How to Write a Literature Review

Written by Francesca Freeman and Spencer Ganus

Have to write a literature review for your Introduction to Sociology class and don’t know where to start? Feeling lost while writing a research paper? We got you. This article will help you to tackle literature reviews with ease and confidence. 

What is a literature review? 

A literature review is a body of writing that surveys the existing research (or literature, in the broad sense) surrounding a particular research topic. At the most basic level, the goal of a literature review is to establish what others have said about a topic by summarizing the existing academic research surrounding it. Literature reviews can also synthesize or evaluate relevant sources, identify gaps and controversies in the research, and propose options for additional research. Exactly what is included in a literature review can vary across different fields, so it’s important to check out literature reviews and academic articles within your discipline and, most importantly, to pay special attention to your instructor’s assignment prompt. 

Aside from the particularities of a given field or assignment, there are two basic types of literature reviews: The first is a standalone literature review, and the second is a literature review that is part of a larger essay. While they have the same fundamental goal—to establish what people have said about a given topic—they can be used in very different ways, which can impact the approach you take and the information you include. 

THE STANDALONE LITERATURE REVIEW 

A standalone literature review provides an overview of what existing literature says on a particular topic and can draw attention to gaps or controversies in the discourse. This type of literature review can also pose further research questions. However, bear in mind that it is not a literature review's job to answer any research questions it identifies, regardless of whether it’s a standalone literature review or part of a larger research project. 

LITERATURE REVIEW WITHIN A LARGER RESEARCH PROJECT

In contrast, the goal of a literature review within a larger research project is to establish what others have said about your research topic and identify gaps or controversies in the literature, which you will then try to fill with your own research (at least in part!). In doing so, your literature review will help you contextualize your research and establish the need for it within the discourse surrounding your topic. While this kind of literature review isn’t going to answer your research question either, it will provide a foundation for the rest of your research paper or project, where you engage with your research question more fully. 

While each type of literature review serves a slightly different purpose, bear in mind that they will both: 

1. Provide an overview of the existing discourse or research surrounding a topic.

2. Avoid answering a research question or providing personal opinions on a research question. 

Why do you need a literature review? 

You might be wondering why you should bother to take the time to summarize what other people have said about your topic. A literature review essentially:

• Allows the researcher (YOU!) to familiarize themselves with a given field

• Provides the audience with a basic overview of a topic so that they can understand the relevant context; basically, it gets everybody up to speed on the status of the research question or topic. 

• Can inform what steps you should take moving forward in the research process in the context of a larger research paper—presenting the current thoughts and findings on the subject clarifies what research has already been conducted, which prevents you from researching something that’s already been done.

• Illuminates gaps in research, directing what further research needs to take place to develop a deeper understanding of a topic. 

7 Steps to a Great Literature Review 

Now that you have a sense of what a literature review is and the role it plays in the research process, we’re going to walk you through the process of creating a literature review step-by-step. This process applies to both standalone literature reviews and literature reviews within the context of a larger research project. However, there are a couple of spots where we’ve noted differences between the two types of literature reviews, so keep an eye open for those. 

1. Choose Your Topic

Ok, yes this is a pre-literature review activity but it is an essential first step toward developing a strong and meaningful literature review. If you don’t have a clear, narrow topic, it will be very challenging to choose relevant literature, and you will likely have an unfocused, and ultimately unhelpful, literature review. Check out this guide on writing a research paper for guidance on choosing an appropriate research topic. 

2. Read Broadly

Once you know what your topic is, start reading what has already been written on the topic. Try conducting a broad search for peer-reviewed academic texts through your library’s academic databases or through Google Scholar. We strongly recommend connecting with a research librarian in a university library, if you can, for added support and expert perspective (librarians are magical!). As you start reading, consider these guiding questions:

• What are the significant perspectives or schools of thought on this topic? 

• Are there core disagreements or controversies in the research? 

• Are there key figures or experts whose work should be included in my literature review? 

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Pro tip: Once you’ve found a few good articles, you can use a “snowball” approach and see who the authors of the initial article cited and then read those articles. Remember that the goal is to understand what others have said about your topic! If you need help determining the credibility of a source (or understanding the nuance of Google Scholar), check out our guide on “Evaluating Sources.” 

Narrow Your Topic

Once you have a sense of the broader landscape of thought on your topic, you might want to revisit your chosen topic and consider whether it can be narrowed or refined. Are your questions, as you initially framed them, what you’re really interested in? Or as you’ve learned more about the topic, has your interest shifted?  

Choose Your Sources and Develop an Annotated Bibliography

Once you’ve narrowed your topic, you can begin to choose your sources and develop an annotated bibliography. Beyond keeping your sources organized, an annotated bibliography will help you do two things: 

• It’ll help you begin to identify themes and arguments on your topic, and 

• It will give you content to pull from when developing your literature review. 

First, determine if a source is relevant to your topic. Focus on the sources that are oriented around the types of questions you are interested in exploring. Remember to note what searches you did and how you chose what sources to use. In some cases, you may need to note this information in the body of your literature review (see a great example here!). Recording this information can also make it easier for you to retrace your steps should you need to locate additional sources. Check out this guide on Writing From Sources for guidance on source integration and citations.

As you select your sources, begin writing an annotated bibliography to keep track of the information you are finding. Simply put, an annotated bibliography is a list of academic sources with an annotation (i.e. a paragraph or two) that discusses the content of that source. Check out examples of annotated bibliography entries here. In some cases, your instructor might require you to write an annotated bibliography in preparation for your literature review. But even if it isn't required, an annotated bibliography is still a worthwhile exercise that will help you organize your information and citations, essentially providing you with the notes to write your literature review. We recommend having each paragraph of the annotated bibliography address how the source you’re reading engages your research topic. However, if your instructor is requiring you to write an annotated bibliography, be sure to defer to their instructions as they might wish for you to include additional content evaluating or critiquing your sources. 

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Pro Tip: Not sure when you’re done gathering sources? Ask yourself: Are your sources all high quality? Are your sources up to date, meaning they represent the most recent contributions on your topic? Are they varied? If the answer to all of these questions is yes, you’re probably good to go! 

Group Your Sources

At this point, you will have collected the necessary sources and likely have a good sense of what each source discusses. Now, you need to figure out how those sources relate to one another. This step will allow you to deepen your understanding of the core ideas on your topic, illuminate where the gaps might lie, and determine the clearest way to present this information to your reader. When determining how to group your sources, ask yourself: 

Are there overlapping arguments in the papers you’re reading? 

Or overlaps in how researchers have approached these questions (often referred to as “methodology”)? 

In grouping the papers, you may also want to think about what arguments, approaches, and methodologies are not addressed. 

Create an Outline

Having completed the previous two steps, you’ve basically done all of the mental labor necessary to write a great literature review. Creating an outline will help you organize the information you’ve gathered in preparation for drafting. The outline should begin with your introduction and end with your conclusion, though you might just bullet any major points you want to communicate rather than writing these sections in full (for more information about what goes into an introduction and conclusion for a literature review, check out Step 7). The “body paragraphs” of your literature review should include the core arguments that you found in the literature and can be organized in a few different ways: 

• chronologically based on when the papers were published or when the arguments were relevant 

• grouped by themes (check out Step 5!) 

• according to what research methods the authors used 

Which approach you use will vary on a case-by-case basis. In organizing an outline, you should reflect on what structure will most clearly communicate the key ideas, themes, etc. in your research, as well as norms within your discipline. At the end of your body paragraphs, you should also discuss controversies and gaps in the existing literature that suggest new directions for future research. 

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Pro tip: If you’re writing a literature review within the context of a larger research project, it can be helpful to think about your overall research paper as engaging with these controversies or filling gaps in the literature, and the literature review as establishing the fact that the thing you are researching is, in fact, addressing a gap or controversy that exists. In other words, a literature review can help set up the importance or utility of your research. 

Write the literature review

At this point, you have all of the elements to start writing the first draft of your literature review, fleshing out the outline into an essay. Whether your literature review is a standalone project or a component of a larger paper or document, you can approach it as a mini-essay within itself, with an introduction, body paragraphs, and a conclusion. Use your outline extensively here: ideally, you are just filling in your outline with fuller sentences and adding in transitions. 

We actually recommend drafting your body paragraphs first—it will be much easier to introduce your ideas once you’ve drafted them! Check out our guides on Avoiding Plagiarism and Writing from Sources for guidance on source integration and citations!

Once you have drafted your “body paragraphs,” you can turn to your conclusion, which should summarize the high-level findings from your literature review and note opportunities for further research. In the case of a literature review within a broader research project, you can also include your research question and how it connects with or builds upon your sources. 

Once you’ve written the conclusion, you can circle back to writing the introduction for your literature review. In the introduction of the literature review within a broader essay, introduce (or re-introduce) your research question and provide some context for how you approached your research for the literature review (What kind of terms did you search for? What major themes arose?). If you’re writing a standalone literature review, you’ll want to include a purpose statement in your introduction, which will establish the topic, scope, and goals of your literature review.

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Pro tip: Literature reviews will vary quite significantly in length. For a shorter essay with a very specific research question, it may be just a few paragraphs or pages long, but for a thesis or longer essay, the literature review may be an entire chapter. 

Editing a Literature Review 

Editing a literature review is similar to editing any other essay. We suggest reading through your essay a few times, focusing on different elements during each pass (more on that in a moment). If you want a more comprehensive overview of editing strategies, check out this guide on How to edit a college essay. 

In the first pass of editing, focus on revising the bigger ideas of your literature review. Take into consideration the following questions:

1. Is the topic of the literature review clear?

2. Is your content focused on the topic or research question at hand?

3. Does your literature review follow a clear, consistent organizational pattern (e.g. chronological, thematic, etc.)?

In the next pass of editing, focus on formatting and structure:

1. Check for spelling, punctuation, and grammar. Grammarly is a free resource you can use. 

2. Make sure your in-text citations are clear and cited properly.

If you can have another person peer-edit your review, in particular see if they can (1) clearly identify the objective of your literature review and (2) identify the primary views around the subject or question you have chosen to evaluate. (Other feedback can also be useful, but these two things are essential.)

In addition to having somebody read your literature review, you can also read your essay out loud. Reading your own writing out loud often illuminates its coherency and flow, and makes it easier to find typos or grammatical issues. 

Tools for Creating a Literature Review 

While every researcher has their own preference for how to track sources and organize ideas, below you will find some incredible resources and tools for making the process of writing your literature review as easy as possible: 

1. Google Scholar. Google Scholar is a Google search engine that focuses on academic sources. Most of the time it shares academic books and peer-reviewed journal articles, although sometimes it can also link to PDFs and other results that are not peer-reviewed (so be careful and don’t make assumptions/go on autopilot). Check out our guide on evaluating sources for step-by-step guidance on identifying good sources for your academic research.

2. Your school’s library. Many articles or books that you find on Google Scholar will be behind paywalls, but don’t get too discouraged! If you are affiliated with a university, you should have access to most of the articles and books you need through your library system. Check out your school library’s website to search for specific articles that you’ve found through Google Scholar or log in to the journal’s website with your school login information. Remember to reach out to a librarian if there is a source you can’t access—they may be able to get it for you through another school or by other means! 

3. Citation Management Software. Citation management software can help you track your sources and generate formatted citations. There are tons of citation management software tools out there. Zotero is widely used citation management software (and is the one that I (Francesca) use for my own research!). Although it’s not necessarily better than any of the others, I like to use it because it is free and super easy to use. The Zotero Chrome extension will also save you tons of time by allowing you to track sources right from the web page, easing the process of developing your bibliography. You can even take notes within Zotero for your annotated bibliography! 

4. A Working Annotated Bibliography. When I’m working on a research paper, I create a document where I simply copy and paste quotes from the literature into a Google Doc. This allows me to keep track of important information from the literature and from primary sources, while also providing an easily searchable format where I can find this information when drafting a literature review (and the rest of an essay!). Collecting your notes in Google Docs or in Word is an easy and simple way to do this, but citation management software extensions or applications also often have places where you can add notes. As you read through your sources in preparation for your literature review, you can pull direct quotes into a working document to save for future reference. Just be sure to properly cite direct quotes by including the source name and page number (at the bare minimum). This will make it easy to cite your sources correctly when the time comes to draft your literature review. Check out our guide on Writing from Sources for more information on citing sources! 

Conclusion

A literature review is a big and incredibly important undertaking, but you should now have the tools to make meaningful contributions to your field and to become a more engaged and effective researcher by developing a deeper understanding of what others have said on your topic. 

Special thanks to Francesca Freeman and Spencer Ganus for writing this post and contributing to other College Writing Center resources

Francesca Freeman (she/ her) loves working with students to help them share their stories. She specializes in working with international students who need full scholarships, and has worked with students from across the world, including from Syria, Ukraine, Bangladesh, Pakistan, and Sudan. Francesca is also pursuing her doctorate in Peace Studies and History. She is also the founder of DAWNetwork, a college-access mentorship program for Syrian girls. She loves her dog Buster, hour long students with sessions that go on way more than an hour, College Essay Guy, and chocolate. 

Top Values: Communication | Meaningful Work | Competence