How to write a strong literature review

How to write a strong literature review

A literature review is a summary of the current research on a topic. It gives an overview of previous research and presents a rationale for your own study. A literature review is not just a list of references; it should be organized with an explicit purpose statement, thesis statement, and an outline of what will be discussed in each section.

1. Narrow your topic and select papers accordingly.

It's important to start out with a clear idea of what you want to accomplish with your literature review. If you're writing a paper on the effects of climate change on animal populations, for example, you'll need to find research that has investigated those effects.

The first step in writing a literature review is to narrow your topic and select papers accordingly. For example, if you are writing about the effects of stress on cardiovascular disease, you would start by narrowing your topic to just cardiovascular disease, or narrowing it further to just heart disease. You could also narrow using subtopics like "the effects of stress on cardiovascular disease in men" or "the effects of stress on cardiovascular disease in women." You can then go through your list and select papers that relate to those topics.

2. Search for literature.

There are many different databases available online that contain scholarly articles and other types of academic writing—you just have to know where to look! You should also search through any print indexes or journals that are relevant to your topic.