In almost every scientific discipline, literature reviews are in high demand. The ever-increasing output of scientific papers has necessitated their assistance. When you’re beginning from scratch, reviewing the literature may be a considerable undertaking. That is why academics who have spent their careers focusing on a particular study topic are ideal candidates to examine the literature on that topic.

Seven simple strategies for writing a flawless literature review

1. Decide on a topic and target audience

There are so many topics in modern science that you might spend a lifetime attending conferences and reading the literature, simply deciding what to cover. On the one hand, if you wait several years to make your decision, several other individuals may have had the same thought. On the other hand, only a well-thought-out topic is likely to result in a fantastic literature review.

At the very least, the subject should be:

• you find intriguing (ideally, you should have come across a series of recent papers related to your line of work that calls for a critical summary)
• A significant feature of the area (so that there will be enough information to write the review and many readers will be interested in it), and
• A well-stated problem (otherwise, you could potentially include thousands of publications, which would make the review unhelpful).

Papers that provide lists of significant research issues to be solved may inspire prospective reviews.

It would help if you also chose a target audience in addition to your theme. The topic will immediately identify an audience in many situations, but the same issue may also be of interest to areas adjacent to it.

2. Conduct a literature search and a re-search

Begin by reviewing the literature and downloading relevant articles after you’ve decided on your topic and audience. 

Here are five pieces of advice:

• Maintains a list of the search terms you employ.
• Maintain a list of documents whose puffs you can’t access right away, and utilize a paper management system to keep track of them.
• Establish some criteria for excluding irrelevant articles early on in the process.
• Look for past evaluations as well as research articles in the field you want to review.

There’s a good possibility that someone has previously written a literature review on the topic you’re interested in, if not on it specifically, then on something similar. If there have already been a couple or many evaluations of the literature on your topic, my recommendation is to keep going with your review.

3. Take Notes as You Read

If you read the papers first and then start writing the review, you’ll need an excellent memory to remember who wrote what and what your impressions and associations were while reading each one. While reading, you can start jotting down interesting facts, ideas for organizing the review, and ideas for what to write.

If you are tentatively transcribing straight from the literature, be sure to use quote marks while taking notes. It’s best to reformulate such quotes in the final copy using your own words. To avoid misattributions, it is critical to be cautious while noting references at this point.

 4. Decide what kind of review you want to write

You’ll have a general sense of the quantity of content accessible for the review after taking notes while reading the literature. This is a perfect moment to consider if you want to do a mini- or full review. Some journals are currently promoting brief studies concentrating on the previous few years, with a word count and citation constraint.

• A mini-review does not have to be a minor one: It may pique the interest of busy readers.

• A thorough review will have the benefit of being able to explore the nuances of a specific scientific breakthrough in more depth. Still, it may be relegated to the pile of essential publications “to be read” by readers with limited time to devote to extensive monographs.

• Mini-reviews and complete reviews are most likely on a continuum.

• The similar argument may be made about descriptive vs. integrative reviews. Integrative reviews try to uncover common ideas and concepts from the examined material, whereas descriptive studies focus on each evaluated work’s methodology, conclusions, and interpretation.

• There is a similar contrast between narrative and systematic reviews: whereas narrative reviews are qualitative, systematic reviews aim to test a hypothesis based on published data obtained using a specified process to minimize bias.

• Meta-analyses are created when systematic reviews analyze quantitative data quantitatively. The decision between different sorts of thoughts will have to be taken on a case-by-case basis, taking into account the nature of the content discovered and the preferences of the target publication.

 5. Keep the review focused, but make it attractive to a broad audience

Whether you’re writing a mini-review or a comprehensive review, it’s a good idea to keep it focused. Included content merely for the sake of having it can easily result in evaluations that try to accomplish too much at once. For multidisciplinary reviews, when the goal is to bridge the gap across areas, the requirement to keep a review focused might be a difficulty.

While concentration is a crucial component of a good review, it must be balanced with the need to make the study accessible to a broad audience. This square can be ringed by exploring the topic’s wider ramifications for other disciplines.

“When you finally find a few valid publications, take a look at their bibliographies to discover other relevant sources as well.” says Ross, a Literature Review expert offering best assignment help.

6. Be Consistent and Critical

A competent review summarises the literature and critically evaluates it, finds methodological flaws, and identifies research gaps. A reader should have a general notion of: after reading a review of the literature:

• The most significant achievements in the field under consideration,
• The critical points of contention, and
• The most important research questions

On all of these fronts, completing a successful review is difficult. A solution might be to enlist the help of a group of complementary co-authors. Some individuals thrive at charting what has been accomplished, while others excel at spotting black clouds on the horizon. Others, on the other hand, have a talent for forecasting where solutions will come from.

7. Come up with a logical structure

It is current, organized, well written, focused, and critical, and it is well worth the reader’s attention. It also needs a solid framework. The traditional organization of research articles into introduction, methodology, findings, and discussion does not work or is only used infrequently with reviews. In the case of studies, however, a general introduction to the background and, at the conclusion, a recapitulation of the key issues addressed and take-home messages make sense. There is a trend in systematic reviews to provide details about how the literature was searched.

Conclusion:

Finding and assessing relevant content and synthesizing information from numerous sources requires the capacity to juggle several activities, from critical thinking to paraphrasing, evaluating, and citation abilities.

Given that most research students begin their study by generating an overview of what has already been done on their research topic, several graduate institutions are increasingly offering courses in evaluating the literature. You can relieve yourself off the stress with the assistance of a professional Literature Review Assignment Help service provider offering help.