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How To Write A Literature Review - A Complete Guide

Table of Contents

A literature review is much more than just another section in your research paper. It forms the very foundation of your research. It is a formal piece of writing where you analyze the existing theoretical framework, principles, and assumptions and use that as a base to shape your approach to the research question.

Curating and drafting a solid literature review section not only lends more credibility to your research paper but also makes your research tighter and better focused. But, writing literature reviews is a difficult task. It requires extensive reading, plus you have to consider market trends and technological and political changes, which tend to change in the blink of an eye.

Now streamline your literature review process with the help of SciSpace Copilot. With this AI research assistant, you can efficiently synthesize and analyze a vast amount of information, identify key themes and trends, and uncover gaps in the existing research. Get real-time explanations, summaries, and answers to your questions for the paper you're reviewing, making navigating and understanding the complex literature landscape easier.

In this comprehensive guide, we will explore everything from the definition of a literature review, its appropriate length, various types of literature reviews, and how to write one.

What is a literature review?

A literature review is a collation of survey, research, critical evaluation, and assessment of the existing literature in a preferred domain.

Eminent researcher and academic Arlene Fink, in her book Conducting Research Literature Reviews , defines it as the following:

“A literature review surveys books, scholarly articles, and any other sources relevant to a particular issue, area of research, or theory, and by so doing, provides a description, summary, and critical evaluation of these works in relation to the research problem being investigated.

Literature reviews are designed to provide an overview of sources you have explored while researching a particular topic, and to demonstrate to your readers how your research fits within a larger field of study.”

Simply put, a literature review can be defined as a critical discussion of relevant pre-existing research around your research question and carving out a definitive place for your study in the existing body of knowledge. Literature reviews can be presented in multiple ways: a section of an article, the whole research paper itself, or a chapter of your thesis.

A literature review does function as a summary of sources, but it also allows you to analyze further, interpret, and examine the stated theories, methods, viewpoints, and, of course, the gaps in the existing content.

As an author, you can discuss and interpret the research question and its various aspects and debate your adopted methods to support the claim.

What is the purpose of a literature review?

A literature review is meant to help your readers understand the relevance of your research question and where it fits within the existing body of knowledge. As a researcher, you should use it to set the context, build your argument, and establish the need for your study.

What is the importance of a literature review?

The literature review is a critical part of research papers because it helps you:

• Gain an in-depth understanding of your research question and the surrounding area
• Convey that you have a thorough understanding of your research area and are up-to-date with the latest changes and advancements
• Establish how your research is connected or builds on the existing body of knowledge and how it could contribute to further research
• Elaborate on the validity and suitability of your theoretical framework and research methodology
• Identify and highlight gaps and shortcomings in the existing body of knowledge and how things need to change
• Convey to readers how your study is different or how it contributes to the research area

How long should a literature review be?

Ideally, the literature review should take up 15%-40% of the total length of your manuscript. So, if you have a 10,000-word research paper, the minimum word count could be 1500.

Your literature review format depends heavily on the kind of manuscript you are writing — an entire chapter in case of doctoral theses, a part of the introductory section in a research article, to a full-fledged review article that examines the previously published research on a topic.

Another determining factor is the type of research you are doing. The literature review section tends to be longer for secondary research projects than primary research projects.

What are the different types of literature reviews?

All literature reviews are not the same. There are a variety of possible approaches that you can take. It all depends on the type of research you are pursuing.

Here are the different types of literature reviews:

Argumentative review

It is called an argumentative review when you carefully present literature that only supports or counters a specific argument or premise to establish a viewpoint.

Integrative review

It is a type of literature review focused on building a comprehensive understanding of a topic by combining available theoretical frameworks and empirical evidence.

Methodological review

This approach delves into the ''how'' and the ''what" of the research question —  you cannot look at the outcome in isolation; you should also review the methodology used.

Systematic review

This form consists of an overview of existing evidence pertinent to a clearly formulated research question, which uses pre-specified and standardized methods to identify and critically appraise relevant research and collect, report, and analyze data from the studies included in the review.

Meta-analysis review

Meta-analysis uses statistical methods to summarize the results of independent studies. By combining information from all relevant studies, meta-analysis can provide more precise estimates of the effects than those derived from the individual studies included within a review.

Historical review

Historical literature reviews focus on examining research throughout a period, often starting with the first time an issue, concept, theory, or phenomenon emerged in the literature, then tracing its evolution within the scholarship of a discipline. The purpose is to place research in a historical context to show familiarity with state-of-the-art developments and identify future research's likely directions.

Theoretical Review

This form aims to examine the corpus of theory accumulated regarding an issue, concept, theory, and phenomenon. The theoretical literature review helps to establish what theories exist, the relationships between them, the degree the existing approaches have been investigated, and to develop new hypotheses to be tested.

Scoping Review

The Scoping Review is often used at the beginning of an article, dissertation, or research proposal. It is conducted before the research to highlight gaps in the existing body of knowledge and explains why the project should be greenlit.

State-of-the-Art Review

The State-of-the-Art review is conducted periodically, focusing on the most recent research. It describes what is currently known, understood, or agreed upon regarding the research topic and highlights where there are still disagreements.

Can you use the first person in a literature review?

When writing literature reviews, you should avoid the usage of first-person pronouns. It means that instead of "I argue that" or "we argue that," the appropriate expression would be "this research paper argues that."

Do you need an abstract for a literature review?

Ideally, yes. It is always good to have a condensed summary that is self-contained and independent of the rest of your review. As for how to draft one, you can follow the same fundamental idea when preparing an abstract for a literature review. It should also include:

• The research topic and your motivation behind selecting it
• A one-sentence thesis statement
• An explanation of the kinds of literature featured in the review
• Summary of what you've learned
• Conclusions you drew from the literature you reviewed
• Potential implications and future scope for research

Here's an example of the abstract of a literature review

Is a literature review written in the past tense?

Yes, the literature review should ideally be written in the past tense. You should not use the present or future tense when writing one. The exceptions are when you have statements describing events that happened earlier than the literature you are reviewing or events that are currently occurring; then, you can use the past perfect or present perfect tenses.

How many sources for a literature review?

There are multiple approaches to deciding how many sources to include in a literature review section. The first approach would be to look level you are at as a researcher. For instance, a doctoral thesis might need 60+ sources. In contrast, you might only need to refer to 5-15 sources at the undergraduate level.

The second approach is based on the kind of literature review you are doing — whether it is merely a chapter of your paper or if it is a self-contained paper in itself. When it is just a chapter, sources should equal the total number of pages in your article's body. In the second scenario, you need at least three times as many sources as there are pages in your work.

Quick tips on how to write a literature review

To know how to write a literature review, you must clearly understand its impact and role in establishing your work as substantive research material.

You need to follow the below-mentioned steps, to write a literature review:

• Outline the purpose behind the literature review
• Search relevant literature
• Examine and assess the relevant resources
• Discover connections by drawing deep insights from the resources
• Structure planning to write a good literature review

1. Outline and identify the purpose of  a literature review

As a first step on how to write a literature review, you must know what the research question or topic is and what shape you want your literature review to take. Ensure you understand the research topic inside out, or else seek clarifications. You must be able to the answer below questions before you start:

• How many sources do I need to include?
• What kind of sources should I analyze?
• How much should I critically evaluate each source?
• Should I summarize, synthesize or offer a critique of the sources?
• Do I need to include any background information or definitions?

Additionally, you should know that the narrower your research topic is, the swifter it will be for you to restrict the number of sources to be analyzed.

2. Search relevant literature

Dig deeper into search engines to discover what has already been published around your chosen topic. Make sure you thoroughly go through appropriate reference sources like books, reports, journal articles, government docs, and web-based resources.

You must prepare a list of keywords and their different variations. You can start your search from any library’s catalog, provided you are an active member of that institution. The exact keywords can be extended to widen your research over other databases and academic search engines like:

• Google Scholar
• Microsoft Academic
• Science.gov

Besides, it is not advisable to go through every resource word by word. Alternatively, what you can do is you can start by reading the abstract and then decide whether that source is relevant to your research or not.

Additionally, you must spend surplus time assessing the quality and relevance of resources. It would help if you tried preparing a list of citations to ensure that there lies no repetition of authors, publications, or articles in the literature review.

3. Examine and assess the sources

It is nearly impossible for you to go through every detail in the research article. So rather than trying to fetch every detail, you have to analyze and decide which research sources resemble closest and appear relevant to your chosen domain.

While analyzing the sources, you should look to find out answers to questions like:

• What question or problem has the author been describing and debating?
• What is the definition of critical aspects?
• How well the theories, approach, and methodology have been explained?
• Whether the research theory used some conventional or new innovative approach?
• How relevant are the key findings of the work?
• In what ways does it relate to other sources on the same topic?
• What challenges does this research paper pose to the existing theory
• What are the possible contributions or benefits it adds to the subject domain?

Be always mindful that you refer only to credible and authentic resources. It would be best if you always take references from different publications to validate your theory.

Always keep track of important information or data you can present in your literature review right from the beginning. It will help steer your path from any threats of plagiarism and also make it easier to curate an annotated bibliography or reference section.

4. Discover connections

At this stage, you must start deciding on the argument and structure of your literature review. To accomplish this, you must discover and identify the relations and connections between various resources while drafting your abstract.

A few aspects that you should be aware of while writing a literature review include:

• Rise to prominence: Theories and methods that have gained reputation and supporters over time.
• Constant scrutiny: Concepts or theories that repeatedly went under examination.
• Contradictions and conflicts: Theories, both the supporting and the contradictory ones, for the research topic.
• Knowledge gaps: What exactly does it fail to address, and how to bridge them with further research?
• Influential resources: Significant research projects available that have been upheld as milestones or perhaps, something that can modify the current trends

Once you join the dots between various past research works, it will be easier for you to draw a conclusion and identify your contribution to the existing knowledge base.

5. Structure planning to write a good literature review

There exist different ways towards planning and executing the structure of a literature review. The format of a literature review varies and depends upon the length of the research.

Like any other research paper, the literature review format must contain three sections: introduction, body, and conclusion. The goals and objectives of the research question determine what goes inside these three sections.

Nevertheless, a good literature review can be structured according to the chronological, thematic, methodological, or theoretical framework approach.

Literature review samples

1. Standalone

2. As a section of a research paper

How SciSpace Discover makes literature review a breeze?

SciSpace Discover is a one-stop solution to do an effective literature search and get barrier-free access to scientific knowledge. It is an excellent repository where you can find millions of only peer-reviewed articles and full-text PDF files. Here’s more on how you can use it:

Find the right information

Find what you want quickly and easily with comprehensive search filters that let you narrow down papers according to PDF availability, year of publishing, document type, and affiliated institution. Moreover, you can sort the results based on the publishing date, citation count, and relevance.

Assess credibility of papers quickly

When doing the literature review, it is critical to establish the quality of your sources. They form the foundation of your research. SciSpace Discover helps you assess the quality of a source by providing an overview of its references, citations, and performance metrics.

Get the complete picture in no time

SciSpace Discover’s personalized suggestion engine helps you stay on course and get the complete picture of the topic from one place. Every time you visit an article page, it provides you links to related papers. Besides that, it helps you understand what’s trending, who are the top authors, and who are the leading publishers on a topic.

Make referring sources super easy

To ensure you don't lose track of your sources, you must start noting down your references when doing the literature review. SciSpace Discover makes this step effortless. Click the 'cite' button on an article page, and you will receive preloaded citation text in multiple styles — all you've to do is copy-paste it into your manuscript.

Final tips on how to write a literature review

A massive chunk of time and effort is required to write a good literature review. But, if you go about it systematically, you'll be able to save a ton of time and build a solid foundation for your research.

We hope this guide has helped you answer several key questions you have about writing literature reviews.

Would you like to explore SciSpace Discover and kick off your literature search right away? You can get started here .

Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs)

1. how to start a literature review.

• What questions do you want to answer?

• What sources do you need to answer these questions?

• What information do these sources contain?

• How can you use this information to answer your questions?

2. What to include in a literature review?

• A brief background of the problem or issue

• What has previously been done to address the problem or issue

• A description of what you will do in your project

• How this study will contribute to research on the subject

3. Why literature review is important?

The literature review is an important part of any research project because it allows the writer to look at previous studies on a topic and determine existing gaps in the literature, as well as what has already been done. It will also help them to choose the most appropriate method for their own study.

4. How to cite a literature review in APA format?

To cite a literature review in APA style, you need to provide the author's name, the title of the article, and the year of publication. For example: Patel, A. B., & Stokes, G. S. (2012). The relationship between personality and intelligence: A meta-analysis of longitudinal research. Personality and Individual Differences, 53(1), 16-21

5. What are the components of a literature review?

• A brief introduction to the topic, including its background and context. The introduction should also include a rationale for why the study is being conducted and what it will accomplish.

• A description of the methodologies used in the study. This can include information about data collection methods, sample size, and statistical analyses.

• A presentation of the findings in an organized format that helps readers follow along with the author's conclusions.

6. What are common errors in writing literature review?

• Not spending enough time to critically evaluate the relevance of resources, observations and conclusions.

• Totally relying on secondary data while ignoring primary data.

• Letting your personal bias seep into your interpretation of existing literature.

• No detailed explanation of the procedure to discover and identify an appropriate literature review.

7. What are the 5 C's of writing literature review?

• Cite - the sources you utilized and referenced in your research.

• Compare - existing arguments, hypotheses, methodologies, and conclusions found in the knowledge base.

• Contrast - the arguments, topics, methodologies, approaches, and disputes that may be found in the literature.

• Critique - the literature and describe the ideas and opinions you find more convincing and why.

• Connect - the various studies you reviewed in your research.

8. How many sources should a literature review have?

When it is just a chapter, sources should equal the total number of pages in your article's body. if it is a self-contained paper in itself, you need at least three times as many sources as there are pages in your work.

9. Can literature review have diagrams?

• To represent an abstract idea or concept

• To explain the steps of a process or procedure

• To help readers understand the relationships between different concepts

10. How old should sources be in a literature review?

Sources for a literature review should be as current as possible or not older than ten years. The only exception to this rule is if you are reviewing a historical topic and need to use older sources.

11. What are the types of literature review?

• Argumentative review

• Integrative review

• Methodological review

• Systematic review

• Meta-analysis review

• Historical review

• Theoretical review

• Scoping review

• State-of-the-Art review

12. Is a literature review mandatory?

Yes. Literature review is a mandatory part of any research project. It is a critical step in the process that allows you to establish the scope of your research, and provide a background for the rest of your work.

But before you go,

• Six Online Tools for Easy Literature Review
• Evaluating literature review: systematic vs. scoping reviews
• Systematic Approaches to a Successful Literature Review
• Writing Integrative Literature Reviews: Guidelines and Examples

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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.

Kickstart Your Literature Review, Today

Get everything you need to craft a comprehensive lit review, the smart way.

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Here’s what you’ll learn in just a few hours :

WHAT exactly a literature review is (and isn’t) and how this fits into the bigger picture of research.

WHAT you need to have in place before you even start your literature review, so that you don’t waste time.

WHAT the assessors are looking for in a literature review and what they focus on in each section.

WHAT different types of literature reviews exist (systematic, unsystematic, etc.) and how they vary.

WHAT the three critically important components of a literature review are and how to develop them.

HOW to write a high-quality literature review that lays a rock-solid foundation for your dissertation.

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What’s in the box?

Here’s an overview of what we cover in Literature Review Bootcamp:

Course Content

Section 1: introduction & overview.

• Welcome to Literature Review Bootcamp
• How to get the most from this course
• Resource Master List

PS – You can watch a FREE sample lesson here 🙂

SECTION 2: Literature Review Basics

• Section overview: Literature review basics
• What (exactly) is a literature review?
• The function and purpose (the “why”) of the literature review
• Different types of literature reviews (systematic, unsystematic, etc.)
• The literature review process
• Before you start…
• Additional resources

SECTION 3: Sourcing Your Literature

• Section overview: Sourcing & synthesising
• Understanding the different types of literature/resources
• How to use “grey” literature
• How to find high-quality academic literature
• How to (quickly) assess the relevance of any journal article
• How to critically evaluate the quality of a journal article
• How to create a literature review catalogue
• How to use Mendeley to manage your sources
• How to synthesise all of the literature you’ve read
• Revisiting your research aims
• Tips & tricks for this stage
• Practical exercise

SECTION 4: Planning Your Chapter

• Section overview: Planning the chapter
• The “Big 3” core components of a literature review
• The theoretical framework (foundation of theory)
• The empirical research
• The research gap
• Example of a literature review (full walkthrough)
• How to structure your literature review (3 options)

SECTION 5: Writing Your Literature Review

• Section overview: Writing up your lit review
• Understanding the (real) writing process
• How to craft strong arguments (simple structure)
• How to write critically (vs descriptively)
• How to avoid plagiarism in your literature review
• How to reference and cite correctly
• How to create smooth transitions and connections
• How to craft a good introduction and conclusion
• How to edit your literature review

SECTION 6: Wrapping Up

• Section overview: Wrapping up
• What reviewers are looking for in a literature review
• Common mistakes to avoid

Have a question?

We’ve got answers…

Is this course the right fit for me?

Literature Review Bootcamp is well suited to:

• New and first-time researchers completing a dissertation or thesis (undergraduate or postgraduate)
• Researchers wanting to recap on the core principles and best practices in literature review writing 
• Students undertaking research within the sciences , especially the social sciences
• Anyone feeling overwhelmed or intimidated by the literature review process

In a nutshell, if you’re working on a literature review within the sciences, you’re certain to benefit from Literature Review Bootcamp.

What exactly does it cover?

In a nutshell, we cover the literature review process from A to Z, from concept to final draft.

You can view the full curriculum here.

Will I receive a certificate?

Yes, you will receive a verified certificate upon completion of the course.

You can view a sample certificate here.

How much time do I need to commit?

The core content within the course spans about 4 hours . There are also practical exercises (which are optional) and loads of additional resources (spanning dozens of hours) that you can engage with, should you wish.

Ideally, you’ll want to commit a few days to get the full benefit from the course.

Are there any tests or exams?

There are no mandatory tests or exams within the course. However, there are optional quizzes peppered throughout the course. These allow you to test your understanding and maximise your learning.

How long will I have access to the course?

Once you’ve enrolled, you’ll be able to access the course content indefinitely. There is no time limit in terms of content access.

Is there a schedule or fixed timeline?

The course is self-paced . In other words, you can work through the content and exercises (optional) at whatever pace suits you.

Can I ask questions within the course?

There is a Q&A section below each lesson where you can ask questions directly related to the lesson content.

If you’re looking for advice relating to your specific project, we suggest considering our private coaching service instead.

How much does it cost?

You can view the current pricing here .

Are there any additional costs or fees?

No, the pricing is all-inclusive and there are no additional fees within the course.

Don’t take our word for it…

Over 5000 students have joined our courses. Here’s what some of them have to say:

The course is well-designed, with good pacing and relevant content. For the novice, writing a thesis can be an overwhelming undertaking. The instructors provide a solid foundation upon which to embark on this undertaking. This is a course that will benefit any student undertaking a research project.

The course was very insightful for me. As a beginner, I struggled to know what a literature review is and how to understand the flow and content of LR. this course has given me much clarity. Thank you!

Excellent course for doctoral students. it covers the literature review chapter via bitesize sections. Great advice and discussion. Plenty of good resources to go with this course. Knowledge and presentation skills of presenters – excellent. This course has really helped me…I just wished I’d watched it at the start of my doctorate!

Went through five fly-by-night ‘study support experts’, wasted money, and now finally found the perfect course to assist me in my masters!

This is a high-quality course with valuable content provided through the course videos, exercises, and additional resources. Well worth the time and cost.

This is a very important course to take for anyone just venturing into research and those writing literature review section of their dissertation. Thanks to the Grad Coach team.

So helpful. Thank you for breaking each component of each chapter and each chapter of the overall thesis structure down. Before watching this Bootcamp I was not aware of all the easy guides one can apply to navigate through in a more systematic manner. Now, after setting up I feel like I can start writing.

Wow…This is really good. I absolutely appreciate the small snippet format. This does not feel overwhelming and give excellent quick thoughts to think through prior to the next video. Wish I would have purchased this the moment I began my dissertation. This would have saved me a lot of time. Thank you, GRADCOACH!

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You can continue to fumble about, struggling and trying to figure things out on your own – or –

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Conduct a Literature Review

Course: conduct a literature review.

Course Overview

This course guides you through the entire process of preparing a literature review, selecting and analyzing existing literature, and structuring and writing a quality literature review. Most importantly, the course develops skills in using evidence to create and present an engaging and critical argument.

Learning Outcomes

This course will help you to:

• Evaluate the purpose of a literature review
• Develop and clarify your thinking, embed your ideas, and articulate your thoughts clearly
• Identify the key preparation steps of a literature review and use each step to effectively articulate your research question and literature review plan
• Identify the key considerations when evaluating journals, selecting the most appropriate journal for your literature review
• Build a strong and convincing argument using suitable literature and data to develop and present your argument in your literature review
• Write and structure a strong literature review, avoiding common pitfalls
• Recognize what each section of the literature review requires and formulate your own with the help of examples and guidelines

Course Instructor: Dr. Robert Thomas

Dr. robert thomas.

Dr. Thomas is currently a Lecturer (Marketing) at Aston Business School. Dr. Thomas’s primary research interests and publications encompass Brand Management, specifically the areas associated with sponsorship, fandom, co-creation, and brand community. His work has been published in the European Journal of Marketing, Computers in Human Behavior, Journal of Marketing Management, Journal of Product and Brand Management, Young Consumers, Strategic Change: Briefings in Entrepreneurial Finance, and IEEE Transactions on Engineering Management. Dr. Thomas sits on the editorial boards for Journal of Product and Brand Management, and International Journal of Sport Management and Marketing, winning reviewer of the year for Journal of Product and Brand Management in 2015.

Module One: What Is the Purpose of a Literature Review?

This module will help you to:

• Identify the main features of a literature review
• Understand the key do’s and don’ts of a literature review

Module Two: What to Do Before You Start

• Develop and clarify your thinking
• Identify the key preparation steps of a literature review
• Use each step to effectively articulate your research question and literature review plan

Module Three: Selecting and Analyzing the Right Literature

• Identify the key considerations when evaluating journals
• Select the most appropriate journal for your literature review

Module Four: How Do I Create My Argument?

• Build a strong and convincing argument
• Use suitable literature and data to develop your argument
• Present your argument in your literature review

Module Five: How Do I Write My Argument?

• Write a strong and compelling literature review
• Avoid common pitfalls when writing
• Structure a literature review correctly

Module Six: How Should I Structure a Literature Review?

• Recognize what each section of the literature review requires
• Formulate your own literature review with the help of examples and guidelines
• Write a strong literature review

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Conduct a Literature Review

Navigate the entire process of preparing a literature review, from selection and analysis to structuring and writing. Develop skills in using evidence to create engaging and critical arguments based on existing literature.

Advantages of using Conduct a Literature Review

• Evaluate the purpose of a literature review
• Develop and clarify thinking, embed ideas, and articulate thoughts clearly
• Identify key preparation steps for a literature review and use each step effectively
• Evaluate journals and select the most appropriate ones for literature review
• Build a compelling argument using suitable literature and data
• Write and structure a strong literature review, avoiding common pitfalls
• Recognize requirements for each section of the literature review
• Formulate personalized literature reviews using examples and guidelines

Time to Complete:

5  hours

Instructor:

Dr Robert Thomas

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Writing a Literature Review

What is a literature review, purpose of a literature review, structure of a literature review, information to consider in your review: what to write about, further readings, useful tools.

• Engineering Home

The literature review is a critical look at the existing research that is significant to the work that you are carrying out. This overview identifies prominent research trends in addition to assessing the overall strengths and weaknesses of the existing research.

• From Penn State University
• To provide background information about a research topic.
• To establish the importance of a topic.
• To demonstrate familiarity with a topic/problem.
• To “carve out a space” for further work and allow you to position yourself in a scholarly conversation.

Penn State University  

Your review should follow the following structure:

• Write this last
• A summary of your main thesis and the studies you examine in your review
• Introduce your topic
• Outline what you will discuss throughout the review
• Frame the paper with your thesis
• Tell your audience why it is important that you reviewed the literature in your topic area
• Can take different forms depending on your topic
• Break it up into sections if this is helpful (i.e. if you are studying three different methodologies, then you can break your body into three main sections)
• Go through all of the literature in detail, in an organized fashion
• Restate your thesis
• Wrap up your review by drawing everything together and making sure it is clear what conclusions you draw about your topic or field of study based on the research studies you read and analyzed.
• Make sure your references are formatted correctly and all present
• This paper is all about the references! Cite everything that you discuss. For tips on when and how to cite, visit the next page on the drop-down menu under "Writing in the Sciences!"

Adapted from the   UCLA Undergraduate Science Journal

When doing research for your review, here is a list of questions to consider as you read through articles to potentially include:

• What is the  thesis  or  problem being addressed  in this paper? 
• What are the  strengths and limitations  of the study? Is there a better way to answer the research question?
• How does the author approach the study - from a theoretical, experimental, interpretive, or clinical (etc.) standpoint? Did they choose the best approach?
• Is the author using an assumed theoretical framework such as, for example, psychoanalytic or developmental? How does this affect the conclusions they draw? 
• How does the author engage with other literature in the field? Is literature that both contradicts and supports his/her findings mentioned? 
• Did the researchers choose appropriate methods of experimentation and data analysis for the research question? 
• Do you think that the conclusions they draw based upon the data they present are valid and reasonable? Or are there gaps in the logic or assumptions being made?
• Does this particular research study contribute to the knowledge base of the field around which you're centering your review? Is it worth including in your discussion, and does it fit your main thesis?
• The Literature Review: A Few Tips on Conducting It Written by Dena Taylor, Health Sciences Writing Centre, University of Toronto
• Literature Reviews Created by The Writing Center at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill.
• Literature Review Template
• Literature Reviews Penn State University Libraries
• Writing and Rhetoric Writing and Rhetoric: Writing & Citing Library Guide by Laura Barrett
• Dartmouth Citation Linker Find out if the library has access to the full-text of a citation. Can use just the DOI or PMID.
• LibKey Nomad Browser plugin Single click access to library content from publisher websites, PubMed, Wikipedia, and more.
• ZoteroBib To create a citation in ZoteroBib, simply input the URL of the item in the search box. If the URL isn’t generating the citation you need, or if the item is in print, you can also use the DOI, ISBN, PubMed ID, arXive ID, or title of the item for Zotero to look up the bibliographic data.
• Next: Engineering Home >>
• Last Updated: Aug 29, 2022 4:54 PM
• URL: https://researchguides.dartmouth.edu/writing-a-literature-review

Literature Reviews

What this handout is about.

This handout will explain what literature reviews are and offer insights into the form and construction of literature reviews in the humanities, social sciences, and sciences.

Introduction

OK. You’ve got to write a literature review. You dust off a novel and a book of poetry, settle down in your chair, and get ready to issue a “thumbs up” or “thumbs down” as you leaf through the pages. “Literature review” done. Right?

Wrong! The “literature” of a literature review refers to any collection of materials on a topic, not necessarily the great literary texts of the world. “Literature” could be anything from a set of government pamphlets on British colonial methods in Africa to scholarly articles on the treatment of a torn ACL. And a review does not necessarily mean that your reader wants you to give your personal opinion on whether or not you liked these sources.

What is a literature review, then?

A literature review discusses published information in a particular subject area, and sometimes information in a particular subject area within a certain time period.

A literature review can be just a simple summary of the sources, but it usually has an organizational pattern and combines both summary and synthesis. A summary is a recap of the important information of the source, but a synthesis is a re-organization, or a reshuffling, of that information. It might give a new interpretation of old material or combine new with old interpretations. Or it might trace the intellectual progression of the field, including major debates. And depending on the situation, the literature review may evaluate the sources and advise the reader on the most pertinent or relevant.

But how is a literature review different from an academic research paper?

The main focus of an academic research paper is to develop a new argument, and a research paper is likely to contain a literature review as one of its parts. In a research paper, you use the literature as a foundation and as support for a new insight that you contribute. The focus of a literature review, however, is to summarize and synthesize the arguments and ideas of others without adding new contributions.

Why do we write literature reviews?

Literature reviews provide you with a handy guide to a particular topic. If you have limited time to conduct research, literature reviews can give you an overview or act as a stepping stone. For professionals, they are useful reports that keep them up to date with what is current in the field. For scholars, the depth and breadth of the literature review emphasizes the credibility of the writer in his or her field. Literature reviews also provide a solid background for a research paper’s investigation. Comprehensive knowledge of the literature of the field is essential to most research papers.

Who writes these things, anyway?

Literature reviews are written occasionally in the humanities, but mostly in the sciences and social sciences; in experiment and lab reports, they constitute a section of the paper. Sometimes a literature review is written as a paper in itself.

Let’s get to it! What should I do before writing the literature review?

If your assignment is not very specific, seek clarification from your instructor:

• Roughly how many sources should you include?
• What types of sources (books, journal articles, websites)?
• Should you summarize, synthesize, or critique your sources by discussing a common theme or issue?
• Should you evaluate your sources?
• Should you provide subheadings and other background information, such as definitions and/or a history?

Find models

Look for other literature reviews in your area of interest or in the discipline and read them to get a sense of the types of themes you might want to look for in your own research or ways to organize your final review. You can simply put the word “review” in your search engine along with your other topic terms to find articles of this type on the Internet or in an electronic database. The bibliography or reference section of sources you’ve already read are also excellent entry points into your own research.

Narrow your topic

There are hundreds or even thousands of articles and books on most areas of study. The narrower your topic, the easier it will be to limit the number of sources you need to read in order to get a good survey of the material. Your instructor will probably not expect you to read everything that’s out there on the topic, but you’ll make your job easier if you first limit your scope.

Keep in mind that UNC Libraries have research guides and to databases relevant to many fields of study. You can reach out to the subject librarian for a consultation: https://library.unc.edu/support/consultations/ .

And don’t forget to tap into your professor’s (or other professors’) knowledge in the field. Ask your professor questions such as: “If you had to read only one book from the 90’s on topic X, what would it be?” Questions such as this help you to find and determine quickly the most seminal pieces in the field.

Consider whether your sources are current

Some disciplines require that you use information that is as current as possible. In the sciences, for instance, treatments for medical problems are constantly changing according to the latest studies. Information even two years old could be obsolete. However, if you are writing a review in the humanities, history, or social sciences, a survey of the history of the literature may be what is needed, because what is important is how perspectives have changed through the years or within a certain time period. Try sorting through some other current bibliographies or literature reviews in the field to get a sense of what your discipline expects. You can also use this method to consider what is currently of interest to scholars in this field and what is not.

Strategies for writing the literature review

Find a focus.

A literature review, like a term paper, is usually organized around ideas, not the sources themselves as an annotated bibliography would be organized. This means that you will not just simply list your sources and go into detail about each one of them, one at a time. No. As you read widely but selectively in your topic area, consider instead what themes or issues connect your sources together. Do they present one or different solutions? Is there an aspect of the field that is missing? How well do they present the material and do they portray it according to an appropriate theory? Do they reveal a trend in the field? A raging debate? Pick one of these themes to focus the organization of your review.

Convey it to your reader

A literature review may not have a traditional thesis statement (one that makes an argument), but you do need to tell readers what to expect. Try writing a simple statement that lets the reader know what is your main organizing principle. Here are a couple of examples:

The current trend in treatment for congestive heart failure combines surgery and medicine. More and more cultural studies scholars are accepting popular media as a subject worthy of academic consideration.

Consider organization

You’ve got a focus, and you’ve stated it clearly and directly. Now what is the most effective way of presenting the information? What are the most important topics, subtopics, etc., that your review needs to include? And in what order should you present them? Develop an organization for your review at both a global and local level:

First, cover the basic categories

Just like most academic papers, literature reviews also must contain at least three basic elements: an introduction or background information section; the body of the review containing the discussion of sources; and, finally, a conclusion and/or recommendations section to end the paper. The following provides a brief description of the content of each:

• Introduction: Gives a quick idea of the topic of the literature review, such as the central theme or organizational pattern.
• Body: Contains your discussion of sources and is organized either chronologically, thematically, or methodologically (see below for more information on each).
• Conclusions/Recommendations: Discuss what you have drawn from reviewing literature so far. Where might the discussion proceed?

Organizing the body

Once you have the basic categories in place, then you must consider how you will present the sources themselves within the body of your paper. Create an organizational method to focus this section even further.

To help you come up with an overall organizational framework for your review, consider the following scenario:

You’ve decided to focus your literature review on materials dealing with sperm whales. This is because you’ve just finished reading Moby Dick, and you wonder if that whale’s portrayal is really real. You start with some articles about the physiology of sperm whales in biology journals written in the 1980’s. But these articles refer to some British biological studies performed on whales in the early 18th century. So you check those out. Then you look up a book written in 1968 with information on how sperm whales have been portrayed in other forms of art, such as in Alaskan poetry, in French painting, or on whale bone, as the whale hunters in the late 19th century used to do. This makes you wonder about American whaling methods during the time portrayed in Moby Dick, so you find some academic articles published in the last five years on how accurately Herman Melville portrayed the whaling scene in his novel.

Now consider some typical ways of organizing the sources into a review:

• Chronological: If your review follows the chronological method, you could write about the materials above according to when they were published. For instance, first you would talk about the British biological studies of the 18th century, then about Moby Dick, published in 1851, then the book on sperm whales in other art (1968), and finally the biology articles (1980s) and the recent articles on American whaling of the 19th century. But there is relatively no continuity among subjects here. And notice that even though the sources on sperm whales in other art and on American whaling are written recently, they are about other subjects/objects that were created much earlier. Thus, the review loses its chronological focus.
• By publication: Order your sources by publication chronology, then, only if the order demonstrates a more important trend. For instance, you could order a review of literature on biological studies of sperm whales if the progression revealed a change in dissection practices of the researchers who wrote and/or conducted the studies.
• By trend: A better way to organize the above sources chronologically is to examine the sources under another trend, such as the history of whaling. Then your review would have subsections according to eras within this period. For instance, the review might examine whaling from pre-1600-1699, 1700-1799, and 1800-1899. Under this method, you would combine the recent studies on American whaling in the 19th century with Moby Dick itself in the 1800-1899 category, even though the authors wrote a century apart.
• Thematic: Thematic reviews of literature are organized around a topic or issue, rather than the progression of time. However, progression of time may still be an important factor in a thematic review. For instance, the sperm whale review could focus on the development of the harpoon for whale hunting. While the study focuses on one topic, harpoon technology, it will still be organized chronologically. The only difference here between a “chronological” and a “thematic” approach is what is emphasized the most: the development of the harpoon or the harpoon technology.But more authentic thematic reviews tend to break away from chronological order. For instance, a thematic review of material on sperm whales might examine how they are portrayed as “evil” in cultural documents. The subsections might include how they are personified, how their proportions are exaggerated, and their behaviors misunderstood. A review organized in this manner would shift between time periods within each section according to the point made.
• Methodological: A methodological approach differs from the two above in that the focusing factor usually does not have to do with the content of the material. Instead, it focuses on the “methods” of the researcher or writer. For the sperm whale project, one methodological approach would be to look at cultural differences between the portrayal of whales in American, British, and French art work. Or the review might focus on the economic impact of whaling on a community. A methodological scope will influence either the types of documents in the review or the way in which these documents are discussed. Once you’ve decided on the organizational method for the body of the review, the sections you need to include in the paper should be easy to figure out. They should arise out of your organizational strategy. In other words, a chronological review would have subsections for each vital time period. A thematic review would have subtopics based upon factors that relate to the theme or issue.

Sometimes, though, you might need to add additional sections that are necessary for your study, but do not fit in the organizational strategy of the body. What other sections you include in the body is up to you. Put in only what is necessary. Here are a few other sections you might want to consider:

• Current Situation: Information necessary to understand the topic or focus of the literature review.
• History: The chronological progression of the field, the literature, or an idea that is necessary to understand the literature review, if the body of the literature review is not already a chronology.
• Methods and/or Standards: The criteria you used to select the sources in your literature review or the way in which you present your information. For instance, you might explain that your review includes only peer-reviewed articles and journals.

Questions for Further Research: What questions about the field has the review sparked? How will you further your research as a result of the review?

Begin composing

Once you’ve settled on a general pattern of organization, you’re ready to write each section. There are a few guidelines you should follow during the writing stage as well. Here is a sample paragraph from a literature review about sexism and language to illuminate the following discussion:

However, other studies have shown that even gender-neutral antecedents are more likely to produce masculine images than feminine ones (Gastil, 1990). Hamilton (1988) asked students to complete sentences that required them to fill in pronouns that agreed with gender-neutral antecedents such as “writer,” “pedestrian,” and “persons.” The students were asked to describe any image they had when writing the sentence. Hamilton found that people imagined 3.3 men to each woman in the masculine “generic” condition and 1.5 men per woman in the unbiased condition. Thus, while ambient sexism accounted for some of the masculine bias, sexist language amplified the effect. (Source: Erika Falk and Jordan Mills, “Why Sexist Language Affects Persuasion: The Role of Homophily, Intended Audience, and Offense,” Women and Language19:2).

Use evidence

In the example above, the writers refer to several other sources when making their point. A literature review in this sense is just like any other academic research paper. Your interpretation of the available sources must be backed up with evidence to show that what you are saying is valid.

Be selective

Select only the most important points in each source to highlight in the review. The type of information you choose to mention should relate directly to the review’s focus, whether it is thematic, methodological, or chronological.

Use quotes sparingly

Falk and Mills do not use any direct quotes. That is because the survey nature of the literature review does not allow for in-depth discussion or detailed quotes from the text. Some short quotes here and there are okay, though, if you want to emphasize a point, or if what the author said just cannot be rewritten in your own words. Notice that Falk and Mills do quote certain terms that were coined by the author, not common knowledge, or taken directly from the study. But if you find yourself wanting to put in more quotes, check with your instructor.

Summarize and synthesize

Remember to summarize and synthesize your sources within each paragraph as well as throughout the review. The authors here recapitulate important features of Hamilton’s study, but then synthesize it by rephrasing the study’s significance and relating it to their own work.

Keep your own voice

While the literature review presents others’ ideas, your voice (the writer’s) should remain front and center. Notice that Falk and Mills weave references to other sources into their own text, but they still maintain their own voice by starting and ending the paragraph with their own ideas and their own words. The sources support what Falk and Mills are saying.

Use caution when paraphrasing

When paraphrasing a source that is not your own, be sure to represent the author’s information or opinions accurately and in your own words. In the preceding example, Falk and Mills either directly refer in the text to the author of their source, such as Hamilton, or they provide ample notation in the text when the ideas they are mentioning are not their own, for example, Gastil’s. For more information, please see our handout on plagiarism .

Revise, revise, revise

Draft in hand? Now you’re ready to revise. Spending a lot of time revising is a wise idea, because your main objective is to present the material, not the argument. So check over your review again to make sure it follows the assignment and/or your outline. Then, just as you would for most other academic forms of writing, rewrite or rework the language of your review so that you’ve presented your information in the most concise manner possible. Be sure to use terminology familiar to your audience; get rid of unnecessary jargon or slang. Finally, double check that you’ve documented your sources and formatted the review appropriately for your discipline. For tips on the revising and editing process, see our handout on revising drafts .

Works consulted

We consulted these works while writing this handout. This is not a comprehensive list of resources on the handout’s topic, and we encourage you to do your own research to find additional publications. Please do not use this list as a model for the format of your own reference list, as it may not match the citation style you are using. For guidance on formatting citations, please see the UNC Libraries citation tutorial . We revise these tips periodically and welcome feedback.

Anson, Chris M., and Robert A. Schwegler. 2010. The Longman Handbook for Writers and Readers , 6th ed. New York: Longman.

Jones, Robert, Patrick Bizzaro, and Cynthia Selfe. 1997. The Harcourt Brace Guide to Writing in the Disciplines . New York: Harcourt Brace.

Lamb, Sandra E. 1998. How to Write It: A Complete Guide to Everything You’ll Ever Write . Berkeley: Ten Speed Press.

Rosen, Leonard J., and Laurence Behrens. 2003. The Allyn & Bacon Handbook , 5th ed. New York: Longman.

Troyka, Lynn Quittman, and Doug Hesse. 2016. Simon and Schuster Handbook for Writers , 11th ed. London: Pearson.

You may reproduce it for non-commercial use if you use the entire handout and attribute the source: The Writing Center, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill

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• Research guides

Writing a Literature Review

What is a literature review.

A literature review is a comprehensive and up-to-date overview of the principal research about the topic being studied. The review helps form the intellectual framework for the study. The review need not be exhaustive; the objective is not to list as many relevant books, articles, reports as possible. However, the review should contain the most pertinent studies and point to important past and current research and practices in the field.

NECESSARY SKILLS

When conducting a literature review a researcher must have three quite distinct skills. He or she must be

• adept at searching online databases and print indexes,
• able to evaluate critically what she has read, and
• able to incorporate the selected readings into a coherent, integrated, and meaningful account.

A literature review serves several purposes. For example, it

• provides thorough knowledge of previous studies; introduces seminal works.
• helps focus one’s own research topic.
• identifies a conceptual framework for one’s own research questions or problems; indicates potential directions for future research.
• suggests previously unused or underused methodologies, designs, quantitative and qualitative strategies.
• identifies gaps in previous studies; identifies flawed methodologies and/or theoretical approaches; avoids replication of mistakes.
• helps the researcher avoid repetition of earlier research.
• suggests unexplored populations.
• determines whether past studies agree or disagree; identifies controversy in the literature.
• tests assumptions; may help counter preconceived ideas and remove unconscious bias.
• Next: Phase 1: Scope of Review >>
• Last Updated: Dec 5, 2023 2:26 PM
• Subjects: Education , General
• Tags: literature_review , literature_review_in_education

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Common Assignments: Literature Reviews

Basics of literature reviews.

A literature review is a written approach to examining published information on a particular topic or field. Authors use this review of literature to create a foundation and justification for their research or to demonstrate knowledge on the current state of a field. This review can take the form of a course assignment or a section of a longer capstone project. Read on for more information about writing a strong literature review!

Students often misinterpret the term "literature review" to mean merely a collection of source summaries, similar to annotations or article abstracts. Although summarizing is an element of a literature review, the purpose is to create a comprehensive representation of your understanding of a topic or area of research, such as what has already been done or what has been found. Then, also using these sources, you can demonstrate the need for future research, specifically, your future research.

There is usually no required format or template for a literature review. However, there are some actions to keep in mind when constructing a literature review:

• Include an introduction and conclusion . Even if the literature review will be part of a longer document, introductory and concluding paragraphs can act as bookends to your material. Provide background information for your reader, such as including references to the pioneers in the field in the beginning and offering closure in the end by discussing the implications of future research to the field.
• Avoid direct quotations . Just like in an annotated bibliography, you will want to paraphrase all of the material you present in a literature review. This assignment is a chance for you to demonstrate your knowledge on a topic, and putting ideas into your own words will ensure that you are interpreting the found material for your reader. Paraphrasing will also ensure your review of literature is in your authorial voice.
• Organize by topic or theme rather than by author. When compiling multiple sources, a tendency can be to summarize each source and then compare and contrast the sources at the end. Instead, organize your source information by your identified themes and patterns. This organization helps demonstrate your synthesis of the material and inhibits you from creating a series of book reports.
•  Use headings . APA encourages the use of headings within longer pieces of text to display a shift in topic and create a visual break for the reader. Headings in a literature review can also help you as the writer organize your material by theme and note any layers, or subtopics, within the field.
• Show relationships and consider the flow of ideas. A literature review can be lengthy and dense, so you will want to make your text appealing to your reader. Transitions and comparison terms will allow you to demonstrate where authors agree or disagree on a topic and highlight your interpretation of the literature.

Related Multimedia, Social Media, and Other Resources

Randolph, J. J. (2009). A guide to writing the dissertation literature review. Practical Assessment, Research and Evaluation , 14 (13), 1–13. https://scholarworks.umass.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1219&context=pare

Didn't find what you need? Email us at [email protected] .

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• Staying Organized: EndNote

Writing Literature Reviews

What is a literature review.

A literature review is an overview of the previously published research on a topic . It represents the literature that provides background information on your topic and shows a correspondence between those writings and your research question. 

A lit review should -

• Explain the background of research on a topic
• Demonstrate why a topic is significant to a subject area
• Help focus your own research questions or problems
• Discover relationships between research studies/ideas
• Suggest unexplored ideas or populations
• Identify major themes, concepts, and researchers on a topic
• Test assumptions; may help counter preconceived ideas and remove unconscious bias
• Identify critical gaps, points of disagreement, or potentially flawed methodology or theoretical approaches
• Indicate potential directions for future research
• Lead to the hypothesis of your paper or research

The process

• Don't be too broad
• Can be one of the toughest parts
• May require an initial search/review of literature
• Consider setting limits on the topic
• Plan approach to the research and review
• Search the literature
• Analyze the material you’ve found
• Managing the results of your research
• Writing your Review

Questions to answer

• What is known about the subject?
• Are there any gaps in the knowledge of the subject?
• Have areas of further study been identified by other researchers that you may want to consider?
• Is there consensus about the topic?
• What aspects have generated significant debate on the topic?
• What methods or problems were identified by others studying in the field and how might they impact your research?
• What is the most productive methodology for your research based on the literature you have reviewed?
• What is the current status of research in this area?
• What sources of information or data were identified that might be useful to you?
• How detailed? Will it be a review of ALL relevant material or will the scope be limited to more recent material, e.g., the last five years.
• Are you focusing on methodological approaches; on theoretical issues; on qualitative or quantitative research?

Managing your literature

You will be looking through a lot of materials for your review, and it's easy to lose track of a particular citation or how you got to a source

It can be helpful to keep a search log, a notebook, note cards, an online document, a Word document, a citation manager, etc.

  Track

     When & where you searched

     Terms and combinations that did or did not work

     Ideas for future searches

At the least keep track of all of your reference lists for your bibliography

UTSA Libraries supports several citation management tools that allow you to import citations directly from most sources including Library Quick Search, UTSA Libraries Databases, and Google Scholar.

• EndNote Guide Instructions on how to download, install, and use Endnote, a bibliographic management program provided by UTSA
• Zotero Guide Instructions on how to download, install, and use Zotero, a free open source bibliographic management program
• Mendeley Guide Instructions on how to download, install, and use Mendeley, a free open source bibliographic management program

Contents on this page adapted from Pitt Libraries - Literature Reviews

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Writing a Literature Review

About literature reviews, why conduct a literature review, necessary skills, literature review: an overview for students.

• Defining the Scope
• Finding the Literature
• Developing a Search Strategy
• Managing Your Research
• Writing the Review
• Systematic Reviews and Other Review Types
• Useful Books
• Useful Videos
• Useful Links
• Commonly Used Terms

Adapted with thanks from many sources, using the excellent LibGuide   Writing a Literature Review from the University of the Fraser Valley, and Conducting a Literature Review from Michigan State University, as a basis.

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What is a literature review?

A literature review is an evaluative critique of scholarly literature that has been published on a particular subject. The aim of a literature review is to demonstrate that you have read and understood the main trends and concepts in your chosen discipline taking in any contrasting or opposing views. A comprehensive literature review can identify gaps in the literature and provide direction for future research

A literature review is not a summary - it analyses,  critically evaluates and synthesises to give a clear picture of the current knowledge base of a subject.

Literature reviews can be part of undergraduate and postgraduate work or a standalone project.

Why are you asked to do a literature review?

They are necessary for several reasons. They are an essential part of the research process. They give an overview of a topic's theoretical background. Researchers use literature reviews to identify gaps in existing knowledge and to set the context for their research studies. Students can be asked to complete a literature review as part of their course to help them understand a topic more deeply. Writing a literature review can enable a student to demonstrate what they have learned about a topic and further develop their own insights within that topic .

A literature review shows that

• You have an in-depth grasp of your topic
• You understand where your own research fits into and adds to an existing body of knowledge

It demonstrates

• Your literature searching abilities
• Your critical appraisal skills
• That you have learnt from others
• That your research can be a starting point for new ideas

Before you start

If a literature review is part of your undergraduate or postgraduate research paper, it is important to ask your instructor for clarification on the following:

• How many databases you are expected to use
• The types of sources that should be consulted (e.g. is grey literature to be included)
• How in-depth you should evaluate and explore your sources, searching for common themes and/or controversies

Reasons for doing a literature review

• Acquire a comprehensive knowledge of the critical works in your discipline and how the research has progressed.
• Identify your niche and focus on this area of study
• Explore a research question from different perspectives
• Discover previously unexplored research design and methodology, and provide possible direction for future studies
• Determine if there are any contrasting or contradictory views within an area of research
• Avoid repeating existing research

Steps in a literature review

• Constructing a clear research question is essential to a successful literature review. It may take time and its important to discuss it with your supervisor.
• Decide on the scope and emphasis of your question. You may have to change it depending on what you find in the literature. This is quite common and part of the process. Designing a clear research question will save you much time in the long run so it worth spending time initially to get it right
• Searching the literature that has been published in the area - decide what formats and why
• Managing the literature search results - the Library has software that will help you with this
• Synthesising and analysing the research literature

Check out North Carolina State Library’s video on literature reviews. This nine-minute video provides a definition for a literature review, the purpose it serves, and what pitfalls to avoid when writing your review. While targeted toward graduate students, it's useful for anyone conducting a literature review.

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• v.9(7); 2013 Jul

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.

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Case report article, malignant peritoneal mesothelioma presenting with bilateral hydronephrosis and renal insufficiency: a case report and literature review.

• 1 Department of Urology, Guiqian International General Hospital, Guiyang, China
• 2 Department of Pathology, Guiqian International General Hospital, Guiyang, China

Introduction: Malignant peritoneal mesothelioma (MPM) is an extremely rare tumor with nonspecific clinical manifestations, making diagnosis challenging.

Case presentation: Herein, we report a case of MPM with occult onset presenting with bilateral hydronephrosis and renal insufficiency. A 30-year-old man was admitted to the Urology Department because of recurrent bilateral lower back pain. The etiology was unclear after a series of laboratory tests, imaging examinations, bone marrow aspiration, renal puncture biopsy, ascites examination, ureteroscopy, and so on. Finally, MPM was diagnosed by laparoscopic exploration and biopsy. Moreover, during the course of the disease, the patient's bilateral ureters were compressed, and the obstruction could not be relieved after the placement of ordinary ureteral stents. Percutaneous nephrostomy or metal ureteral stenosis was appropriate in managing malignant ureteral obstruction as it could improve renal function.

Conclusions: The onset of this case was insidious, and the diagnosis was difficult, with a poor prognosis. To date, only a handful of cases have been reported. We hope this case can provide some enlightenment for our clinical work.

Introduction

Malignant peritoneal mesothelioma (MPM) is an aggressive neoplasm that can rapidly spread within the abdominal area. Patients with peritoneal mesothelioma usually present with an abdominal mass, ascites, and abdominal pain. Herein, we report a case with bilateral hydronephrosis and renal insufficiency as the first symptoms. The case was extremely challenging to diagnose, which was finally confirmed based on laparoscopic exploration and biopsy. This study aimed to provide clinical evidence for the diagnosis, treatment, and prognosis of rare MPM.

Case presentation

A 30-year-old man was admitted to the Urology Department because of repeated bilateral lower back pain for 3 months. At the onset of the illness, computed tomography (CT) scans revealed bilateral hydronephrosis, and the serum creatinine (SCr) level was 123 μmol/L. Symptoms improved after the placement of bilateral ureteral stents. However, the back pain recurred 1 month later, accompanied by abdominal distension, nausea, and vomiting. Enhanced CT scans revealed bilateral hydronephrosis, splenomegaly, and ascites. Hydronephrosis had aggravated, with SCr levels increasing to 305 µmol/L. A transurethral cystoscopy revealed no lower urinary tract obstruction. Ureteroscopy indicated narrowing of the lower part of the bilateral ureter, approximately 6 cm from the ureteral opening. During hospitalization, the patient's condition continued to deteriorate, with a progressive decrease in urine volume. The highest SCr level was 470 μmol/L. A plain CT scan revealed bilateral hydronephrosis, splenomegaly, abdominal effusion, peritoneal thickening with exudative changes, and intestinal wall thickening, with no significant mass observed. We performed a bilateral percutaneous nephrostomy (PCN) and abdominal catheterization. Ascites analysis revealed no definite malignant cells. Serum IgG4 level testing yielded negative results. A renal needle biopsy indicated moderate to severe chronic tubulointerstitial injury. Finally, laparoscopic exploration was performed, and intraoperative findings revealed numerous small, shiny, whitish nodules carpeting all visualized peritoneal surfaces and some parts of the intestinal tubes. The tumor infiltrated the entire omentum, forming a large, firm mass ( Figure 1 ). A biopsy of the omentum itself confirmed the diagnosis of peritoneal mesothelioma. Histological findings revealed fibrous tissue hyperplasia with inflammatory cell infiltration and papillary hyperplasia of the overlying mesothelium. The immunohistochemical (IHC) markers were as follows: calretinin (+), CK (+), desmin (-), HMB45 (-), Ki-67 (10%+), CD34 (-), MC (HBME-1) (+), melan-A (-), and B-catenin (+) ( Figure 2 ).

Figure 1 . ( A ) Numerous small nodules carpeting all visualized peritoneal and some parts of intestinal tube surfaces. ( B ) Tumor infiltrating the entire omentum and forming a large, firm mass.

Figure 2 . Histology and immunohistochemistry of the omentum. ( A , B ) Mass of cells lined with a papillary structure of monolayer flat/cuboidal mesothelial cells with a milder nucleus and acidophilic cytoplasm (H&E, ×100). ( C , D ) Immunohistochemistry results for calretinin and MC (HBME-1) (×100).

Unfortunately, the patient refused to undergo therapy and chose to be discharged for recuperation. During the follow-up, he died at home 1 month after discharge.

Discussion and conclusions

Malignant peritoneal mesothelioma is an aggressive neoplasm of the serosal membranes, first reported by Miller and Wynn in 1908 ( 1 ). It accounts for approximately 25% of malignant mesotheliomas. Asbestos exposure is a well-recognized high-risk pathogenic factor for MPM ( 2 ). The patient was a deaf–mute construction worker with no clear history of asbestos exposure. Patients with peritoneal mesothelioma usually present with abdominal pain, distention, ascites, and an abdominal mass. Hydronephrosis rarely occurs as the first symptom. We searched PubMed for articles addressing peritoneal mesothelioma and hydronephrosis and found five relevant articles, screened by title and abstract. Two articles were finally included in the review. Detailed case data of four patients were obtained ( Table 1 ).

Table 1 . Characteristics of four cases of peritoneal mesothelioma presenting with hydronephrosis, as screened from PubMed and our patient.

Among these cases, the majority had a survival period of only a few months after the first diagnosis. Four out of five presented with combined bilateral hydronephrosis. Ureteral stenting was initially used in the majority of patients to drain hydronephrosis. Renal function improvement was observed in two patients. Therefore, the drainage mode should be considered when dealing with ureteral obstruction. There is no consensus on the optimal method for malignant ureteral obstruction (MUO). Some studies ( 5 ) showed that the postoperative stent failure rate of extrinsic malignant ureteral obstruction was 42%–45%. However, there was no difference in median survival compared with PCN. Metallic stents and some new material stents provide more options. The type and level of obstruction, renal insufficiency, degree of hydroneurosis, and length of obstruction >3 cm have been identified as predictors of stent failure in MUO patients. Accordingly, all these aspects should be taken into consideration. Clinician preference and patient comfort are also important factors.

Diagnosing MPM is extremely challenging, as it is characterized by irregular or nodular peritoneal or mesenteric thickening, omental mass, and ascites in imaging evaluations. The accuracy of ascitic cytology is only 50% ( 6 ). Laparoscopy is superior to CT in the evaluation of localized peritoneal metastases. The gold standard for MPM diagnosis is pathological examination. Morphologically, there are mainly three subtypes of MPM: epithelioid, sarcomatoid, and biphasic. Epithelioid MPM is the most common and least aggressive subtype, accounting for approximately 60% of cases. Our patient belongs to the epithelioid type, as evidenced by the histological findings showing papillary hyperplasia of the overlying mesothelium. However, the diffused growth pattern of the tumor and the limited tissue obtained by laparoscopic biopsy present challenges for pathological examination. In combination with the prognosis of the patient, it can be mixed with a few sarcomatoid types. IHC staining is the most valuable and feasible method for the differential diagnosis of MPM ( 7 ). The recognized positive markers are calretinin, CK 5/6, WT-1, HBME-1, thrombomodulin, podoplanin, mesothelin, and D2-40, while the negative markers are TTF1, carcinoembryonic antigen (CEA), Ber Ep4, B72.3, MOC31, and CD15. It is recommended to use at least two positive and two negative markers for differential diagnosis ( 8 ).

In 2011, Yan et al. ( 9 ) proposed a TNM staging system based on the extent of peritoneal disease burden (T), intra-abdominal nodal metastasis (N), and extra-abdominal metastasis (M) to standardize and guide the clinical treatment and prognostic evaluation of MPM. The T stage is determined by calculating the peritoneal carcinomatosis index (PCI). This assessment combines lesion size (0–3) with tumor distribution (abdominopelvic and mesenteric regions 0–13) to quantify the extent of disease as a numerical score (PCI-0 to 39). The 5-year survival rates of stage I, II, and III patients were reported to be 87%, 53%, and 29%, respectively. The patient’s PCI was >30, categorizing MPM as stage III (T4). This staging was an independent prognostic factor for malignant peritoneal mesothelioma.

Cytoreductive surgery (CRS) combined with hyperthermic intraperitoneal chemotherapy (HIPEC) is the initial preferred treatment for MPM. An analysis by the US HIPEC Collaborative, including 130 patients with MPM (all histologic subtypes included) who underwent CRS-HIPEC, reported a 5-year OS of 67.8% and a conditional OS of 89.7%. The strongest predictor of long-term survival is complete cytoreduction ( 10 ). Our patient presented with diffuse MPM, with extensive peritoneal, small bowel serosal, or mesentery involvement, which is not amenable to complete cytoreduction. The proposed treatment plan is intravenous chemotherapy and HIPEC, and immunosuppressive therapy can be added if physical conditions allow. The current preferred intraperitoneal chemotherapy is cisplatin alone or in combination with cisplatin/doxorubicin, the most commonly used combination therapy. Systemic therapy is an alternative treatment for inoperable patients. The International Expanded Access Program assessed pemetrexed regimens for 109 patients with MPM. Patients received pemetrexed, pemetrexed plus cisplatin, or pemetrexed plus carboplatin as either first-line or second-line therapy. For patients who received pemetrexed plus cisplatin, the 1-year survival rate was 57.4%. For patients who received pemetrexed alone, the median survival rate was 10.3 months, and the 1-year survival rate was 41.5%. Survival rates are not available for pemetrexed plus carboplatin ( 11 ). In recent years, molecular therapy and immunotherapy have attracted increasing attention. BAP1, TP53, NF2, and ALK, which are commonly mutated genes in MPM ( 12 ), are expected to become potential therapeutic targets. A phase II study evaluated the activity of pembrolizumab in 64 mesothelioma patients who had been treated with one or two chemotherapy regimens. Among these patients, only eight (12.5%) had MPM, and they exhibited lower overall response rates than patients with pleural mesothelioma in the study. Whether PDL1 expression is predictive of benefit remains unknown. In another cohort study evaluating the clinical efficacy of immunotherapy in patients with advanced MPM, the overall response rate was 19%, with a reported median progression-free survival (PFS) of 5.5 months ( 13 ) . Immunotherapy is an exciting future direction for MPM, and we look forward to the results of more clinical trials.

Peritoneal mesothelioma with bilateral hydronephrosis as the first symptom is rare and the diagnosis can be confirmed by laparoscopic exploration biopsy when necessary. Because of severe ureteral compression, PCN, or metal stents with high tension, offer more advantages than ordinary stents in improving renal function.

Data availability statement

The original contributions presented in the study are included in the article/Supplementary Material, further inquiries can be directed to the corresponding author.

Ethics statement

This study involving humans was approved by the ethics committee of the Guiqian International General Hospital. The studies were conducted in accordance with local legislation and institutional requirements. The participants provided their written informed consent to participate in this study. Written informed consent was obtained from the participant/patient(s) for the publication of this case report.

Author contributions

JL: Conceptualization, Data curation, Validation, Writing – original draft, Writing – review & editing. JP: Resources, Writing – review & editing. CZ: Investigation, Software, Validation, Writing – review & editing. LW: Formal analysis, Validation, Writing – review & editing. HZ: Conceptualization, Funding acquisition, Methodology, Project administration, Writing – review & editing.

The authors declare that no financial support was received for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.

Conflict of interest

The authors declare that the research was conducted in the absence of any commercial or financial relationships that could be construed as a potential conflict of interest.

Publisher's note

All claims expressed in this article are solely those of the authors and do not necessarily represent those of their affiliated organizations, or those of the publisher, the editors and the reviewers. Any product that may be evaluated in this article, or claim that may be made by its manufacturer, is not guaranteed or endorsed by the publisher.

Supplementary material

The Supplementary Material for this article can be found online at: https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fsurg.2024.1342657/full#supplementary-material

1. Miller J, Wynn WH. A malignant tumour arising from the endothelium of the peritoneum, and producing a mucoid ascitic fluid. J Pathol Bacteriol . (1908) 12:267–78. doi: 10.1002/path.1700120212

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6. Manzini VP, Recchia L, Cafferata M, Porta C, Siena S, Giannetta L, et al. Malignant peritoneal mesothelioma: a multicenter study on 81 cases. Ann Oncol . (2010) 21(2):348–53. doi: 10.1093/annonc/mdp307

7. Marchevsky AM. Application of immunohistochemistry to the diagnosis of malignant mesothelioma. Arch Pathol Lab Med . (2008) 132(3):397–401. doi: 10.5858/2008-132-397-AOITTD

8. Suster S, Moran CA. Applications and limitations of immunohistochemistry in the diagnosis of malignant mesothelioma. Adv Anat Pathol . (2006) 13(6):316–29. doi: 10.1097/01.pap.0000213064.05005.64

9. Yan TD, Deraco M, Elias D, Glehen O, Levine EA, Moran BJ, et al. A novel tumor-node-metastasis (TNM) staging system of diffuse malignant peritoneal mesothelioma using outcome analysis of a multi-institutional database. Cancer . (2011) 117(9):1855–63. doi: 10.1002/cncr.25640

10. Steadman JA, Grotz TE. Principles of surgical management of peritoneal mesothelioma. J Natl Compr Canc Netw . (2023) 21(9):981–6. doi: 10.6004/jnccn.2023.7055

11. Ettinger DS, Wood DE, Stevenson J, Aisner DL, Akerley L, Bauman JR, et al. Mesothelioma: peritoneal, version 2.2023, NCCN clinical practice guidelines in oncology. J Natl Compr Canc Netw . (2023) 21(9):961–79. doi: 10.6004/jnccn.2023.0045

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13. Menezes MB, Lima R, Dunões I, Inácio M, Dinis R. A complete response to pembrolizumab in malignant peritoneal mesothelioma: a case report. Cureus . (2024) 16(1):e52716. doi: 10.7759/cureus.52716

Keywords: peritoneal mesothelioma, hydronephrosis, percutaneous nephrostomy, ureteral stent, case report

Citation: Luo J, Pan J, Zhong C, Wang L and Zhang H (2024) Malignant peritoneal mesothelioma presenting with bilateral hydronephrosis and renal insufficiency: a case report and literature review. Front. Surg. 11:1342657. doi: 10.3389/fsurg.2024.1342657

Received: 22 November 2023; Accepted: 3 April 2024; Published: 24 April 2024.

Reviewed by:

© 2024 Luo, Pan, Zhong, Wang and Zhang. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY) . The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) and the copyright owner(s) are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.

*Correspondence: Heng Zhang [email protected]

To revisit this article, visit My Profile, then View saved stories .

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By Kate Knibbs

How One Author Pushed the Limits of AI Copyright

Last October, I received an email with a hell of an opening line: “I fired a nuke at the US Copyright Office this morning.”

The message was from Elisa Shupe, a 60-year-old retired US Army veteran who had just filed a copyright registration for a novel she’d recently self-published. She’d used OpenAI's ChatGPT extensively while writing the book. Her application was an attempt to compel the US Copyright Office to overturn its policy on work made with AI, which generally requires would-be copyright holders to exclude machine-generated elements.

That initial shot didn’t detonate—a week later, the USCO rejected Shupe’s application—but she ultimately won out. The agency changed course earlier this month after Shupe appealed, granting her copyright registration for AI Machinations: Tangled Webs and Typed Words, a work of autofiction self-published on Amazon under the pen name Ellen Rae.

The novel draws from Shupe’s eventful life , including her advocacy for more inclusive gender recognition. Its registration provides a glimpse of how the USCO is grappling with artificial intelligence , especially as more people incorporate AI tools into creative work. It is among the first creative works to receive a copyright for the arrangement of AI-generated text.

“We’re seeing the Copyright Office struggling with where to draw the line,” intellectual property lawyer Erica Van Loon, a partner at Nixon Peabody, says. Shupe’s case highlights some of the nuances of that struggle—because the approval of her registration comes with a significant caveat.

The USCO’s notice granting Shupe copyright registration of her book does not recognize her as author of the whole text as is conventional for written works. Instead she is considered the author of the “selection, coordination, and arrangement of text generated by artificial intelligence.” This means no one can copy the book without permission, but the actual sentences and paragraphs themselves are not copyrighted and could theoretically be rearranged and republished as a different book.

The agency backdated the copyright registration to October 10, the day that Shupe originally attempted to register her work. It declined to comment on this story. “The Copyright Office does not comment on specific copyright registrations or pending applications for registration,” Nora Scheland, an agency spokesperson says. President Biden’s executive order on AI last fall asked the US Patent and Trademark Office to make recommendations on copyright and AI to the White House in consultation with the Copyright Office, including on the “scope of protection for works produced using AI.”

Although Shupe’s limited copyright registration is notable, she originally asked the USCO to open a more significant path to copyright recognition for AI-generated material. “I seek to copyright the AI-assisted and AI-generated material under an ADA exemption for my many disabilities,” she wrote in her original copyright application. Shupe believes fervently that she was only able to complete her book with the assistance of generative AI tools. She says she has been assessed as 100 percent disabled by the Department of Veterans Affairs and struggles to write due to cognitive impairment related to conditions including bipolar disorder, borderline personality disorder, and a brain stem malformation.

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She is proud of the finished work and sees working with a text generator as a different but no less worthwhile method of expressing thoughts. “You don't just hit ‘generate’ and get something worthy of publishing. That may come in the future, but we're still far from it,” she says, noting that she spent upwards of 14 hours a day working on her draft.

After her initial registration was refused, Shupe connected with Jonathan Askin, founder of the Brooklyn Law Incubator and Policy Clinic at Brooklyn Law School, which takes pro bono cases centered on emerging tech and policy questions. Askin and Brooklyn Law student Sofia Vescovo began working on Shupe’s case and filed an appeal with the USCO in January.

The appeal built on Shupe’s argument about her disabilities, saying she should be granted copyright because she used ChatGPT as an assistive technology to communicate, comparing her use of OpenAI’s chatbot to an amputee using a prosthetic leg. The appeal claimed that the USCO “discriminated against her because of her disability.”

The Brooklyn Law appeal also claimed that Shupe should be granted copyright for compiling the book—that is, doing the work of selecting and organizing the snippets of AI-generated text. It provided an exhaustive log of how Shupe prompted ChatGPT, showing the custom commands she created and the edits she made.

It includes a side-by-side comparison of the unedited machine output and the final version of Shupe’s book. On a sentence level, she adjusted almost every line in some way, from changes in word choice to structure. One example describing a character in the novel: “Mark eyed her, a complex mix of concern and annoyance evident in his gaze” becomes “Mark studied her, his gaze reflecting both worry and irritation.”

The appeal cites another recent AI copyright decision about the graphic novel Zarya and the Dawn , which incorporates AI-generated images created with Midjourney. In February 2023, author Kris Kashtanova was granted copyright to the selection and arrangement of AI-generated images in the text, even though they were denied copyright on the specific images themselves.

When the USCO granted Shupe’s request for copyright, it did not address the disability argument put forth but agreed with the appeal’s other argument. Shupe could be considered the author of “selection, coordination, and arrangement of text generated by artificial intelligence,” the agency wrote, backdating her copyright registration to October 10, 2023, the day that Shupe had originally attempted to register her work. That gives her authorship of the work overall, prohibiting unauthorized wholecloth reproduction of the entire book, but not copyright protection over the actual sentences of the novel.

“Overall, we are extremely satisfied,” says Vescovo. The team felt that copyrighting the book’s compilation would provide peace of mind against out-and-out reproduction of the work. “We really wanted to make sure we could get her this protection right now.” The Brooklyn Law team hope Shupe’s approval can serve as a blueprint for other people experimenting with AI text generation who want some copyright protection.

“I’m going to take this as a win for now,” Shupe says, even though she knows that “in some ways, it’s a compromise.” She maintains that the way she uses ChatGPT more closely resembles a collaboration than an automated output, and that she should be able to copyright the actual text of the book.

Matthew Sag, a professor of law and artificial intelligence at Emory University, calls what the USCO granted Shupe “thin copyright”—protection against full-fledged duplication of materials that doesn’t stop someone from rearranging the paragraphs into a different story. “This is the same kind of copyright you would get in an anthology of poetry that you didn’t write,” Sag says.

Erica Van Loon agrees. “It’s hard to imagine something more narrow,” she says.

Shupe is part of a larger movement to make copyright law friendlier to AI and the people who use it. The Copyright Office, which both administers the copyright registration system and advises Congress, the judiciary system, and other governmental agencies on copyright matters, plays a central role in determining how works that use AI are treated.

Although it continues to define authorship as an exclusively human endeavor , the USCO has demonstrated openness to registering works that incorporate AI elements. The USCO said in February that it has granted registration to over 100 works with AI incorporated; a search by WIRED found over 200 copyright registration applications explicitly disclosing AI elements, including books, songs, and visual artworks.

One such application came from Tyler Partin, who works for a chemical manufacturer. He recently registered a tongue-in-cheek song he created about a coworker, but excluded lyrics that he spun up using ChatGPT from his registration. Partin sees the text generator as a tool, but ultimately doesn’t think he should take credit for its output. Instead, he applied only for the music rather than the accompanying words. “I didn’t do that work,” he says.

But there are others who share Shupe’s perspective and agree with her mission, and believe that AI-generated materials should be registrable. Some high-profile attempts to register AI-generated artworks have resulted in USCO refusals, like artist Jason M. Allen’s effort to get his award-winning artwork Théâtre D’opéra Spatial copyrighted last year. AI researcher Stephen Thaler has been on a mission for years to prove that he should be entitled to copyright protections for a work made by the AI system he developed.

Thaler is currently appealing a ruling in the US last year that rebuffed his attempt to obtain copyright. Ryan Abbott, the lead attorney on the case, founded the Artificial Inventor Project , a group of intellectual property lawyers who file test cases seeking legal protections for AI-generated works.

Abbott is a supporter of Shupe’s mission, although he’s not a member of her legal team. He isn’t happy that the copyright registration excludes the AI-generated work itself. “We all see it as a very big problem,” he says.

Shupe and her legal helpers don’t have plans to push the ADA argument further by contesting the USCO’s decision, but it’s an issue that is far from settled. “The best path is probably to lobby Congress for an addition to the ADA statute,” says Askin. “There's a potential for us to draft some legislation or testimony to try to move Congress in that direction.”

Shupe’s qualified victory is still a significant marker in how the Copyright Office is grappling with what it means to be an author in the age of AI. She hopes going public with her efforts will reduce what she sees as a stigma against using AI as a creative tool. Her metaphorical nuke didn’t go off, but she has nonetheless advanced her cause. “I haven't been this excited since I unboxed a Commodore 64 back in the 1980s and, after a lot of noise, connected to a distant computer,” she says.

Updated 17-4-2024, 4:35 pm EDT: President Biden's executive order on AI last year asked the US Patent and Trademark office to make recommendations on copyright and AI in consultation with the Copyright Office, it did not ask the Copyright Office itself to make the recommendations.

Updated 18-4-2024, 9 am EDT: This piece has been updated to clarify Stephen Thaler's position on AI system copyright.

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