Information Technology Reference
In-Depth Information
Developing a Literature Review
A literature review is a structured analysis of a body of literature, and may cover
work from several separate areas of research. This review is not simply a list of
these papers. Rather, the papers should be grouped by topic, and critically discussed
in a way that allows the reader to understand their contribution to the field, their
limitations, and the questions that they leave open.
The task of writing a literature review for a paper can be challenging, and for a
thesis can be more demanding than any other single activity. It therefore makes good
sense to develop the review progressively.
Begin a rough literature review as soon as you start reading, and, when you read a
paper that you think will need to be discussed, add it in. (You should also capture the
bibliographic data as you go, and also keep a copy of every paper you read.) Initially,
the literature review will be sketchy and unstructured, but as you add papers you can
group them by topic and contribution, and add notes on each paper and how they
relate to each other. Briefly summarize each paper's contribution and the evidence
used to support the claims, and also note any shortcomings or features that are of
interest. You might also want to note, for your own reference, how the work might
have been done better: for example, are there obvious experiments that should have
been tried, or plausible counter-arguments to the claims? Keep in mind that your
understanding of other work helps examiners to judge your abilities as a researcher.
There is no need for these drafts of your literature review to be polished—in all
likelihood, no-one but you will ever read these early versions—so think of the writing
as a letter to your future self. That is, at this stage you should focus on organization
and content rather than on presentation. The rewriting, editing, and polishing that
produces the final literature review will probably be done in a focused way only once
your research is complete.
As your review proceeds, it will become easier to decide whether to include each
of the papers you read. Many obvious factors will guide your decisions: how close
some other work is to yours, or how influential it has been. Some factors may be more
subtle. For example, you may find a survey paper, or a recent paper with a thorough
literature review of its own, that means that many of the older papers do not need to be
discussed; some papers that initially seemed important might on reflection seem less
relevant, and can be set aside or noted in passing; while a paper that at first seemed
too theoretical or abstract may on further investigation be revealed as foundational.
I suggest that in early drafts you be as inclusive as possible. When you do remove
discussion of a paper, put the discussion in another file (or comment it out) rather
than deleting it altogether, as this text is your record of having read the paper.
