD journey.

When deciding on a theme, consider areas within your field that allow for new research or fresh perspectives. This approach ensures that your contribution stands out from existing studies and provides valuable insights into the academic community.

Selecting an exciting topic is essential because you’ll be spending countless hours reading articles, books, and other materials related to it. If you choose something tedious, it’s much easier to lose interest or become overwhelmed with boredom.

Ultimately, picking an enticing subject matter will determine how effectively you can analyze and synthesize existing knowledge in your literature review—so take some time at this early stage and choose wisely! In the next sections, we’ll dive deeper into finding sources and organizing all information gathered coherently.

2. Know Your Audience

Understanding your audience is a crucial aspect of writing an engaging and informative literature review for your PhD thesis. Consider what information readers want to extract from your review and write in a style that caters to their interests.

Academics, researchers, and fellow students will likely make up the majority of your audience. Therefore, it’s important to maintain an academic tone while still being accessible for different levels of knowledge within the field.

As you structure your literature review, keep in mind any questions or concerns that may arise among readers who have varying familiarity with the subject matter. Addressing these questions can help establish credibility and showcase expertise on the topic.

Incorporating feedback is another way to tailor your writing to suit the preferences of your target audience. By critiquing your own work or inviting others to provide input, you can refine your literature review into an enjoyable read for both yourself and other scholars in the field. This iterative process will ultimately contribute towards creating a winning literature review for your PhD thesis.

3. Read Widely & Use a Range of Sources

Diving deep into a wide variety of sources is essential for a comprehensive and well-rounded literature review. To explore different perspectives, ensure that you access various types of resources:

Online databases like JSTOR, Google Scholar, or university research hubs are gold mines when searching for articles in your field.

University/college/departmental libraries should not be overlooked. They may contain physical copies of books or articles that can’t be found online.

Don’t forget to check the wider web for relevant dissertations, reports, conference papers, and more.

By using these diverse channels in your search efforts, you’re likely to discover both classic texts and cutting-edge scientific research.

It’s crucial to assess the relevance of each source by examining abstracts, footnotes and scrutinizing content quality. This analysis helps filter out redundant or unimportant material before investing too much time reading through them.

Remember: A good literature review doesn’t just list sources – it engages with them critically. By reading widely and choosing high-quality materials from various perspectives within your discipline, you’ll demonstrate your thorough understanding of the topic at hand while showcasing intellectual rigor throughout your PhD thesis.

Photo by Karl Solano  on Unsplash

4. Evaluate the Quality of the Literature

Evaluating the quality of the literature is a crucial aspect of writing a good literature review. When assessing sources, you should consider their relevance, reliability, and credibility. Keep in mind that not every source will contribute meaningfully to your research question or topic.

To evaluate the quality, pay attention to:

The research methods used in each study

Data analysis techniques employed

Conclusions drawn from the sources

These factors play a significant role in determining whether the studies are valuable additions to your review.

Additionally, check for:

Author credentials and expertise in their field

Reputation of publication outlets or journals

Both can indicate if a source holds credibility within its domain.

Critical evaluation is necessary for avoiding biased conclusions and ensuring that only high-quality sources make it into your review. This process helps maintain objectivity while providing an accurate representation of existing knowledge on your topic.

Remember that evaluating literature quality isn’t just about finding flaws; it’s about understanding how different pieces fit together, complement one another or diverge from one another. The goal here is to provide context and insight into why certain theories or approaches might be more useful than others given specific situations or contexts. So take time during this evaluation phase to think critically about how these various works connect with each other – what themes emerge? Are there any unanswered questions? Once you’ve identified these connections, you’ll be better equipped for synthesizing information later on when structuring your own literature review.

5. Use Keywords

Optimizing your literature search process using relevant keywords is an essential step in crafting a winning literature review. By identifying and employing the right terminology, you can drastically improve your search results and ensure that you’re covering all bases in your research.

Begin by brainstorming keywords and synonyms related to your research topic. Be strategic when selecting these terms, as they’ll be guiding you throughout your literature search journey.

To refine your search even further, consider using advanced search techniques with these keywords. This may involve combining or excluding specific terms to avoid irrelevant or limited results.

If you find yourself struggling to identify suitable keywords, don’t hesitate to consult a keyword database or online tool for assistance. These resources can provide valuable insights into the most relevant terminology within your field of study.

Remember that incorporating 2-4 highly relevant keywords naturally within this section will help enhance its readability and comprehensibility for the reader while also improving its SEO ranking.

6. Analyze & Synthesize

In the context of a literature review, analysis and synthesis are essential for creating an impactful piece of work. These two processes allow you to dig deeper into your research question and uncover new insights.

Analysis involves breaking down the literature into smaller parts, examining them closely, and identifying patterns, themes, and gaps. To analyze effectively, it is crucial to take detailed notes while reading various sources. Jot down key points from articles or books that align with your research question or topic.

On the other hand, synthesis entails combining different parts of the existing knowledge –ideas or methodologies–to create a new interpretation or argument. When synthesizing information across multiple sources, try to identify common themes or trends that emerge throughout your reading.

For instance:

Are certain methods more commonly used in recent studies?

Is there a shift in focus within your field?

Have researchers come to similar conclusions?

By analyzing and synthesizing various materials related to your topic effectively, you can gain a deeper understanding of the subject matter while also showcasing critical thinking skills. Remember that successful analysis and synthesis will ultimately lead towards new ideas about potential future steps for addressing gaps in knowledge within your specific research area.

As you progress through writing up these findings for your PhD thesis literature review section, keep in mind that it should remain objective yet concise so as not only maintain coherence but provide valuable insight into context surrounding chosen topics well.

Photo by Timothy Eberly  on Unsplash

7. Be Objective, Clear, Concise, and Coherent

In a literature review, it’s vital to maintain objectivity and avoid any biased opinions or predetermined conclusions. You must present your findings in an unbiased manner and let the evidence speak for itself.

Clarity is crucial when conveying ideas and arguments. Use concise language to effectively express your thoughts without unnecessary words or phrases that might distract the reader from your main points. This not only makes your writing easier to read but also ensures that your message is delivered efficiently.

Coherence plays a significant role in keeping the reader engaged with your literature review. Make sure to structure your content logically, connecting paragraphs seamlessly and ensuring smooth transitions between different themes and ideas. This helps readers follow along effortlessly as they navigate through various studies, articles, theories, and concepts related to your field of research.

Remember, a well-structured literature review successfully showcases existing knowledge on a specific topic while demonstrating critical thinking skills by evaluating relevant academic sources. Be objective, clear, concise, and coherent throughout the entire process – this will greatly enhance both the quality of work you produce as well as its readability!

8. Check & Edit

A crucial step in writing a winning literature review is to thoroughly check and edit your work. This process ensures that the final draft is free from errors, inconsistencies, and omissions.

Firstly, proofread your content for grammatical errors, punctuation mistakes, and typos. It might be helpful to print out your drafts and edit them physically – sometimes seeing the text on paper can make it easier to spot issues you may have missed while editing digitally.

Secondly, assess the structure, organization, and coherence of your review. Make sure that each paragraph flows logically from one to another so that readers can easily follow the development of ideas throughout the text.

Thirdly, examine if you’ve covered all relevant sources within your topic area to demonstrate a comprehensive understanding of current research. Ensure that every citation in your review has been accurately referenced according to academic guidelines.

Lastly but importantly: never hesitate to ask for feedback! Share drafts with supervisors or peers who can offer guidance on improving clarity or identifying gaps in your analysis. Remember their input is essential for refining both thesis cohesiveness as well as fine-tuning specific aspects of your literature review’s content.

In conclusion, checking and editing are indispensable steps when crafting a high-quality PhD literature review. With attention to detail during these stages – including seeking outside perspectives – you’ll enhance both readability and credibility in presenting an authoritative overview of existing knowledge related to your chosen field of study.

9. It is an Iterative Process

Remember, a PhD literature review is not a one-time affair. Instead, it evolves as you progress through your research and gain new insights into the topic. Embrace the iterative process of writing a literature review.

Start by reading widely on your topic and gathering relevant sources. As you delve deeper into your research, don’t be afraid to revisit earlier sections of your review to refine or expand upon certain points. You may also come across new sources or themes that need integration into your existing structure.

Keep in mind that this iterative approach allows for continuous improvement and helps ensure that your literature review remains current and robust throughout the course of your thesis journey. So don’t view it as a burden; instead, see it as an opportunity to grow in understanding and build stronger connections between various pieces of knowledge within your field.

In conclusion, embracing the iterative process while writing a PhD literature review will result in a more comprehensive overview of the existing body of research on your chosen topic – ultimately strengthening both your thesis argument and contribution to future academic discourse.

As you reach the end of your journey in writing a literature review for your PhD thesis, it’s essential to create an engaging and concise conclusion. This section should provide a clear answer to your main research question while summarizing and reflecting on the overall research process.

In this final stage, emphasize the contributions your research has made to the field. For example, highlight any new knowledge or insights that have emerged from your study. Also, consider making recommendations for future work on the topic. This can help inspire other researchers who may build upon your findings.

Keep in mind that although it’s called “Conclusion,” it doesn’t mean merely reiterating what you’ve already said throughout the paper. Instead, focus on tying all previous sections together into a coherent argument while showing how each part of your literature review relates to and supports one another.

So go ahead; gather all those relevant themes and arguments you identified earlier in the process and use them as building blocks to construct a meaningful conclusion for your PhD thesis literature review. Remember – writing is an iterative process!

In sum: be proud of what you’ve accomplished! Your well-structured literature review will undoubtedly make an impact in its academic field and contribute valuable knowledge to future studies.

• Apr 15, 2021

7 Secrets to Write a PhD Literature Review The Right Way

Updated: Sep 27, 2021

A literature review gives your readers an idea about your scholarly understanding of the previous work in your research domain. It requires you to justify your work and demonstrate the importance of your research work with respect to the current state of knowledge. It is a great opportunity for you to examine the previous work and fill any gaps in it which may help you to make it a foundation for your own research.

The role of a literature review and its importance in your thesis can also be seen from here:

Role of a Literature Review|Walden University

Writing a literature review requires gathering loads of information by reading many articles, books, and papers related to your Ph.D. topic. And once you are done with the initial stage, you have to organize the important data collected and discuss it according to your learning. Now, all of this seems quite tedious.

You may have seen many people ranting when they have to write a literature review, and it is totally fine. But, does it help in writing a review? Obviously, no. You have to make this process interesting for yourself to remain focused.

Here are some secrets which can help you to enjoy writing an amazing literature review.

1. Make a Well-Structured Outline:

A literature review is exhaustive research on the topic under investigation so that you can become an expert on that topic. Therefore, it is important for you to make a well-structured outline before you start writing otherwise you won’t understand where to end as you’ll be having a lot of information. For example, a literature review must include an introduction and conclusion section, you should avoid direct quotations and use paraphrasing instead. Your literature review should be organized according to the theme and should be divided into various headings to shift from one topic to another. You can use comparative terms to agree or disagree with the author and provide your own opinion.

Check out this literature review template to have a more clear understanding of creating a well-structured outline for your literature review: Literature Review Template|Thompson Rivers University

2. Use Synthesis Matrix:

When you are gathering information from a lot of resources, and you have to ultimately gather them in one place then using a synthesis matrix could be very helpful for this purpose. A synthesis matrix is an outline that permits a researcher to sort and arrange the various contentions introduced on an issue. Across the highest point of the chart are the spaces to record sources, and at the edge of the chart are the spaces to record the primary concerns of contention on the current theme.

You can outline your whole literature review and keep a check and balance of which things you have covered and what is left. It simplifies your work greatly and helps in writing a literature review in a very organized manner.

See more on the use of synthesis matrix at Literature Review using synthesis Matrix and Synthesizing various sources

3. Change Your Perspective:

Another important thing that you must do before you start writing a literature review is to change your writing perspective. You don’t have to take it as a burden that Why am I even doing this? Yes, we know it is quite a dull task, but why not enjoy it if you have to do it after all?

Write it for yourself. Question yourself from time to time. Like what information would you like to extract from it while you are reading this review? Would it sound interesting to your self? Would you remain focused while reading this writing style? Will you love this review as a third person? Will this be an interesting thing to read?

When you become your critique you have high chances of improvement. You start writing a review such that you would like to read it yourself, and gradually you can write one interesting literature review for your thesis.

4. Read and Write Simultaneously:

A common mistake that many people make while writing a literature review is that they do all the readings and information gathering first and leave the writing at last. What happens is that they utilize all their energy and focus in the reading phase and when it's time to start the actual writing they feel exhausted and over-worked. Moreover, when they see a blank page in front of them after reading piles of paperwork they get demotivated and feel anxious that how they will manage to write such a long review.

How to avoid this anxiety?

One simple way is to start writing parallel to reading. When you are reading an article or paper, make notes of it or short bullet points. It will help you to keep a track of both what you have read and what you need to add to your literature review. And when you finally start compiling the review you will have your guideline instead of a blank paper which makes it quite easy for you to jot it all down on a paper.

5. Make a Proper Timeline and Stick To It:

Making a proper timeline to write a literature review is crucial. You don’t want to get stuck in it and end up completing your review in a year instead of weeks. To avoid this, take a day or two off, search through the internet or other resources that what helping material you would require reading, and then make a proper timeline of completing them and making notes simultaneously.

It will help you a lot to stay on track.

Here is a sample timeline you could follow: Research Sample Timeline

6. Go Easy On Yourself:

Yes, you heard it. Don’t be so harsh on yourself. Keep days off in your schedule and relax fully on those days. You don’t have to keep reading and writing 24/7, all days a week. Our mind needs to be relaxed on and off to remain functional. If you over-burden yourself you will eventually end up doing absolutely nothing because of over-work.

If you get stuck somewhere, seek help from your supervisor, friends or other resources, Don’t let your shyness or shame keep you away from achieving your target. We are all humans, and we do need help at some point in our lives so don’t discourage yourself to do so.

7. Interpret Your Understanding Comprehensively:

When writing a review you need to portray what you have truly learned from the already published work of other scholars. What many people do is they start cramming information to write a review and end up writing only a summary of that data, They don’t learn and understand anything from it. They just take it as a formality that has to be fulfilled. That is wrong.

You need to have clear concepts and must be able to demonstrate to others what you learned from the previous work and how your work would contribute towards it. This is the true essence of writing a literature review, and it will benefit you the most for your research process.

If you are having any difficulty in writing or editing your thesis Literature Review you can visit our website to seek help and guidance by the following link:

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Resources for PhD Literature Review

PhD Literature Review: Strategies and Resources for Effective Research

One of the crucial aspects of this academic expedition is the literature review, where researchers look into existing knowledge to identify research gaps and contribute to their field. In this article, iLovePhD presents the various resources available to PhD researchers, focusing particularly on the extensive landscape of literature review.

PhD Literature Review: Resources for PhD Literature Review

1. academic databases.

Dive into databases such as PubMed , IEEE Xplore , JSTOR, ScienceDirect, and Google Scholar. These repositories house many scholarly articles, conference papers, and journals across disciplines.

2. Libraries and Archives

Local and university libraries offer a treasure trove of physical and digital resources. Explore rare manuscripts, books, and archived materials that may not be available online.

3. Interlibrary Loan Services

If your institution lacks specific resources, utilize interlibrary loan services. This allows you to request materials from other libraries, broadening your access to relevant literature.

4. Digital Repositories

Institutional repositories, like those hosted by universities, often contain theses, dissertations, and research papers . These can provide valuable insights and serve as references for structuring your work.

5. Reference Management Tools

Employ tools such as Zotero, EndNote, or Mendeley to organize and cite your sources efficiently. These tools streamline the citation process, making it easier to manage a large volume of literature.

6. Research Networks and Academic Social Media

Engage with platforms like ResearchGate and Academia.edu. These networks connect researchers globally, providing opportunities to access preprints, and drafts, and engage in scholarly discussions.

7. Conferences and Workshops

Attend academic conferences and workshops relevant to your field. Besides gaining insights from presentations, networking can lead to valuable recommendations for literature and potential collaborators.

8. Expert Consultations

Reach out to experts in your field for guidance. Professors, mentors, and professionals often have a wealth of knowledge and can recommend key resources or point you in the right direction.

9. Government Reports and Official Publications

Government agencies and international organizations publish reports on various topics. These documents can offer unique perspectives and data that may not be found in traditional academic literature.

10. News Articles and Popular Media

While scholarly articles form the foundation, don’t overlook the insights provided by news articles and popular media. These sources can offer real-world context and applications of academic research.

11. Data Repositories

Access data repositories relevant to your research. Platforms like Data.gov or Dryad provide datasets that can complement your literature review and contribute to empirical research.

In the vast sea of information, navigating resources for a literature review requires a strategic approach. Researchers can ensure a comprehensive and well-informed foundation for their PhD journey by combining traditional academic databases with emerging tools and platforms. Embrace the diversity of resources available, and let them guide you toward a thorough understanding of your research landscape.

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Literature Review: Conducting & Writing

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How to write a PhD literature review: three tips to make life easier

Jan 18, 2021

Have you checked out the rest of  The PhD Knowledge Base ? It’s home to hundreds more free resources and guides, written especially for PhD students. 

We’ve written elsewhere on The PhD Knowledge Base about how to plan and conduct your literature review. In this guide, we look at the actual writing process and how to write your PhD literature review. Specifically, we zone in on three strategies you can use to make writing it easier and less stressful. 

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Work out your central argument, then stick to it

Master your lit review & theory framework.

Learn what goes where (and why), and how it all fit together with this free, interactive guide to the PhD literature review and theory framework.

Don’t get lost in a sea of authors

It’s important to remember that the literature review isn’t a summary of the literature. An easy way to tell whether you are summarising (rather than critically engaging with the literature) is to see whether you are getting lost in a sea of authors.

If you’re just summarising, you’ll find when you write your literature review that you’re just listing various studies and that you aren’t critically engaging with them and relating them to the central argument you are developing in the chapter. All you’re doing really is saying ‘she said X, he said Y’, rather than explaining why that matters and why it’s relevant.

If you write descriptively, your voice will not come through.

So as you write your review, make sure your argument shines and that your voice is heard. Sure, you’ll obviously need to explain what others have said, but you need to do so in relation to your argument and to the points you are making in the chapter as a whole and in a particular section or sub-section.

One way to do this is to make sure that every chapter has a clearly defined central argument, and that every section and sub-section also have their own nested arguments (for more on how to nest arguments, click here ).

That way, each section has a particular function: to develop, validate, and expand upon that particular central/nested argument. The job of the literature then is to back up, validate and expand upon that argument. Working in this way means you start each chapter, and each section and sub-section by clearly stating what you will be arguing. Only then do you bring in the literature to illustrate that argument.

You can see how your voice will shine if you work like this.

Without an argument, you are just piling authors and studies on top of one another, with no clear direction or aim. For more on how to avoid getting lost in a sea of authors, read our in-depth guide here . 

Write early, and write quickly.

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• NATURE INDEX
• 01 May 2024

Plagiarism in peer-review reports could be the ‘tip of the iceberg’

• Jackson Ryan 0

Jackson Ryan is a freelance science journalist in Sydney, Australia.

You can also search for this author in PubMed   Google Scholar

Time pressures and a lack of confidence could be prompting reviewers to plagiarize text in their reports. Credit: Thomas Reimer/Zoonar via Alamy

Mikołaj Piniewski is a researcher to whom PhD students and collaborators turn when they need to revise or refine a manuscript. The hydrologist, at the Warsaw University of Life Sciences, has a keen eye for problems in text — a skill that came in handy last year when he encountered some suspicious writing in peer-review reports of his own paper.

Last May, when Piniewski was reading the peer-review feedback that he and his co-authors had received for a manuscript they’d submitted to an environmental-science journal, alarm bells started ringing in his head. Comments by two of the three reviewers were vague and lacked substance, so Piniewski decided to run a Google search, looking at specific phrases and quotes the reviewers had used.

To his surprise, he found the comments were identical to those that were already available on the Internet, in multiple open-access review reports from publishers such as MDPI and PLOS. “I was speechless,” says Piniewski. The revelation caused him to go back to another manuscript that he had submitted a few months earlier, and dig out the peer-review reports he received for that. He found more plagiarized text. After e-mailing several collaborators, he assembled a team to dig deeper.

Meet this super-spotter of duplicated images in science papers

The team published the results of its investigation in Scientometrics in February 1 , examining dozens of cases of apparent plagiarism in peer-review reports, identifying the use of identical phrases across reports prepared for 19 journals. The team discovered exact quotes duplicated across 50 publications, saying that the findings are just “the tip of the iceberg” when it comes to misconduct in the peer-review system.

Dorothy Bishop, a former neuroscientist at the University of Oxford, UK, who has turned her attention to investigating research misconduct, was “favourably impressed” by the team’s analysis. “I felt the way they approached it was quite useful and might be a guide for other people trying to pin this stuff down,” she says.

Peer review under review

Piniewski and his colleagues conducted three analyses. First, they uploaded five peer-review reports from the two manuscripts that his laboratory had submitted to a rudimentary online plagiarism-detection tool . The reports had 44–100% similarity to previously published online content. Links were provided to the sources in which duplications were found.

The researchers drilled down further. They broke one of the suspicious peer-review reports down to fragments of one to three sentences each and searched for them on Google. In seconds, the search engine returned a number of hits: the exact phrases appeared in 22 open peer-review reports, published between 2021 and 2023.

The final analysis provided the most worrying results. They took a single quote — 43 words long and featuring multiple language errors, including incorrect capitalization — and pasted it into Google. The search revealed that the quote, or variants of it, had been used in 50 peer-review reports.

Predominantly, these reports were from journals published by MDPI, PLOS and Elsevier, and the team found that the amount of duplication increased year-on-year between 2021 and 2023. Whether this is because of an increase in the number of open-access peer-review reports during this time or an indication of a growing problem is unclear — but Piniewski thinks that it could be a little bit of both.

Why would a peer reviewer use plagiarized text in their report? The team says that some might be attempting to save time , whereas others could be motivated by a lack of confidence in their writing ability, for example, if they aren’t fluent in English.

The team notes that there are instances that might not represent misconduct. “A tolerable rephrasing of your own words from a different review? I think that’s fine,” says Piniewski. “But I imagine that most of these cases we found are actually something else.”

The source of the problem

Duplication and manipulation of peer-review reports is not a new phenomenon. “I think it’s now increasingly recognized that the manipulation of the peer-review process, which was recognized around 2010, was probably an indication of paper mills operating at that point,” says Jennifer Byrne, director of biobanking at New South Wales Health in Sydney, Australia, who also studies research integrity in scientific literature.

Paper mills — organizations that churn out fake research papers and sell authorships to turn a profit — have been known to tamper with reviews to push manuscripts through to publication, says Byrne.

The fight against fake-paper factories that churn out sham science

However, when Bishop looked at Piniewski’s case, she could not find any overt evidence of paper-mill activity. Rather, she suspects that journal editors might be involved in cases of peer-review-report duplication and suggests studying the track records of those who’ve allowed inadequate or plagiarized reports to proliferate.

Piniewski’s team is also concerned about the rise of duplications as generative artificial intelligence (AI) becomes easier to access . Although his team didn’t look for signs of AI use, its ability to quickly ingest and rephrase large swathes of text is seen as an emerging issue.

A preprint posted in March 2 showed evidence of researchers using AI chatbots to assist with peer review, identifying specific adjectives that could be hallmarks of AI-written text in peer-review reports .

Bishop isn’t as concerned as Piniewski about AI-generated reports, saying that it’s easy to distinguish between AI-generated text and legitimate reviewer commentary. “The beautiful thing about peer review,” she says, is that it is “one thing you couldn’t do a credible job with AI”.

Preventing plagiarism

Publishers seem to be taking action. Bethany Baker, a media-relations manager at PLOS, who is based in Cambridge, UK, told Nature Index that the PLOS Publication Ethics team “is investigating the concerns raised in the Scientometrics article about potential plagiarism in peer reviews”.

How big is science’s fake-paper problem?

An Elsevier representative told Nature Index that the publisher “can confirm that this matter has been brought to our attention and we are conducting an investigation”.

In a statement, the MDPI Research Integrity and Publication Ethics Team said that it has been made aware of potential misconduct by reviewers in its journals and is “actively addressing and investigating this issue”. It did not confirm whether this was related to the Scientometrics article.

One proposed solution to the problem is ensuring that all submitted reviews are checked using plagiarism-detection software. In 2022, exploratory work by Adam Day, a data scientist at Sage Publications, based in Thousand Oaks, California, identified duplicated text in peer-review reports that might be suggestive of paper-mill activity. Day offered a similar solution of using anti-plagiarism software , such as Turnitin.

Piniewski expects the problem to get worse in the coming years, but he hasn’t received any unusual peer-review reports since those that originally sparked his research. Still, he says that he’s now even more vigilant. “If something unusual occurs, I will spot it.”

doi: https://doi.org/10.1038/d41586-024-01312-0

Piniewski, M., Jarić, I., Koutsoyiannis, D. & Kundzewicz, Z. W. Scientometrics https://doi.org/10.1007/s11192-024-04960-1 (2024).

Article   Google Scholar  

Liang, W. et al. Preprint at arXiv https://doi.org/10.48550/arXiv.2403.07183 (2024).

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