Steps to Write a Literature Review

In writing a scientific research article, it would not be wrong to say that one of the most important portions is a part of literature review. A literature review, from www.msvu.ca/library/glossary.asp, is defined that it is a comprehensive survey of publications in a specific field of study or related to a particular line of research, usually in the form of a list of references or an in-depth review of key works. A literature review is always the first section of most research articles, and it, of course, is the part usually written to convey to your reader the important academic research related to your topic. As we could realize, it is not an easy task to write such a good literature review; therefore, it is necessary to learn some steps to write before we conduct it. In this essay, I would like to describe some steps for writing a literature review based on what I have learned.

The first thing you should conduct for writing a literature review is critically understanding in your topic. A literature review is a part for introducing your reader some background knowledge related to your field; hence, it is unavoidable for you to understand your own topic and its scope intensively. Once understanding in your topic’s scope, you will able to select only the core knowledge related to your information that should be read and included in your article. For instance, if you wanted to discuss on the topic of “Does Vitamin C supplement help healthier?”, you might provide some background about Vitamin C, the amount of Vitamin C human needs per day, the concentration of those in general conventional food and daily Vitamin C, the necessary of supplementing Vitamin C, or even the disadvantages of Vitamin C supplement consumption. Thus, you could survey on the topic of nutrition.

Surveying and evaluation other’s related research, articles, and journals from any sources, such as the internet, published journals, or even textbooks, that have been done is the next. You should go through those to gain a variety of specific ideas, methodologies, and results related to your topics, and then try to generalize several points indicating known and unknown particular knowledge in your field. Therefore, on the topic of Vitamin C, you might survey on research, or other sources, to gain data and information about the above mentioned ideas. Don’t forget to evaluate those information sources. A good scientific research basically needs strongly reliable information sources. The easiest way is surfing on the well-known scientific websites or world-wide accepted journals. Pubmed, Nature, Sciences are good instances. The information posted on those sources was assessed reliability by specific experts who have in-depth knowledge in related fields.

What’s next?, summarizing your surveyed results is another important steps. Once you gained a large amount of information, you would realize that some of those support your topic whereas others are not, try to generalize and group them. After that, synthesize information into what is or not known about your topic. In the Vitamin C research, for example, some results encourage people to consume daily Vitamin C supplement while others are not. Group them and try to generalize. Then start writing your own research and don’t forget to quote references to which you refer.

The key portion of a good literature review is a part of which an author tries to convince reader that his research is necessary. In your own research, you might provide some reasonable known and not known information, and then provide several critical reasons about the necessary to conduct your research. This would urge reader to be interested in your research.

For the steps mentioned above, there can be no doubt that writing literature review, of course, is not too difficult task for you to conduct. The key factors contributing to a good literature review are definite scope-not too narrow or general, in-depth knowledge in your topic, enough supportive information and references, and, most importantly, effectively convincing reader to realize your research’s necessary.