Literature review: A set of steps

Ross Woods, 2021-23. With thanks to Τοm Grαnοff, Shαnε Jεnsεn, Cαrοlinε Schοερf, Kεsslyn Brαdε Stεnnis, and Αndrεα Wαlkεr.

This guide is basically a set of steps on how to write a literature review. It doesn’t explain the principles or even what your final literature review should look like. It presumes that you've already found out exactly what your institution requires.

The easiest way to use this guide is to work through the steps one at a time with a tutor, so that you can ask questions and get explanations as you go. (The hardest way is to work through the steps by yourself without help.) Part of this approach is a method to keep your notes organized, which is especially important in a big project. For example, you might find 500 or more sources relevant to your topic, so you'll need a simple system that is easy to use.

The point of the procedure is to get maximum efficiency. Writing a long literature review will be much easier and less overwhelming if you have a good method, because it reduces some complicated tasks to simple steps. A very efficient method of searching probably won't be very time-consuming. Most of your time and effort should be spent thinking about significant matters relevant to your topic, not in the mechanical procedures of searching and organizing.

I suggest a particular system of managing files and folders, because it worked for me. However, students tend to create their own systems and a system that works well for one researcher might be confusing for others. In any case, the purpose is that saved documents are easy to locate and to retrieve.

In summary, the main steps are:

Prepare before you start
Write an annotated bibliography

Create a new folder and a new file
Write an introduction
Plan your search (Select search engines and repositories, make a list of key words that define precisely what you are looking for.)
Use those search words to find articles and write comments and bibliography items for each one.
Write a conclusion.

Turn it into a literature review
Edit the whole thing into an integrated document.

Check your equipment

Make sure you have an adequate computer, word processor, and Internet connection. While you might be able to do some reading on a cellphone, you cannot write a literature review with one.

Prepare before you start

You might find it helpful to look through the literature reviews of other dissertations in topics similar to yours. You'll see the kind of final result that is expected, and how it is presented. Don't worry if you feel a little overwhelmed (some students do) and think that you couldn't write something like that. Remember that you're looking at only the final product. They are finished products, so they don't give any guidance on the processes that writers went through to get there.

To see examples of literature reviews, search for a few dissertations in your field. Nearly all dissertations have a literature review as a separate chapter, which is often chapter two. You will find that some dissertations are better than others and you might find it helpful to ask what makes some better.

If you can, it might be more helpful to look in topics similar to yours, and perhaps approved by the same committee as yours; it will give you an understanding of what you might need.

Create a new folder and a new file

Create a new folder and a new word processor file. This new file will be your annotated bibliography.

Write an introduction for your annotated bibliography

Your readers need to know your purpose and topic. An introduction will reflect the focus of your work, create some kind of unity, and indicate its boundaries.

Plan your search

Your goal at this stage is to have a full collection of sources in folders. The steps are as follows:

Choose the search engines and repositories that you will use. They should be specifically for academic sources, mostly journal articles. Google Scholar is the only one that includes excerpts of monographs, but use others as well. Core is also excellent. ERIC is excellent for education.
Make a list of key search words that you can use in a search engine. That way, the search engine can do the work of finding journal articles. Try these suggestions to get ideas for search words:

Use your background reading from when you chose the topic; it should be very helpful in identifying relevant search words, topics, and leading writers in the field.
List search words that represent each variable, theory, or question that you discussed in your preliminary proposal.
Look in your theoretical and conceptual assumptions.
If the problem has sub-problems, it might be easier to explore them individually.

Make a folder in your computer for each search word.
Inside each search word folder, create a folder called Done.

Collect sources and make comments

Do searches on key words.

If you notice some writers come up often as leading thinkers on the topic, you might use their names as keywords and make folders for each one.
Other relevant topics might emerge during your search, so add them as keywords and make folders for each one. Follow up on new themes that emerge and any apparent gaps in the literature. As you learn more, some of these often unexpectedly become important.

For each item you find, first check whether it's relevant:

For journal articles, you only need to read the title to know whether or not to continue reading.
If the title indicates that it is relevant, read the abstract.
If the title indicates that it is relevant, read the findings, which are usually placed near the end.
If the findings indicate that it is relevant, read the whole article carefully.
If you find that it is irrelevant at any stage, discontinue that article so that you don't waste time.

Write out the full bibliographical entry.

Most journals now have a full reference on the front page of the article, so this task is usually a simple copy and paste. Many journals use other formats than the bibliographical format required by your institution, so you might need to edit them a little to comply with your institution's style guide.
If the article has no issue number and is not dated (which is unusual), you will need a URL (website link) for your Accessed on [date].
Note: Capture that information while you still have the article on screen.

Save copies of each useful article in the folder for each key word. When in doubt about whether it is useful, make a copy, because it might be useful later on.
Write an in-text reference for each bibliographical item and insert it into the annotation. For example, Harvard in-text references often look like this: (Smith, 2017, pp. 21-32.)
Write your own comments, such as strengths, unique insights or information, weaknesses, relevance, and implications.

You might also want to include a summary of the article’s main ideas expressed (accurately) in your own words so that you are sure you understand them.
Include any particularly pertinent direct quotes, with page numbers. (Sometimes it's just too hard to improve on the original author's wording.)
Give your critique, but “critique” doesn't always mean “find fault.” You will find that some sources are very helpful and you won't find fault with them. In fact, you can more easily build on their work. (Some students think that critique is finding fault with everything.) Just write factually about the source material that you read. You don't have to add an develop our own ideas at this stage.
Make good notes of your comments in whole sentences, so you will understand them later on. (You don't want to go back to them later on and think, “What did I mean by that?”) If you make notes on a scrap of paper, put them into your well-organized notes in your word processor document as soon as possible.
Compare the views of authors. What is similar? What is different?
Identify the most important thinkers on your topic and the watershe papers, and comment more heavily on their contribution.
When you have critiqued the ideas in the main sources, you don't always need to do separate critiques of very similar documents that are examples of the same thing. Some sources are adequately represented with a “cf.” or “cf. also” reference.

Check that you have represented the article accurately and that the comments will make sense to a reader who hasn’t read the actual article.
Check the bibliographical entry.
After each article, move it into the Done folder for that search word. (This makes it easy to keep track of what you have already done and what you haven’t yet done yet; it’s just too easy to lose track if you keep them all in one folder.)

Let it evolve

As you follow leads and find more sources, new themes will probably emerge for you to explore. You might also notice gaps where nothing has been written. This will change the shape of your annotated bibliography.

You will almost certainly find that some avenues are unfruitful. Don't worry. They might help you get a better understanding of the whole topic.

Write a conclusion

Write a conclusion summing up the state of research on your topic.

Edit, edit, edit

You should presume that your readers are well-educated people who know nothing about your specialist topic. Give enough detail to prevent gaps. Your readers probably will not have prior knowledge of everything you know about the topic.

Edit your document so that it is easy to understand for someone other than you. For example, comments need to be full sentences, not just rough notes.

Proofread: Check details of references, grammar, punctuation, spelling, etc.

You now have an annotated bibliography.

This would be a good time to show it to your supervisor and discuss it.

Create your literature review file

Save your annotated bibliography as a new file, which will eventually become the basis of your literature review. (Keep your annotated bibliography in its original form, because you might want to refer back to it.)

Create an outline

At first, your notes in the annotated bibliography might appear to be a chaotic mix of different ideas. Your goal is to put them into a neat, easy to understand order, in language that flows. It will be a full literature review of each topic or theme with in-text references and a complete bibliography at the end. You want your readers to be able to enjoy reading something that is informative and flows well.

You will find that a structure will emerge as you go, even if it is not obvious at first. (You might even have multiple options from which to choose.)

The steps are as follows:

Plan an outline and put in section headings, so that the outline flows and will be easy for your readers to read.

Develop a structure for the literature review. This will be expressed in set of section headings that naturally represent the literature and will be easy for your readers to follow. If you can, try putting them into chronological order so that you “tell a story.” Otherwise, have a series of themes.
If you can't tell a story, group them by theme, and then go through them theme by theme, perhaps including sub-themes. The key words might be a good guide to themes.
If the variety of information starts getting confusing, you might like to follow a specific method to determine key concepts or themes, for example:

Draw a mind-map of your topic
Create a matrix
Make a color-coded chart
Create a chart and then group articles in parts of the chart.
Write one outline of the whole chapter, and then write mini-outlines for each main idea or theme.
Use color coding to highlight main ideas when you read.

The topic and definitions come first. This is simply a modified version of the introduction to the annotated bibliography.
Other headings, making up your outline
A heading for concluding comments
A heading for the bibliography

Check with your supervisor

You might need to go through several drafts of the outline before it is ready to show your supervisor. When you think it is ready, present it as a one-page list of 10-15 section headings. It's a good idea to check with your supervisor and ask for feedback on your outline. It might prevent you doing lots of work that you later have to discard.

If they agree with your outline, you can turn those points into paragraphs or pages. This is your first rough draft of the literature review.

Revising your outline

Later on, as you write successive drafts, you might revise your outline, especially if new themes keep emerging from your reading. You might also change some of those headings. Just check that the changes are improvements and that your supervisor is agreeable.

Some students think that they've failed if their planned outline no longer works. But it's actually a victory, because they've learned something new and understand the topic better. (Coincidentally, sorting items into categories is actually a kind of analysis, because you are creating a new structure for the information.)

Turning it into a literature review

Move all annotations into the outline under the relevant section heading. (This is simply a cut and paste activity in your word processor.) Go through each item in the annotated bibliography for that keyword:

Copy it into the relevant place in the literature review.
Cross out the text in the annotated bibliography so that you can recognize what has been done, ~~like this~~. Don’t delete anything because you might want to check back later on.
Put the bibliographic entry (author, title, publication details) into the bibliography.

Edit the notes of each section into a section of flowing prose. If necessary, add any interpretive notes in each section.
About your bibliography:

Some sources might be relevant to multiple parts of the literature review, but still only need one bibliographic entry.
Check that you don’t have duplicates in the bibliography.
Check for cases of multiple articles written by the same author in the same year. Depending on your referencing system, they will need to be referenced as, for example, (Smith, 2019a) and (Smith, 2019b).

Put the bibliography in alphabetical order.
You now have a full first draft of your literature review.

Edit, edit, edit

Make sure you have an introductory section and a closing section for the chapter.

Look at the whole document and edit it into a coherent literature review. Add transitional paragraphs as necessary so that it flows and makes sense to your readers.

Then proofread: Check details of references, grammar, punctuation, spelling, etc.