Can a Literature Review Include Your Published Works
What is a Literature Review
A literature review is an objective, concise, critical summary of published research literature relevant to a topic existence researched in an commodity.
A literature review does Not:
A literature review does not but reference and listing all of the material you have cited in your paper.
- Presenting material that is non directly relevant to your report will distract and frustrate the reader and make them lose sight of the purpose of your report.
- Starting a literature review with "A number of scholars accept studied the human relationship between X and Y" and only listing who has studied the topic and what each scholar concluded is not going to strengthen your paper.
A good literature review DOES:
- Present a brief typology that orders articles and books into groups to help readers focus on unresolved debates, inconsistencies, tensions, and new questions about a enquiry topic.
- Summarize the virtually relevant and important aspects of the scientific literature related to your area of inquiry
- Synthesize what has been done in this area of research and by whom, highlight what previous research indicates about a topic, and identify potential gaps and areas of disagreement in the field
- Requite the reader an understanding of the groundwork of the field and evidence which studies are of import—and highlight errors in previous studies
Building Your Literature Review Bookshelf
1 way to excogitate of a literature review is to think near writing it as you would build a bookshelf. Y'all don't need to cut each piece by yourself from scratch. Rather, you can have the pieces that other researchers have cutting out and put them together to build a framework on which to hang your own "books"—that is, your own written report methods, results, and conclusions.
What Makes a Good Literature Review?
The contents of a literature review are determined past many factors, including its precise purpose in the article, the degree of consensus with a given theory or tension between competing theories, the length of the article, the number of previous studies existing in the given field, etc. The following are some of the most important elements that a literature review provides.
- A historical background for your research: Analyze what has been written about your field of enquiry to highlight what is new and significant in your study—or how the analysis itself contributes to the understanding of this field, fifty-fifty in a minor way. Providing a historical background also demonstrates to other researchers and journal editors your competency in discussing theoretical concepts. You should also make certain to understand how to paraphrase scientific literature to avert plagiarism in your work.
- The current context in which your research is situated: Discuss fundamental (or peripheral) questions, issues, and debates in the field. Because a field is constantly being updated by new work, you tin can show where your research fits into this context and explain developments and trends in research.
- A discussion of relevant theories and concepts that provide the foundation for your inquiry: For example, if you are researching the relationship between ecological environments and man populations, provide models and theories that focus on specific aspects of this connexion to contextualize your study. If your written report asks a question concerning sustainability, mention a theory or model that underpins this concept. If information technology concerns invasive species, choose fabric that is focused in this direction.
- A definition of the relevant terminology: In the natural sciences, the significant of terms is relatively straightforward and consistent. Just if you lot nowadays a term that is obscure or context-specific, you lot should define the meaning of the term in the Introduction section (if you are introducing a written report) or in the summary of the literature existence reviewed.
- A description of related research that shows how your piece of work expands or challenges earlier studies or fills in gaps in previous work: You tin use your literature review as testify of what works, what doesn't, and what is missing in the field.
- Supporting show for a practical problem or issue your enquiry is addressing that demonstrates its importance: Referencing related research establishes your expanse of research every bit reputable and shows you are building upon previous piece of work that other researchers take deemed significant.
Types of Literature Reviews
Literature reviews can differ in construction, length, and corporeality and breadth of content included. They can range from the selective (a very narrow expanse of research or only a single work) to the comprehensive (a larger corporeality or range of works). They can as well be role of a larger work or stand on their own.
- A course consignment is an instance of a selective, stand up-lonely piece of work. It focuses on a small segment of the literature on a topic and makes upward an unabridged work on its own.
- The literature review in a dissertation or thesis is both comprehensive and helps make up a larger work.
- A bulk of periodical manufactures start with a selective literature review to provide context for the inquiry reported in the report; such a literature review is usually included in the Introduction section (but it can also follow the presentation of the results in the Discussion department).
- Some literature reviews are both comprehensive and stand as a dissever work—in this instance, the entire commodity analyzes the literature on a given topic.
Type of Literature Reviews Found in Journals
The 2 types of literature reviews commonly found in journals are those introducing enquiry manufactures (studies and surveys) and stand up-alone literature analyses. They tin can differ in their scope, length, and specific purpose.
Literature reviews introducing research articles
The literature review institute at the beginning of a journal article is used to introduce research related to the specific study and is found in the Introduction section, commonly nearly the terminate. It is shorter than a stand-lone review considering information technology must be limited to very specific studies and theories that are directly relevant to the current study. Its purpose is to prepare research precedence and provide support for the study's theory, methods, results, and/or conclusions. Not all research articles contain an explicit review of the literature, but most exercise, whether it is a discrete section or indistinguishable from the rest of the Introduction.
How to structure a literature review for an commodity
When writing a literature review equally part of an introduction to a study, simply follow the structure of the Introduction and move from the general to the specific—presenting the broadest background data about a topic first and then moving to specific studies that back up your rationale, finally leading to your hypothesis statement. Such a literature review is oft indistinguishable from the Introduction itself—the literature is INTRODUCING the background and defining the gaps your study aims to fill.
The stand-solitary literature review
The literature review published as a stand-alone article presents and analyzes as many of the of import publications in an area of study equally possible to provide background information and context for a current area of inquiry or a study. Stand-alone reviews are an excellent resources for researchers when they are first searching for the most relevant data on an surface area of study.
Such literature reviews are generally a fleck broader in scope and tin can extend further back in time. This means that sometimes a scientific literature review can be highly theoretical, in addition to focusing on specific methods and outcomes of previous studies. In addition, all sections of such a "review commodity" refer to existing literature rather than describing the results of the authors' own report.
In improver, this type of literature review is usually much longer than the literature review introducing a study. At the finish of the review follows a decision that once again explicitly ties all of the cited works together to evidence how this analysis is itself a contribution to the literature. While not absolutely necessary, such articles oft include the terms "Literature Review" or "Review of the Literature" in the title. Whether or not that is necessary or appropriate tin also depend on the specific writer instructions of the target journal. Have a look at this article for more input on how to compile a stand-alone review article that is insightful and helpful for other researchers in your field.
Writing a Literature Review in half-dozen Steps
And so how exercise authors turn a network of articles into a coherent review of relevant literature?
Writing a literature review is non usually a linear process—authors often go back and bank check the literature while reformulating their ideas or making adjustments to their written report. Sometimes new findings are published before a study is completed and demand to be incorporated into the current work. This also means you lot will not be writing the literature review at any one time, but constantly working on it before, during, and after your study is consummate.
Here are some steps that will help you begin and follow through on your literature review.
Step 1: Choose a topic to write nigh—focus on and explore this topic.
Choose a topic that you are familiar with and highly interested in analyzing; a topic your intended readers and researchers will notice interesting and useful; and a topic that is current, well-established in the field, and about which at that place has been sufficient research conducted for a review. This will help you lot find the "sweet spot" for what to focus on.
Step 2: Enquiry and collect all the scholarly information on the topic that might be pertinent to your study.
This includes scholarly articles, books, conventions, conferences, dissertations and theses—these and whatsoever other academic work related to your expanse of report is called "the literature."
Stride iii: Analyze the network of data that extends or responds to the major works in your expanse; select the material that is nearly useful.
Use thought maps and charts to identify intersections in the research and to outline of import categories; select the material that will be most useful to you review.
Footstep 4: Depict and summarize each commodity—provide the essential information of the article that pertains to your study.
Determine ii-3 important concepts (depending on the length of your commodity) that are discussed in the literature; take notes nearly all of the of import aspects of this written report relevant to your topic being reviewed.
For example, in a given study, perhaps some of the main concepts are X, Y, and Z. Note these concepts and and then write a brief summary most how the article incorporates them. In reviews that introduce a study, these can be relatively short. In stand-solitary reviews, there may be significantly more texts and more than concepts.
Step 5: Demonstrate how these concepts in the literature chronicle to what you discovered in your study or how the literature connects the concepts or topics being discussed.
In a literature review intro for an commodity, this information might include a summary of the results or methods of previous studies that stand for and/or confirm to those sections in your own study. For a stand-alone literature review, this may hateful highlighting the concepts in each article and showing how they strengthen a hypothesis or show a pattern.
Discuss unaddressed issues in previous studies. These studies that are missing something you address are of import to include in your literature review. In improver, those works whose theories and conclusions directly back up your findings will be valuable to review here.
Pace 6: Identify relationships in the literature and develop and connect your ain ideas to them.
This is essentially the same every bit step 5, merely focused on the connections between the literature and the current written report or guiding concepts or arguments of the newspaper, not only on the connections betwixt the works themselves.
Your hypothesis, argument, or guiding concept is the "gold thread" that volition ultimately tie the works together and provide readers with specific insights they didn't have before reading your literature review. Make certain yous know where to put the enquiry question, hypothesis, or statement of the problem in your research newspaper and then that you guide your readers logically and naturally from your introduction of earlier work and evidence to the conclusions you want them to describe from the bigger picture.
Your review will not only encompass publications on your topics but will include your own ideas and contributions. By post-obit these steps y'all volition be telling the specific story that sets the background and shows the significance of your research and you can turn a network of related works into a focused review of the literature.
In addition to these guidelines, authors besides demand to check which style guidelines to employ (APA, AMA, MLA, etc.) and what specific rules the target periodical might have for how to construction such manufactures or how many studies to include—such information can usually be establish on the journals' "Guide for Authors" pages.
Finally, after y'all have finished drafting your literature review, be sure to receive proofreading and language editing for your bookish piece of work. A competent proofreader who understands academic writing conventions and the specific style guides used by bookish journals will ensure that your paper is set up for publication in your target journal.
Wordvice Resource
If you demand more advice on how many references to include in your paper, how to write the abstract or title for your manuscript, or how to impress the editor of your target journal with a perfect embrace letter, so head over to the Wordvice academic resources website.
Source: https://blog.wordvice.com/how-to-write-a-literature-review/
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