CHEM 390: Research Methods for Undergraduate Students

Step 2 - Evaluate What You Find - Is It Relevant?

As you search, be thinking about the following questions as you do your research:

• 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?

Step 3 - Identify Themes, Debates and Gaps in the Literature

As you do your research, 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 show how your own research will contribute to existing knowledge or how it fits into the whole.

Step 4 - Develop an Outline for Review

There are various approaches to organizing a literature review:

Chronological

The simplest approach is to trace the development of the topic over time. Make sure you 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.

Thematic

You can organize your literature review into subsections that address recurring, central themes or 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.

Or Combine Approaches

You may find it helpful to combine several of these strategies, particularly if your literature review is long. For example, your overall structure might be thematic, but each theme is discussed chronologically.

Step 5: Write your 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:

• 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 draw connections, comparisons and contrasts between sources

Source: How to Write a Literature Review: Guide, Examples, & Templates, by Shona McCombes. Scribbr.com, February 22, 2019. URL: https://www.scribbr.com/dissertation/literature-review/

Find Literature Reviews for an In-Depth Overview

Literature reviews are particularly helpful in finding past research on a specific topic because someone else summarizes the research in an area up to a particular date, essentially doing some of your research for you, and providing some context for that research.

Some databases provide a way to limit a search to reviews in journal articles. The following databases provide access to reviews across a wide range of disciplines:

Mine Article References, Use "Cited By" Features, Search Authors

When you find relevant articles, look at the bibliographies - the references the author used to write the article. This will lead you to additional sources. Some databases offer links to these references, and to articles that cite the relevant article you found. For example:

• The Web of Science database allows you to link to an authors References and do a "cited reference" search on others who have cited the original article
• SciFinder provides a "Citation Mapping" feature that allows you to search backward into an author's references and forward into articles that cite the original article
• Google Scholar provides a "Cited By" link to articles that cite the original article

Have you found an article that is cited repeatedly or know of key individuals in the field?  Use an author search to find additional sources by these experts.