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Chapter 5: The Literature Review
5.3 Acceptable sources for literature reviews
Following are a few acceptable sources for literature reviews, listed in order from what will be considered most acceptable to less acceptable sources for your literature review assignments:
- Peer reviewed journal articles.
- Edited academic books.
- Articles in professional journals.
- Statistical data from government websites.
- Website material from professional associations (use sparingly and carefully). The following sections will explain and provide examples of these various sources.
Peer reviewed journal articles (papers)
A peer reviewed journal article is a paper that has been submitted to a scholarly journal, accepted, and published. Peer review journal papers go through a rigorous, blind review process of peer review. What this means is that two to three experts in the area of research featured in the paper have reviewed and accepted the paper for publication. The names of the author(s) who are seeking to publish the research have been removed (blind review), so as to minimize any bias towards the authors of the research (albeit, sometimes a savvy reviewer can discern who has done the research based upon previous publications, etc.). This blind review process can be long (often 12 to 18 months) and may involve many back and forth edits on the behalf of the researchers, as they work to address the edits and concerns of the peers who reviewed their paper. Often, reviewers will reject the paper for a variety of reasons, such as unclear or questionable methods, lack of contribution to the field, etc. Because peer reviewed journal articles have gone through a rigorous process of review, they are considered to be the premier source for research. Peer reviewed journal articles should serve as the foundation for your literature review.
The following link will provide more information on peer reviewed journal articles. Make sure you watch the little video on the upper left-hand side of your screen, in addition to reading the material at the following website: http://guides.lib.jjay.cuny.edu/c.php?g=288333&p=1922599
Edited academic books
An edited academic book is a collection of scholarly scientific papers written by different authors. The works are original papers, not published elsewhere (“Edited volume,” 2018). The papers within the text also go through a process of review; however, the review is often not a blind review because the authors have been invited to contribute to the book. Consequently, edited academic books are fine to use for your literature review, but you also want to ensure that your literature review contains mostly peer reviewed journal papers.
Articles in professional journals
Articles from professional journals should be used with caution for your literature review. This is because articles in trade journals are not usually peer reviewed, even though they may appear to be. A good way to find out is to read the “About Us” section of the professional journal, which should state whether or not the papers are peer reviewed. You can also find out by Googling the name of the journal and adding “peer reviewed” to the search.
Statistical data from governmental websites
Governmental websites can be excellent sources for statistical data, e.g, Statistics Canada collects and publishes data related to the economy, society, and the environment (see https://www.statcan.gc.ca/eng/start ).
Website material from professional associations
Material from other websites can also serve as a source for statistics that you may need for your literature review. Since you want to justify the value of the research that interests you, you might make use of a professional association’s website to learn how many members they have, for example. You might want to demonstrate, as part of the introduction to your literature review, why more research on the topic of PTSD in police officers is important. You could use peer reviewed journal articles to determine the prevalence of PTSD in police officers in Canada in the last ten years, and then use the Ontario Police Officers´ Association website to determine the approximate number of police officers employed in the Province of Ontario over the last ten years. This might help you estimate how many police officers could be suffering with PTSD in Ontario. That number could potentially help to justify a research grant down the road. But again, this type of website- based material should be used with caution and sparingly.
Research Methods for the Social Sciences: An Introduction by Valerie Sheppard is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License , except where otherwise noted.
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- University of La Verne
- Subject Guides
Literature Review Basics
- Literature Review Introduction
- Writing Literature Reviews
- Primary & Secondary Sources
- Tutorials & Samples
Hours: Mon-Fri 11am-8pm Call or Text: (626) 344-0295 [email protected] Landline: (909) 448-4195
What is a literature review?
A literature review is both the process and the product.
- A literature review is a descriptive, analytic summary of the existing material relating to a particular topic or area of study.
- The literature review process involves a systematic examination of prior scholarly works.
Bangert-Drowns, R. (2005). Literature review. In S. Mathison (Ed.), Encyclopedia of evaluation. (pp. 232-233). Thousand Oaks, CA: SAGE Publications, Inc.
Why review the literature?
Reference to prior literature is a defining feature of academic and research writing. Why review the literature?
- To help you understand a research topic
- To establish the importance of a topic
- To help develop your own ideas
- To make sure you are not simply replicating research that others have already successfully completed
- To demonstrate knowledge and show how your current work is situated within, builds on, or departs from earlier publications
Feak, C. B., Swales, J. M., Swales, J. M., & Feak, C. B. (2009). Telling a research story: Writing a literature review . Ann Arbor, Mich.: University of Michigan Press.
Literature Reviews: An Overview for Graduate Students by North Carolina State University Libraries
Types of Literature Reviews
- Literature Review: Lit Review Types A full list of types of reviews with definitions from Duke University Medical Center Library and Archives.
Books/Book Chapters on Literature Reviews
- Next: Writing Literature Reviews >>
- Last Updated: Feb 8, 2023 11:29 AM
- URL: https://laverne.libguides.com/litreviews
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1.2 Sources of information
Learning objectives.
- Explain how information is created and how it evolves over time
- Select appropriate sources of information for your inquiry
- Describe the strengths and limitations of each type of source
Because a literature review is a summary and analysis of the relevant publications on a topic, we first have to understand what is meant by “the literature.” In this case, “the literature” is a collection of all of the relevant written sources on a topic.
Disciplines of knowledge
When drawing boundaries around an idea, topic, or subject area, it helps to think about how and where the information for the field is produced. For this, you need to identify the disciplines of knowledge production in a subject area.
Information does not exist in the environment like some kind of raw material. It is produced by individuals working within a particular field of knowledge (or discipline ) who use specific methods for generating new information. Disciplines consume, produce, and disseminate knowledge. Looking through a university’s course catalog gives clues to disciplinary structure. Fields such as political science, biology, history, and mathematics are unique disciplines, as is social work, with its own logic for how and where new knowledge is introduced and made accessible.
You will need to become comfortable with identifying the disciplines that might contribute information to any search. When you do this, you will also learn how to decode the way how people talk about a topic within a discipline. This will be useful to you when you begin a review of the literature in your area of study.
For example, think about the disciplines that might contribute information to a topic such as the role of sports in society. Try to anticipate the type of perspective each discipline might have on the topic. Consider the following types of questions as you examine what different disciplines might contribute:
- What is important about the topic to the people in that discipline?
- What is most likely to be the focus of their study about the topic?
- What perspective would they be likely to have on the topic?
In this example, we identify two disciplines that have something to say about the role of sports in society: the human service professions of nursing and social work. What would each of these disciplines raise as key questions or issues related to that topic? A nursing researcher might study how sports affect individuals’ health and well-being, how to assess and treat sports injuries, or the physical conditioning required for athletics. A social work researcher might study how schools privilege or punish student athletes, how athletics impact social relationships and hierarchies, or the differences between boys’ and girls’ participation in organized sports. In this example, we see that a single topic can be approached from many different perspectives depending on how the disciplinary boundaries are drawn and how the topic is framed. Nevertheless, it is useful for a social worker to be aware of the nursing literature, as they could better appreciate the physical toll that sports take on athletes’ bodies and how that may interact with other issues. An interdisciplinary perspective is usually a more comprehensive perspective.
Types of sources of information
“The literature” consists of the published works that document a scholarly conversation on a specific topic within and between disciplines. In “the literature,” you will find documents that explain the background of your topic. You will also find controversies and unresolved questions that can inspire your own project. By now in your social work academic career, you’ve probably heard that you need to get “peer-reviewed journal articles.” But what are those exactly? How do they differ from news articles or encyclopedias? That is the focus of this section of the textbook—the different types of literature.
Periodicals
First, let’s discuss periodicals . Periodicals include magazines, newspapers, trade publications, and journals. While they may appear similar, particularly online, each of these periodicals has unique features designed for a specific purpose. Magazine and newspaper articles are usually written by journalists, are intended to be short and understandable for the average adult, contain color images and advertisements, and are designed as commodities sold to an audience. Magazines may contain primary or secondary literature depending on the article in question. The New Social Worker is an excellent magazine for social workers. An article that is a primary source would gather information as an event happened, like an interview with a victim of a local fire, or relate original research done by the journalists, like the Guardian newspaper’s The Counted webpage which tracks how many people were killed by police officers in the United States (The Guardian, n.d.).
Is it okay to use a magazine or newspaper as a source in your research methods class? In most social work research classes, the answer is “probably not.” There are some exceptions like the Guardian page mentioned above or breaking news about a policy or community, but most of what newspapers and magazines publish is secondary literature. Secondary sources interpret, discuss, and summarize primary sources. Often, news articles will summarize a study done in an academic journal. Your job in this course is to read the original source of the information , in this case, the academic journal article itself. Journalists are not scientists. If you have seen articles about how chocolate cures cancer or how drinking whiskey can extend your life, you should understand how journalists can exaggerate or misinterpret results. Careful scholars will critically examine the primary source, rather than relying on someone else’s summary. Many newspapers and magazines also contain opinion articles , which are even less reputable as the author will choose facts to support their viewpoint and exclude facts that contract their viewpoint. Nevertheless, newspaper and magazine articles are excellent places to start your journey into the literature, as they do not require specialized knowledge to understand and may inspire deeper inquiry.
Unlike magazines and newspapers, trade publications may take some specialized knowledge to understand. Trade publications or trade journals are periodicals directed to members of a specific profession. They often have information about industry trends and practical information for people working in the field. Because of this trade publications are somewhat more reputable than newspapers or magazines, as the authors are specialists on their field. NASW News is a good example a trade publication in social work, published by the National Association of Social Workers. Its intended audience is social work practitioners who want to know about important practice issues. They report news and trends in a field but not scholarly research. They may also provide product or service reviews, job listings, and advertisements.
So, can you use trade publications in a formal research proposal? Again, in most classes, the answer would be “probably not.” A main shortcoming trade publication is the lack of peer review. P eer review refers to a formal process in which other esteemed researchers and experts ensure your work meets the standards and expectations of the professional field. While trade publications do contain a staff of editors, the level of review is not as stringent as academic journal articles. On the other hand, if you are doing a study about practitioners, then trade publications may be quite relevant sources for your proposal. Peer review is part of the cycle of publication illustrated below and acts as a gatekeeper, ensuring that only top-quality articles are published. While peer review is far from perfect, the process provides for stricter scrutiny of scientific publications.
In summary, newspapers and other popular press publications are useful for getting general topic ideas. Trade publications are useful for practical application in a profession and may also be a good source of keywords for future searching. Scholarly journals are the conversation of the scholars who are doing research in a specific discipline and publishing their research findings.
Journal Articles
As you’ve probably heard by now, academic journal articles are considered to be the most reputable sources of information, particularly in research methods courses. Journal articles are written by scholars with the intended audience of other scholars (like you!) interested in the subject matter. The articles are often long and contain extensive references for the arguments made by the author. The journals themselves are often dedicated to a single topic, like violence or child welfare, and include articles that seek to advance the body of knowledge about their chosen topic.
Most journals are peer-reviewed or refereed, which means a panel of volunteer scholars reviews articles to decide if they should be accepted into a specific publication and make recommendations for improving them. Scholarly journals provide articles of interest to experts or researchers in a discipline. An editor or editorial board of respected scholars reviews all articles submitted to a journal. Editors and volunteer reviewers decide if the article provides a noteworthy contribution to the field and should be published. For this reason, journal articles are the main source of information for researchers and for literature reviews. You can tell whether a journal is peer reviewed by going to its website. Usually, under the “About Us” section, the website will list the editorial board or otherwise note its procedures for peer review. If a journal does not provide such information, you may have found a “predatory journal.” These journals will publish any article—no matter how bad it is—as long as the author pays them. Not all journals are created equal!
A kind of peer review also occurs after publication. Scientists regularly read articles and use them to inform their research. A seminal article is “a classic work of research literature that is more than 5 years old and is marked by its uniqueness and contribution to professional knowledge” (Houser, 2018, p. 112). Basically, it is a really important article. Seminal articles are cited a lot in the literature. You can see how many authors have cited an article using Google Scholar’s citation count feature when you search for the article. Generally speaking, articles that have been cited more often are considered more reputable. There is nothing wrong with citing an article with a low citation count, but it is an indication that not many other scholars have found the source to be useful or important.
Journal articles fall into a few different categories. Empirical articles report the results of a quantitative or qualitative data analysis conducted by the author. Just because an article includes quantitative or qualitative results does not mean it is an empirical journal article. Since most articles contain a literature review with empirical findings, you need to make sure the findings reported in the study are from the author’s own analysis. Fortunately, empirical articles follow a similar structure—introduction, method, results, and discussion sections appear in that order. While the exact headings may differ slightly from publication to publication and other sections like conclusions, implications, or limitations may appear, this general structure applies to nearly all empirical journal articles.
Theoretical articles , by contrast, do not follow a set structure. They follow whatever format the author finds most useful to organize their information. Theoretical articles discuss a theory, conceptual model, or framework for understanding a problem. They may delve into philosophy or values, as well. Theoretical articles help you understand how to think about a topic and may help you make sense of the results of empirical studies. Practical articles describe “how things are done” (Wallace & Wray, 2016, p. 20). They are usually shorter than other types of articles and are intended to inform practitioners of a discipline on current issues. They may also provide a reflection on a “hot topic” in the practice domain, a complex client situation, or an issue that may affect the profession as a whole.
No one type of article is better than the other, as each serves a different purpose. Seminal articles relevant to your topic area are important to read because of their influence on the field. Theoretical articles will help you understand the social theory behind your topic. Empirical articles should test those theories quantitatively or create those theories qualitatively, a process we will discuss in greater detail later in this book. Practical articles will help you understand a practitioner’s perspective, though these are less useful when writing a literature review as they only present a single person’s opinions on a topic.
Other sources of information
As mentioned previously, newspaper and magazine articles are good places to start your search (though they should not be the end of your search!). Another source students go to almost immediately is Wikipedia. Wikipedia is a marvel of human knowledge. It is a digital encyclopedia to which anyone can contribute. The entries for each Wikipedia article are overseen by skilled and specialized editors who volunteer their time and knowledge to making sure their articles are correct and up to date. Wikipedia is an example of a tertiary source. We reviewed primary and secondary sources in the previous section. Tertiary sources synthesize or distill primary and secondary sources. Examples of tertiary sources include encyclopedias, directories, dictionaries, and textbooks like this one. Tertiary sources are an excellent place to start (but are not a good place to end your search). A student might consult Wikipedia or the Encyclopedia of Social Work to get a general idea of the topic.
The difference between secondary and tertiary sources is not exact, and as we’ve discussed, using one or both at the beginning of a project is a good idea. As your study of the topic progresses, you will naturally have to transition away from secondary and tertiary sources and towards primary sources. We’ve already talked about one particular kind of primary source—the academic journal article. We will spend more time on this primary source than any other in this textbook. However, it is important to understand how other types of sources can be used as well.
Books contain important scholarly information. They are particularly helpful for theoretical, philosophical, and historical inquiry. You can use books to learn definitions, key concepts, and keywords you can use to find additional sources. They will help you understand the scope and foundations of a topic and how it has changed over time. Some books contain chapters that look like academic journal articles. These are called edited volumes , and they contain articles that may not have made it into academic journals or seminal articles that are republished in the book. Edited volumes are considered less reputable than journal articles, as they do not have as strong of a peer review process. However, papers in social science journals will often include references to books and edited volumes.
Conference proceedings
Conferences are a great source of information. At conferences such as the Council on Social Work Education’s Annual Program Meeting or your state’s NASW conference, researchers present papers on their most recent research and obtain feedback from the audience. The papers presented at conferences are sometimes published in a volume called a conference proceeding. Conference proceedings highlight current discussion in a discipline and can lead you to scholars who are interested in specific research areas. A word about conference papers: several factors contribute to making these documents difficult to find. It is not unusual that papers delivered at professional conferences are not published in print or electronic form, although an abstract may be available. In these cases, the full paper may only be available from the author or authors. The most important thing to remember is that if you have any difficulty finding a conference proceeding or paper, ask a librarian for assistance.
Gray literature
Another source of information is the gray literature , which is research and information released by non-commercial publishers, such as government agencies, policy organizations, and think-tanks. The main shortcoming of gray literature is the lack of peer review that is found in academic journal articles, though many gray literature sources are of good quality and can be good sources of data to describe a social problem. If you have already taken a policy class, perhaps you’ve come across the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities . CBPP is a think tank or a group of scholars that conduct research and perform advocacy on social issues. Similarly, students often find the Centers for Disease Control website helpful for understanding the prevalence of social problems like mental illness and child abuse. Think tanks and policy organizations often have a specific viewpoint they support. There are conservative, liberal, and libertarian think tanks, for example. Policy organizations may be funded by private businesses to push a given message to the public.
Government data
Government agencies are generally more objective, though they may be less critical of government programs than other sources might be. Some examples of excellent government sources are the U.S. Census Bureau’s American FactFinder and data from the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration, or SAMHSA .
Dissertations
Dissertations and theses can be rich sources of information and have extensive reference lists to scan for resources. They are considered gray literature because they are not peer reviewed. The accuracy and validity of the paper itself may depend on the school that awarded the doctoral or master’s degree to the author. If you come across a dissertation that is relevant, it is a good idea to read the literature review and plumb the sources the author uses in your literature search. However, the data analysis from these sources is considered less reputable as it has not passed through peer review yet. Consider searching for journal articles by the author to see if any of the results passed peer review.
The final source of information we must talk about is webpages. Matthew DeCarlo’s graduate research focused on substance abuse and drugs, and he was fond of reading Drug War Rant , a blog about drug policy. It provided him with breaking news about drug policy and editorial opinion about the drug war. He wouldn’t cite the blog in a research proposal, but it was an excellent source of information that warranted further investigation. Web pages will also help you locate professional organizations and human service agencies that address your problem. Looking at their social media feeds, reports, publications, or “news” sections on an organization’s web page can clue you into important topics to study. Because anyone can begin their own web page, they are usually not considered scholarly sources to use in formal writing, but they are still useful when you are first learning about a topic. Additionally, many advocacy web pages will provide references for the facts they site, providing you with the primary source of the information.
Evaluating other sources
As you think about each source, remember:
All information sources are not created equal. Sources can vary greatly in terms of how carefully they are researched, written, edited, and reviewed for accuracy. Common sense will help you identify obviously questionable sources, such as tabloids that feature tales of alien abductions, or personal websites with glaring typos. Sometimes, however, a source’s reliability—or lack of it—is not so obvious…You will consider criteria such as the type of source, its intended purpose and audience, the author’s (or authors’) qualifications, the publication’s reputation, any indications of bias or hidden agendas, how current the source is, and the overall quality of the writing, thinking, and design. (Writing for Success, 2015, p. 448).
While each of these sources is an important part of how we learn about a topic, your research should focus on finding academic journal articles about your topic. These are the primary sources of the research world. While it may be acceptable and necessary to use other primary sources—like books, government reports, or an investigative article by a newspaper or magazine—academic journal articles are preferred. Finding these journal articles is the topic of the next section.
Key Takeaways
- Social work involves reading research from a variety of disciplines.
- While secondary and tertiary sources are okay to start with, primary sources provide the most accurate and authoritative information about a topic.
- Peer-reviewed journal articles are considered the best source of information for literature reviews, though other sources are often used.
- Peer review is the process by which other scholars evaluate the merits of an article before publication.
- Social work research requires critical evaluation of each source in a literature review
- Empirical articles- apply theory to a behavior and reports the results of a quantitative or qualitative data analysis conducted by the author
- Gray literature- research and information released by non-commercial publishers, such as government agencies, policy organizations, and think-tanks
- Peer review- a formal process in which other esteemed researchers and experts ensure your work meets the standards and expectations of the professional field
- Practical articles- describe “how things are done” in practice (Wallace & Wray, 2016, p. 20)
- Primary source- published results of original research studies
- Secondary source- interpret, discuss, summarize original sources
- Seminal articles– classic work noted for its contribution to the field and high citation count
- Tertiary source- synthesize or distill primary and secondary sources, such as Wikipedia
- Theoretical articles – articles that discuss a theory, conceptual model or framework for understanding a problem
Image Attributions
Knowledge by geralt cc-0, yahoo news portal by simon cc-0, research journals by m. imran cc-0, books door entrance culture by ninocare cc-0.
Guidebook for Social Work Literature Reviews and Research Questions by Rebecca Mauldin and Matthew DeCarlo is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License , except where otherwise noted.
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Literature review sources
Sources for literature review can be divided into three categories as illustrated in table below. In your dissertation you will need to use all three categories of literature review sources:
Sources for literature review and examples
Generally, your literature review should integrate a wide range of sources such as:
- Books . Textbooks remain as the most important source to find models and theories related to the research area. Research the most respected authorities in your selected research area and find the latest editions of books authored by them. For example, in the area of marketing the most notable authors include Philip Kotler, Seth Godin, Malcolm Gladwell, Emanuel Rosen and others.
- Magazines . Industry-specific magazines are usually rich in scholarly articles and they can be effective source to learn about the latest trends and developments in the research area. Reading industry magazines can be the most enjoyable part of the literature review, assuming that your selected research area represents an area of your personal and professional interests, which should be the case anyways.
- Newspapers can be referred to as the main source of up-to-date news about the latest events related to the research area. However, the proportion of the use of newspapers in literature review is recommended to be less compared to alternative sources of secondary data such as books and magazines. This is due to the fact that newspaper articles mainly lack depth of analyses and discussions.
- Online articles . You can find online versions of all of the above sources. However, note that the levels of reliability of online articles can be highly compromised depending on the source due to the high levels of ease with which articles can be published online. Opinions offered in a wide range of online discussion blogs cannot be usually used in literature review. Similarly, dissertation assessors are not keen to appreciate references to a wide range of blogs, unless articles in these blogs are authored by respected authorities in the research area.
Your secondary data sources may comprise certain amount of grey literature as well. The term grey literature refers to type of literature produced by government, academics, business and industry in print and electronic formats, which is not controlled by commercial publishers. It is called ‘grey’ because the status of the information in grey literature is not certain. In other words, any publication that has not been peer reviewed for publication is grey literature.
The necessity to use grey literature arises when there is no enough peer reviewed publications are available for the subject of your study.
John Dudovskiy
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Chapter 2: What is a Literature Review?
Learning objectives.
At the conclusion of this chapter, you will be able to:
- Recognize how information is created and how it evolves over time.
- Identify how the information cycle impacts the reliability of the information.
- Select information sources appropriate to information need.
2.1 Overview of information
Because a literature review is a summary and analysis of the relevant publications on a topic, we first have to understand what is meant by ‘the literature’. In this case, ‘the literature’ is a collection of all of the relevant written sources on a topic. It will include both theoretical and empirical works. Both types provide scope and depth to a literature review.
2.1.1 Disciplines of knowledge
When drawing boundaries around an idea, topic, or subject area, it helps to think about how and where the information for the field is produced. For this, you need to identify the disciplines of knowledge production in a subject area.
Information does not exist in the environment like some kind of raw material. It is produced by individuals working within a particular field of knowledge who use specific methods for generating new information. Disciplines are knowledge-producing and -disseminating systems which consume, produce and disseminate knowledge. Looking through a course catalog of a post-secondary educational institution gives clues to the structure of a discipline structure. Fields such as political science, biology, history and mathematics are unique disciplines, as are education and nursing, with their own logic for how and where new knowledge is introduced and made accessible.
You will need to become comfortable with identifying the disciplines that might contribute information to any search strategy. When you do this, you will also learn how to decode the way how people talk about a topic within a discipline. This will be useful to you when you begin a review of the literature in your area of study.
For example, think about the disciplines that might contribute information to a the topic such as the role of sports in society. Try to anticipate the type of perspective each discipline might have on the topic. Consider the following types of questions as you examine what different disciplines might contribute:
- What is important about the topic to the people in that discipline?
- What is most likely to be the focus of their study about the topic?
- What perspective would they be likely to have on the topic?
In this example, we identify two disciplines that have something to say about the role of sports in society: allied health and education. What would each of these disciplines raise as key questions or issues related to that topic?
2.1.1.1 Nursing
- how sports affect individuals’ health and well-being
- assessing and treating sports injuries
- physical conditioning for athletes
2.1.1.2 Education
- how schools privilege or punish student athletes
- how young people are socialized into the ideal of team cooperation
- differences between boys’ and girls’ participation in organized sports
We see that a single topic can be approached from many different perspectives depending on how the disciplinary boundaries are drawn and how the topic is framed. This step of the research process requires you to make some decisions early on to focus the topic on a manageable and appropriate scope for the rest of the strategy. ( Hansen & Paul, 2015 ).
‘The literature’ consists of the published works that document a scholarly conversation in a field of study. You will find, in ‘the literature,’ documents that explain the background of your topic so the reader knows where you found loose ends in the established research of the field and what led you to your own project. Although your own literature review will focus on primary, peer-reviewed resources, it will begin by first grounding yourself in background subject information generally found in secondary and tertiary sources such as books and encyclopedias. Once you have that essential overview, you delve into the seminal literature of the field. As a result, while your literature review may consist of research articles tightly focused on your topic with secondary and tertiary sources used more sparingly, all three types of information (primary, secondary, tertiary) are critical to your research.
2.1.2 Definitions
- Theoretical – discusses a theory, conceptual model or framework for understanding a problem.
- Empirical – applies theory to a behavior or event and reports derived data to findings.
- Seminal – “A classic work of research literature that is more than 5 years old and is marked by its uniqueness and contribution to professional knowledge.” ( Houser, 4th ed., 2018, p. 112 ).
- Practical – “…accounts of how things are done” ( Wallace & Wray, 3rd ed., 2016, p. 20 ). Action research, in Education, refers to a wide variety of methods used to develop practical solutions. ( Great Schools Partnership, 2017 ).
- Policy – generally produced by policy-makers, such as government agencies.
- Primary – published results of original research studies .
- Secondary – interpret, discuss, summarize original sources
- Tertiary – synthesize or distill primary and secondary sources. Examples include: encyclopedias, directories, dictionaries, handbooks, guides, classification, chronology, and other fact books.
- Grey literature – research and information released by non-commercial publishers, such as government agencies, policy organizations, and think-tanks.
‘The literature’ is published in books, journal articles, conference proceedings, theses and dissertations. It can also be found in newspapers, encyclopedias, textbooks, as well as websites and reports written by government agencies and professional organizations. While these formats may contain what we define as ‘the literature’, not all of it will be appropriate for inclusion in your own literature review.
These sources are found through different tools that we will discuss later in this section. Although a discovery tool, such as a database or catalog, may link you to the ‘the literature’ not every tool is appropriate to every literature review. No single source will have all of the information resources you should consult. A comprehensive literature review should include searches in the following:
- Multiple subject and article databases
- Library and other book catalogs
- Grey literature sources
2.2 Information Cycle
To get a better idea of how the literature in a discipline develops, it’s useful to see how the information publication lifecycle works. These distinct stages show how information is created, reviewed, and distributed over time.
The following chart can be used to guide you in searching literature existing at various stages of the scholarly communication process (freely accessible sources are linked, subscription or subscribed sources are listed but not linked):
2.3 Information Types
To continue our discussion of information sources, there are two ways published information in the field can be categorized:
- Articles by the type of periodical in which an article it is published, for example, magazine, trade, or scholarly publications .
- Where the material is located in the information cycle, as in primary, secondary, or tertiary information sources .
2.3.1 Popular, Trade, or Scholarly publications
2.3.1.1 types of periodicals.
Journals, trade publications, and magazines are all periodicals, and articles from these publications they can all look similar article by article when you are searching in the databases. It is good to review the differences and think about when to use information from each type of periodical.
2.3.1.2 Magazines
A magazine is a collection of articles and images about diverse topics of popular interest and current events.
Features of magazines:
- articles are usually written by journalists
- articles are written for the average adult
- articles tend to be short
- articles rarely provides a list of reference sources at the end of the article
- lots of color images and advertisements
- the decision about what goes into the magazine is made by an editor or publisher
- magazines can have broad appeal, like Time and Newsweek , or a narrow focus, like Sports Illustrated and Mother Earth News .
Popular magazines like Psychology Today , Sports Illustrated , and Rolling Stone can be good sources for articles on recent events or pop-culture topics, while Harpers , Scientific American , and The New Republic will offer more in-depth articles on a wider range of subjects. These articles are geared towards readers who, although not experts, are knowledgeable about the issues presented.
2.3.1.3 Trade Publications
Trade publications or trade journals are periodicals directed to members of a specific profession. They often have information about industry trends and practical information for people working in the field.
Features of trade publications:
- Authors are specialists in their fields
- Focused on members of a specific industry or profession
- No peer review process
- Include photographs, illustrations, charts, and graphs, often in color
- Technical vocabulary
Trade publications are geared towards professionals in a discipline. They report news and trends in a field, but not original research. They may provide product or service reviews, job listings, and advertisements.
2.3.1.4 Scholarly, Academic, and Scientific Publications
Scholarly, academic, and scientific publications are a collections of articles written by scholars in an academic or professional field. Most journals are peer-reviewed or refereed, which means a panel of scholars reviews articles to decide if they should be accepted into a specific publication. Journal articles are the main source of information for researchers and for literature reviews.
Features of journals:
- written by scholars and subject experts
- author’ credentials and institution will be identified
- written for other scholars
- dedicated to a specific discipline that it covers in depth
- often report on original or innovative research
- long articles, often 5-15 pages or more
- articles almost always include a list of sources at the end (Works Cited, References, Sources, or Bibliography) that point back to where the information was derived
- no or very few advertisements
- published by organizations or associations to advance their specialized body of knowledge
Scholarly journals provider articles of interest to experts or researchers in a discipline. An editorial board of respected scholars (peers) reviews all articles submitted to a journal. They decide if the article provides a noteworthy contribution to the field and should be published. There are typically few little or no advertisements. Articles published in scholarly journals will include a list of references.
2.3.1.5 A word about open access journals
Increasingly, scholars are publishing findings and original research in open access journals . Open access journals are scholarly and peer-reviewed and open access publishers provide unrestricted access and unrestricted use. Open access is a means of disseminating scholarly research that breaks from the traditional subscription model of academic publishing. It is free of charge to readers and because it is online, it is available at anytime, anywhere in the world, to anyone with access to the internet. The Directory of Open Access Journals ( DOAJ ) indexes and provides access to high-quality, peer-reviewed scholarly articles.
In summary, newspapers and other popular press publications are useful for getting general topic ideas. Trade publications are useful for practical application in a profession and may also be a good source of keywords for future searching. Scholarly journals are the conversation of the scholars who are doing research in a specific discipline and publishing their research findings.
2.3.1.6 Primary, Secondary, and Tertiary Sources
Primary sources of information are those types of information that come first. Some examples of primary sources are:
- original research, like data from an experiment with plankton.
- diaries, journals, photographs
- data from the census bureau or a survey you have done
- original documents, like the constitution or a birth certificate
- newspapers are primary sources when they report current events or current opinion
- speeches, interviews, email, letters
- religious books
- personal memoirs and autobiographies
- pottery or weavings
There are different types of primary sources for different disciplines. In the discipline of history, for example, a diary or transcript of a speech is a primary source. In education and nursing, primary sources will generally be original research, including data sets.
Secondary sources are written about primary sources to interpret or analyze them. They are a step or more removed from the primary event or item. Some examples of secondary sources are:
- commentaries on speeches
- critiques of plays, journalism, or books
- a journal article that talks about a primary source such as an interpretation of Steinbeck’s The Grapes of Wrath, or the flower symbolism of Monet’s water garden paintings
- textbooks (can also be considered tertiary)
- biographies
- encyclopedias
Tertiary sources are further removed from the original material and are a distillation and collection of primary and secondary sources. Some examples are:
- bibliography of critical works about an author
- textbooks (also considered secondary)
A comparison of information sources across disciplines:
2.4 Information Sources
In this section, we discuss how to find not only information, but the sources of information in your discipline or topic area. As we see in the graphic and chart above, the information you need for your literature review will be located in multiple places. How and where research and publication occurs drives how and where the information is located, which in turn determines how you will discover and retrieve it. When we talk about information sources for a literature review in education or nursing, we generally mean these five areas: the internet, reference material and other books, empirical or evidence-based articles in scholarly, peer-reviewed journals, conference proceedings and papers, dissertations and theses, and grey literature.
The World Wide Web can be an excellent place to satisfy some initial research needs.
- It is a good resource for background information and for finding keywords for searching in the library catalog and databases.
- It is a good tool for locating professional organizations and searching for information and the names of experts in a given discipline.
- Google Scholar is a useful discovery tool for citations, especially if you are trying to get the lay of the land surrounding your topic or if you are having a problem with keywords in the databases. You can find some information to refine your search terms. It is NOT acceptable to depend on Google Scholar for finding articles because of the spotty coverage and lack of adequate search features.
2.4.2 Books and Reference Sources
Reference materials and books are available in both print and electronic formats. They provide gateway knowledge to a subject area and are useful at the beginning of the research process to:
- Get an overview of the topic, learn the scope, key definitions, significant figures who are involved, and important timelines
- Discover the foundations of a topic
- Learn essential definitions, vocabulary terms, and keywords you can use in your literature searching strategy
2.4.3 Scholarly Articles in Journals
Another major category of information sources is scholarly information produced by subject experts working in academic institutions, research centers and scholarly organizations. Scholars and researchers generate information that advances our knowledge and understanding of the world. The research they do creates new opportunities for inventions, practical applications, and new approaches to solving problems or understanding issues.
Academics, researchers and students at universities make their contributions to scholarly knowledge available in many forms:
- masters’ theses
- doctoral dissertations
- conference papers
- journal articles and books
- individual scholars’ web pages
- web pages developed by the researcher’s’ home institution (Hansen & Paul, 2015).
Scholars and researchers introduce their discoveries to the world in a formal system of information dissemination that has developed over centuries. Because scholarly research undergoes a process of “peer review” before being published (meaning that other experts review the work and pass judgment about whether it is worthy of publication), the information you find from scholarly sources meets preset standards for accuracy, credibility and validity in that field.
Likewise, scholarly journal articles are generally considered to be among the most reliable sources of information because they have gone through a peer-review process.
2.4.5 Conference Papers & Proceedings
Conferences are a major source of emerging research where researchers present papers on their current research and obtain feedback from the audience. The papers presented in the conference are then usually published in a volume called a conference proceeding. Conference proceedings highlight current discussion in a discipline and can lead you to scholars who are interested in specific research areas.
A word about conference papers: several factors contribute to making these documents difficult to find. It may be months before a paper is published as a journal article, or it may never be published. Publishers and professional associations are inconsistent in how they publish proceedings. For example, the papers from an annual conference may be published as individual, stand-alone titles, which may be indexed in a library catalog, or the conference proceedings may be treated more like a periodical or serial and, therefore, indexed in a journal database.
It is not unusual that papers delivered at professional conferences are not published in print or electronic form, although an abstract may be available. In these cases, the full paper may only be available from the author or authors.
The most important thing to remember is that if you have any difficulty finding a conference proceeding or paper, ask a librarian for assistance.
2.4.6 Dissertations and Theses
Dissertations and theses can be rich sources of information and have extensive reference lists to scan for resources. They are considered gray literature, so are not “peer reviewed”. The accuracy and validity of the paper itself may depend on the school that awarded the doctoral or master’s degree to the author.
2.5 Conclusion
In thinking about ‘the literature’ of your discipline, you are beginning the first step in writing your own literature review. By understanding what the literature in your field is, as well as how and when it is generated, you begin to know what is available and where to look for it.
We briefly discussed seven types of (sometimes overlapping) information:
- information found on the web
- information found in reference books and monographs
- information found in scholarly journals
- information found in conference proceedings and papers
- information found in dissertations and theses
- information found in magazines and trade journals
- information that is primary, secondary, or tertiary.
By conceptualizing or scoping how and where the literature of your discipline or topic area is generated, you have started on your way to writing your own literature review.
Finally, remember:
“All information sources are not created equal. Sources can vary greatly in terms of how carefully they are researched, written, edited, and reviewed for accuracy. Common sense will help you identify obviously questionable sources, such as tabloids that feature tales of alien abductions, or personal websites with glaring typos. Sometimes, however, a source’s reliability—or lack of it—is not so obvious…You will consider criteria such as the type of source, its intended purpose and audience, the author’s (or authors’) qualifications, the publication’s reputation, any indications of bias or hidden agendas, how current the source is, and the overall quality of the writing, thinking, and design.” ( Writing for Success, 2015, p. 448 ).
We will cover how to evaluate sources in more detail in Chapter 5.
For each of these information needs, indicate what resources would be the best fit to answer your question. There may be more than one source so don’t feel like you have to limit yourself to only one. See Answer Key for the correct response.
- You are to write a brief paper on a theory that you only vaguely understand. You need some basic information. Where would you look?
- If you heard something on the radio about a recent research involving an herbal intervention for weight loss where could you find the actual study?
- You are going to be doing an internship in a group home for young men. You have heard that one issue that comes up for them is anger. Where would you look for practical interventions to help you manage this problem if it came up?
- You have the opportunity to work on a research project through a grant proposal. You need to justify the research question and show that there is an interest and a need for this research. What resources would you cite in your application?
- You have been assigned a project to find primary sources about classroom discipline used in early 20th-century schools. What primary sources could you use and where would you find them?
- You have an idea for a great thesis but you are afraid that it has been done before. Since you would like to do something original, where could you find out if someone else has done the project?
- There was a post on Facebook that welfare recipients in Arizona were recently tested for drug use with only three in 140,000 having positive results. Where can I find out if this number is accurate?
Test Yourself
Question 1 match the type of periodical to its content.
Trade publication Scholarly journal Magazine
- Contains articles about a variety of topics of popular interest; also contains advertising.
- Has information about industry trends and practical information for professionals in a field.
- Contains articles written by scholars in an academic field and reviewed by experts in that field.
Question 2: Given what you know about information types and sources, put the following information sources in order from the least accurate and reliable to the most accurate and reliable. (1 least accurate/4 most accurate)
- Books and encyclopedias
- News broadcasts and social media directly following an event.
- Analysis of an event in the news media or popular magazine weeks after an event.
- Articles written by scholars and published in a journal.
Question 3: What is information called that is either a diary, a speech, original research, data, artwork, or a religious book.
Question 4: to find the best information in the databases you need to use keywords that are used by the scholars. where do you find out what keywords to try.
- From websites
- In journal articles
- All of the above
Question 5: Which of the following is NOT true about scholarly journals?
- They contain the conversation of the scholars on a particular subject.
- They are of interest to the general public.
- The articles are followed by an extensive reference list.
- They contain reports of original research.
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Literature Reviews for Education and Nursing Graduate Students by Linda Frederiksen is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License , except where otherwise noted.
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About this guide
This guide provides an overview of the literature review process including useful tips and advice on effective searching and managing of resources. The guide is intended as a starting point for any student or researcher new to the literature review process.
Types of literature reviews
Principles of a good literature review, endnote support, related library guides.
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You may have heard of a number of different types of literature review. Common terms include:
- literature review
- scoping review
- systematic review
- narrative review
- meta-analysis, and
- rapid review
There are a number of organisations, such as the international Cochrane and Campbell Collaborations, and the Joanna Briggs Institute which support the conduct of systematic reviews in health, social welfare, criminal justice and education (see the Systematic Reviews tab for more information).
For the purposes of this guide, we will focus on general principles that apply to anyone (from any discipline) conducting a good-quality literature review .
A literature review can be defined as follows:
A critical summary and assessment of the range of existing materials dealing with knowledge and understanding in a given field … Its purpose is to locate the research project, to form its context or background, and to provide insights into previous work
( The SAGE Dictionary of Social Research Methods 2006)
Jupp, V 2006, 'Literature review', The SAGE Dictionary of Social Research Methods , SAGE Publications, London
- A literature review involves defining the topic, identifying sources, evaluating the sources, synthesising and reporting.
- Aims to provide the author with a solid understanding of the key principles and theories in their chosen subject area
- Aims to identify what is already known, and to identify gaps in the evidence base to provide a starting point for new research
- The key element of any literature review is a critical analysis or assessment of the literature.
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- How to Write a Literature Review | Guide, Examples, & Templates
How to Write a Literature Review | Guide, Examples, & Templates
Published on January 2, 2023 by Shona McCombes .
What is a literature review? A literature review is a survey of scholarly sources on a specific topic. It provides an overview of current knowledge, allowing you to identify relevant theories, methods, and gaps in the existing research that you can later apply to your paper, thesis, or dissertation topic .
There are five key steps to writing a literature review:
- Search for relevant literature
- Evaluate sources
- Identify themes, debates, and gaps
- Outline the structure
- Write your literature review
A good literature review doesn’t just summarize sources—it analyzes, synthesizes , and critically evaluates to give a clear picture of the state of knowledge on the subject.
Table of contents
What is the purpose of a literature review, examples of literature reviews, step 1 – search for relevant literature, step 2 – evaluate and select sources, step 3 – identify themes, debates, and gaps, step 4 – outline your literature review’s structure, step 5 – write your literature review, free lecture slides, frequently asked questions, introduction.
- Quick Run-through
- Step 1 & 2
When you write a thesis , dissertation , or research paper , you will likely have to conduct a literature review to situate your research within existing knowledge. The literature review gives you a chance to:
- Demonstrate your familiarity with the topic and its scholarly context
- Develop a theoretical framework and methodology for your research
- Position your work in relation to other researchers and theorists
- Show how your research addresses a gap or contributes to a debate
- Evaluate the current state of research and demonstrate your knowledge of the scholarly debates around your topic.
Writing literature reviews is a particularly important skill if you want to apply for graduate school or pursue a career in research. We’ve written a step-by-step guide that you can follow below.
Writing literature reviews can be quite challenging! A good starting point could be to look at some examples, depending on what kind of literature review you’d like to write.
- Example literature review #1: “Why Do People Migrate? A Review of the Theoretical Literature” ( Theoretical literature review about the development of economic migration theory from the 1950s to today.)
- Example literature review #2: “Literature review as a research methodology: An overview and guidelines” ( Methodological literature review about interdisciplinary knowledge acquisition and production.)
- Example literature review #3: “The Use of Technology in English Language Learning: A Literature Review” ( Thematic literature review about the effects of technology on language acquisition.)
- Example literature review #4: “Learners’ Listening Comprehension Difficulties in English Language Learning: A Literature Review” ( Chronological literature review about how the concept of listening skills has changed over time.)
You can also check out our templates with literature review examples and sample outlines at the links below.
Download Word doc Download Google doc
Prevent plagiarism. Run a free check.
Before you begin searching for literature, you need a clearly defined topic .
If you are writing the literature review section of a dissertation or research paper, you will search for literature related to your research problem and questions .
Make a list of keywords
Start by creating a list of keywords related to your research question. Include each of the key concepts or variables you’re interested in, and list any synonyms and related terms. You can add to this list as you discover new keywords in the process of your literature search.
- Social media, Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, Snapchat, TikTok
- Body image, self-perception, self-esteem, mental health
- Generation Z, teenagers, adolescents, youth
Search for relevant sources
Use your keywords to begin searching for sources. Some useful databases to search for journals and articles include:
- Your university’s library catalogue
- Google Scholar
- Project Muse (humanities and social sciences)
- Medline (life sciences and biomedicine)
- EconLit (economics)
- Inspec (physics, engineering and computer science)
You can also use boolean operators to help narrow down your search.
Make sure to read the abstract to find out whether an article is relevant to your question. When you find a useful book or article, you can check the bibliography to find other relevant sources.
You likely won’t be able to read absolutely everything that has been written on your topic, so it will be necessary to evaluate which sources are most relevant to your research question.
For each publication, ask yourself:
- What question or problem is the author addressing?
- What are the key concepts and how are they defined?
- What are the key theories, models, and methods?
- Does the research use established frameworks or take an innovative approach?
- What are the results and conclusions of the study?
- How does the publication relate to other literature in the field? Does it confirm, add to, or challenge established knowledge?
- What are the strengths and weaknesses of the research?
Make sure the sources you use are credible , and make sure you read any landmark studies and major theories in your field of research.
You can use our template to summarize and evaluate sources you’re thinking about using. Click on either button below to download.
Take notes and cite your sources
As you read, you should also begin the writing process. Take notes that you can later incorporate into the text of your literature review.
It is important to keep track of your sources with citations to avoid plagiarism . It can be helpful to make an annotated bibliography , where you compile full citation information and write a paragraph of summary and analysis for each source. This helps you remember what you read and saves time later in the process.
To begin organizing your literature review’s argument and structure, be sure you understand the connections and relationships between the sources you’ve read. Based on your reading and notes, you can look for:
- Trends and patterns (in theory, method or results): do certain approaches become more or less popular over time?
- Themes: what questions or concepts recur across the literature?
- Debates, conflicts and contradictions: where do sources disagree?
- Pivotal publications: are there any influential theories or studies that changed the direction of the field?
- Gaps: what is missing from the literature? Are there weaknesses that need to be addressed?
This step will help you work out the structure of your literature review and (if applicable) show how your own research will contribute to existing knowledge.
- Most research has focused on young women.
- There is an increasing interest in the visual aspects of social media.
- But there is still a lack of robust research on highly visual platforms like Instagram and Snapchat—this is a gap that you could address in your own research.
There are various approaches to organizing the body of a literature review. Depending on the length of your literature review, you can combine several of these strategies (for example, your overall structure might be thematic, but each theme is discussed chronologically).
Chronological
The simplest approach is to trace the development of the topic over time. However, if you choose this strategy, be careful to avoid simply listing and summarizing sources in order.
Try to analyze patterns, turning points and key debates that have shaped the direction of the field. Give your interpretation of how and why certain developments occurred.
If you have found some recurring central themes, you can organize your literature review into subsections that address different aspects of the topic.
For example, if you are reviewing literature about inequalities in migrant health outcomes, key themes might include healthcare policy, language barriers, cultural attitudes, legal status, and economic access.
Methodological
If you draw your sources from different disciplines or fields that use a variety of research methods , you might want to compare the results and conclusions that emerge from different approaches. For example:
- Look at what results have emerged in qualitative versus quantitative research
- Discuss how the topic has been approached by empirical versus theoretical scholarship
- Divide the literature into sociological, historical, and cultural sources
Theoretical
A literature review is often the foundation for a theoretical framework . You can use it to discuss various theories, models, and definitions of key concepts.
You might argue for the relevance of a specific theoretical approach, or combine various theoretical concepts to create a framework for your research.
Like any other academic text , your literature review should have an introduction , a main body, and a conclusion . What you include in each depends on the objective of your literature review.
The introduction should clearly establish the focus and purpose of the literature review.
Depending on the length of your literature review, you might want to divide the body into subsections. You can use a subheading for each theme, time period, or methodological approach.
As you write, you can follow these tips:
- Summarize and synthesize: give an overview of the main points of each source and combine them into a coherent whole
- Analyze and interpret: don’t just paraphrase other researchers — add your own interpretations where possible, discussing the significance of findings in relation to the literature as a whole
- Critically evaluate: mention the strengths and weaknesses of your sources
- Write in well-structured paragraphs: use transition words and topic sentences to draw connections, comparisons and contrasts
In the conclusion, you should summarize the key findings you have taken from the literature and emphasize their significance.
When you’ve finished writing and revising your literature review, don’t forget to proofread thoroughly before submitting. Not a language expert? Check out Scribbr’s professional proofreading services !
This article has been adapted into lecture slides that you can use to teach your students about writing a literature review.
Scribbr slides are free to use, customize, and distribute for educational purposes.
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A literature review is a survey of scholarly sources (such as books, journal articles, and theses) related to a specific topic or research question .
It is often written as part of a thesis, dissertation , or research paper , in order to situate your work in relation to existing knowledge.
There are several reasons to conduct a literature review at the beginning of a research project:
- To familiarize yourself with the current state of knowledge on your topic
- To ensure that you’re not just repeating what others have already done
- To identify gaps in knowledge and unresolved problems that your research can address
- To develop your theoretical framework and methodology
- To provide an overview of the key findings and debates on the topic
Writing the literature review shows your reader how your work relates to existing research and what new insights it will contribute.
The literature review usually comes near the beginning of your thesis or dissertation . After the introduction , it grounds your research in a scholarly field and leads directly to your theoretical framework or methodology .
A literature review is a survey of credible sources on a topic, often used in dissertations , theses, and research papers . Literature reviews give an overview of knowledge on a subject, helping you identify relevant theories and methods, as well as gaps in existing research. Literature reviews are set up similarly to other academic texts , with an introduction , a main body, and a conclusion .
An annotated bibliography is a list of source references that has a short description (called an annotation ) for each of the sources. It is often assigned as part of the research process for a paper .
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Literature Review: Lit Review Sources
- Lit Review Types
- GRADE System
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- Lit Review Sources
Where do I find information for a literature review?
Research is done by...
...by way of...
...communicated through...
...and organized in...
Types of sources for a review...
- Primary source: Usually a report by the original researchers of a study (unfiltered sources)
- Secondary source: Description or summary by somebody other than the original researcher, e.g. a review article (filtered sources)
- Conceptual/theoretical: Papers concerned with description or analysis of theories or concepts associated with the topic
- Anecdotal/opinion/clinical: Views or opinions about the subject that are not research, review or theoretical (case studies or reports from clinical settings)
A Heirarchy of research information:
Source: SUNY Downstate Medical Center. Medical Research Library of Brooklyn. Evidence Based Medicine Course. A Guide to Research Methods: The Evidence Pyramid: http://library.downstate.edu/EBM2/2100.htm
Life Cycle of Publication
Click image to enlarge
Scientific information has a ‘life cycle’ of its own… it is born as an idea, and then matures and becomes more available to the public. First it appears within the so-called ‘invisible college’ of experts in the field, discussed at conferences and symposia or posted as pre-prints for comments and corrections. Then it appears in the published literature (the primary literature), often as a journal article in a peer-reviewed journal.
Researchers can use the indexing and alerting services of the secondary literature to find out what has been published in a field. Depending on how much information is added by the indexer or abstracter, this may take a few months (though electronic publication has sped up this process). Finally, the information may appear in more popular or reference sources, sometimes called the tertiary literature.
The person beginning a literature search may take this process in reverse: using tertiary sources for general background, then going to the secondary literature to survey what has been published, following up by finding the original (primary) sources, and generating their own research Idea.
(Original content by Wade Lee-Smith)
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Primary, Secondary, and Tertiary Sources
Sources of information or evidence are often categorized as primary, secondary, or tertiary material. These classifications are based on the originality of the material and the proximity of the source or origin. This informs the reader as to whether the author is reporting information that is first hand or is conveying the experiences and opinions of others which is considered second hand. Determining if a source is primary, secondary or tertiary can be tricky. Below you will find a description of the three categories of information and examples to help you make a determination.
Primary Sources
These sources are records of events or evidence as they are first described or actually happened without any interpretation or commentary. It is information that is shown for the first time or original materials on which other research is based. Primary sources display original thinking, report on new discoveries, or share fresh information.
Examples of primary sources: Theses, dissertations, scholarly journal articles (research based), some government reports, symposia and conference proceedings, original artwork, poems, photographs, speeches, letters, memos, personal narratives, diaries, interviews, autobiographies, and correspondence.
Secondary Sources
These sources offer an analysis or restatement of primary sources. They often try to describe or explain primary sources. They tend to be works which summarize, interpret, reorganize, or otherwise provide an added value to a primary source.
Examples of Secondary Sources: Textbooks, edited works, books and articles that interpret or review research works, histories, biographies, literary criticism and interpretation, reviews of law and legislation, political analyses and commentaries.
Tertiary Sources
These are sources that index, abstract, organize, compile, or digest other sources. Some reference materials and textbooks are considered tertiary sources when their chief purpose is to list, summarize or simply repackage ideas or other information. Tertiary sources are usually not credited to a particular author.
Examples of Tertiary Sources: Dictionaries/encyclopedias (may also be secondary), almanacs, fact books, Wikipedia, bibliographies (may also be secondary), directories, guidebooks, manuals, handbooks, and textbooks (may be secondary), indexing and abstracting sources.
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Related Guides and Sources
- Library Research 101 (Recording) View this webinar recording that introduces the FAU Libraries and its services. This provides demonstrations for searching the FAU Library Catalog and its Indexes and Databases.
- Guide to Science Information Resources A guide with a focus on STEM information sources which provides types of publications, indexes and databases, the IMRAD structure of journal articles, reference searching and more.
- Nursing: Literature and Systematic Reviews A guide to literature and systematic reviews with a focus on nursing and health-related subjects. Information about PRISMA and other reporting guidelines are included.
- The EBM Literature Review A guide for literature searches and literature reviews using evidence-based medicine (EBM) for medical and health sciences.
A literature review is one of the first things done by any student or scholar who plans to pursue new knowledge or do research in most subject areas. It involves identifying, locating, and examining information and publications on a particular topic. A literature review allows a student or scholar to integrate and synthesize information on a topic and use it to support their research or creations. It complements some forms of lab research so that a scholar understands what is known about their topic before or as they do their own research. Literature reviews may be done as an assignment or a required part of a thesis or dissertation. They can also be included in a grant or funding proposal to give support of an idea, and are frequently used in evidence-based practice in various fields.
Here are the reasons for doing a literature review:
- A literature review establishes the background on what has already been researched on a topic.
- It shows why a topic is significant to a subject area.
- Students and scholars will discover relationships between ideas in the literature.
- A literature review helps students and scholars identify major themes and concepts within their topic.
- Knowing what has been published allows identification of critical gaps of knowledge and points of disagreement within a subject area.
- The literature review helps a scholar or student turn a network of articles into a coherent view of the literature.
A literature review is not:
- an annotated bibliography ; or
- a "laundry list" of articles.
A literature review can be very simple, where some articles, books or other information sources are identified, critiqued, and summarized. It can also be very complex where its focus is very narrow or it condenses many information sources. Regardless of its simplicity or complexity, it lays out a logical case to defend points or to come to conclusions on a given topic.
This Guide will help you with the following:
- Introduce the types of publications or other materials you may need to include in your literature review.
- Show where you can start your literature review and what to consider for when you can finish it.
- Provide some overall steps you can take to begin and complete your literature review.
- Identify where you can get help with your literature review.
Originality statement: Some of this content is from Guide to Science Information Sources (Research Guide) by K. Padron (2022) at https://libguides.fau.edu/science-resources . Additional content has been added, revised, and repurposed in this Research Guide.
- Where, When, Who, What, How and Where for Trainees Writing Literature Reviews (Annals of Biomedical Engineering) A brief article written for novices of any field for writing a literature review.
- The literature review: six steps to success by Machi, Lawrence A., McEvoy, Brenda T. Call Number: eBook (FAUNet login required) Publication Date: 2016
- Next: Publications: A World of Information >>
- Last Updated: Feb 10, 2023 11:37 AM
- URL: https://libguides.fau.edu/literature-review
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5.3 Acceptable sources for literature reviews · Peer reviewed journal articles (papers) · Edited academic books · Articles in professional journals · Statistical
Other common examples of primary sources include speeches, letters, diaries, autobiographies, interviews, official reports, court records
Peer-reviewed journal articles are considered the best source of information for literature reviews, though other sources are often used. Peer review is the
Literature review sources · Books. Textbooks remain as the most important source to find models and theories related to the research area. · Magazines.
'The literature' is published in books, journal articles, conference proceedings, theses and dissertations. It can also be found in newspapers, encyclopedias
Primary and secondary sources ; Diaries, Journal articles ; Audio recordings, Textbooks ; Transcripts, Dictionaries and encyclopaedias ; Original
A literature review is a survey of credible sources on a topic, often used in dissertations, theses, and research papers. Literature reviews
Where do I find information for a literature review? · Anthologies · Blogs · Conference Papers · Journals · Lectures · Letters · Meetings · Newsletters
Examples of primary sources: Theses, dissertations, scholarly journal articles (research based), some government reports, symposia and conference proceedings
Primary Sources ; Magazine or newspaper articles ; (literature, poetry, fiction books, film, works of art or design, performances) ; Autobiographies