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Wie führt man einen Literatur-Review durch?

Veröffentlicht am 9. November 2015 von Annelien Krul . Aktualisiert am 15. August 2023.

Wenn du eine Abschlussarbeit schreibst, ist es unbedingt nötig, dass du einen Literatur-Review durchführst. Aber was genau bedeutet das? Wie strukturierst du in erster Linie diesen Review und wie integrierst du anschließend die Informationen, die du findest, in deine Arbeit?

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Inhaltsverzeichnis

Was ist ein literatur-review, literatur-wegweiser, wie verweist du auf deine quellen, standardsätze die sie verwenden können, häufig gestellte fragen.

Bei einem Literatur-Review handelt es sich um eine Methode, die angewandt wird, um Wissen, das bereits in Bezug auf ein bestimmtes Thema oder Problem besteht, zu sammeln. Diese Informationen können in verschiedenen Quellen, wie Zeitschriftenartikel, Bücher, Papers, Abschlussarbeiten und Archivmaterial, gefunden werden.

Durch die Durchführung eines Literatur-Reviews kannst du dir einen Einblick in bereits bestehende Kenntnisse und Theorien in Bezug auf dein Thema verschaffen. Dies stellt außerdem sicher, dass deine Abschlussarbeit über eine starke wissenschaftliche Fundierung verfügt.

Wenn er richtig durchgeführt wird, entsteht aus einem Literatur-Review nicht nur eine einfache Liste oder Zusammenfassung der verfügbaren Daten. Dein Ziel ist es stattdessen, die relevantesten Ideen und Informationen, die du herausgefunden hast, im Rahmen deines theoretischen Rahmens kritisch zu diskutieren.

Was ist der Unterschied zwischen einem Literatur-Review und einem systematic Review?

Ein systematic Review ist systematischer und formaler als ein Litertur-Review.

Bei einem Literatur-Review werden existierende Arbeiten qualitativ zusammenfasst und evaluiert, ohne dass eine formale, explizite Methode verwendet wird.

Was ist der Unterschied zwischen einem Literatur-Review und einem theoretischen Rahmen?

Der Literatur-Review dient als echter Grundstein für die Analyse des Problems, das du untersuchst. Abhängig vom Aufbau deiner Abschlussarbeit kann er auch als Grundlage verwendet werden, um einen umfassenden theoretischen Rahmen zu entwickeln.

Beispiel theoretische Rahmen

Vorbereitende Erforschung des Problems

Sobald du einen allgemeinen Überblick über das Problem und die Forschungsfragen, die du in deiner Abschlussarbeit ansprechen möchtest, hast, ist der erste Schritt oft, mit einem Literatur-Review zu beginnen. Dies ist eine wertvolle Möglichkeit, um dich selbst innerhalb des Forschungsfeldes besser zu orientieren und dich auf das Problem, das du untersuchen willst, genauer auszurichten.

Diese Einblicke in die bestehenden Kenntnisse und Theorien, die du durch den Literatur-Review gewinnst, werden dir auch dabei helfen, einen starken wissenschaftlichen Ausgangspunkt für den Rest deiner Forschung zu schaffen.

Nachdem du eine klare Problemstellung und Forschungsfrage(n) bestimmt hast, ist der nächste Schritt, dass du dich eingehender in dein Thema und die einschlägige Literatur vertiefst.

Dies kann eine echte Herausforderung sein, angesichts der Menge der verfügbaren Literatur und der begrenzten Zeit, die dir unter Umständen für das Schreiben deiner Abschlussarbeit zur Verfügung steht. Deshalb ist es wichtig, dass du an diesen Prozess so effizient und systematisch wie möglich herangehst.

Kostenlos auf Plagiate prüfen.

Hältst du dich an diesen Vier-Stufen-Wegweiser, wird dir das dabei helfen, deinen Literatur-Review effektiv durchzuführen.

• Vorbereitung
• Literatur sammeln
• Literatur bewerten und auswählen
• Literatur verarbeiten

1. Vorbereitung

Der erste Schritt umfasst, dass du dich selbst auf dein Thema ausrichtest, damit du ein umfassenderes Bild des Untersuchungsgebietes erlangst. Dazu gehört auch die Erstellung einer Liste von Schlüsselbegriffen, die als Grundlage für den nächsten Schritt dient.

• Lies eine aktuelle Publikation zu deinem Thema. Wähle eine Publikation von einem renommierten Autor, in der alle (oder möglichst viele) Facetten deines Themas erörtert werden. Dadurch erhältst du einen allgemeinen Überblick über dein Forschungsfeld. Frage deinen Betreuer, falls Fragen auftauchen.
• Notiere während des Lesens die Begriffe, die dir am wichtigsten/relevantesten erscheinen.
• Identifiziere auch die wichtigsten/relevantesten Begriffe deines (Ausgangs-) Problems und deiner Forschungsfrage(n).
• Nonverbale Kommunikation
• Nonverbale Signale
• Nonverbale Gesten
• Körpersprache

2. Literatur sammeln

Diese Vorbereitungsarbeit macht es nun viel einfacher, nach spezifischer Literatur und nach anderen Quellen zu suchen. Diese Suche beginnt oftmals online. Dabei ist es sehr wichtig, dass die richtigen Schlüsselbegriffe verwendet werden, weshalb der erste Schritt dieses Wegweisers die Zusammenstellung einer Liste umfasst.

Suche nach diesen Begriffen sowohl in deutscher Sprache als auch in allen anderen Sprachen, in denen du über Lesekompetenzen verfügst. Es ist auch hilfreich zu versuchen, Synonyme und verschiedene Kombinationen von Begriffen zu verwenden.

Es gibt viele verschiedene Arten von Datenbanken, die du vielleicht durchforsten möchtest:

• Der Online-Katalog deiner Schule oder der Universitätbibliothek. Die meisten wissenschaftlichen Bibliotheken haben einen großen Bestand an physischen Ressourcen, einschließlich Büchern, Papers, Zeitschriften und Magazinen. Die meisten haben jedoch ihre Angebote exponentiell durch das Abonnieren wissenschaftlicher Ressourcen, einschließlich Fachzeitschriften sowie wissenschaftlicher Datenbanken (siehe unten), erweitert.
• Google Scholar. Über www.scholar.google.de gelangst du zu der speziellen Suchmaschine von Google für wissenschaftliche Literatur. Wenn du auf einen Artikel, an dem du interessiert bist, nicht kostenlos zugreifen kannst, versuche stattdessen über die Bibliothek deines Instituts darauf zuzugreifen.
• Länderspezifische Datenbanken. Manche Datenbanken werden auf nationaler Ebene betrieben. Beispielsweise kann auf die Datenbank PiCarta fast immer über Bibliotheken niederländischer Institute zugegriffen werden. Sie enthält Daten zu allen verfügbaren Publikationen in den Niederlanden, einschließlich Büchern und Magazinen, die nicht in deiner eigenen Bibliothek verfügbar sind.
• Fachübergreifende Datenbanken. Datenbanken wie JSTOR und EBSCO sind digitale Bibliotheken, die Fachzeitschriften, Bücher und Primärliteratur zu einer Vielzahl von Themen beinhalten. Die meisten Institutsbibliotheken abonnieren mehrere davon.
• Fachspezifische Datenbanken. Mehrere Datenbanken konzentrieren sich auf bestimmte Disziplinen (oder Gruppen von verwandten Disziplinen). Ein Beispiel hierfür ist die AGRIS-Datenbank, die ein breites Spektrum an Themen in Bezug auf Landwirtschaft und Umwelt abdeckt.

Wenn du eine nützliche Quelle gefunden hast, prüfe die Biografie dieser Publikation auf andere relevante Quellen (dies wird als „Schneeball“-Forschungsmethode bezeichnet). Taucht ein Autorname immer wieder auf? Dann bedeutet das normalerweise, dass diese Person eine umfangreiche Forschung zu diesem Thema geleistet hat.

Ein Blick auf seine/ihre Webseite oder die Suche nach seinem/ihrem Namen direkt in einem (Online-) Katalog wird wahrscheinlich zu weiteren Ergebnissen führen.

3. Literatur bewerten und auswählen

Es ist wahrscheinlich, dass du eine überwältigende Menge an Literatur entdeckst. Da dir nur ein begrenztes Ausmaß an Zeit zur Verfügung steht, ist es wichtig, dass du dich auf die wichtigsten Quellen konzentrierst. Wir schlagen vor, die Literatur, die du gefunden hast, zuerst in Hinblick auf ihre Relevanz und anschließend auf ihre wissenschaftliche Qualität zu bewerten.

Relevanz Eine relevante Publikation ist eine, die gut zu deinem Thema oder deinem Problem passt. Um die Relevanz eines Buches oder Artikels, ohne es/ihn in seiner Gesamtheit zu lesen, zu bestimmen, beginne nur mit der Einleitung und dem Fazit . Dies wird dir häufig genügend Informationen liefern, um zu beurteilen, ob die Publikation für deine Arbeit relevant ist.

Qualität Die Qualität einer Publikation wird durch eine Reihe von Faktoren bestimmt. Als allgemeine Regel gilt: Versuche nur die Artikel, die in renommierten Fachzeitschriften veröffentlicht wurden, zu verwenden. Rankings wie die Journal Quality List helfen dir dabei herauszufinden, welche Zeitschriften qualitativ sind.

Ein Blick auf die Fachkenntnisse mitwirkender Autoren kann ebenfalls hilfreich sein. Fachkundige Autoren sind normalerweise einem akademischen Institut zugehörig, publizieren umfangreich und werden häufig von anderen zitiert.

Bedenke, dass Informationen von Webseiten, mit Ausnahme von Webseiten, die von wissenschaftlichen, staatlichen oder zwischenstaatlichen Institutionen betrieben werden, häufig nicht zuverlässig sind. Es ist auch wichtig, wenn möglich die neueste Literatur zu nutzen; wenn du das nicht machst, läufst du Gefahr, deine Arbeit auf veralteten Informationen aufzubauen.

4. Literatur verarbeiten

Sobald du die Literatur, auf die du dich konzentrieren willst, bestimmt hast, findet im nächsten Schritt die Verarbeitung der Informationen, die du herausgefunden hast, statt (zum Beispiel durch eine Problemanalyse oder einen theoretischen Rahmen). Es ist natürlich wichtig, damit zu beginnen, die ausgewählten Publikationen gründlich zu studieren. Stell dir dabei die folgenden Fragen:

• Was ist das zu untersuchende Problem und wie nimmt es die Forschung in Angriff?
• Was sind die Schlüsselkonzepte und wie werden diese definiert?
• Welche Theorien und Modelle verwendet der Autor?
• Was sind die Ergebnisse und Schlossfolgerungen der Studie?
• Wie steht diese Publikation verwandten Publikationen innerhalb dieses Forschungsfeldes gegenüber?
• Wie kann ich diese Forschung auf meine eigene anwenden?

Die Analyse all deiner Quellen auf diese Art und Weise wird dir ein klares Bild des Forschungsfeldes und wie deine Forschung dazu passt, vermitteln. Danach bist du dazu in der Lage, die Literatur auf eine kritische und gut fundierte Weise zu diskutieren.

Die Art und Weise, wie du die Ergebnisse deines Literatur-Reviews präsentieren sollst, variiert je nach Programm. Die entsprechenden Leitlinien deines Fachgebiets sollten dir zur Verfügung gestellt werden. Wenn du den Literatur-Review verwendest, um beispielweise einen theoretischen Rahmen vorzubereiten, würde der Schwerpunkt auf der Definition und Analyse von Theorien und Modellen liegen.

Die Zitate in deinem Literatur-Review sollten sehr genau sein. Viele Schulen und Universitäten nutzen die Zitierweise der American Pscyhological Association ( APA ). Nutze den kostenlosen Scribbr-Zitiergenerator , der dir dabei hilft, Zitate schnell und korrekt zu erstellen.

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• Aus vorgehenden Untersuchungen wurde ersichtlich, dass…
• In mehreren Studien (Smith, 1988; Driessen, 2007) wurde aufgezeigt, dass…
• Durch Studien (Smith, 1988; Driessen, 2007) zu X wird die Wichtigkeit von…hervorgehoben
• Frühere Untersuchungen (Smith, 1988) zum Vergleich von X und Y zeigen, dass…
• Studien, wie jene von Smith (1988), zeigen, dass…

Mehr standardsätze »

• Previous studies have shown that…
• Several studies (Smith, 1988; Driessen, 2007) have looked at…
• Studies (Smith, 1988; Driessen, 2007) of X shows the importance of…
• Previous research (Smith, 1988) comparing X and Y has found…
• Research carried out by Smith (1988) indicated that …

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Beachte diese vier Schritte, um einen Literatur-Review zu schreiben:

Für Inhalte von Theorien, Definitionen und Fakten benutzt du im Literatur-Review den Indikativ Präsens. Abgeschlossene Studien und Ergebnisse von anderen Untersuchern werden im Indikativ Perfekt geschrieben.

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Krul, A. (2023, 15. August). Wie führt man einen Literatur-Review durch?. Scribbr. Abgerufen am 23. April 2024, von https://www.scribbr.de/aufbau-und-gliederung/wie-fuehrt-man-einen-literatur-review-durch/

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Literaturreview als Methode (narrativ, kritisch, etc.)

Du möchtest ein Literaturreview als Methode für deine wissenschaftliche Arbeit einsetzen? Dann bist du hier genau richtig.

In diesem Artikel geht es nicht darum, wie du einen Literaturteil aka aktuellen Forschungsstand aka Literature Review für eine empirische Arbeit schreibst.

Hier geht es um alleinstehende Literaturreviews, die sich als wissenschaftliche Arbeit ausschließlich mit der Literatur eines speziellen Forschungsfelds auseinandersetzen.

In diesem Artikel lernst du folgende 3 Dinge:

• Alle Typen von Literaturreviews und wie sie sich unterscheiden
• Wie du den richtigen Typ für dein Forschungsziel identifizierst

Wie du die perfekte Anleitung für ein Literaturreview in deinem Fachbereich findest

Also mach es dir im Ohrensessel deines Lesezimmers oder dem Klappstuhl deiner Uni-Bib bequem und genieße die Show!

Inhaltsverzeichnis

• 1 Warum Literaturreviews als Methode wichtig sind
• 2 Taxonomie der Literaturreviews nach Cooper (1988)
• 3.1.1 Narratives Review
• 3.1.2 Deskriptives Review
• 3.1.3 Scoping Review
• 3.2.1 Meta-Analyse
• 3.2.2 Qualitatives Systematisches Review
• 3.2.3 Umbrella Review
• 3.3.1 Theoretisches Review
• 3.3.2 Realist Review
• 3.4.1 Kritisches Review
• 4.1 Auswahl eingrenzen
• 4.2 Entscheidung treffen

Warum Literaturreviews als Methode wichtig sind

Eine wissenschaftliche Disziplin ist nur dann „wissenschaftlich“, wenn sie aktiv einen eigenen Wissensschatz aufbaut und pflegt. Eine Disziplin muss sich außerdem von anderen abgrenzen und immer wieder definieren, welche Art von Forschung sie beherbergen sollte oder nicht.

Dazu dienen Fachzeitschriften und Editoren, die bestimmte Themen pushen, Geldgeber, die bestimmte Forschungsprojekte fördern und Universitäten, die Lehrprogramme anbieten.

Ein etwas kleinerer, aber ebenso wichtiger Beitrag zur Pflege des Wissensschatzes in einer wissenschaftlichen Disziplin ist die Durchführung von Literaturreviews. Diese tragen nicht nur bestehendes Wissen zusammen, sondern erweitern dieses, indem sie durch Analyse der Literatur einen Mehrwert schaffen, der größer ist als die Summe der zugrunde liegenden Einzelteile.

Ein Literaturreview kann nach (Paré, 2015) beispielsweise

• die Breite der Forschung zu einem Thema helfen zu verstehen
• die empirischen Befunde zu einem Thema zusammenzufassen
• neue Theorie entwickeln
• einen konzeptionellen Hintergrund für zukünftige Forschung liefern
• Themen oder Forschungsbereiche identifizieren, die weitere Untersuchungen erfordern

Taxonomie der Literaturreviews nach Cooper (1988)

Über die Zeit haben sich verschieden Typen von Literaturreviews entwickelt. Diese sind weitgehend akzeptiert und helfen dir, als potenziellem Autor oder potenzieller Autorin eines Reviews, bei der Erstellung.

Bevor wir uns die Typen im Einzelnen ansehen, möchte ich die Taxonomy von Literaturreviews nach Cooper (1988) nicht unerwähnt lassen.

Professor Cooper identifizierte 6 Charakteristiken von Literaturreviews, und zwar:

Fokussiert sich das Review auf empirische Ergebnisse, Methoden, Theorien oder Anwendungsfelder?

Möchte das Review Wissen zusammenführen, kritisieren oder zentrale Forschungsprobleme identifizieren?

(3) Perspektive

Vertritt das Review eine neutrale oder subjektive Position?

(4) Abdeckung

Behandelt das Review möglichst alle vorhandenen Arbeiten zu einem Thema oder nur einzeln ausgewählte zentrale Werke? Nach welchen Kriterien werden diese ausgewählt?

(5) Organisation

Wird die Literatur historisch, konzeptionell oder methodologisch aufbereitet?

(6) Publikum

Richtet sich das Review an ein spezielles akademisches Publikum, Praktiker:innen oder die Allgemeinheit?

9 Typen von Literaturreviews

Auf Basis dieser Charakteristiken ergeben sich nun konkrete Arten von Literaturreviews. Hierfür beziehe ich mich nun wieder auf Paré (2015). Cooper’s Taxonomie ist noch immer relevant, aber die Literatur-Typen haben sich über die letzten Jahrzehnte noch ein wenig klarer herauskristallisiert.

Kategorie 1: Zusammenfassung von bestehendem Wissen

Narratives review.

Ein narratives Review fasst zusammen, was zu einem Thema bereits geschrieben wurde. Dabei wird meistens kein größerer theoretischer Mehrwert generiert, sondern es bleibt bei der Beschreibung. Die Auswahl der Quellen folgt keinem systematischen Vorgehen und muss auch nicht alle Publikationen zu einem Thema berücksichtigen. Die Quellen sind subjektiv durch die Autoren ausgewählt. All diese Punkte führen dazu, das narrative Reviews oft kritisiert werden.

Deskriptives Review

Beschreibende Reviews gehen da schon eher systematisch vor. Die identifizierten Quellen stellen dann eine Art Datensatz da, der auf einen ganz bestimmten Aspekt hin untersucht wird. Beispielsweise werden alle Quellen darauf untersucht, welche empirische Methode untersucht wurde. Dann würde man eine deskriptive Statistik darüber erstellen, welche Methoden in einem bestimmten Feld am häufigsten verwendet wurden. Hier kann man alles mögliche analysieren, z.B. die Veröffentlichungsjahre von Publikationen in einem Bereich, die Zitationsnetzwerke und noch vieles mehr.

Scoping Review

Das Scoping Review widmet sich einem bestimmten Forschungsthema und überprüft, in welchem Ausmaß zu diesem Thema in einer oder mehreren Disziplinen dazu veröffentlicht wurde. Hier muss darauf geachtet werden, dass die Auswahl der Quellen möglichst komplett ist und keine Studien übersehen werden. Berichtet werden dann die Anzahl an Publikationen über die Zeit hinweg und wie sich die Forschung zu einem Thema entwickelt hat. Die konkreten Inhalte der Studien spielen dabei eine kleinere Rolle.

Kategorie 2: Sammeln oder Zusammenführen empirischer Daten

Meta-analyse.

Die Meta-Analyse nimmt sich existierende Forschungsarbeiten vor und fasst deren statistische Ergebnisse zusammen. Die Stichprobe bildet dann eine Sammlung der relevanten Studien, die gelesen und ausgewertet werden müssen. Für eine Meta-Analyse kommen nur Studien mit quantitativen Ergebnissen infrage. Die gewonnenen Daten werden dann mit Hilfe statistischer Verfahren analysiert, um z.B. gleiche Muster innerhalb der vielen Einzelergebnisse zu finden und zu beschreiben. Ein komplettes Tutorial zur Meta-Analyse findest du ebenfalls auf meinem Kanal.

Qualitatives Systematisches Review

Beim qualitativen systematische Review solltest du dich nicht vom Namen in die Irre führen lassen. Auch hier werden ausschließlich quantitative Studien untersucht. Doch nicht wie bei der Meta-Analyse durch weitere statistische Tests, sondern eher erzählerisch. Dabei dienen vier Fragen als Leitlinie:

• (1) In welche Richtung ist ein Effekt zu beobachten?
• (2) Wie groß ist der Effekt?
• (3) Ist der Effekt über die untersuchten Studien hinweg konsistent?
• (4) Wie stark ist die Beweislage für diesen Effekt?

Umbrella Review

Achtung, jetzt wird es meta – Hinter diesem Begriff verbirgt sich ein Review von Reviews. In Disziplinen wie der Medizin werden bereits so viele systematische Reviews veröffentlicht, dass es sich lohnt, diese ebenfalls zusammenzufassen. Statt Umbrella Review wird auch manchmal der Begriff Meta-Review verwendet.

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Kategorie 3: Erklärungen bilden

Theoretisches review.

Das theoretische Review umfasst Studien, die sowohl quantitativ als auch qualitativ sein können. Hier ist es das Ziel, ein theoretisches Framework oder Modell zu bilden. So wird ein theoretischer Mehrwert geschaffen, indem Muster, Beziehungen oder konzeptuelle Unstimmigkeiten aufgedeckt werden. Das nennt man im Englischen auch „Synthesis“. Je größer der theoretische Mehrwert, den das Review generiert, desto besser.

Realist Review

Diese Art von Review ist eher etwas für Fortgeschrittene. Um diesen Typ zu verstehen, müssen wir uns auf die wissenschaftstheoretische Ebene begeben.

Reviews wie eine Meta-Analyse oder das qualitative systematische Review sind in Disziplinen wie der Medizin total sinnvoll. Hier gibt es wenig Uneinigkeiten über ontologische oder epistemologische Fragestellungen. In sozialwissenschaftlichen Disziplinen ist das anders.

Hier lässt sich gut argumentieren, dass es wenig Sinn ergibt systematische Reviews zu quantitativen Studienergebnissen zu machen, da so der sozial konstruierte Kontext ignoriert wird.

So ist die Art des Realist Reviews entstanden, welche nach dem Vorbild des Critical Realism untersucht, unter welchen Bedingungen und in welchen Kontexten bestimmte Ergebnisse gültig sind und wann eben nicht. Wenn du tiefer in diese Thematik einsteigen möchtest, schau gerne mal bei meinem Tutorial zu Ontologie, Epistemologie und Methodologie v orbei.

Kategorie 4: Kritische Auseinandersetzung

Kritisches review.

Review Typ Nummer 9 ist schnell erklärt. Die Auswahl der Quellen ist nicht systematisch und erhebt keinen Anspruch auf Vollständigkeit. Es geht darum Schwächen, Widersprüche, Kontroversen oder Inkonsistenzen innerhalb eines Forschungsfeld aufzudecken.

Ein kritisches Review ist ebenfalls eher für Fortgeschrittene geeignet.

In meiner Zeit als Doktorand habe ich mich bereits an ein Scoping Review und ein theoretisches Review herangewagt und das hat auch prima funktioniert. Die letzten beiden Reviewarten hebe ich mir noch ein bisschen für später auf.

An deiner Stelle würde ich bei der Planung des Reviews mit dem Forschungsziel starten. Schaue dir dazu die Taxonomie von Cooper an und entscheide, welche Charakteristiken dein Review haben sollte.

Auswahl eingrenzen

Dann grenzt du die Auswahl der 9 Reviewtypen so stark es geht ein. Wenn du direkt weißt, welcher Typ passt – prima. Wenn du zwischen zwei Typen schwankst, auch ok.

Gehe nun auf eine führende Datenbank deiner Disziplin und Google Scholar und recherchiere existierende Reviews dieser Typen aus deinem Fachbereich. Gib also z.B. „theoretical review education“ oder „scoping review education“ ein.

Sollten hier zu wenig Ergebnisse bei rumkommen, probiere es nur mit dem Begriff review und deinem thematischen Schlüsselwort. An diesem Punkt kannst du selbst bewerten, welchen Typ Review du vor dir liegen hast.

Entscheidung treffen

Nachdem du einige Beispiele studiert hast, entscheidest du dich für den Typ, der er es sein soll. Jetzt recherchierst du nach einem Methoden-Paper zu genau diesem Reviewtypen, in genau deiner Disziplin.

Also im Idealfall findest du ein Methoden-Paper zu theoretischen Reviews in der Pädagogik. Wenn es das nicht gibt, dann weichst du eben aus und suchst ein Methoden-Paper zu theoretischen Reviews aus der Psychologie. Und so weiter.

So findest du irgendwann deine persönliche Anleitung, welche die Eigenheiten deiner Disziplin berücksichtigt und dir einen Schritt-für-Schritt Leitfaden gibt. Dieses Paper zitierst du dann selbstverständlich in deinem Methodenteil. Es ist natürlich nicht verboten Methoden-Paper aus fremden Disziplinen als Anleitung zu verwenden und zu zitieren – aber je verwandter sie mit deinem Bereich sind, desto besser.

Wenn du auf dem Weg zu mehr Erfolg im Studium noch ein wenig Starthilfe für deine wissenschaftliche Arbeit benötigst, dann habe noch ein PDF   für dich, das du dir gratis herunterladen kannst:

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How do you write a systematic literature review? What types of systematic literature reviews exist and where do you use them? Learn everything you need to know about a systematic literature review in this guide

What is a literature review? [with examples]

Not sure what a literature review is? This guide covers the definition, purpose, and format of a literature review.

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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.

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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 .

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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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Ten Simple Rules for Writing a Literature Review

Marco pautasso.

1 Centre for Functional and Evolutionary Ecology (CEFE), CNRS, Montpellier, France

2 Centre for Biodiversity Synthesis and Analysis (CESAB), FRB, Aix-en-Provence, France

Literature reviews are in great demand in most scientific fields. Their need stems from the ever-increasing output of scientific publications [1] . For example, compared to 1991, in 2008 three, eight, and forty times more papers were indexed in Web of Science on malaria, obesity, and biodiversity, respectively [2] . Given such mountains of papers, scientists cannot be expected to examine in detail every single new paper relevant to their interests [3] . Thus, it is both advantageous and necessary to rely on regular summaries of the recent literature. Although recognition for scientists mainly comes from primary research, timely literature reviews can lead to new synthetic insights and are often widely read [4] . For such summaries to be useful, however, they need to be compiled in a professional way [5] .

When starting from scratch, reviewing the literature can require a titanic amount of work. That is why researchers who have spent their career working on a certain research issue are in a perfect position to review that literature. Some graduate schools are now offering courses in reviewing the literature, given that most research students start their project by producing an overview of what has already been done on their research issue [6] . However, it is likely that most scientists have not thought in detail about how to approach and carry out a literature review.

Reviewing the literature requires the ability to juggle multiple tasks, from finding and evaluating relevant material to synthesising information from various sources, from critical thinking to paraphrasing, evaluating, and citation skills [7] . In this contribution, I share ten simple rules I learned working on about 25 literature reviews as a PhD and postdoctoral student. Ideas and insights also come from discussions with coauthors and colleagues, as well as feedback from reviewers and editors.

Rule 1: Define a Topic and Audience

How to choose which topic to review? There are so many issues in contemporary science that you could spend a lifetime of attending conferences and reading the literature just pondering what to review. On the one hand, if you take several years to choose, several other people may have had the same idea in the meantime. On the other hand, only a well-considered topic is likely to lead to a brilliant literature review [8] . The topic must at least be:

• interesting to you (ideally, you should have come across a series of recent papers related to your line of work that call for a critical summary),
• an important aspect of the field (so that many readers will be interested in the review and there will be enough material to write it), and
• a well-defined issue (otherwise you could potentially include thousands of publications, which would make the review unhelpful).

Ideas for potential reviews may come from papers providing lists of key research questions to be answered [9] , but also from serendipitous moments during desultory reading and discussions. In addition to choosing your topic, you should also select a target audience. In many cases, the topic (e.g., web services in computational biology) will automatically define an audience (e.g., computational biologists), but that same topic may also be of interest to neighbouring fields (e.g., computer science, biology, etc.).

Rule 2: Search and Re-search the Literature

After having chosen your topic and audience, start by checking the literature and downloading relevant papers. Five pieces of advice here:

• keep track of the search items you use (so that your search can be replicated [10] ),
• keep a list of papers whose pdfs you cannot access immediately (so as to retrieve them later with alternative strategies),
• use a paper management system (e.g., Mendeley, Papers, Qiqqa, Sente),
• define early in the process some criteria for exclusion of irrelevant papers (these criteria can then be described in the review to help define its scope), and
• do not just look for research papers in the area you wish to review, but also seek previous reviews.

The chances are high that someone will already have published a literature review ( Figure 1 ), if not exactly on the issue you are planning to tackle, at least on a related topic. If there are already a few or several reviews of the literature on your issue, my advice is not to give up, but to carry on with your own literature review,

The bottom-right situation (many literature reviews but few research papers) is not just a theoretical situation; it applies, for example, to the study of the impacts of climate change on plant diseases, where there appear to be more literature reviews than research studies [33] .

• discussing in your review the approaches, limitations, and conclusions of past reviews,
• trying to find a new angle that has not been covered adequately in the previous reviews, and
• incorporating new material that has inevitably accumulated since their appearance.

When searching the literature for pertinent papers and reviews, the usual rules apply:

• be thorough,
• use different keywords and database sources (e.g., DBLP, Google Scholar, ISI Proceedings, JSTOR Search, Medline, Scopus, Web of Science), and
• look at who has cited past relevant papers and book chapters.

Rule 3: Take Notes While Reading

If you read the papers first, and only afterwards start writing the review, you will need a very good memory to remember who wrote what, and what your impressions and associations were while reading each single paper. My advice is, while reading, to start writing down interesting pieces of information, insights about how to organize the review, and thoughts on what to write. This way, by the time you have read the literature you selected, you will already have a rough draft of the review.

Of course, this draft will still need much rewriting, restructuring, and rethinking to obtain a text with a coherent argument [11] , but you will have avoided the danger posed by staring at a blank document. Be careful when taking notes to use quotation marks if you are provisionally copying verbatim from the literature. It is advisable then to reformulate such quotes with your own words in the final draft. It is important to be careful in noting the references already at this stage, so as to avoid misattributions. Using referencing software from the very beginning of your endeavour will save you time.

Rule 4: Choose the Type of Review You Wish to Write

After having taken notes while reading the literature, you will have a rough idea of the amount of material available for the review. This is probably a good time to decide whether to go for a mini- or a full review. Some journals are now favouring the publication of rather short reviews focusing on the last few years, with a limit on the number of words and citations. A mini-review is not necessarily a minor review: it may well attract more attention from busy readers, although it will inevitably simplify some issues and leave out some relevant material due to space limitations. A full review will have the advantage of more freedom to cover in detail the complexities of a particular scientific development, but may then be left in the pile of the very important papers “to be read” by readers with little time to spare for major monographs.

There is probably a continuum between mini- and full reviews. The same point applies to the dichotomy of descriptive vs. integrative reviews. While descriptive reviews focus on the methodology, findings, and interpretation of each reviewed study, integrative reviews attempt to find common ideas and concepts from the reviewed material [12] . A similar distinction exists between narrative and systematic reviews: while narrative reviews are qualitative, systematic reviews attempt to test a hypothesis based on the published evidence, which is gathered using a predefined protocol to reduce bias [13] , [14] . When systematic reviews analyse quantitative results in a quantitative way, they become meta-analyses. The choice between different review types will have to be made on a case-by-case basis, depending not just on the nature of the material found and the preferences of the target journal(s), but also on the time available to write the review and the number of coauthors [15] .

Rule 5: Keep the Review Focused, but Make It of Broad Interest

Whether your plan is to write a mini- or a full review, it is good advice to keep it focused 16 , 17 . Including material just for the sake of it can easily lead to reviews that are trying to do too many things at once. The need to keep a review focused can be problematic for interdisciplinary reviews, where the aim is to bridge the gap between fields [18] . If you are writing a review on, for example, how epidemiological approaches are used in modelling the spread of ideas, you may be inclined to include material from both parent fields, epidemiology and the study of cultural diffusion. This may be necessary to some extent, but in this case a focused review would only deal in detail with those studies at the interface between epidemiology and the spread of ideas.

While focus is an important feature of a successful review, this requirement has to be balanced with the need to make the review relevant to a broad audience. This square may be circled by discussing the wider implications of the reviewed topic for other disciplines.

Rule 6: Be Critical and Consistent

Reviewing the literature is not stamp collecting. A good review does not just summarize the literature, but discusses it critically, identifies methodological problems, and points out research gaps [19] . After having read a review of the literature, a reader should have a rough idea of:

• the major achievements in the reviewed field,
• the main areas of debate, and
• the outstanding research questions.

It is challenging to achieve a successful review on all these fronts. A solution can be to involve a set of complementary coauthors: some people are excellent at mapping what has been achieved, some others are very good at identifying dark clouds on the horizon, and some have instead a knack at predicting where solutions are going to come from. If your journal club has exactly this sort of team, then you should definitely write a review of the literature! In addition to critical thinking, a literature review needs consistency, for example in the choice of passive vs. active voice and present vs. past tense.

Rule 7: Find a Logical Structure

Like a well-baked cake, a good review has a number of telling features: it is worth the reader's time, timely, systematic, well written, focused, and critical. It also needs a good structure. With reviews, the usual subdivision of research papers into introduction, methods, results, and discussion does not work or is rarely used. However, a general introduction of the context and, toward the end, a recapitulation of the main points covered and take-home messages make sense also in the case of reviews. For systematic reviews, there is a trend towards including information about how the literature was searched (database, keywords, time limits) [20] .

How can you organize the flow of the main body of the review so that the reader will be drawn into and guided through it? It is generally helpful to draw a conceptual scheme of the review, e.g., with mind-mapping techniques. Such diagrams can help recognize a logical way to order and link the various sections of a review [21] . This is the case not just at the writing stage, but also for readers if the diagram is included in the review as a figure. A careful selection of diagrams and figures relevant to the reviewed topic can be very helpful to structure the text too [22] .

Rule 8: Make Use of Feedback

Reviews of the literature are normally peer-reviewed in the same way as research papers, and rightly so [23] . As a rule, incorporating feedback from reviewers greatly helps improve a review draft. Having read the review with a fresh mind, reviewers may spot inaccuracies, inconsistencies, and ambiguities that had not been noticed by the writers due to rereading the typescript too many times. It is however advisable to reread the draft one more time before submission, as a last-minute correction of typos, leaps, and muddled sentences may enable the reviewers to focus on providing advice on the content rather than the form.

Feedback is vital to writing a good review, and should be sought from a variety of colleagues, so as to obtain a diversity of views on the draft. This may lead in some cases to conflicting views on the merits of the paper, and on how to improve it, but such a situation is better than the absence of feedback. A diversity of feedback perspectives on a literature review can help identify where the consensus view stands in the landscape of the current scientific understanding of an issue [24] .

Rule 9: Include Your Own Relevant Research, but Be Objective

In many cases, reviewers of the literature will have published studies relevant to the review they are writing. This could create a conflict of interest: how can reviewers report objectively on their own work [25] ? Some scientists may be overly enthusiastic about what they have published, and thus risk giving too much importance to their own findings in the review. However, bias could also occur in the other direction: some scientists may be unduly dismissive of their own achievements, so that they will tend to downplay their contribution (if any) to a field when reviewing it.

In general, a review of the literature should neither be a public relations brochure nor an exercise in competitive self-denial. If a reviewer is up to the job of producing a well-organized and methodical review, which flows well and provides a service to the readership, then it should be possible to be objective in reviewing one's own relevant findings. In reviews written by multiple authors, this may be achieved by assigning the review of the results of a coauthor to different coauthors.

Rule 10: Be Up-to-Date, but Do Not Forget Older Studies

Given the progressive acceleration in the publication of scientific papers, today's reviews of the literature need awareness not just of the overall direction and achievements of a field of inquiry, but also of the latest studies, so as not to become out-of-date before they have been published. Ideally, a literature review should not identify as a major research gap an issue that has just been addressed in a series of papers in press (the same applies, of course, to older, overlooked studies (“sleeping beauties” [26] )). This implies that literature reviewers would do well to keep an eye on electronic lists of papers in press, given that it can take months before these appear in scientific databases. Some reviews declare that they have scanned the literature up to a certain point in time, but given that peer review can be a rather lengthy process, a full search for newly appeared literature at the revision stage may be worthwhile. Assessing the contribution of papers that have just appeared is particularly challenging, because there is little perspective with which to gauge their significance and impact on further research and society.

Inevitably, new papers on the reviewed topic (including independently written literature reviews) will appear from all quarters after the review has been published, so that there may soon be the need for an updated review. But this is the nature of science [27] – [32] . I wish everybody good luck with writing a review of the literature.

Acknowledgments

Many thanks to M. Barbosa, K. Dehnen-Schmutz, T. Döring, D. Fontaneto, M. Garbelotto, O. Holdenrieder, M. Jeger, D. Lonsdale, A. MacLeod, P. Mills, M. Moslonka-Lefebvre, G. Stancanelli, P. Weisberg, and X. Xu for insights and discussions, and to P. Bourne, T. Matoni, and D. Smith for helpful comments on a previous draft.

Funding Statement

This work was funded by the French Foundation for Research on Biodiversity (FRB) through its Centre for Synthesis and Analysis of Biodiversity data (CESAB), as part of the NETSEED research project. The funders had no role in the preparation of the manuscript.

• University of Texas Libraries

Literature Reviews

• What is a literature review?
• Steps in the Literature Review Process
• Define your research question
• Determine inclusion and exclusion criteria
• Choose databases and search
• Review Results
• Synthesize Results
• Analyze Results
• Librarian Support

What is a Literature Review?

A literature or narrative review is a comprehensive review and analysis of the published literature on a specific topic or research question. The literature that is reviewed contains: books, articles, academic articles, conference proceedings, association papers, and dissertations. It contains the most pertinent studies and points to important past and current research and practices. It provides background and context, and shows how your research will contribute to the field. 

A literature review should: 

• Provide a comprehensive and updated review of the literature;
• Explain why this review has taken place;
• Articulate a position or hypothesis;
• Acknowledge and account for conflicting and corroborating points of view

From  S age Research Methods

Purpose of a Literature Review

A literature review can be written as an introduction to a study to:

• Demonstrate how a study fills a gap in research
• Compare a study with other research that's been done

Or it can be a separate work (a research article on its own) which:

• Organizes or describes a topic
• Describes variables within a particular issue/problem

What is a Literature Review? How to Write It (with Examples)

A literature review is a critical analysis and synthesis of existing research on a particular topic. It provides an overview of the current state of knowledge, identifies gaps, and highlights key findings in the literature. 1 The purpose of a literature review is to situate your own research within the context of existing scholarship, demonstrating your understanding of the topic and showing how your work contributes to the ongoing conversation in the field. Learning how to write a literature review is a critical tool for successful research. Your ability to summarize and synthesize prior research pertaining to a certain topic demonstrates your grasp on the topic of study, and assists in the learning process. 

Table of Contents

• What is the purpose of literature review? 
• a. Habitat Loss and Species Extinction: 
• b. Range Shifts and Phenological Changes: 
• c. Ocean Acidification and Coral Reefs: 
• d. Adaptive Strategies and Conservation Efforts: 
• How to write a good literature review 
• Choose a Topic and Define the Research Question: 
• Decide on the Scope of Your Review: 
• Select Databases for Searches: 
• Conduct Searches and Keep Track: 
• Review the Literature: 
• Organize and Write Your Literature Review: 
• Frequently asked questions 

What is a literature review?

A well-conducted literature review demonstrates the researcher’s familiarity with the existing literature, establishes the context for their own research, and contributes to scholarly conversations on the topic. One of the purposes of a literature review is also to help researchers avoid duplicating previous work and ensure that their research is informed by and builds upon the existing body of knowledge.

What is the purpose of literature review?

A literature review serves several important purposes within academic and research contexts. Here are some key objectives and functions of a literature review: 2  

• Contextualizing the Research Problem: The literature review provides a background and context for the research problem under investigation. It helps to situate the study within the existing body of knowledge. 
• Identifying Gaps in Knowledge: By identifying gaps, contradictions, or areas requiring further research, the researcher can shape the research question and justify the significance of the study. This is crucial for ensuring that the new research contributes something novel to the field. 
• Understanding Theoretical and Conceptual Frameworks: Literature reviews help researchers gain an understanding of the theoretical and conceptual frameworks used in previous studies. This aids in the development of a theoretical framework for the current research. 
• Providing Methodological Insights: Another purpose of literature reviews is that it allows researchers to learn about the methodologies employed in previous studies. This can help in choosing appropriate research methods for the current study and avoiding pitfalls that others may have encountered. 
• Establishing Credibility: A well-conducted literature review demonstrates the researcher’s familiarity with existing scholarship, establishing their credibility and expertise in the field. It also helps in building a solid foundation for the new research. 
• Informing Hypotheses or Research Questions: The literature review guides the formulation of hypotheses or research questions by highlighting relevant findings and areas of uncertainty in existing literature. 

Literature review example

Let’s delve deeper with a literature review example: Let’s say your literature review is about the impact of climate change on biodiversity. You might format your literature review into sections such as the effects of climate change on habitat loss and species extinction, phenological changes, and marine biodiversity. Each section would then summarize and analyze relevant studies in those areas, highlighting key findings and identifying gaps in the research. The review would conclude by emphasizing the need for further research on specific aspects of the relationship between climate change and biodiversity. The following literature review template provides a glimpse into the recommended literature review structure and content, demonstrating how research findings are organized around specific themes within a broader topic. 

Literature Review on Climate Change Impacts on Biodiversity:

Climate change is a global phenomenon with far-reaching consequences, including significant impacts on biodiversity. This literature review synthesizes key findings from various studies: 

a. Habitat Loss and Species Extinction:

Climate change-induced alterations in temperature and precipitation patterns contribute to habitat loss, affecting numerous species (Thomas et al., 2004). The review discusses how these changes increase the risk of extinction, particularly for species with specific habitat requirements. 

b. Range Shifts and Phenological Changes:

Observations of range shifts and changes in the timing of biological events (phenology) are documented in response to changing climatic conditions (Parmesan & Yohe, 2003). These shifts affect ecosystems and may lead to mismatches between species and their resources. 

c. Ocean Acidification and Coral Reefs:

The review explores the impact of climate change on marine biodiversity, emphasizing ocean acidification’s threat to coral reefs (Hoegh-Guldberg et al., 2007). Changes in pH levels negatively affect coral calcification, disrupting the delicate balance of marine ecosystems. 

d. Adaptive Strategies and Conservation Efforts:

Recognizing the urgency of the situation, the literature review discusses various adaptive strategies adopted by species and conservation efforts aimed at mitigating the impacts of climate change on biodiversity (Hannah et al., 2007). It emphasizes the importance of interdisciplinary approaches for effective conservation planning. 

How to write a good literature review

Writing a literature review involves summarizing and synthesizing existing research on a particular topic. A good literature review format should include the following elements. 

Introduction: The introduction sets the stage for your literature review, providing context and introducing the main focus of your review. 

• Opening Statement: Begin with a general statement about the broader topic and its significance in the field. 
• Scope and Purpose: Clearly define the scope of your literature review. Explain the specific research question or objective you aim to address. 
• Organizational Framework: Briefly outline the structure of your literature review, indicating how you will categorize and discuss the existing research. 
• Significance of the Study: Highlight why your literature review is important and how it contributes to the understanding of the chosen topic. 
• Thesis Statement: Conclude the introduction with a concise thesis statement that outlines the main argument or perspective you will develop in the body of the literature review. 

Body: The body of the literature review is where you provide a comprehensive analysis of existing literature, grouping studies based on themes, methodologies, or other relevant criteria. 

• Organize by Theme or Concept: Group studies that share common themes, concepts, or methodologies. Discuss each theme or concept in detail, summarizing key findings and identifying gaps or areas of disagreement. 
• Critical Analysis: Evaluate the strengths and weaknesses of each study. Discuss the methodologies used, the quality of evidence, and the overall contribution of each work to the understanding of the topic. 
• Synthesis of Findings: Synthesize the information from different studies to highlight trends, patterns, or areas of consensus in the literature. 
• Identification of Gaps: Discuss any gaps or limitations in the existing research and explain how your review contributes to filling these gaps. 
• Transition between Sections: Provide smooth transitions between different themes or concepts to maintain the flow of your literature review. 

Conclusion: The conclusion of your literature review should summarize the main findings, highlight the contributions of the review, and suggest avenues for future research. 

• Summary of Key Findings: Recap the main findings from the literature and restate how they contribute to your research question or objective. 
• Contributions to the Field: Discuss the overall contribution of your literature review to the existing knowledge in the field. 
• Implications and Applications: Explore the practical implications of the findings and suggest how they might impact future research or practice. 
• Recommendations for Future Research: Identify areas that require further investigation and propose potential directions for future research in the field. 
• Final Thoughts: Conclude with a final reflection on the importance of your literature review and its relevance to the broader academic community. 

Conducting a literature review

Conducting a literature review is an essential step in research that involves reviewing and analyzing existing literature on a specific topic. It’s important to know how to do a literature review effectively, so here are the steps to follow: 1  

Choose a Topic and Define the Research Question:

• Select a topic that is relevant to your field of study. 
• Clearly define your research question or objective. Determine what specific aspect of the topic do you want to explore? 

Decide on the Scope of Your Review:

• Determine the timeframe for your literature review. Are you focusing on recent developments, or do you want a historical overview? 
• Consider the geographical scope. Is your review global, or are you focusing on a specific region? 
• Define the inclusion and exclusion criteria. What types of sources will you include? Are there specific types of studies or publications you will exclude? 

Select Databases for Searches:

• Identify relevant databases for your field. Examples include PubMed, IEEE Xplore, Scopus, Web of Science, and Google Scholar. 
• Consider searching in library catalogs, institutional repositories, and specialized databases related to your topic. 

Conduct Searches and Keep Track:

• Develop a systematic search strategy using keywords, Boolean operators (AND, OR, NOT), and other search techniques. 
• Record and document your search strategy for transparency and replicability. 
• Keep track of the articles, including publication details, abstracts, and links. Use citation management tools like EndNote, Zotero, or Mendeley to organize your references. 

Review the Literature:

• Evaluate the relevance and quality of each source. Consider the methodology, sample size, and results of studies. 
• Organize the literature by themes or key concepts. Identify patterns, trends, and gaps in the existing research. 
• Summarize key findings and arguments from each source. Compare and contrast different perspectives. 
• Identify areas where there is a consensus in the literature and where there are conflicting opinions. 
• Provide critical analysis and synthesis of the literature. What are the strengths and weaknesses of existing research? 

Organize and Write Your Literature Review:

• Literature review outline should be based on themes, chronological order, or methodological approaches. 
• Write a clear and coherent narrative that synthesizes the information gathered. 
• Use proper citations for each source and ensure consistency in your citation style (APA, MLA, Chicago, etc.). 
• Conclude your literature review by summarizing key findings, identifying gaps, and suggesting areas for future research. 

The literature review sample and detailed advice on writing and conducting a review will help you produce a well-structured report. But remember that a literature review is an ongoing process, and it may be necessary to revisit and update it as your research progresses. 

Frequently asked questions

A literature review is a critical and comprehensive analysis of existing literature (published and unpublished works) on a specific topic or research question and provides a synthesis of the current state of knowledge in a particular field. A well-conducted literature review is crucial for researchers to build upon existing knowledge, avoid duplication of efforts, and contribute to the advancement of their field. It also helps researchers situate their work within a broader context and facilitates the development of a sound theoretical and conceptual framework for their studies.

Literature review is a crucial component of research writing, providing a solid background for a research paper’s investigation. The aim is to keep professionals up to date by providing an understanding of ongoing developments within a specific field, including research methods, and experimental techniques used in that field, and present that knowledge in the form of a written report. Also, the depth and breadth of the literature review emphasizes the credibility of the scholar in his or her field.  

Before writing a literature review, it’s essential to undertake several preparatory steps to ensure that your review is well-researched, organized, and focused. This includes choosing a topic of general interest to you and doing exploratory research on that topic, writing an annotated bibliography, and noting major points, especially those that relate to the position you have taken on the topic. 

Literature reviews and academic research papers are essential components of scholarly work but serve different purposes within the academic realm. 3 A literature review aims to provide a foundation for understanding the current state of research on a particular topic, identify gaps or controversies, and lay the groundwork for future research. Therefore, it draws heavily from existing academic sources, including books, journal articles, and other scholarly publications. In contrast, an academic research paper aims to present new knowledge, contribute to the academic discourse, and advance the understanding of a specific research question. Therefore, it involves a mix of existing literature (in the introduction and literature review sections) and original data or findings obtained through research methods. 

Literature reviews are essential components of academic and research papers, and various strategies can be employed to conduct them effectively. If you want to know how to write a literature review for a research paper, here are four common approaches that are often used by researchers.  Chronological Review: This strategy involves organizing the literature based on the chronological order of publication. It helps to trace the development of a topic over time, showing how ideas, theories, and research have evolved.  Thematic Review: Thematic reviews focus on identifying and analyzing themes or topics that cut across different studies. Instead of organizing the literature chronologically, it is grouped by key themes or concepts, allowing for a comprehensive exploration of various aspects of the topic.  Methodological Review: This strategy involves organizing the literature based on the research methods employed in different studies. It helps to highlight the strengths and weaknesses of various methodologies and allows the reader to evaluate the reliability and validity of the research findings.  Theoretical Review: A theoretical review examines the literature based on the theoretical frameworks used in different studies. This approach helps to identify the key theories that have been applied to the topic and assess their contributions to the understanding of the subject.  It’s important to note that these strategies are not mutually exclusive, and a literature review may combine elements of more than one approach. The choice of strategy depends on the research question, the nature of the literature available, and the goals of the review. Additionally, other strategies, such as integrative reviews or systematic reviews, may be employed depending on the specific requirements of the research.

The literature review format can vary depending on the specific publication guidelines. However, there are some common elements and structures that are often followed. Here is a general guideline for the format of a literature review:  Introduction:   Provide an overview of the topic.  Define the scope and purpose of the literature review.  State the research question or objective.  Body:   Organize the literature by themes, concepts, or chronology.  Critically analyze and evaluate each source.  Discuss the strengths and weaknesses of the studies.  Highlight any methodological limitations or biases.  Identify patterns, connections, or contradictions in the existing research.  Conclusion:   Summarize the key points discussed in the literature review.  Highlight the research gap.  Address the research question or objective stated in the introduction.  Highlight the contributions of the review and suggest directions for future research.

Both annotated bibliographies and literature reviews involve the examination of scholarly sources. While annotated bibliographies focus on individual sources with brief annotations, literature reviews provide a more in-depth, integrated, and comprehensive analysis of existing literature on a specific topic. The key differences are as follows: 

References 

• Denney, A. S., & Tewksbury, R. (2013). How to write a literature review.  Journal of criminal justice education ,  24 (2), 218-234. 
• Pan, M. L. (2016).  Preparing literature reviews: Qualitative and quantitative approaches . Taylor & Francis. 
• Cantero, C. (2019). How to write a literature review.  San José State University Writing Center . 

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Methodische Vorgehensweise: Systematic Literature Review

• First Online: 18 September 2022

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• Lisa Zach 2  

Part of the book series: BestMasters ((BEST))

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Zusammenfassung

Dieses Kapitel erläutert die verwendete Methode, die zur Beantwortung der Forschungsfrage herangezogen wurde, sowie das methodische Vorgehen hinsichtlich der Literaturrecherche und Literaturauswahl. Anschließend wird die Vorgehensweise bei der Qualitätsbewertung der ausgewählten Literatur sowie die Synthese und Analyse der Forschungsergebnisse beschrieben.

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Zach, L. (2022). Methodische Vorgehensweise: Systematic Literature Review. In: Berufliche Übergänge und Employability von First-in-Family Hochschulabsolvent*innen. BestMasters. Springer Gabler, Wiesbaden. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-658-39061-7_3

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I'm a sniper in the US Army, and Hollywood doesn't show you the hardest part of my job

• Staff Sgt. Phillip Cho is a sniper for the Army's 11th Airborne Division in Alaska.
• Cho said that while movies mainly focus on precision marksmanship, there's much more to sniping. 
• Movies often don't show the true value of fieldcraft and concealment. 

This as-told-to essay is based on a conversation with Staff Sgt. Phillip Cho, a US Army sniper in the 11th Airborne Division based in Alaska. It's been edited for length and clarity.

At sniper training, we focus on things like range estimation, target detection, and precision marksmanship, the last of which is the most heavily portrayed aspect in Hollywood movies .

But, really, the hardest part of being a sniper is combining all of that together, because someone good at range estimation might be terrible at detecting targets, especially in a heavily wooded area or an urban environment, for example.

For me, the easiest part is probably shooting because I was already a good shot before I became a sniper.

And then I realized that's just a small part of the job. A lot goes into being a sniper, from staying hidden from patrols or trained observers to finding targets and calling for fire, like fire missions and artillery.

Hide-and-seek for adults

Something I harp a lot on is the importance of training. If you train hard enough, and if you can do your job well under pressure in training, you can do it in real life.

Let's say you are calculating the distance of a target in training. Then you'd be able to do that in the field because you've already shown that you can right there.

Obviously, there are things you can't predict in real life, like equipment failures, but when it comes down to it, you probably would have experienced whatever failures or obstacles that you might be experiencing in the field in training.

When we train for target detection, one of the biggest games we play is hiding objects in the open and having guys find them, sitting from one position. It's like hide-and-seek for adults .

I feel like, with all the training, you will be in the zone when it comes time to do your job regardless of your nerves.

Related stories

But nerves are also a good thing. One of my first recon squad leaders told me, "If you do the job long enough where you get comfortable, you' should probably stop doing it because that's how you get people killed." Complacency is absolutely unacceptable, and we have to stay sharp.

I love my .300 Win Mag

Our section in Alaska currently has a few rifles in its inventory: the M110 chambered in .308, the M2010 in .300 Winchester Magnum cartridge, the MK22, the brand new one , we only have .308 for right now, and then the M107, which is our anti-material rifle.

The MK22 is an amazing shooting system and an easy weapon to use, but I've personally never used it in a field environment.

I'll always be a M2010 guy. I love my .300 Win Mag. It's the quintessential sniper rifle, but from what I've seen, the MK22 is an excellent weapon system and something I'll get more comfortable using.

As snipers, we have to carry a ton of extra equipment, not just our rifles.

In the summer, our stuff, such as our observation and communication equipment, extra batteries, and the actual weapon and ammunition, weighs roughly around 60 to 80 pounds.

In the winter, we need things like our bunny boots, different layers to help keep us warm, and various other extreme cold weather equipment that adds to that. Snipers are typically carrying anything from 90 to 120 pounds of extra weight in the cold.

Disappearing in depth and shadows

While movies touch on concealment, they never really show the true value of what makes it effective.

Camouflaging with elements of one's surroundings is what makes things like a gillie suit effective, and it's what allows a sniper to be unseen in their operational environment even if they don't have one on.

I would rather have someone who can hide without me having to babysit him than the guy who can call a perfect distance because we can work on that. It's mastering disappearing in depth and shadows in your environment.

And that's something that we have to master as a sniper that sets us apart.

Watch: Special-operations sniper 'The Reaper' breaks down sniper scene in 'The Last of Us'

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