Literature Review as a Research Methodology: An Overview and Guidelines

Are you also looking forward to publishing your own review but confused about the process? A literature review is a part of your research paper or thesis. Its purpose is to review and discuss the already published material and what it lacks. It helps the readers compare what is being said about your topic with other resources, thereby compiling the gaps that are present in the research.

A literature review in research helps one in understanding the current knowledge of your research topic and how it fits into your research by maybe providing a solution to it. It can be done by anyone who desires to write a research paper for a PhD thesis. It is present in both with a difference of length. The literature review is bigger in PhD but only a few lines while one is writing about it in their research paper.

This article is a guide for your literature review, explaining the different key terms used frequently in the research paper. Along with it, we will also provide you with the reasons and how to get it published.

Table of Content

What is a Literature Review?

A literature review is usually useful in a PhD or a research paper. It helps in identifying how society perceives your suggested topic in the research and how your research fits into the worldly knowledge by sometimes providing one with the solutions.

An academic research review helps you demonstrate your research skills while showcasing your expertise in the given topic. With a literature review, a reader becomes interested in the prevalent theories and studies, evaluations, and comparisons while learning about the gaps in the literature that might exist.

Why should you write a Literature Review?

A researcher is given the task of reviewing the previous papers relating to the topic, thus providing various gaps and inadequacies that exist between the previous and the suggested papers. Written below are some of the reasons why one should write a literature review:

1. Finding the Gaps: While writing on a topic, sometimes there are gaps in the research work. Maybe no papers were published after a certain time, which helps an individual in gathering and presenting the information about the years left out in their own research paper.

2. Theoretical Framework: A Literature review helps in creating a theoretical framework which presents the research paper in an easily understood way. One can understand the theories and concepts easily when a review is present in the paper.

3. Escaping Duplication: A researcher can avoid duplicating any other research paper. With ample research on the selected topic, a researcher already knows what is present to us via other sources and doesn’t waste time rewriting it again.

4. Contextualization of Research Problems: Researchers, with the help of literature review, understand the gap and the background of the previous research. This helps them in strengthening their own research paper

Process of Conducting a Literature Review

While one is conducting a literature review, it is almost impossible to not seek any information and references from other research papers. Below is a brief process explaining how to write one:

1. Defining your Topic: The first step is to understand what your topic is about. It should be guided by the central question of your paper.

2. Scope and Database: The next step is to decide how many studies one needs to look at. In addition to that, it also asks an individual to decide how many years it should cover. Along with that, one needs to figure out what research tools one should refer to and how to find the resources.

3. Researching and Evaluating: Once you have collected other research papers. You can refer to the abstracts to understand the theories used. In this way, you can also avoid topics that have already been covered. One can use bibliographies and references to further trace similar research papers.

4. Composing your Own Review: Once you have analyzed the other papers, you can now move forward to composing your own literature review, mentioning the gaps that were found in the other research papers.

Assessing the Quality of a Literature Review

A literature review is a critical analysis of an existing topic which helps find gaps and findings in the same field. It helps you determine your research question and justify your methodology. However, not all reviews are helpful and true to the findings. Therefore, below are some of the ways to assess the quality:

1. Clear Objective: A good literature review should have a clear objective. It should cover the most significant source of literature on the topic, using different sources, including books, journals, reports, and much more, using different approaches like empirical, historical, etc.

2. Analysis: It should be analyzed properly and shouldn’t just compile a summary. It should present the artifacts, including the gaps, trends, and patterns that other research papers lack.

3. Style and Language: A researcher should make sure that it aligns with the guidelines, like the formatting of the text in APA, Chicago, MLA, or other writing styles. It should be devoid of informal language, jargon, or slang. One should also notice the way it is paraphrased and presented with no plagiarism or formal language.

4. Relevance and Reliability: The sources used in a literature review should directly be related to the topic. There should be relevance and reliability. Reliability means the sources should be credible and trustworthy.

How to get your Literature Review Published

Publishing your own review can look intimidating, especially when it is a standalone article and requires the right journal. Mentioned below is a step-by-step procedure to get it published easily:

1. Kind of Review: Choose what kind of review you are writing. This will also help in letting you know what kind of journals will accept your writing. The different types of literature review include narrative, systematic, scoping, and integrative reviews.

2. Make it Valuable: It is your duty to make sure that your review contains the gaps, trends, and inconsistencies. It should not just be a summary of existing research.

3. Follow Structure: Make sure that your review includes an abstract, introduction, methodology, chronological review, critical analysis, gaps and future research, conclusion, and last references.

4. Choosing a Journal: To choose what kind of journal, you need to make sure what kind of review you are writing.

5. Journal Guidelines: Once you have decided on the journal, adhere to its guidelines. And submit your review while peers review it. Once it is reviewed and accepted. You can publish your literature review in journals.

What is Methodology?

Defining methodology, one can say that it refers to techniques and procedures which are used to analyze your research work. Research methodology includes research design, collection of data, data analysis methods, and much more. Methodology in research helps a researcher by providing a framework and guidelines to help in defining research questions, hypotheses, and objectives.

Below is a methodology example of “A Study on Employee Well-Being and Mental Health at Business Process Services” written by Srija T.S. and Prof. D. Chitra. It is published under the International Journal of Research Publication and Reviews.

“The research design adopted in this study is Descriptive Research. Descriptive research is a search method describing the characteristics of the population or phenomenon studied. The primary data collection techniques used in this study is QUESTIONNAIRE METHOD. In this study, the major questionnaire technique used is Close Ended Questions. The sampling method used in this study is PROBABILITY SAMPLING. Probability sampling is a sampling technique where a researcher selects a few criteria and chooses members of a population randomly. The sampling technique used in this study is Simple Random Sampling. The sample size for this study is determined using KREJCIE AND MORGON TABLE. The sample size for this study is 152, which is derived from the total number of employees in the organization, i.e., population(N) of 250.The collected data has been analyzed by the following statistical tool: Mann-Whitney U Test, Kruskal Wallis H Test, Correlation, Chi – square.”

Summary and conclusion

To summarize, a literature review is an integral part of a research paper and even as a standalone, it can help in discovering the gaps in the research. Along with that, it helps the researchers who are looking for adequate work regarding their own topic.

It alone is a great tool, but even in any other work, it plays an equally important role. It helps shape research by providing more clarity with the selected topic.

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