Introduction
Literature reviews can be stand-alone documents, or they can form part of a research proposal or project. A stand-alone literature review aims to summarise and evaluate the current knowledge of a specific topic, whereas a literature review that forms part of a research proposal or project also describes the gaps in the current knowledge that the project aims to address.
This module is intended as an introductory guide to writing stand-alone literature reviews. A graduate literature review module is also available in the graduate research and writing section of the Research and Learning Online site. The graduate literature review module is particularly useful if you are writing a literature review that forms part of a research project, including an Honours, Master by Research or PhD project.
This tutorial will cover:
The purpose of a literature review
The purpose of a stand-alone literature review is to provide a summary, synthesis and critical evaluation of the literature relevant to your specific research question or aim. Within the review, you need to identify patterns, consensus, inconsistencies, discrepancies, problems or gaps based on the body of literature. Ultimately, the literature review will contribute something new to the topic, so it will not be a discussion that has been repeated or previously established in the past.
Choosing your topic
Depending on the unit, there are a number of ways that you might be asked to choose a topic for your literature review. For example:
- You may be asked to choose from a list of specific research questions.
- You may be asked to create a research question from a list of broad topics, or from any topic that interests you.
- You might be asked to include only a research question, or to include a research question and an aim.
What is the difference between a research question and an aim?
The research question
A research question is an answerable, focused question that helps to limit the scope of your research and writing within a broader topic. Your research question needs to be answerable within your word limit. The video below contains tips for writing a good research question.
In some assignments, you may be asked to create both a research question and an aim from a broad topic. For example, your topic may be the effects of climate change on crop production. There are multiple components of climate change (e.g. rising temperatures, rising sea levels, and rising CO2 levels) and multiple crop types (wheat, corn, rice, etc.). You could refine this topic by focusing on specific aspects of climate change and specific crop types. An answerable research question based on this topic might be:
Research question: How will rising levels of atmospheric CO2 impact the global agriculture of wheat growth and quality?
The aim
The aim is a detailed statement of what your review is intending to achieve. For example, an aim based on our example research question is:
Aim: This review aims to directly assess how global wheat crops will react to a rise in environmental CO2 and guide research of mitigation of any challenges wheat may face.
The aim of your literature review is often stated at the end of the introduction section.
Once you have selected your research question or aim, you can identify keywords to assist you in finding the relevant literature. The Researching for your literature review library guide is a comprehensive guide to finding relevant information sources for your topic.
Structure of a literature review
In general, literature reviews are structured in a similar way to a standard essay, with an introduction, a body and a conclusion. Within the body, sub-headings are often used.
The structure of the different sections of a literature review is discussed below. Excerpts from a number of Monash student assignments are used to demonstrate the structure of each section.
You may be asked to write an abstract for your review. The purpose of an abstract is to provide potential readers with an overview of the review content, so that they can determine if it is relevant to their research. The abstract should include brief background information, including any knowledge gaps or discrepancies that the review aims to address, as well as a statement regarding the purpose and scope of the review. A good abstract also includes a brief statement of the main findings and how they relate to the broader context. The example abstract below includes these elements.
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Example abstract
Not all introductions follow exactly the same order, however there are some key points to include to provide your reader with the context and purpose of your review. The general guidelines for the structure of a literature review introduction are:
- Start with a broad introduction to the topic. Include relevant background information and definitions or explanations of the relevant terms and concepts.
- Provide information that is relevant for your specific topic, and explain the importance of your topic (e.g. why it’s worth reading your literature review).
- Tell the reader what the scope of your review is, e.g. what key points you will include in the body of your review.
- Tell your reader what the aim or purpose of your review is. This is often included at the end of the introduction.
The example introduction below includes these elements. Click on the
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Example introduction
The body of the review contains your review of the literature relevant to your research question or aim. Aim to structure the body of your literature review in a logical and coherent way. Consider what your sub-topics or sections will be in order to answer your research question thoroughly and coherently. Then consider the most logical order to discuss your sections. Creating sub-headings for the sections of your review will assist you in creating a logical structure and keep you focused on sub-topics relevant to your research aim.
In the body of your literature review, it is important to analyse the literature rather than to merely describe the findings of a number of different literature sources. Some description of the key findings is important to give the reader context, however your review should also include an analysis of the key themes, gaps in understanding, and points of disagreement between the different literature sources.
There are numerous ways to organise your body paragraphs, depending on your topic. You may want to organise some of your paragraphs in chronological order, e.g. historical findings, more recent findings, current research. You may want to group your literature sources into paragraphs based on similar arguments or findings. You may want to group your sources into similar sub-topics and compare different findings within a single paragraph.
One method of organising your reviewed literature is to group similar findings together. The assignment excerpt below is an example of how this can be done.
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Comparing wheat crop growth under elevated CO2 conditions with those in ambient conditions, Wang et al. (2016) were able to significantly demonstrate that increases in atmospheric carbon could improve grain growth up to 8%.
During an experiment of wheat growth in CO2 rich atmospheres by Hӧgy et al. (2009) the plants experienced a growing season with a mean temperature 1.8℃ higher than in previous years. Concurrently the crop experiences a shorter growth period, finishing their growth cycle earlier than normal. The rise in temperature, while hastening growth time, had a negative effect on crop yield and quality, suggesting that while elevated CO2 may increase growth processes, accompanying abiotic influences such as temperature increases may be detrimental to crop growth. Asseng et al. (2013) supported this, contending that their predictive models indicate negative overall impacts on wheat crops at higher levels of warming as a result of CO2 increases. Fang et al. (2017) recently completed innovative research into the management of crop sensitivity to temperature change through genetic selection but more inquiry into such mitigation of temperature damage to crop growth is important to agricultural success in future climates.
Another method of organising your body paragraphs is to group papers together that have found different or contradictory results related to the same topic. This helps you to demonstrate your understanding of the literature and highlights the inconsistencies between findings. The example assignment body paragraph below is an example of how this can be done
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Start by demonstrating how you have answered your research question and/or how you have achieved your research aim. This tells the audience you have achieved what you set out to achieve. Then highlight the key points you discussed. Now you can refer to implications of this knowledge in a broader sense, as well as recommendations for future studies/research (if applicable). The conclusion starts specific and finishes broad - the opposite structure to your introduction.
There are several conventions to note when you are writing your conclusion:
- It is important that you do not include new information in your conclusion. Instead, you need to highlight the key points raised in the earlier sections of your literature review.
- In-text citations are not usually included in your conclusion. This relates to the point above in regards to not including new information - all of the information in your discussion should have also been included, with correct citing and referencing, in the earlier sections of your literature review.
The example below demonstrates the structural elements of a conclusion. Click on the icons next to the paragraph to see the comments. Click again to hide the comments.
Tips for writing the literature review
Click the icons on the graphic below for tips on the different stages of the writing process.
Citing and referencing in a literature review
Paraphrasing and summarising are key skills required in a literature review. For more information on how to paraphrase and summarise effectively, please see the citing and referencing tutorial on the Research and Learning Online website.
In literature reviews, you may want to summarise similar findings by including several sources within a single citation. Citing several published works at once can demonstrate your understanding of the patterns and consensus in the literature. You can find instructions for how to do this for each of the different referencing styles in the Library citing and referencing guide, but as a general rule, this can be done as follows:
If you want to refer to a small number of literature sources at once, you can list each of them within the citation at the end of the relevant information, separated by semicolons. For example:
Only a few epidemiologic investigations have assessed the intake of chocolate products as part of a food frequency questionnaire (FFQ) (Arts et al., 2002; di Giuseppe et al., 2008), whereas other studies have simply asked about chocolate intake as part of a lifestyle questionnaire (Lee & Paffenbarger, 1998; Paganini-Hill et al., 2007).
If there are many studies that have reported a similar finding and you only want to include some of them, you can use the letters e.g. (from the Latin exempli gratia, meaning 'for example') at the beginning of your citation. This tells the reader that these are a selection of sources of this information, rather than the full list. For example:
Many epidemiologic studies have explored the beneficial effects of green tea, soy beans, and other foods containing polyphenols (e.g. Dreosti, 2000; Adlercreutz & Mazur, 1997; Arts & Hollman, 2005).
For more help on writing literature reviews
You may also find the literature review resources in the Graduate Research and Writing section of Research and Learning Online helpful.
