9 Things to Keep In Mind While Writing a Literature Review

What is Literature Review?

Literature review is basically the extraction of relevant published information by scholars on the chosen topic.

If you are a student looking for Dissertation Help and academic consultancy then this blog will be of help to you. Listed below are the 9 things to keep in mind while writing a dissertation literature review.

1. Choose a topic:

There are so many things happening in the world and so many problems to solve that it could take your whole life to ponder what to review and which problem to solve first. But, you must keep these points in mind.

1. A topic of your interest: Choose a topic that best interests you and you have done some research or read papers related to it.
2. A topic of your enough information: Another important point is to know while selecting a topic is that it must have enough relevant information. So that you can back up your own findings with relative previous researches.
3. A well-defined issue:Pick a topic that actually fulfils a research gap.

2. Research the literature:

After selecting the topic, search what the previous researchers have done on the chosen topic and what their findings are. Start by keeping a list of at least 10 research papers and read them thoroughly.

3. Keep notes while reading:

If you read the papers first and start writing after what you’re done reading. You won’t remember who said what? So, it’s better to keep making notes of relevant and interesting points with the author’s reference.This will make citations/bibliography easier.This rough draft will still need some restructuring and rewriting but at least, you won’t have a blank document at the end.

4. Choose the type of review:

After having a rough draft of notes and thoughts, you’ll most likely know how much data is available for the review. At this point, you can decide whether you want to write a mini review or full detailed document.  Some journals are in favor of mini review with a limited number of words and recent past researches because it attracts the busy readers but it inevitably lacks some information due to limited space. On the other hand, a full review will cover all the important aspects and complexities of the topic. So, it totally depends on who your audience is.

5. Include Citations:

Students often consider Literature Review Writing Service just because they are unable to cite properly. Citations are a crucial part of your dissertation and cannot be ignored as they validate your research.

6. Be focused:

Whether it’s a mini or full literature review, it is better to keep it focused. Including material which is unnecessary or leads to another discussion won’t entertain the reader and instead of solving one problem, it will bring more gaps in the study.

7. Think critically:

The purpose of a good review, should not just summarize the previous study but it should critically discuss the key questions and other research gaps which the author wants to answer.

8. Conclusion:

In conclusion, summarize the previous researches, the similarities and differences among them.

9. Review:

After writing the literature review, read it as a reader. First of all, check if the purpose of writing it has been fulfilled or not. It should give the clear idea of where you’re taking your reader through it. Secondly, check if there is any information to be added or cut the irrelevant information and also check all the grammatical errors and sentence structure.