The Literature Review

'You know one when you see one.' H.Cooper

Introduction

'Undertaking a review of a body of literature is often seen as something obvious and a task easily done. In practice, although research students do produce what are called reviews of the literature, the quality of these varies considerably. Many reviews, in fact, are only thinly disguised annotated bibliographies. Quality means appropriate breadth and depth, rigour and consistency, clarity and brevity, and effective analysis and synthesis; in other words, the use of the ideas in the literature to justify the particular approach to the topic, the selection of methods and demonstration that this research contributes something new…

The originality of a research topic often depends on critical reading of a wide-ranging literature. The nature of this concerns, on one hand, immersing oneself in the topic to avoid the shallowness of quick and “dirty” research and, on the other, there is the need to identify the key ideas and methodologies from which some contribution to knowledge might be made. Without a systematic search and critical reading of the literature it would be very difficult to see how academic research could make a new application of a methodology or contribute in some way, no matter how small, to knowledge. In other words, knowledge generation and understanding is an emergent process and not a universal product. In order to know the nature and character of the implications of a development you need to know the intellectual context of that development '. (Hart 1998 p.26)

Hart, Chris  1998 Doing a literature review: releasing the social science research imagination, Sage Publications, London.

Online Resources

• A sample literature review from USQ

• The Literature Review: A Few Tips On Conducting It
  Short, easy to understand. Checklist of questions for researchers to ask themselves when conducting a literature review.

• What's a literature review and why do a literature review

• Practitioner Research: the Purposes of Reviewing the Literature within an Enquiry

• Writing Literature Reviews

• PhD: From first thoughts to finished writing - the literature review

• Research skills for a literature review  
  From RMIT- Section on the Literature Review

• The Writing Center - University of Wisconsin - Madison
  A very clear set of guidelines on the purpose of a literature review and how to write one

• The Literature Review
  Pages developed by the staff at Central Queensland University to help postgraduate students concepualize, research and write a literature review. It features video presentations by researchers discussing the whats, whys and hows of a literature review.
  

Subject Specific

• Psychology Writing Center Handouts: Literature Reviews  
  Literature reviews for Psychology students

• Writing a literature review in the Health Sciences and Social Work
  Site at the University of Toronto. Lists the questions you should be asking yourself as you embark upon your literature review

• Literature Review in the Sciences, Engineering and Technology
• Literature Review in the Social Sciences and Humanities
  Discipline specific sites from the University of South Australia