The Literature Review, Part 1: What to Include

This blog is about what to include in your literature review. In short, it is a snapshot of the current state of research on your topic, including research on study variables and major concepts or theories of your study. It also helps to support your research problem and rationalize why your study is necessary by identifying gaps in the literature and the methodological weaknesses of previous studies. Below is what to include in your literature review.</p>

Include recent, peer-reviewed studies and articles. These are really the meat of any literature review and what your literature review should primarily contain. Include historical or informational material in the Introduction’s background section or the setup section.

Articles should ideally be recent within five years of the time you anticipate completing your dissertation. This five-year window, however, is not always required. Some schools allow articles to be recent within five to seven years, and some schools have no requirements. However, the intention of the literature review is to give readers a sense of the current state of research on your topic. ot=”1″>To write an accurate and effective literature review, researchers should use recent sources.

Additionally, most, if not all, material in your literature review should be peer reviewed. Peer-reviewed means several experts in the field have evaluated the article and deemed it worthy of publication. To determine whether a journal has peer-reviewed an article, check Ulrich’s Guide to Periodicals, available through most university libraries. Professors and researchers, who publish their work and understand the field’s scholarship and scholarly publishing, usually serve as these experts. To determine whether a journal has peer-reviewed an article, check Ulrich’s Guide to Periodicals, available through most university libraries.</span></span&gt;&lt;/span&amp;gt;&lt;/span&gt;</p&gt;</p>

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p>>In “The Literature Review, Part 2,” we will discuss what not to include in the literature review.&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;lt;/p>