reasons for reviewing literature in research

• Link to facebook
• Link to linkedin
• Link to twitter
• Link to youtube
• Writing Tips

5 Reasons the Literature Review Is Crucial to Your Paper

• 3-minute read
• 8th November 2016

People often treat writing the literature review in an academic paper as a formality. Usually, this means simply listing various studies vaguely related to their work and leaving it at that.

But this overlooks how important the literature review is to a well-written experimental report or research paper. As such, we thought we’d take a moment to go over what a literature review should do and why you should give it the attention it deserves.

What Is a Literature Review?

Common in the social and physical sciences, but also sometimes required in the humanities, a literature review is a summary of past research in your subject area.

Sometimes this is a standalone investigation of how an idea or field of inquiry has developed over time. However, more usually it’s the part of an academic paper, thesis or dissertation that sets out the background against which a study takes place.

There are several reasons why we do this.

Reason #1: To Demonstrate Understanding

In a college paper, you can use a literature review to demonstrate your understanding of the subject matter. This means identifying, summarizing and critically assessing past research that is relevant to your own work.

Reason #2: To Justify Your Research

The literature review also plays a big role in justifying your study and setting your research question . This is because examining past research allows you to identify gaps in the literature, which you can then attempt to fill or address with your own work.

Find this useful?

Subscribe to our newsletter and get writing tips from our editors straight to your inbox.

Reason #3: Setting a Theoretical Framework

It can help to think of the literature review as the foundations for your study, since the rest of your work will build upon the ideas and existing research you discuss therein.

A crucial part of this is formulating a theoretical framework , which comprises the concepts and theories that your work is based upon and against which its success will be judged.

Reason #4: Developing a Methodology

Conducting a literature review before beginning research also lets you see how similar studies have been conducted in the past. By examining the strengths and weaknesses of existing research, you can thus make sure you adopt the most appropriate methods, data sources and analytical techniques for your own work.

Reason #5: To Support Your Own Findings

The significance of any results you achieve will depend to some extent on how they compare to those reported in the existing literature. When you come to write up your findings, your literature review will therefore provide a crucial point of reference.

If your results replicate past research, for instance, you can say that your work supports existing theories. If your results are different, though, you’ll need to discuss why and whether the difference is important.

Share this article:

Post A New Comment

Got content that needs a quick turnaround? Let us polish your work. Explore our editorial business services.

6-minute read

How to Write a Nonprofit Grant Proposal

If you’re seeking funding to support your charitable endeavors as a nonprofit organization, you’ll need...

9-minute read

How to Use Infographics to Boost Your Presentation

Is your content getting noticed? Capturing and maintaining an audience’s attention is a challenge when...

8-minute read

Why Interactive PDFs Are Better for Engagement

Are you looking to enhance engagement and captivate your audience through your professional documents? Interactive...

7-minute read

Seven Key Strategies for Voice Search Optimization

Voice search optimization is rapidly shaping the digital landscape, requiring content professionals to adapt their...

4-minute read

Five Creative Ways to Showcase Your Digital Portfolio

Are you a creative freelancer looking to make a lasting impression on potential clients or...

How to Ace Slack Messaging for Contractors and Freelancers

Effective professional communication is an important skill for contractors and freelancers navigating remote work environments....

Make sure your writing is the best it can be with our expert English proofreading and editing.

• UConn Library
• Literature Review: The What, Why and How-to Guide
• Introduction

Literature Review: The What, Why and How-to Guide — Introduction

• Getting Started
• How to Pick a Topic
• Strategies to Find Sources
• Evaluating Sources & Lit. Reviews
• Tips for Writing Literature Reviews
• Writing Literature Review: Useful Sites
• Citation Resources
• Other Academic Writings

What are Literature Reviews?

So, what is a literature review? "A literature review is an account of what has been published on a topic by accredited scholars and researchers. In writing the literature review, your purpose is to convey to your reader what knowledge and ideas have been established on a topic, and what their strengths and weaknesses are. As a piece of writing, the literature review must be defined by a guiding concept (e.g., your research objective, the problem or issue you are discussing, or your argumentative thesis). It is not just a descriptive list of the material available, or a set of summaries." Taylor, D.  The literature review: A few tips on conducting it . University of Toronto Health Sciences Writing Centre.

Goals of Literature Reviews

What are the goals of creating a Literature Review?  A literature could be written to accomplish different aims:

• To develop a theory or evaluate an existing theory
• To summarize the historical or existing state of a research topic
• Identify a problem in a field of research 

Baumeister, R. F., & Leary, M. R. (1997). Writing narrative literature reviews .  Review of General Psychology , 1 (3), 311-320.

What kinds of sources require a Literature Review?

• A research paper assigned in a course
• A thesis or dissertation
• A grant proposal
• An article intended for publication in a journal

All these instances require you to collect what has been written about your research topic so that you can demonstrate how your own research sheds new light on the topic.

Types of Literature Reviews

What kinds of literature reviews are written?

Narrative review: The purpose of this type of review is to describe the current state of the research on a specific topic/research and to offer a critical analysis of the literature reviewed. Studies are grouped by research/theoretical categories, and themes and trends, strengths and weakness, and gaps are identified. The review ends with a conclusion section which summarizes the findings regarding the state of the research of the specific study, the gaps identify and if applicable, explains how the author's research will address gaps identify in the review and expand the knowledge on the topic reviewed.

• Example : Predictors and Outcomes of U.S. Quality Maternity Leave: A Review and Conceptual Framework:  10.1177/08948453211037398  

Systematic review : "The authors of a systematic review use a specific procedure to search the research literature, select the studies to include in their review, and critically evaluate the studies they find." (p. 139). Nelson, L. K. (2013). Research in Communication Sciences and Disorders . Plural Publishing.

• Example : The effect of leave policies on increasing fertility: a systematic review:  10.1057/s41599-022-01270-w

Meta-analysis : "Meta-analysis is a method of reviewing research findings in a quantitative fashion by transforming the data from individual studies into what is called an effect size and then pooling and analyzing this information. The basic goal in meta-analysis is to explain why different outcomes have occurred in different studies." (p. 197). Roberts, M. C., & Ilardi, S. S. (2003). Handbook of Research Methods in Clinical Psychology . Blackwell Publishing.

• Example : Employment Instability and Fertility in Europe: A Meta-Analysis:  10.1215/00703370-9164737

Meta-synthesis : "Qualitative meta-synthesis is a type of qualitative study that uses as data the findings from other qualitative studies linked by the same or related topic." (p.312). Zimmer, L. (2006). Qualitative meta-synthesis: A question of dialoguing with texts .  Journal of Advanced Nursing , 53 (3), 311-318.

• Example : Women’s perspectives on career successes and barriers: A qualitative meta-synthesis:  10.1177/05390184221113735

Literature Reviews in the Health Sciences

• UConn Health subject guide on systematic reviews Explanation of the different review types used in health sciences literature as well as tools to help you find the right review type
• << Previous: Getting Started
• Next: How to Pick a Topic >>
• Last Updated: Sep 21, 2022 2:16 PM
• URL: https://guides.lib.uconn.edu/literaturereview

Have a language expert improve your writing

Run a free plagiarism check in 10 minutes, generate accurate citations for free.

• Knowledge Base

Methodology

• 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 . Revised on September 11, 2023.

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.

Instantly correct all language mistakes in your text

Upload your document to correct all your mistakes in minutes

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, other interesting articles, 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.

Here's why students love Scribbr's proofreading services

Discover proofreading & editing

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

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.

Prevent plagiarism. Run a free check.

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.

Open Google Slides Download PowerPoint

If you want to know more about the research process , methodology , research bias , or statistics , make sure to check out some of our other articles with explanations and examples.

• Sampling methods
• Simple random sampling
• Stratified sampling
• Cluster sampling
• Likert scales
• Reproducibility

 Statistics

• Null hypothesis
• Statistical power
• Probability distribution
• Effect size
• Poisson distribution

Research bias

• Optimism bias
• Cognitive bias
• Implicit bias
• Hawthorne effect
• Anchoring bias
• Explicit bias

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 .  

Cite this Scribbr article

If you want to cite this source, you can copy and paste the citation or click the “Cite this Scribbr article” button to automatically add the citation to our free Citation Generator.

McCombes, S. (2023, September 11). How to Write a Literature Review | Guide, Examples, & Templates. Scribbr. Retrieved July 22, 2024, from https://www.scribbr.com/dissertation/literature-review/

Is this article helpful?

Shona McCombes

Other students also liked, what is a theoretical framework | guide to organizing, what is a research methodology | steps & tips, how to write a research proposal | examples & templates, get unlimited documents corrected.

✔ Free APA citation check included ✔ Unlimited document corrections ✔ Specialized in correcting academic texts

Research Methods

• Getting Started
• Literature Review Research
• Research Design
• Research Design By Discipline
• SAGE Research Methods
• Teaching with SAGE Research Methods

Literature Review

• What is a Literature Review?
• What is NOT a Literature Review?
• Purposes of a Literature Review
• Types of Literature Reviews
• Literature Reviews vs. Systematic Reviews
• Systematic vs. Meta-Analysis

Literature Review  is a comprehensive survey of the works published in a particular field of study or line of research, usually over a specific period of time, in the form of an in-depth, critical bibliographic essay or annotated list in which attention is drawn to the most significant works.

Also, we can define a literature review as the collected body of scholarly works related to a topic:

• Summarizes and analyzes previous research relevant to a topic
• Includes scholarly books and articles published in academic journals
• Can be an specific scholarly paper or a section in a research paper

The objective of a Literature Review is to find previous published scholarly works relevant to an specific topic

• Help gather ideas or information
• Keep up to date in current trends and findings
• Help develop new questions

A literature review is important because it:

• Explains the background of research on a topic.
• Demonstrates why a topic is significant to a subject area.
• Helps focus your own research questions or problems
• Discovers relationships between research studies/ideas.
• Suggests unexplored ideas or populations
• Identifies major themes, concepts, and researchers on a topic.
• Tests assumptions; may help counter preconceived ideas and remove unconscious bias.
• Identifies critical gaps, points of disagreement, or potentially flawed methodology or theoretical approaches.
• Indicates potential directions for future research.

All content in this section is from Literature Review Research from Old Dominion University 

Keep in mind the following, a literature review is NOT:

Not an essay 

Not an annotated bibliography  in which you summarize each article that you have reviewed.  A literature review goes beyond basic summarizing to focus on the critical analysis of the reviewed works and their relationship to your research question.

Not a research paper   where you select resources to support one side of an issue versus another.  A lit review should explain and consider all sides of an argument in order to avoid bias, and areas of agreement and disagreement should be highlighted.

A literature review serves several purposes. For example, it

• provides thorough knowledge of previous studies; introduces seminal works.
• helps focus one’s own research topic.
• identifies a conceptual framework for one’s own research questions or problems; indicates potential directions for future research.
• suggests previously unused or underused methodologies, designs, quantitative and qualitative strategies.
• identifies gaps in previous studies; identifies flawed methodologies and/or theoretical approaches; avoids replication of mistakes.
• helps the researcher avoid repetition of earlier research.
• suggests unexplored populations.
• determines whether past studies agree or disagree; identifies controversy in the literature.
• tests assumptions; may help counter preconceived ideas and remove unconscious bias.

As Kennedy (2007) notes*, it is important to think of knowledge in a given field as consisting of three layers. First, there are the primary studies that researchers conduct and publish. Second are the reviews of those studies that summarize and offer new interpretations built from and often extending beyond the original studies. Third, there are the perceptions, conclusions, opinion, and interpretations that are shared informally that become part of the lore of field. In composing a literature review, it is important to note that it is often this third layer of knowledge that is cited as "true" even though it often has only a loose relationship to the primary studies and secondary literature reviews.

Given this, while literature reviews are designed to provide an overview and synthesis of pertinent sources you have explored, there are several approaches to how they can be done, depending upon the type of analysis underpinning your study. Listed below are definitions of types of literature reviews:

Argumentative Review      This form examines literature selectively in order to support or refute an argument, deeply imbedded assumption, or philosophical problem already established in the literature. The purpose is to develop a body of literature that establishes a contrarian viewpoint. Given the value-laden nature of some social science research [e.g., educational reform; immigration control], argumentative approaches to analyzing the literature can be a legitimate and important form of discourse. However, note that they can also introduce problems of bias when they are used to to make summary claims of the sort found in systematic reviews.

Integrative Review      Considered a form of research that reviews, critiques, and synthesizes representative literature on a topic in an integrated way such that new frameworks and perspectives on the topic are generated. The body of literature includes all studies that address related or identical hypotheses. A well-done integrative review meets the same standards as primary research in regard to clarity, rigor, and replication.

Historical Review      Few things rest in isolation from historical precedent. Historical reviews are focused on examining research throughout a period of time, often starting with the first time an issue, concept, theory, phenomena emerged in the literature, then tracing its evolution within the scholarship of a discipline. The purpose is to place research in a historical context to show familiarity with state-of-the-art developments and to identify the likely directions for future research.

Methodological Review      A review does not always focus on what someone said [content], but how they said it [method of analysis]. This approach provides a framework of understanding at different levels (i.e. those of theory, substantive fields, research approaches and data collection and analysis techniques), enables researchers to draw on a wide variety of knowledge ranging from the conceptual level to practical documents for use in fieldwork in the areas of ontological and epistemological consideration, quantitative and qualitative integration, sampling, interviewing, data collection and data analysis, and helps highlight many ethical issues which we should be aware of and consider as we go through our study.

Systematic Review      This form consists of an overview of existing evidence pertinent to a clearly formulated research question, which uses pre-specified and standardized methods to identify and critically appraise relevant research, and to collect, report, and analyse data from the studies that are included in the review. Typically it focuses on a very specific empirical question, often posed in a cause-and-effect form, such as "To what extent does A contribute to B?"

Theoretical Review      The purpose of this form is to concretely examine the corpus of theory that has accumulated in regard to an issue, concept, theory, phenomena. The theoretical literature review help establish what theories already exist, the relationships between them, to what degree the existing theories have been investigated, and to develop new hypotheses to be tested. Often this form is used to help establish a lack of appropriate theories or reveal that current theories are inadequate for explaining new or emerging research problems. The unit of analysis can focus on a theoretical concept or a whole theory or framework.

* Kennedy, Mary M. "Defining a Literature."  Educational Researcher  36 (April 2007): 139-147.

All content in this section is from The Literature Review created by Dr. Robert Larabee USC

Robinson, P. and Lowe, J. (2015),  Literature reviews vs systematic reviews.  Australian and New Zealand Journal of Public Health, 39: 103-103. doi: 10.1111/1753-6405.12393

What's in the name? The difference between a Systematic Review and a Literature Review, and why it matters . By Lynn Kysh from University of Southern California

Systematic review or meta-analysis?

A  systematic review  answers a defined research question by collecting and summarizing all empirical evidence that fits pre-specified eligibility criteria.

A  meta-analysis  is the use of statistical methods to summarize the results of these studies.

Systematic reviews, just like other research articles, can be of varying quality. They are a significant piece of work (the Centre for Reviews and Dissemination at York estimates that a team will take 9-24 months), and to be useful to other researchers and practitioners they should have:

• clearly stated objectives with pre-defined eligibility criteria for studies
• explicit, reproducible methodology
• a systematic search that attempts to identify all studies
• assessment of the validity of the findings of the included studies (e.g. risk of bias)
• systematic presentation, and synthesis, of the characteristics and findings of the included studies

Not all systematic reviews contain meta-analysis. 

Meta-analysis is the use of statistical methods to summarize the results of independent studies. By combining information from all relevant studies, meta-analysis can provide more precise estimates of the effects of health care than those derived from the individual studies included within a review.  More information on meta-analyses can be found in  Cochrane Handbook, Chapter 9 .

A meta-analysis goes beyond critique and integration and conducts secondary statistical analysis on the outcomes of similar studies.  It is a systematic review that uses quantitative methods to synthesize and summarize the results.

An advantage of a meta-analysis is the ability to be completely objective in evaluating research findings.  Not all topics, however, have sufficient research evidence to allow a meta-analysis to be conducted.  In that case, an integrative review is an appropriate strategy. 

Some of the content in this section is from Systematic reviews and meta-analyses: step by step guide created by Kate McAllister.

• << Previous: Getting Started
• Next: Research Design >>
• Last Updated: Jul 15, 2024 10:34 AM
• URL: https://guides.lib.udel.edu/researchmethods

• Library Homepage

Literature Review: The What, Why and How-to Guide: Literature Reviews?

• Literature Reviews?
• Strategies to Finding Sources
• Keeping up with Research!
• Evaluating Sources & Literature Reviews
• Organizing for Writing
• Writing Literature Review
• Other Academic Writings

What is a Literature Review?

So, what is a literature review .

"A literature review is an account of what has been published on a topic by accredited scholars and researchers. In writing the literature review, your purpose is to convey to your reader what knowledge and ideas have been established on a topic, and what their strengths and weaknesses are. As a piece of writing, the literature review must be defined by a guiding concept (e.g., your research objective, the problem or issue you are discussing, or your argumentative thesis). It is not just a descriptive list of the material available or a set of summaries." - Quote from Taylor, D. (n.d)."The Literature Review: A Few Tips on Conducting it".

• Citation: "The Literature Review: A Few Tips on Conducting it"

What kinds of literature reviews are written?

Each field has a particular way to do reviews for academic research literature. In the social sciences and humanities the most common are:

• Narrative Reviews: The purpose of this type of review is to describe the current state of the research on a specific research topic and to offer a critical analysis of the literature reviewed. Studies are grouped by research/theoretical categories, and themes and trends, strengths and weaknesses, and gaps are identified. The review ends with a conclusion section that summarizes the findings regarding the state of the research of the specific study, the gaps identify and if applicable, explains how the author's research will address gaps identify in the review and expand the knowledge on the topic reviewed.
• Book review essays/ Historiographical review essays : A type of literature review typical in History and related fields, e.g., Latin American studies. For example, the Latin American Research Review explains that the purpose of this type of review is to “(1) to familiarize readers with the subject, approach, arguments, and conclusions found in a group of books whose common focus is a historical period; a country or region within Latin America; or a practice, development, or issue of interest to specialists and others; (2) to locate these books within current scholarship, critical methodologies, and approaches; and (3) to probe the relation of these new books to previous work on the subject, especially canonical texts. Unlike individual book reviews, the cluster reviews found in LARR seek to address the state of the field or discipline and not solely the works at issue.” - LARR

What are the Goals of Creating a Literature Review?

• To develop a theory or evaluate an existing theory
• To summarize the historical or existing state of a research topic
• Identify a problem in a field of research 
• Baumeister, R.F. & Leary, M.R. (1997). "Writing narrative literature reviews," Review of General Psychology , 1(3), 311-320.

When do you need to write a Literature Review?

• When writing a prospectus or a thesis/dissertation
• When writing a research paper
• When writing a grant proposal

In all these cases you need to dedicate a chapter in these works to showcase what has been written about your research topic and to point out how your own research will shed new light into a body of scholarship.

Where I can find examples of Literature Reviews?

Note:  In the humanities, even if they don't use the term "literature review", they may have a dedicated  chapter that reviewed the "critical bibliography" or they incorporated that review in the introduction or first chapter of the dissertation, book, or article.

• UCSB electronic theses and dissertations In partnership with the Graduate Division, the UC Santa Barbara Library is making available theses and dissertations produced by UCSB students. Currently included in ADRL are theses and dissertations that were originally filed electronically, starting in 2011. In future phases of ADRL, all theses and dissertations created by UCSB students may be digitized and made available.

Where to Find Standalone Literature Reviews

Literature reviews are also written as standalone articles as a way to survey a particular research topic in-depth. This type of literature review looks at a topic from a historical perspective to see how the understanding of the topic has changed over time. 

• Find e-Journals for Standalone Literature Reviews The best way to get familiar with and to learn how to write literature reviews is by reading them. You can use our Journal Search option to find journals that specialize in publishing literature reviews from major disciplines like anthropology, sociology, etc. Usually these titles are called, "Annual Review of [discipline name] OR [Discipline name] Review. This option works best if you know the title of the publication you are looking for. Below are some examples of these journals! more... less... Journal Search can be found by hovering over the link for Research on the library website.

Social Sciences

• Annual Review of Anthropology
• Annual Review of Political Science
• Annual Review of Sociology
• Ethnic Studies Review

Hard science and health sciences:

• Annual Review of Biomedical Data Science
• Annual Review of Materials Science
• Systematic Review From journal site: "The journal Systematic Reviews encompasses all aspects of the design, conduct, and reporting of systematic reviews" in the health sciences.
• << Previous: Overview
• Next: Strategies to Finding Sources >>
• Last Updated: Mar 5, 2024 11:44 AM
• URL: https://guides.library.ucsb.edu/litreview

Why is it important to do a literature review in research?

The importance of scientific communication in the healthcare industry

The Importance and Role of Biostatistics in Clinical Research

 “A substantive, thorough, sophisticated literature review is a precondition for doing substantive, thorough, sophisticated research”. Boote and Baile 2005

Authors of manuscripts treat writing a literature review as a routine work or a mere formality. But a seasoned one knows the purpose and importance of a well-written literature review.  Since it is one of the basic needs for researches at any level, they have to be done vigilantly. Only then the reader will know that the basics of research have not been neglected.

The aim of any literature review is to summarize and synthesize the arguments and ideas of existing knowledge in a particular field without adding any new contributions.   Being built on existing knowledge they help the researcher to even turn the wheels of the topic of research.  It is possible only with profound knowledge of what is wrong in the existing findings in detail to overpower them.  For other researches, the literature review gives the direction to be headed for its success. 

The common perception of literature review and reality:

As per the common belief, literature reviews are only a summary of the sources related to the research. And many authors of scientific manuscripts believe that they are only surveys of what are the researches are done on the chosen topic.  But on the contrary, it uses published information from pertinent and relevant sources like

• Scholarly books
• Scientific papers
• Latest studies in the field
• Established school of thoughts
• Relevant articles from renowned scientific journals

and many more for a field of study or theory or a particular problem to do the following:

• Summarize into a brief account of all information
• Synthesize the information by restructuring and reorganizing
• Critical evaluation of a concept or a school of thought or ideas
• Familiarize the authors to the extent of knowledge in the particular field
• Encapsulate
• Compare & contrast

By doing the above on the relevant information, it provides the reader of the scientific manuscript with the following for a better understanding of it:

• It establishes the authors’  in-depth understanding and knowledge of their field subject
• It gives the background of the research
• Portrays the scientific manuscript plan of examining the research result
• Illuminates on how the knowledge has changed within the field
• Highlights what has already been done in a particular field
• Information of the generally accepted facts, emerging and current state of the topic of research
• Identifies the research gap that is still unexplored or under-researched fields
• Demonstrates how the research fits within a larger field of study
• Provides an overview of the sources explored during the research of a particular topic

Importance of literature review in research:

The importance of literature review in scientific manuscripts can be condensed into an analytical feature to enable the multifold reach of its significance.  It adds value to the legitimacy of the research in many ways:

• Provides the interpretation of existing literature in light of updated developments in the field to help in establishing the consistency in knowledge and relevancy of existing materials
• It helps in calculating the impact of the latest information in the field by mapping their progress of knowledge.
• It brings out the dialects of contradictions between various thoughts within the field to establish facts
• The research gaps scrutinized initially are further explored to establish the latest facts of theories to add value to the field
• Indicates the current research place in the schema of a particular field
• Provides information for relevancy and coherency to check the research
• Apart from elucidating the continuance of knowledge, it also points out areas that require further investigation and thus aid as a starting point of any future research
• Justifies the research and sets up the research question
• Sets up a theoretical framework comprising the concepts and theories of the research upon which its success can be judged
• Helps to adopt a more appropriate methodology for the research by examining the strengths and weaknesses of existing research in the same field
• Increases the significance of the results by comparing it with the existing literature
• Provides a point of reference by writing the findings in the scientific manuscript
• Helps to get the due credit from the audience for having done the fact-finding and fact-checking mission in the scientific manuscripts
• The more the reference of relevant sources of it could increase more of its trustworthiness with the readers
• Helps to prevent plagiarism by tailoring and uniquely tweaking the scientific manuscript not to repeat other’s original idea
• By preventing plagiarism , it saves the scientific manuscript from rejection and thus also saves a lot of time and money
• Helps to evaluate, condense and synthesize gist in the author’s own words to sharpen the research focus
• Helps to compare and contrast to  show the originality and uniqueness of the research than that of the existing other researches
• Rationalizes the need for conducting the particular research in a specified field
• Helps to collect data accurately for allowing any new methodology of research than the existing ones
• Enables the readers of the manuscript to answer the following questions of its readers for its better chances for publication
• What do the researchers know?
• What do they not know?
• Is the scientific manuscript reliable and trustworthy?
• What are the knowledge gaps of the researcher?

22. It helps the readers to identify the following for further reading of the scientific manuscript:

• What has been already established, discredited and accepted in the particular field of research
• Areas of controversy and conflicts among different schools of thought
• Unsolved problems and issues in the connected field of research
• The emerging trends and approaches
• How the research extends, builds upon and leaves behind from the previous research

A profound literature review with many relevant sources of reference will enhance the chances of the scientific manuscript publication in renowned and reputed scientific journals .

References:

http://www.math.montana.edu/jobo/phdprep/phd6.pdf

journal Publishing services  |  Scientific Editing Services  |  Medical Writing Services  |  scientific research writing service  |  Scientific communication services

Related Topics:

Meta Analysis

Scientific Research Paper Writing

Medical Research Paper Writing

Scientific Communication in healthcare

pubrica academy

Related posts.

Statistical analyses of case-control studies

Selecting material (e.g. excipient, active pharmaceutical ingredient, packaging material) for drug development

Health economics in clinical trials

Comments are closed.

Harvey Cushing/John Hay Whitney Medical Library

• Collections
• Research Help

YSN Doctoral Programs: Steps in Conducting a Literature Review

• Biomedical Databases
• Global (Public Health) Databases
• Soc. Sci., History, and Law Databases
• Grey Literature
• Trials Registers
• Data and Statistics
• Public Policy
• Google Tips
• Recommended Books
• Steps in Conducting a Literature Review

What is a literature review?

A literature review is an integrated analysis -- not just a summary-- of scholarly writings and other relevant evidence related directly to your research question.  That is, it represents a synthesis of the evidence that provides background information on your topic and shows a association between the evidence and your research question.

A literature review may be a stand alone work or the introduction to a larger research paper, depending on the assignment.  Rely heavily on the guidelines your instructor has given you.

Why is it important?

A literature review is important because it:

• Explains the background of research on a topic.
• Demonstrates why a topic is significant to a subject area.
• Discovers relationships between research studies/ideas.
• Identifies major themes, concepts, and researchers on a topic.
• Identifies critical gaps and points of disagreement.
• Discusses further research questions that logically come out of the previous studies.

APA7 Style resources

APA Style Blog - for those harder to find answers

1. Choose a topic. Define your research question.

Your literature review should be guided by your central research question.  The literature represents background and research developments related to a specific research question, interpreted and analyzed by you in a synthesized way.

• Make sure your research question is not too broad or too narrow.  Is it manageable?
• Begin writing down terms that are related to your question. These will be useful for searches later.
• If you have the opportunity, discuss your topic with your professor and your class mates.

2. Decide on the scope of your review

How many studies do you need to look at? How comprehensive should it be? How many years should it cover? 

• This may depend on your assignment.  How many sources does the assignment require?

3. Select the databases you will use to conduct your searches.

Make a list of the databases you will search. 

Where to find databases:

• use the tabs on this guide
• Find other databases in the Nursing Information Resources web page
• More on the Medical Library web page
• ... and more on the Yale University Library web page

4. Conduct your searches to find the evidence. Keep track of your searches.

• Use the key words in your question, as well as synonyms for those words, as terms in your search. Use the database tutorials for help.
• Save the searches in the databases. This saves time when you want to redo, or modify, the searches. It is also helpful to use as a guide is the searches are not finding any useful results.
• Review the abstracts of research studies carefully. This will save you time.
• Use the bibliographies and references of research studies you find to locate others.
• Check with your professor, or a subject expert in the field, if you are missing any key works in the field.
• Ask your librarian for help at any time.
• Use a citation manager, such as EndNote as the repository for your citations. See the EndNote tutorials for help.

Review the literature

Some questions to help you analyze the research:

• What was the research question of the study you are reviewing? What were the authors trying to discover?
• Was the research funded by a source that could influence the findings?
• What were the research methodologies? Analyze its literature review, the samples and variables used, the results, and the conclusions.
• Does the research seem to be complete? Could it have been conducted more soundly? What further questions does it raise?
• If there are conflicting studies, why do you think that is?
• How are the authors viewed in the field? Has this study been cited? If so, how has it been analyzed?

Tips: 

• Review the abstracts carefully.  
• Keep careful notes so that you may track your thought processes during the research process.
• Create a matrix of the studies for easy analysis, and synthesis, across all of the studies.
• << Previous: Recommended Books
• Last Updated: Jun 20, 2024 9:08 AM
• URL: https://guides.library.yale.edu/YSNDoctoral

Want to create or adapt books like this? Learn more about how Pressbooks supports open publishing practices.

Chapter 2: Getting Started in Research

Reviewing the Research Literature

Learning Objectives

• Define the research literature in psychology and give examples of sources that are part of the research literature and sources that are not.
• Describe and use several methods for finding previous research on a particular research idea or question.

Reviewing the research literature means finding, reading, and summarizing the published research relevant to your question. An empirical research report written in American Psychological Association (APA) style always includes a written literature review, but it is important to review the literature early in the research process for several reasons.

• It can help you turn a research idea into an interesting research question.
• It can tell you if a research question has already been answered.
• It can help you evaluate the interestingness of a research question.
• It can give you ideas for how to conduct your own study.
• It can tell you how your study fits into the research literature.

What Is the Research Literature?

The  research literature  in any field is all the published research in that field. The research literature in psychology is enormous—including millions of scholarly articles and books dating to the beginning of the field—and it continues to grow. Although its boundaries are somewhat fuzzy, the research literature definitely does not include self-help and other pop psychology books, dictionary and encyclopedia entries, websites, and similar sources that are intended mainly for the general public. These are considered unreliable because they are not reviewed by other researchers and are often based on little more than common sense or personal experience. Wikipedia contains much valuable information, but the fact that its authors are anonymous and may not have any formal training or expertise in that subject area, and its content continually changes makes it unsuitable as a basis of sound scientific research. For our purposes, it helps to define the research literature as consisting almost entirely of two types of sources: articles in professional journals, and scholarly books in psychology and related fields.

Professional Journals

Professional journals  are periodicals that publish original research articles. There are thousands of professional journals that publish research in psychology and related fields. They are usually published monthly or quarterly in individual issues, each of which contains several articles. The issues are organized into volumes, which usually consist of all the issues for a calendar year. Some journals are published in hard copy only, others in both hard copy and electronic form, and still others in electronic form only.

Most articles in professional journals are one of two basic types: empirical research reports and review articles.  Empirical research reports  describe one or more new empirical studies conducted by the authors. They introduce a research question, explain why it is interesting, review previous research, describe their method and results, and draw their conclusions. Review articles  summarize previously published research on a topic and usually present new ways to organize or explain the results. When a review article is devoted primarily to presenting a new theory, it is often referred to as a theoretical article .

Most professional journals in psychology undergo a process of  double-blind peer review . Researchers who want to publish their work in the journal submit a manuscript to the editor—who is generally an established researcher too—who in turn sends it to two or three experts on the topic. Each reviewer reads the manuscript, writes a critical but constructive review, and sends the review back to the editor along with his or her recommendations. The editor then decides whether to accept the article for publication, ask the authors to make changes and resubmit it for further consideration, or reject it outright. In any case, the editor forwards the reviewers’ written comments to the researchers so that they can revise their manuscript accordingly. This entire process is double-blind, as the reviewers do not know the identity of the researcher(s), and vice versa. Double-blind peer review is helpful because it ensures that the work meets basic standards of the field before it can enter the research literature. However, in order to increase transparency and accountability some newer open access journals (e.g., Frontiers in Psychology) utilize an open peer review process wherein the identities of the reviewers (which remain concealed during the peer review process) are published alongside the journal article.

Scholarly Books

Scholarly books  are books written by researchers and practitioners mainly for use by other researchers and practitioners. A  monograph  is written by a single author or a small group of authors and usually gives a coherent presentation of a topic much like an extended review article.  Edited volumes have an editor or a small group of editors who recruit many authors to write separate chapters on different aspects of the same topic. Although edited volumes can also give a coherent presentation of the topic, it is not unusual for each chapter to take a different perspective or even for the authors of different chapters to openly disagree with each other. In general, scholarly books undergo a peer review process similar to that used by professional journals.

Literature Search Strategies

Using psycinfo and other databases.

The primary method used to search the research literature involves using one or more electronic databases. These include Academic Search Premier, JSTOR, and ProQuest for all academic disciplines, ERIC for education, and PubMed for medicine and related fields. The most important for our purposes, however, is PsycINFO, which is produced by the APA. PsycINFO is so comprehensive—covering thousands of professional journals and scholarly books going back more than 100 years—that for most purposes its content is synonymous with the research literature in psychology. Like most such databases, PsycINFO is usually available through your university library.

PsycINFO consists of individual records for each article, book chapter, or book in the database. Each record includes basic publication information, an abstract or summary of the work (like the one presented at the start of this chapter), and a list of other works cited by that work. A computer interface allows entering one or more search terms and returns any records that contain those search terms. (These interfaces are provided by different vendors and therefore can look somewhat different depending on the library you use.) Each record also contains lists of keywords that describe the content of the work and also a list of index terms. The index terms are especially helpful because they are standardized. Research on differences between women and men, for example, is always indexed under “Human Sex Differences.” Research on notetaking is always indexed under the term “Learning Strategies.” If you do not know the appropriate index terms, PsycINFO includes a thesaurus that can help you find them.

Given that there are nearly four million records in PsycINFO, you may have to try a variety of search terms in different combinations and at different levels of specificity before you find what you are looking for. Imagine, for example, that you are interested in the question of whether women and men differ in terms of their ability to recall experiences from when they were very young. If you were to enter “memory for early experiences” as your search term, PsycINFO would return only six records, most of which are not particularly relevant to your question. However, if you were to enter the search term “memory,” it would return 149,777 records—far too many to look through individually. This is where the thesaurus helps. Entering “memory” into the thesaurus provides several more specific index terms—one of which is “early memories.” While searching for “early memories” among the index terms returns 1,446 records—still too many too look through individually—combining it with “human sex differences” as a second search term returns 37 articles, many of which are highly relevant to the topic.

Depending on the vendor that provides the interface to PsycINFO, you may be able to save, print, or e-mail the relevant PsycINFO records. The records might even contain links to full-text copies of the works themselves. (PsycARTICLES is a database that provides full-text access to articles in all journals published by the APA.) If not, and you want a copy of the work, you will have to find out if your library carries the journal or has the book and the hard copy on the library shelves. Be sure to ask a librarian if you need help.

Using Other Search Techniques

In addition to entering search terms into PsycINFO and other databases, there are several other techniques you can use to search the research literature. First, if you have one good article or book chapter on your topic—a recent review article is best—you can look through the reference list of that article for other relevant articles, books, and book chapters. In fact, you should do this with any relevant article or book chapter you find. You can also start with a classic article or book chapter on your topic, find its record in PsycINFO (by entering the author’s name or article’s title as a search term), and link from there to a list of other works in PsycINFO that cite that classic article. This works because other researchers working on your topic are likely to be aware of the classic article and cite it in their own work. You can also do a general Internet search using search terms related to your topic or the name of a researcher who conducts research on your topic. This might lead you directly to works that are part of the research literature (e.g., articles in open-access journals or posted on researchers’ own websites). The search engine Google Scholar is especially useful for this purpose. A general Internet search might also lead you to websites that are not part of the research literature but might provide references to works that are. Finally, you can talk to people (e.g., your instructor or other faculty members in psychology) who know something about your topic and can suggest relevant articles and book chapters.

What to Search For

When you do a literature review, you need to be selective. Not every article, book chapter, and book that relates to your research idea or question will be worth obtaining, reading, and integrating into your review. Instead, you want to focus on sources that help you do four basic things: (a) refine your research question, (b) identify appropriate research methods, (c) place your research in the context of previous research, and (d) write an effective research report. Several basic principles can help you find the most useful sources.

First, it is best to focus on recent research, keeping in mind that what counts as recent depends on the topic. For newer topics that are actively being studied, “recent” might mean published in the past year or two. For older topics that are receiving less attention right now, “recent” might mean within the past 10 years. You will get a feel for what counts as recent for your topic when you start your literature search. A good general rule, however, is to start with sources published in the past five years. The main exception to this rule would be classic articles that turn up in the reference list of nearly every other source. If other researchers think that this work is important, even though it is old, then by all means you should include it in your review.

Second, you should look for review articles on your topic because they will provide a useful overview of it—often discussing important definitions, results, theories, trends, and controversies—giving you a good sense of where your own research fits into the literature. You should also look for empirical research reports addressing your question or similar questions, which can give you ideas about how to operationally define your variables and collect your data. As a general rule, it is good to use methods that others have already used successfully unless you have good reasons not to. Finally, you should look for sources that provide information that can help you argue for the interestingness of your research question. For a study on the effects of cell phone use on driving ability, for example, you might look for information about how widespread cell phone use is, how frequent and costly motor vehicle crashes are, and so on.

How many sources are enough for your literature review? This is a difficult question because it depends on how extensively your topic has been studied and also on your own goals. One study found that across a variety of professional journals in psychology, the average number of sources cited per article was about 50 (Adair & Vohra, 2003) [1] . This gives a rough idea of what professional researchers consider to be adequate. As a student, you might be assigned a much lower minimum number of references to use, but the principles for selecting the most useful ones remain the same.

Key Takeaways

• The research literature in psychology is all the published research in psychology, consisting primarily of articles in professional journals and scholarly books.
• Early in the research process, it is important to conduct a review of the research literature on your topic to refine your research question, identify appropriate research methods, place your question in the context of other research, and prepare to write an effective research report.
• There are several strategies for finding previous research on your topic. Among the best is using PsycINFO, a computer database that catalogs millions of articles, books, and book chapters in psychology and related fields.
• Practice: Use the techniques discussed in this section to find 10 journal articles and book chapters on one of the following research ideas: memory for smells, aggressive driving, the causes of narcissistic personality disorder, the functions of the intraparietal sulcus, or prejudice against the physically handicapped.
• Watch the following video clip produced by UBCiSchool about how to read an academic paper (without losing your mind):

Video Attributions

• “ Sample PsycINFO Search on EBSCOhost ” by APA Publishing Training . Standard YouTube Licence.
• “ Using Google Scholar (CLIP) ” by clipinfolit . CC BY (Attribution)
• “ How to Read an Academic Paper ” by UBCiSchool . CC BY (Attribution)
• Adair, J. G., & Vohra, N. (2003). The explosion of knowledge, references, and citations: Psychology’s unique response to a crisis. American Psychologist, 58 , 15–23. ↵

All the published research in a particular field.

Periodicals that publish original research articles.

A type of research article which describes one or more new empirical studies conducted by the authors.

A type of research article that summarizes previously published research on a topic and usually presents new ways to organize or explain the results.

A type of review article primarily devoted to presenting a new theory.

Books written by researchers and practitioners mainly for sue by other researchers and practitioners.

Type of scholarly book written by a single author or small group of authors, coherently presents a topic much like an extended review article.

A type of scholarly book in which an editor or small group of editors recruit many authors to write separate chapters on different aspects of the same topic.

An electronic database covering thousands of professional journals and scholarly books produced by the APA.

Research Methods in Psychology - 2nd Canadian Edition Copyright © 2015 by Paul C. Price, Rajiv Jhangiani, & I-Chant A. Chiang is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License , except where otherwise noted.

Share This Book

• University of Texas Libraries

Literature Reviews

Steps in the literature review process.

• What is a literature review?
• Define your research question
• Determine inclusion and exclusion criteria
• Choose databases and search
• Review Results
• Synthesize Results
• Analyze Results
• Librarian Support
• Artificial Intelligence (AI) Tools
• You may need to some exploratory searching of the literature to get a sense of scope, to determine whether you need to narrow or broaden your focus
• Identify databases that provide the most relevant sources, and identify relevant terms (controlled vocabularies) to add to your search strategy
• Finalize your research question
• Think about relevant dates, geographies (and languages), methods, and conflicting points of view
• Conduct searches in the published literature via the identified databases
• Check to see if this topic has been covered in other discipline's databases
• Examine the citations of on-point articles for keywords, authors, and previous research (via references) and cited reference searching.
• Save your search results in a citation management tool (such as Zotero, Mendeley or EndNote)
• De-duplicate your search results
• Make sure that you've found the seminal pieces -- they have been cited many times, and their work is considered foundational 
• Check with your professor or a librarian to make sure your search has been comprehensive
• Evaluate the strengths and weaknesses of individual sources and evaluate for bias, methodologies, and thoroughness
• Group your results in to an organizational structure that will support why your research needs to be done, or that provides the answer to your research question  
• Develop your conclusions
• Are there gaps in the literature?
• Where has significant research taken place, and who has done it?
• Is there consensus or debate on this topic?
• Which methodological approaches work best?
• For example: Background, Current Practices, Critics and Proponents, Where/How this study will fit in 
• Organize your citations and focus on your research question and pertinent studies
• Compile your bibliography

Note: The first four steps are the best points at which to contact a librarian. Your librarian can help you determine the best databases to use for your topic, assess scope, and formulate a search strategy.

Videos Tutorials about Literature Reviews

This 4.5 minute video from Academic Education Materials has a Creative Commons License and a British narrator.

Recommended Reading

• Last Updated: Jun 18, 2024 1:00 PM
• URL: https://guides.lib.utexas.edu/literaturereviews

Information

• Author Services

Initiatives

You are accessing a machine-readable page. In order to be human-readable, please install an RSS reader.

All articles published by MDPI are made immediately available worldwide under an open access license. No special permission is required to reuse all or part of the article published by MDPI, including figures and tables. For articles published under an open access Creative Common CC BY license, any part of the article may be reused without permission provided that the original article is clearly cited. For more information, please refer to https://www.mdpi.com/openaccess .

Feature papers represent the most advanced research with significant potential for high impact in the field. A Feature Paper should be a substantial original Article that involves several techniques or approaches, provides an outlook for future research directions and describes possible research applications.

Feature papers are submitted upon individual invitation or recommendation by the scientific editors and must receive positive feedback from the reviewers.

Editor’s Choice articles are based on recommendations by the scientific editors of MDPI journals from around the world. Editors select a small number of articles recently published in the journal that they believe will be particularly interesting to readers, or important in the respective research area. The aim is to provide a snapshot of some of the most exciting work published in the various research areas of the journal.

Original Submission Date Received: .

• Active Journals
• Find a Journal
• Proceedings Series
• For Authors
• For Reviewers
• For Editors
• For Librarians
• For Publishers
• For Societies
• For Conference Organizers
• Open Access Policy
• Institutional Open Access Program
• Special Issues Guidelines
• Editorial Process
• Research and Publication Ethics
• Article Processing Charges
• Testimonials
• Preprints.org
• SciProfiles
• Encyclopedia

Article Menu

• Subscribe SciFeed
• Recommended Articles
• Google Scholar
• on Google Scholar
• Table of Contents

Find support for a specific problem in the support section of our website.

Please let us know what you think of our products and services.

Visit our dedicated information section to learn more about MDPI.

JSmol Viewer

Artificial intelligence as a disruptive technology—a systematic literature review.

1. Introduction

2. materials and methods.

• First exclusion: ○ Document types—the Editorial Materials and Meeting Abstracts were removed (WoS—38, S—42), leaving 124 (WoS) + 142 (S) = 266 papers; ○ All publishers with only 1 article, as we considered that they did not have a serious approach toward this topic, were removed (WoS—20, S—23), leaving 104 (WoS) + 119 (S). Further, at this stage, the intermediary results (1) were merged into the same file, resulting in 223 articles.
• Second exclusion: ○ With the support of EndNote (used for reference management), it was possible to identify duplicate records (196) originating from the two databases and retain only 1 entry (98). In this manner, we obtained the intermediary results (2), with a total of 125 references.
• Third exclusion: ○ The remaining list was evaluated for relevance based on title, keyword, and abstract analysis, and the articles that did not fit the purpose of the research were eliminated (−28), leaving a total of 97 papers included in the study.

3.1. AI as a Disruptive Technology in Healthcare (Medicine)

3.1.1. disruptive features in the applications to surgery, 3.1.2. disruptive features in the applications to healthcare, 3.2. ai as a disruptive technology in business—logistics and transportation and the labor market, 3.2.1. logistics, 3.2.2. labor market, 3.3. ai as a disruptive technology in agriculture, 3.3.1. smart farming, 3.3.2. digital twins, 3.3.3. the fourth industrial revolution (4ir), 3.4. ai as a disruptive technology in education, 3.5. ai as a disruptive technology with respect to urban development—society, smart cities, and smart government, 3.5.1. disruptive technology’s impact on society, 3.5.2. smart cities, 3.5.3. smart government, 4. discussion and conclusions.

• Enhanced diagnosis, as AI algorithms can examine a large number of medical data to help clinicians make more accurate diagnoses, thus minimizing the possibility of misdiagnosis;
• Personalized medicine, since by using a patient’s particular medical history and genetic data, AI can aid the development of individualized treatment approaches;
• Superior patient outcomes, as AI may be used to track patients, anticipate future health difficulties, and alert medical professionals to take preventative action before significant health issues arise;
• Expedite drug development, because AI can analyze massive volumes of data to hasten the process of developing new drugs and bringing them to market;
• Improved clinical trials, due to the fact that data from clinical trials may be analyzed using AI algorithms, thus assisting in the selection of the most efficient therapies and enhancing patient results.
• The development of AI in healthcare creates ethical issues, such as the issue of responsibility in situations of misdiagnosis or treatment suggestions;
• Limited clinical validity poses a serious problem, because in certain complicated medical situations, AI algorithms may not be as accurate as human specialists and may not be completely verified for assessing all medical disorders;
• Healthcare professionals and patients who are suspicious about the accuracy and dependability of the technology can be resistant to the adoption of AI in the industry.
• For improved supply chain management, AI may aid routing, scheduling, and delivery optimization, which lowers transportation costs and increases delivery times;
• Transportation safety may be improved by using AI to track and improve driver behavior, reduce collisions, and increase road safety;
• AI can enhance logistics efficiency, as it may be used to improve inventory management, optimize storage and picking procedures, and expedite warehouse operations;
• AI is transforming the labor sector by replacing many old manual jobs while also opening up new career prospects in programming and data analysis;
• AI may improve customer experience as it can be used to offer updates on tracking and delivery in real-time, thereby reducing wait times and raising satisfaction;
• AI may aid the maximization of fuel use and the cutting of emissions through effective vehicle scheduling and routing and thus contribute to minimized environmental impacts;
• Many laborious and repetitive tasks will be automated, which may result in fewer jobs and employment possibilities, particularly in sectors such as logistics and transportation;
• As the demand for more high-skilled positions in AI and data analysis increases and fewer low-skilled occupations are automated, the rising usage of AI may worsen already-existing income discrepancies;
• The widespread usage of autonomous cars may result in substantial social and cultural changes, such as the loss of individual driving abilities and the demise of the automobile culture.
• Improved agricultural yields and less waste are possible with the use of AI, which may help farmers optimize planting, irrigation, and fertilization;
• Better resource management may help farmers conserve energy, water, and other resources while decreasing waste and enhancing sustainability;
• Enhanced food safety can be enforced by tracking the whole food production chain from farm to table, while AI can assist in the identification and prevention of food-borne diseases;
• AI can provide real-time analysis of crop, soil, and weather variables, thus enabling farmers to make educated decisions;
• Predictive maintenance may reduce downtime and boost production by predicting when machines and equipment need maintenance.
• AI systems are not immune to technical glitches or malfunctions, and the agricultural sector might suffer significantly as a result, leading to crop losses and possible food shortages;
• The usage of AI in agriculture may have unforeseen environmental effects, including increased pesticide and herbicide use, degraded soil, and the loss of biodiversity.
• A decrease in dropout rates and improved student results due to AI’s ability to detect students’ areas of need and offer focused support;
• Education that is customized to each student’s requirements, interests, and learning preferences may be achieved by using AI to deliver personalized learning experiences for students;
• Improved assessment and feedback due to AI’s ability to automate, enhance, and optimize the grading and feedback process and provide students faster, more precise, and more thorough feedback on their work;
• Lifelong learning is possible because of AI, which can help people continue to learn and advance their expertise.
• Education quality may suffer due to the usage of AI in the classroom when human interaction, creativity, and critical thinking abilities are substituted by automated procedures;
• A lack of critical thinking abilities may be precipitated by AI because the use of AI-powered tools and resources may lessen the necessity for critical thinking and problem-solving abilities, which may retard the development of these skills among students;
• The dependence on technology due to an overreliance on AI in the classroom may result in a lack of creativity, independence, and decision-making abilities, which will reduce students’ capacity to think and work independently.
• An increase in transparency, as by using AI to render governmental processes more open and accountable, individuals will be able to better understand how choices are made;
• Enhanced fraud detection, since AI may be used to identify and stop corruption and fraud in government systems, thus increasing public confidence in these organizations;
• Better resource allocation, because governmental organizations may use AI to more effectively direct resources, including money and staff, to the areas where they are most needed;
• The introduction of predictive analytics, as through the use of AI, government agencies may employ predictive analytics to proactively address prospective concerns before they become problems.
• Privacy issues—Government entities frequently deploy AI algorithms that rely on substantial volumes of personal data, which raises privacy concerns regarding how these data are gathered, kept, and used;
• Lack of transparency—AI technologies employed by government agencies may be opaque, making it difficult for the public to comprehend how and why choices are being made;
• The employment of AI in governmental affairs may result in greater control and surveillance, which may have detrimental effects on free expression and civil rights;
• When an AI system utilized by a government errs or causes harm, it may be challenging to pinpoint the culprit, which results in a lack of accountability.

Author Contributions

Data availability statement, conflicts of interest.

• Bower, L.J.; Christensen, M.C. Disruptive technologies: Catching the wave. Har. Buss. Rev. 1995 , 73 , 43–53. [ Google Scholar ]
• Christensen, C.M.; Bower, J.L. Customer power, strategic investment, and the failure of leading firms. Strateg. Manag. J. 1996 , 17 , 197–218. [ Google Scholar ]
• Christensen, C.M. The Innovator’s Dilemma: When New Technologies Cause Great Firms to Fail ; Harvard Business School Press: Boston, MA, USA, 1997; 179p. [ Google Scholar ]
• O’Connor, S.; Sidorko, P. Chapter 2—The complexities of our informational environment. In Imagine Your Library’s Future ; Chandos Publishing: Oxford, UK, 2010; pp. 33–60. [ Google Scholar ]
• Laukyte, M. Disruptive Technologies and the Sport Ecosystem: A Few Ethical Questions. Philosophies 2020 , 5 , 24. [ Google Scholar ] [ CrossRef ]
• Jekov, B.; Petkova, P.; Parusheva, Y.; Shoikova, E. Disruptive Technologies—Artificial Intelligence and Blockchain in Education. In Proceedings of the 11th Annual International Conference of Education, Research and Innovation (ICERI), Seville, Spain, 7–9 November 2022; pp. 6784–6793. [ Google Scholar ]
• Bongomin, O.; Ocen, G.G.; Nganyi, E.O.; Musinguzi, A.; Omara, T. Exponential Disruptive Technologies and the Required Skills of Industry 4.0. J. Eng. 2020 , 2020 , 4280156. [ Google Scholar ] [ CrossRef ] [ Green Version ]
• Hernández, R. World Standards Day 2018 Puts the Spotlight on the Fourth Industrial Revolution. Available online: https://www.iso.org/news/ref2333.html (accessed on 19 January 2023).
• Bird, K. Four Trends Will Impact ISO’s Future Strategy. Available online: https://www.iso.org/news/ref2436.html (accessed on 19 January 2023).
• Bublitz, F.M.; Oetomo, A.; Sahu, K.S.; Kuang, A.; Fadrique, L.X.; Velmovitsky, P.E.; Nobrega, R.M.; Morita, P.P. Disruptive Technologies for Environment and Health Research: An Overview of Artificial Intelligence, Blockchain, and Internet of Things. Int. J. Environ. Res. Public Health 2019 , 16 , 3847. [ Google Scholar ] [ CrossRef ] [ Green Version ]
• Chang, N.; Zhang, Y.; Lu, D.; Zheng, X.; Xue, J. Is a Disruptive Technology Disruptive? The Readiness Perspective Based on TOE. In Proceedings of the 2020 IEEE International Conference on Industrial Engineering and Engineering Management (IEEM), Singapore, 14–17 December 2020; pp. 893–897. [ Google Scholar ]
• Cartaxo, B.; Pinto, G.; Soares, S. The role of rapid reviews in supporting decision-making in software engineering practice. In Proceedings of the 22nd International Conference on Evaluation and Assessment in Software Engineering—EASE’18, Christchurch, New Zealand, 28–29 June 2018. [ Google Scholar ]
• Christensen, C.M.; McDonald, R.; Altman, E.J.; Palmer, J.E. Disruptive innovation: An intellectual history and directions for future research. J. Manag. Stud. 2018 , 55 , 1043–1078. [ Google Scholar ] [ CrossRef ] [ Green Version ]
• Popescul, D.; Radu, L.D.; Păvăloaia, V.D.; Georgescu, M.R. Psychological Determinants of Investor Motivation in Social Media-Based Crowdfunding Projects: A Systematic Review. Front. Psychol. 2020 , 11 , 588121. [ Google Scholar ] [ CrossRef ]
• Radu, L.D. Disruptive Technologies in Smart Cities: A Survey on Current Trends and Challenges. Smart Cities 2020 , 3 , 1022–1038. [ Google Scholar ] [ CrossRef ]
• VOSViewer. Visualizing Scientific Landscapes. Available online: https://www.vosviewer.com/features/highlights (accessed on 20 July 2022).
• Basmmi, A.B.M.N.; Abd Halim, S.; Saadon, N.A. Comparison of web services for sentiment analysis in social networking sites. In Proceedings of the IOP Conference Series: Materials Science and Engineering, Tangerang, Indonesia, 18–20 November 2020. [ Google Scholar ]
• Abdullah, N.S.D.; Zolkepli, I.A. Sentiment Analysis of Online Crowd Input towards Brand Provocation in Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram. In Proceedings of the International Conference on Big Data and Internet of Thing—BDIOT2017, London, UK, 20–22 December 2017. [ Google Scholar ]
• Byrne, M.; O’Malley, L.; Glenny, A.M.; Pretty, I.; Tickle, M. Assessing the reliability of automatic sentiment analysis tools on rating the sentiment of reviews of NHS dental practices in England. PLoS ONE 2021 , 16 , e0259797. [ Google Scholar ] [ CrossRef ]
• Saura, J.R.; Reyes-Menendez, A.; Alvarez-Alonso, C. Do Online Comments Affect Environmental Management? Identifying Factors Related to Environmental Management and Sustainability of Hotels. Sustainability 2018 , 10 , 3016. [ Google Scholar ] [ CrossRef ] [ Green Version ]
• Pahuriray, A.V.; Basanta, J.D.; Arroyo, J.C.T.; Delima, A.J.P. Flexible Learning Experience Analyzer (FLExA): Sentiment Analysis of College Students through Machine Learning Algorithms with Comparative Analysis using WEKA. Int. J. Emerg. Technol. Adv. Eng. 2022 , 12 , 1–15. [ Google Scholar ] [ CrossRef ]
• Stoiber, C.; Walchshofer, C.; Pohl, M.; Potzmann, B.; Grassinger, F.; Stitz, H.; Streit, M.; Aigner, W. Comparative evaluations of visualization onboarding methods. Vis. Inform. 2022 , 6 , 34–50. [ Google Scholar ] [ CrossRef ]
• Zhuang, Y. Emotional analysis of sentences based on machine learning. In Big Data Analytics for Cyber-Physical System in Smart City ; Advances in Intelligent Systems and Computing; Atiquzzaman, M., Yen, N., Xu, Z., Eds.; Springer: Singapore, 2020; pp. 813–820. [ Google Scholar ] [ CrossRef ]
• Elangovan, K.; JasmineRani, L.P.; Karthikeyan, M.P.; Therasa, M. Analysis of Social Network with Ontology and Deep Sentiment Durability Detection (SSD) Model for Green Community. J. Green Eng. 2020 , 10 , 2661–2677. [ Google Scholar ]
• Monkeylearn. No-Code Text Analytics. Available online: https://monkeylearn.com (accessed on 20 July 2022).
• Contreras, D.; Wilkinson, S.; Alterman, E.; Hervás, J. Accuracy of a pre-trained sentiment analysis (SA) classification model on tweets related to emergency response and early recovery assessment: The case of 2019 Albanian earthquake. Nat. Hazards 2022 , 113 , 403–421. [ Google Scholar ] [ CrossRef ] [ PubMed ]
• Contreras, D.; Wilkinson, S.; Balan, N.; James, P. Assessing post-disaster recovery using sentiment analysis: The case of L’Aquila. Earthq. Spectra 2022 , 38 , 81–108. [ Google Scholar ] [ CrossRef ]
• Sadriu, S.; Nuci, K.P.; Imran, A.S.; Uddin, I.; Sajjad, M. An Automated Approach for Analysing Students Feedback Using Sentiment Analysis Techniques. In Mediterranean Conference on Pattern Recognition and Artificial Intelligence ; Springer International Publishing: Cham, Switzerland, 2021; pp. 228–239. [ Google Scholar ]
• Bredava, A. A Guide to Sentiment Analysis: What Is It and How Does It Work? Available online: https://awario.com/blog/sentiment-analysis (accessed on 15 January 2023).
• Ryman-Tubb, N.F.; Krause, P.; Garn, W. How Artificial Intelligence and machine learning research impacts payment card fraud detection: A survey and industry benchmark. Eng. Appl. Artif. Intell. 2018 , 76 , 130–157. [ Google Scholar ] [ CrossRef ]
• Aria, M.; Cuccurullo, C. Bibliometrix: An R-tool for comprehensive science mapping analysis. J. Informetr. 2017 , 11 , 959–975. [ Google Scholar ] [ CrossRef ]
• International Organization for Standardization. ISO Standardization Foresight Framework—Trend Report 2022. Available online: https://www.iso.org/files/live/sites/isoorg/files/store/en/PUB100470.pdf (accessed on 19 January 2023).
• Dal Mas, F.; Piccolo, D.; Cobianchi, L.; Edvinsson, L.; Presch, G.; Massaro, M.; Skrap, M.; Vajana, A.F.D.; D’Auria, S.D.S.; Bagnoli, C. The Effects of Artificial Intelligence, Robotics, and Industry 4.0 Technologies. Insights from the Healthcare Sector. In Proceedings of the European Conference on the Impact of Artificial Intelligence and Robotics (ECIAIR), EM Normandie Business Sch, Oxford, UK, 31 Octorber–1 November 2022; pp. 88–95. [ Google Scholar ]
• Manickam, P.; Mariappan, S.A.; Murugesan, S.M.; Hansda, S.; Kaushik, A.; Shinde, R.; Thipperudraswamy, S.P. Artificial Intelligence (AI) and Internet of Medical Things (IoMT) Assisted Biomedical Systems for Intelligent Healthcare. Biosensors 2022 , 12 , 562. [ Google Scholar ] [ CrossRef ]
• Kelly, J.T.; Collins, P.F.; McCamley, J.; Ball, L.; Roberts, S.; Campbell, K.L. Digital disruption of dietetics: Are we ready? J. Hum. Nutr. Diet. 2021 , 34 , 134–146. [ Google Scholar ] [ CrossRef ]
• Joda, T.; Yeung, A.W.K.; Hung, K.; Zitzmann, N.U.; Bornstein, M.M. Disruptive Innovation in Dentistry: What It Is and What Could Be Next. J. Dent. Res. 2021 , 100 , 448–453. [ Google Scholar ] [ CrossRef ]
• Ahmad, P.; Alam, M.; Aldajani, A.; Alahmari, A.; Alanazi, A.; Stoddart, M.; Sghaireen, M. Dental Robotics: A Disruptive Technology. Sensors 2021 , 21 , 3308. [ Google Scholar ] [ CrossRef ]
• McBee, M.P.; Wilcox, C. Blockchain Technology: Principles and Applications in Medical Imaging. J. Digit. Imaging 2020 , 33 , 726–734. [ Google Scholar ] [ CrossRef ] [ PubMed ]
• Rasouli, J.J.; Shao, J.N.; Neifert, S.; Gibbs, W.N.; Habboub, G.; Steinmetz, M.P.; Benzel, E.; Mroz, T.E. Artificial Intelligence and Robotics in Spine Surgery. Glob. Spine J. 2021 , 11 , 556–564. [ Google Scholar ] [ CrossRef ] [ PubMed ] [ Green Version ]
• Dorweiler, B.; Wegner, M.; Salem, O.; Murtaja, A.; Schäfers, J.F.; Oberhuber, A. Innovation, disruptive technologies and transformation in vascular surgery. Gefasschirurgie 2022 , 27 , 561–568. [ Google Scholar ] [ CrossRef ]
• Mohanty, K.; Subiksha, S.; Kirthika, S.; Bh, S.; Sokkanarayanan, S.; Bose, P.; Sathiyanarayanan, M.; IEEE. Opportunities of Adopting AI-Powered Robotics to Tackle COVID-19. In Proceedings of the International Conference on COMmunication Systems and NETworkS (COMSNETS), Bangalore, India, 5–9 January 2022; pp. 703–708. [ Google Scholar ]
• Jabarulla, M.Y.; Lee, H.N. A Blockchain and Artificial Intelligence-Based, Patient-Centric Healthcare System for Combating the COVID-19 Pandemic: Opportunities and Applications. Healthcare 2021 , 9 , 1019. [ Google Scholar ] [ CrossRef ]
• Saraswat, D.; Bhattacharya, P.; Verma, A.; Prasad, V.K.; Tanwar, S.; Sharma, G.; Bokoro, P.N.; Sharma, R. Explainable AI for Healthcare 5.0: Opportunities and Challenges. IEEE Access 2022 , 10 , 84486–84517. [ Google Scholar ] [ CrossRef ]
• Mesko, B.; Hetenyi, G.; Gyorffy, Z. Will artificial intelligence solve the human resource crisis in healthcare? BMC Health Serv. Res. 2018 , 18 , 545. [ Google Scholar ] [ CrossRef ] [ Green Version ]
• Maliha, G.; Gerke, S.; Cohen, G.; Parikh, R.B. Artificial Intelligence and Liability in Medicine: Balancing Safety and Innovation. Milbank Q. 2021 , 99 , 629–647. [ Google Scholar ] [ CrossRef ]
• Khatab, Z.; Yousef, G.M. Disruptive innovations in the clinical laboratory: Catching the wave of precision diagnostics. Crit. Rev. Clin. Lab. Sci. 2021 , 58 , 546–562. [ Google Scholar ] [ CrossRef ]
• Brunelle, F.; Brunelle, P. Artificial Intelligence and Medical Imaging: Definition, State of the Art and Perspectives. Bull. Acad. Natl. Med. 2019 , 203 , 683–687. [ Google Scholar ]
• Garbuio, M.; Lin, N. Artificial Intelligence as a Growth Engine for Health Care Startups: Emerging Business Models. Calif. Manag. Rev. 2019 , 61 , 59–83. [ Google Scholar ] [ CrossRef ] [ Green Version ]
• Prakash, S.; Balaji, J.N.; Joshi, A.; Surapaneni, K.M. Ethical Conundrums in the Application of Artificial Intelligence (AI) in Healthcare—A Scoping Review of Reviews. J. Pers. Med. 2022 , 12 , 1914. [ Google Scholar ] [ CrossRef ] [ PubMed ]
• Mesko, B. Future Directions of Digital Health. In Digital Health: Scaling Healthcare to the World ; Rivas, H., Wac, K., Eds.; Springer: Berlin/Heidelberg, Germany, 2018; pp. 339–363. [ Google Scholar ] [ CrossRef ]
• Ojo, A. Next Generation Government—Hyperconnected, Smart and Augmented. In Proceedings of the 20th IFIP WG 5.5 Working Conference on Virtual Enterprises (PRO-VE), Turin, Italy, 23–25 September 2019; pp. 285–294. [ Google Scholar ]
• Ljepava, N. AI-Enabled Marketing Solutions in Marketing Decision Making: AI Application in Different Stages of Marketing Process. TEM J. 2022 , 11 , 1308–1315. [ Google Scholar ] [ CrossRef ]
• Wiegandt, D. Blockchain and Smart Contracts and the Role of Arbitration. J. Int. Arbitr. 2022 , 39 , 671–690. [ Google Scholar ] [ CrossRef ]
• Dong, C.W.; Akram, A.; Andersson, D.; Arnas, P.O.; Stefansson, G. The impact of emerging and disruptive technologies on freight transportation in the digital era: Current state and future trends. Int. J. Logist. Manag. 2021 , 32 , 386–412. [ Google Scholar ] [ CrossRef ]
• Noor, A. Adoption of Blockchain Technology Facilitates a Competitive Edge for Logistic Service Providers. Sustainability 2022 , 14 , 15543. [ Google Scholar ] [ CrossRef ]
• Ugochukwu, N.A.; Goyal, S.B.; Rajawat, A.S.; Islam, S.M.N.; He, J.; Aslam, M. An Innovative Blockchain-Based Secured Logistics Management Architecture: Utilizing an RSA Asymmetric Encryption Method. Mathematics 2022 , 10 , 4670. [ Google Scholar ] [ CrossRef ]
• Zondervan, N.A.; Tolentino-Zondervan, F.; Moeke, D. Logistics Trends and Innovations in Response to COVID-19 Pandemic: An Analysis Using Text Mining. Processes 2022 , 10 , 2667. [ Google Scholar ] [ CrossRef ]
• Hong, Z.F.; Zhang, H.Y.; Gong, Y.M.; Yu, Y.G. Towards a multi-party interaction framework: State-of-the-art review in sustainable operations management. Int. J. Prod. Res. 2022 , 60 , 2625–2661. [ Google Scholar ] [ CrossRef ]
• Yu, H. Modeling a remanufacturing reverse logistics planning problem: Some insights into disruptive technology adoption. Int. J. Adv. Manuf. Technol. 2022 , 123 , 4231–4249. [ Google Scholar ] [ CrossRef ]
• Jia, W.; Wang, S.; Xie, Y.; Chen, Z.; Gong, K. Disruptive technology identification of intelligent logistics robots in AIoT industry: Based on attributes and functions analysis. Syst. Res. Behav. Sci. 2022 , 39 , 557–568. [ Google Scholar ] [ CrossRef ]
• Cukier, W. Disruptive processes and skills mismatches in the new economy Theorizing social inclusion and innovation as solutions. J. Glob. Responsib. 2019 , 10 , 211–225. [ Google Scholar ] [ CrossRef ]
• Oosthuizen, R.M. The Fourth Industrial Revolution—Smart Technology, Artificial Intelligence, Robotics and Algorithms: Industrial Psychologists in Future Workplaces. Front. Artif. Intell. 2022 , 5 , 913168. [ Google Scholar ] [ CrossRef ] [ PubMed ]
• Khatri, S.; Pandey, D.K.; Penkar, D.; Ramani, J. Impact of Artificial Intelligence on Human Resources. In Data Management, Analytics and Innovation ; Advances in Intelligent Systems and Computing; Sharma, N., Chakrabarti, A., Balas, V., Eds.; Springer: Singapore, 2019. [ Google Scholar ]
• Burden, K. Impact of disruptive technologies on sourcing and outsourcing transactions. Comput. Law Secur. Rev. 2018 , 34 , 886–889. [ Google Scholar ] [ CrossRef ]
• Miklosik, A.; Evans, N. Impact of Big Data and Machine Learning on Digital Transformation in Marketing: A Literature Review. IEEE Access 2020 , 8 , 101284–101292. [ Google Scholar ] [ CrossRef ]
• Koizumi, S. The Light and Shadow of the Fourth Industrial Revolution. In Innovation beyond Technology: Science for Society and Interdisciplinary Approaches ; Lechevalier, S., Ed.; Springer: Berlin/Heidelberg, Germany, 2019; pp. 63–86. [ Google Scholar ] [ CrossRef ]
• Rosales, M.A.; Magsumbol, J.A.V.; Palconit, M.G.B.; Culaba, A.B.; Dadios, E.P. Artificial Intelligence: The Technology Adoption and Impact in the Philippines. In Proceedings of the IEEE 12th International Conference on Humanoid, Nanotechnology, Information Technology, Communication and Control, Environment, and Management (HNICEM), Manila, Philippines, 3–7 December 2020. [ Google Scholar ]
• Anitha, J.; Saranya, N. Cassava Leaf Disease Identification and Detection Using Deep Learning Approach. Int. J. Comput. Commun. Control 2022 , 17 , 1–7. [ Google Scholar ] [ CrossRef ]
• Ortola, A. Unlocking the full potential of artificial intelligence in PH. Philippine Daily Inquirer , 24 June 2019. [ Google Scholar ]
• Karimanzira, D.; Rauschenbach, T. An intelligent management system for aquaponics. at-Automatisierungstechnik 2021 , 69 , 345–350. [ Google Scholar ] [ CrossRef ]
• Jacobs, M.; Remus, A.; Gaillard, C.; Menendez, H.M.; Tedeschi, L.O.; Neethirajan, S.; Ellis, J.L. ASAS-NANP symposium: Mathematical modeling in animal nutrition: Limitations and potential next steps for modeling and modelers in the animal sciences. J. Anim. Sci. 2022 , 100 , skac132. [ Google Scholar ] [ CrossRef ]
• De Bernardi, P.; Azucar, D.; Forliano, C.; Franco, M. Innovative and Sustainable Food Business Models. In Innovation in Food Ecosystems: Entrepreneurship for a Sustainable Future ; Springer: Berlin/Heidelberg, Germany, 2020; pp. 189–221. [ Google Scholar ] [ CrossRef ]
• Neethirajan, S.; Kemp, B. Digital Twins in Livestock Farming. Animals 2021 , 11 , 1008. [ Google Scholar ] [ CrossRef ]
• Spanaki, K.; Sivarajah, U.; Fakhimi, M.; Despoudi, S.; Irani, Z. Disruptive technologies in agricultural operations: A systematic review of AI-driven AgriTech research. Ann. Oper. Res. 2022 , 308 , 491–524. [ Google Scholar ] [ CrossRef ]
• Kamble, S.; Gunasekaran, A.; Sharma, R. Modeling the blockchain enabled traceability in agriculture supply chain. Int. J. Inf. Manag. 2020 , 52 , 101967. [ Google Scholar ] [ CrossRef ]
• Wamba, S.F.; Queiroz, M.M. Blockchain in the operations and supply chain management: Benefits, challenges and future research opportunities. Int. J. Inf. Manag. 2020 , 52 , 102064. [ Google Scholar ] [ CrossRef ]
• Moore, W.B.; Felo, A. The evolution of accounting technology education: Analytics to STEM. J. Educ. Bus. 2022 , 97 , 105–111. [ Google Scholar ] [ CrossRef ]
• Brito, C.R.; Ciampi, M.M.; Sluss, J.J.; Santos, H.D. Trends in Engineering Education: A Disruptive View for not so far Future. In Proceedings of the 18th International Conference on Information Technology Based Higher Education and Training (ITHET), Magdeburg, Germany, 26–27 September 2019. [ Google Scholar ]
• Ghani, A. Engineering education at the age of Industry 5.0—Higher education at the crossroads. World Trans. Eng. Technol. Educ. 2022 , 20 , 112–117. [ Google Scholar ]
• Bühler, M.M.; Jelinek, T.; Nübel, K. Training and Preparing Tomorrow’s Workforce for the Fourth Industrial Revolution. Educ. Sci. 2022 , 12 , 782. [ Google Scholar ] [ CrossRef ]
• Chaka, C. Is Education 4.0 a Sufficient Innovative, and Disruptive Educational Trend to Promote Sustainable Open Education for Higher Education Institutions? A Review of Literature Trends. Front. Educ. 2022 , 7 , 226. [ Google Scholar ] [ CrossRef ]
• Choi, T.-M.; Kumar, S.; Yue, X.; Chan, H.-L. Disruptive Technologies and Operations Management in the Industry 4.0 Era and Beyond. Prod. Oper. Manag. 2022 , 31 , 9–31. [ Google Scholar ] [ CrossRef ]
• Bengoechea, J.; Bell, A. The Impact of 21st Century Technology in Higher Education: The Role of Artificial Intelligence. Int. J. Educ. Pedagog. Sci. 2022 , 16 , 493–496. [ Google Scholar ]
• Miao, F.; Wayne, H.; Ronghuai, H.; Hui, Z. AI and Education: A Guidance for Policymakers ; UNESCO Publishing: Paris, France, 2021. [ Google Scholar ]
• Pornpongtechavanich, P.; Eambunnapong, K.; Daengsi, T.; Nilsook, P. Critical success factors for smart-professional disruptor in university. Int. J. Eval. Res. Educ. 2022 , 11 , 1696–1703. [ Google Scholar ] [ CrossRef ]
• Molenaar, I. Towards hybrid human-AI learning technologies. Eur. J. Educ. 2022 , 57 , 632–645. [ Google Scholar ] [ CrossRef ]
• Holmes, W.; Tuomi, I. State of the art and practice in AI in education. Eur. J. Educ. 2022 , 53 , 542–570. [ Google Scholar ] [ CrossRef ]
• Zeeshan, K.; Hämäläinen, T.; Neittaanmäki, P. Internet of Things for Sustainable Smart Education: An Overview. Sustainability 2022 , 14 , 4293. [ Google Scholar ] [ CrossRef ]
• Ciolacu, M.; Svasta, P.M.; Berg, W.; Popp, H.; IEEE. Education 4.0 for Tall Thin Engineer in a Data Driven Society. In Proceedings of the 23rd IEEE International Symposium for Design and Technology in Electronic Packaging (SIITME), Constanta, Romania, 26–29 October 2022; pp. 438–443. [ Google Scholar ]
• Ahmad, T. Scenario based approach to re-imagining future of higher education which prepares students for the future of work. High. Educ. Ski. Work-Based Learn. 2019 , 10 , 217–238. [ Google Scholar ] [ CrossRef ]
• Yang, K.; Shi, Y.M.; Zhou, Y.; Yang, Z.P.; Fu, L.Q.; Chen, W. Federated Machine Learning for Intelligent IoT via Reconfigurable Intelligent Surface. IEEE Netw. 2020 , 34 , 16–22. [ Google Scholar ] [ CrossRef ]
• Kasinathan, P.; Pugazhendhi, R.; Elavarasan, R.M.; Ramachandaramurthy, V.K.; Ramanathan, V.; Subramanian, S.; Kumar, S.; Nandhagopal, K.; Raghavan, R.R.V.; Rangasamy, S.; et al. Realization of Sustainable Development Goals with Disruptive Technologies by Integrating Industry 5.0, Society 5.0, Smart Cities and Villages. Sustainability 2022 , 14 , 15258. [ Google Scholar ] [ CrossRef ]
• Sgantzos, K.; Grigg, I. Artificial Intelligence Implementations on the Blockchain. Use Cases and Future Applications. Future Internet 2019 , 11 , 170. [ Google Scholar ] [ CrossRef ] [ Green Version ]
• Corchado, J.M.; Trabelsi, S. Advances in Sustainable Smart Cities and Territories. Electronics 2022 , 11 , 1280. [ Google Scholar ] [ CrossRef ]
• Xu, Y. Programmatic Dreams: Technographic Inquiry into Censorship of Chinese Chatbots. Soc. Media + Soc. 2018 , 4 , 2056305118808780. [ Google Scholar ] [ CrossRef ] [ Green Version ]
• Zweispace. Zweispace Won the Best Startup Award for Real Estate and Construction Batch at the Plug and Play Summer Summit 2020. Available online: https://en.zweispace.co.jp/2020/08/04/zweispace-won-the-best-startup-award-for-real-estate-and-construction-batch-at-the-plug-and-play-summer-summit-2020/ (accessed on 4 August 2022).
• Ortega-Fernández, A.; Martín-Rojas, R.; García-Morales, V. Artificial Intelligence in the Urban Environment: Smart Cities as Models for Developing Innovation and Sustainability. Sustainability 2020 , 12 , 7860. [ Google Scholar ] [ CrossRef ]
• Schintler, L.A.; McNeely, C.L. Artificial intelligence, institutions, and resilience: Prospects and provocations for cities. J. Urban Manag. 2022 , 11 , 256–268. [ Google Scholar ] [ CrossRef ]
• Fu, G.; Jin, Y.; Sun, S.; Yuan, Z.; Butler, D. The role of deep learning in urban water management: A critical review. Water Res. 2022 , 223 , 118973. [ Google Scholar ] [ CrossRef ]
• Ullah, F. Smart Tech 4.0 in the Built Environment: Applications of Disruptive Digital Technologies in Smart Cities, Construction, and Real Estate. Buildings 2022 , 12 , 1516. [ Google Scholar ] [ CrossRef ]
• Ullah, F.; Sepasgozar, S.M.E.; Wang, C.X. A Systematic Review of Smart Real Estate Technology: Drivers of, and Barriers to, the Use of Digital Disruptive Technologies and Online Platforms. Sustainability 2018 , 10 , 3142. [ Google Scholar ] [ CrossRef ] [ Green Version ]
• Ghobakhloo, M. Industry 4.0, digitization, and opportunities for sustainability. J. Clean. Prod. 2020 , 252 , 119869. [ Google Scholar ] [ CrossRef ]
• Khanna, A.; Sah, A.; Bolshev, V.; Jasinski, M.; Vinogradov, A.; Leonowicz, Z.; Jasiński, M. Blockchain: Future of e-Governance in Smart Cities. Sustainability 2021 , 13 , 11840. [ Google Scholar ] [ CrossRef ]
• McLean, J.; Mackenzie, R. Digital justice in Australian visa application processes? Altern. Law J. 2019 , 44 , 291–296. [ Google Scholar ] [ CrossRef ]
• Ishengoma, F.R.; Shao, D.; Alexopoulos, C.; Saxena, S.; Nikiforova, A. Integration of artificial intelligence of things (AIoT) in the public sector: Drivers, barriers and future research agenda. Digit. Policy Regul. Gov. 2022 , 24 , 449–462. [ Google Scholar ] [ CrossRef ]
• Rapanyane, M.B.; Sethole, F.R. The rise of artificial intelligence and robots in the 4th Industrial Revolution: Implications for future South African job creation. Contemp. Soc. Sci. 2020 , 15 , 489–501. [ Google Scholar ] [ CrossRef ]
• Mesko, B. The role of artificial intelligence in precision medicine. Expert Rev. Precis. Med. Drug Dev. 2017 , 2 , 239–241. [ Google Scholar ] [ CrossRef ]
• Brougham, D.; Haar, J. Smart Technology, Artificial Intelligence, Robotics, and Algorithms (STARA): Employees’ perceptions of our future workplace. J. Manag. Organ. 2018 , 24 , 239–257. [ Google Scholar ] [ CrossRef ] [ Green Version ]
• Frey, C.B.; Osborne, M.A. The future of employment: How susceptible are jobs to computerisation? Technol. Forecast. Soc. Chang. 2017 , 114 , 254–280. [ Google Scholar ] [ CrossRef ]

Click here to enlarge figure

Share and Cite

Păvăloaia, V.-D.; Necula, S.-C. Artificial Intelligence as a Disruptive Technology—A Systematic Literature Review. Electronics 2023 , 12 , 1102. https://doi.org/10.3390/electronics12051102

Păvăloaia V-D, Necula S-C. Artificial Intelligence as a Disruptive Technology—A Systematic Literature Review. Electronics . 2023; 12(5):1102. https://doi.org/10.3390/electronics12051102

Păvăloaia, Vasile-Daniel, and Sabina-Cristiana Necula. 2023. "Artificial Intelligence as a Disruptive Technology—A Systematic Literature Review" Electronics 12, no. 5: 1102. https://doi.org/10.3390/electronics12051102

Article Metrics

Article access statistics, further information, mdpi initiatives, follow mdpi.

Subscribe to receive issue release notifications and newsletters from MDPI journals

• SUGGESTED TOPICS
• The Magazine
• Newsletters
• Managing Yourself
• Managing Teams
• Work-life Balance
• The Big Idea
• Data & Visuals
• Reading Lists
• Case Selections
• HBR Learning
• Topic Feeds
• Account Settings
• Email Preferences

The Limits of GenAI Educators

• Jared Cooney Horvath

Three fundamental problems with using LLMs as teachers, tutors, and trainers.

While generative AI tools have been heralded as the future of education, more than 40 years of academic research suggests that it could also harm learning in realms from online tutoring to employee training for three reasons. First, the best student-teacher relationships are empathetic ones but it is biologically impossible for humans and AI to develop mutual empathy. Second, AI might help us bypass the boring task of knowledge accumulation but it is only through that process that we develop higher order thinking skills. Finally, digital tools are notoriously distracting and multitasking diminishes learning. As we think about the benefits of new technology, we must also consider the risks.

Since the widely acclaimed release of ChatGPT 4, generative AI has been touted by many as the savior of education. Case in point: British education expert Sir Anthony Seldon has predicted that by 2027, AI will replace human teachers on a global scale.

• Jared Cooney Horvath (PhD, MEd) is a neuroscientist, educator, and author of the best-selling book  Stop Talking, Start Influencing: 12 Insights from Brain Science to Make Your Message Stick . He has conducted research and lectured at Harvard University, Harvard Medical School, the University of Melbourne, and more than 750 schools internationally and currently serves as director of LME Global.

Partner Center

An official website of the United States government

The .gov means it’s official. Federal government websites often end in .gov or .mil. Before sharing sensitive information, make sure you’re on a federal government site.

The site is secure. The https:// ensures that you are connecting to the official website and that any information you provide is encrypted and transmitted securely.

• Publications
• Account settings

Preview improvements coming to the PMC website in October 2024. Learn More or Try it out now .

• Advanced Search
• Journal List
• PLoS Comput Biol
• v.9(7); 2013 Jul

Ten Simple Rules for Writing a Literature Review

Marco pautasso.

1 Centre for Functional and Evolutionary Ecology (CEFE), CNRS, Montpellier, France

2 Centre for Biodiversity Synthesis and Analysis (CESAB), FRB, Aix-en-Provence, France

Literature reviews are in great demand in most scientific fields. Their need stems from the ever-increasing output of scientific publications [1] . For example, compared to 1991, in 2008 three, eight, and forty times more papers were indexed in Web of Science on malaria, obesity, and biodiversity, respectively [2] . Given such mountains of papers, scientists cannot be expected to examine in detail every single new paper relevant to their interests [3] . Thus, it is both advantageous and necessary to rely on regular summaries of the recent literature. Although recognition for scientists mainly comes from primary research, timely literature reviews can lead to new synthetic insights and are often widely read [4] . For such summaries to be useful, however, they need to be compiled in a professional way [5] .

When starting from scratch, reviewing the literature can require a titanic amount of work. That is why researchers who have spent their career working on a certain research issue are in a perfect position to review that literature. Some graduate schools are now offering courses in reviewing the literature, given that most research students start their project by producing an overview of what has already been done on their research issue [6] . However, it is likely that most scientists have not thought in detail about how to approach and carry out a literature review.

Reviewing the literature requires the ability to juggle multiple tasks, from finding and evaluating relevant material to synthesising information from various sources, from critical thinking to paraphrasing, evaluating, and citation skills [7] . In this contribution, I share ten simple rules I learned working on about 25 literature reviews as a PhD and postdoctoral student. Ideas and insights also come from discussions with coauthors and colleagues, as well as feedback from reviewers and editors.

Rule 1: Define a Topic and Audience

How to choose which topic to review? There are so many issues in contemporary science that you could spend a lifetime of attending conferences and reading the literature just pondering what to review. On the one hand, if you take several years to choose, several other people may have had the same idea in the meantime. On the other hand, only a well-considered topic is likely to lead to a brilliant literature review [8] . The topic must at least be:

• interesting to you (ideally, you should have come across a series of recent papers related to your line of work that call for a critical summary),
• an important aspect of the field (so that many readers will be interested in the review and there will be enough material to write it), and
• a well-defined issue (otherwise you could potentially include thousands of publications, which would make the review unhelpful).

Ideas for potential reviews may come from papers providing lists of key research questions to be answered [9] , but also from serendipitous moments during desultory reading and discussions. In addition to choosing your topic, you should also select a target audience. In many cases, the topic (e.g., web services in computational biology) will automatically define an audience (e.g., computational biologists), but that same topic may also be of interest to neighbouring fields (e.g., computer science, biology, etc.).

Rule 2: Search and Re-search the Literature

After having chosen your topic and audience, start by checking the literature and downloading relevant papers. Five pieces of advice here:

• keep track of the search items you use (so that your search can be replicated [10] ),
• keep a list of papers whose pdfs you cannot access immediately (so as to retrieve them later with alternative strategies),
• use a paper management system (e.g., Mendeley, Papers, Qiqqa, Sente),
• define early in the process some criteria for exclusion of irrelevant papers (these criteria can then be described in the review to help define its scope), and
• do not just look for research papers in the area you wish to review, but also seek previous reviews.

The chances are high that someone will already have published a literature review ( Figure 1 ), if not exactly on the issue you are planning to tackle, at least on a related topic. If there are already a few or several reviews of the literature on your issue, my advice is not to give up, but to carry on with your own literature review,

The bottom-right situation (many literature reviews but few research papers) is not just a theoretical situation; it applies, for example, to the study of the impacts of climate change on plant diseases, where there appear to be more literature reviews than research studies [33] .

• discussing in your review the approaches, limitations, and conclusions of past reviews,
• trying to find a new angle that has not been covered adequately in the previous reviews, and
• incorporating new material that has inevitably accumulated since their appearance.

When searching the literature for pertinent papers and reviews, the usual rules apply:

• be thorough,
• use different keywords and database sources (e.g., DBLP, Google Scholar, ISI Proceedings, JSTOR Search, Medline, Scopus, Web of Science), and
• look at who has cited past relevant papers and book chapters.

Rule 3: Take Notes While Reading

If you read the papers first, and only afterwards start writing the review, you will need a very good memory to remember who wrote what, and what your impressions and associations were while reading each single paper. My advice is, while reading, to start writing down interesting pieces of information, insights about how to organize the review, and thoughts on what to write. This way, by the time you have read the literature you selected, you will already have a rough draft of the review.

Of course, this draft will still need much rewriting, restructuring, and rethinking to obtain a text with a coherent argument [11] , but you will have avoided the danger posed by staring at a blank document. Be careful when taking notes to use quotation marks if you are provisionally copying verbatim from the literature. It is advisable then to reformulate such quotes with your own words in the final draft. It is important to be careful in noting the references already at this stage, so as to avoid misattributions. Using referencing software from the very beginning of your endeavour will save you time.

Rule 4: Choose the Type of Review You Wish to Write

After having taken notes while reading the literature, you will have a rough idea of the amount of material available for the review. This is probably a good time to decide whether to go for a mini- or a full review. Some journals are now favouring the publication of rather short reviews focusing on the last few years, with a limit on the number of words and citations. A mini-review is not necessarily a minor review: it may well attract more attention from busy readers, although it will inevitably simplify some issues and leave out some relevant material due to space limitations. A full review will have the advantage of more freedom to cover in detail the complexities of a particular scientific development, but may then be left in the pile of the very important papers “to be read” by readers with little time to spare for major monographs.

There is probably a continuum between mini- and full reviews. The same point applies to the dichotomy of descriptive vs. integrative reviews. While descriptive reviews focus on the methodology, findings, and interpretation of each reviewed study, integrative reviews attempt to find common ideas and concepts from the reviewed material [12] . A similar distinction exists between narrative and systematic reviews: while narrative reviews are qualitative, systematic reviews attempt to test a hypothesis based on the published evidence, which is gathered using a predefined protocol to reduce bias [13] , [14] . When systematic reviews analyse quantitative results in a quantitative way, they become meta-analyses. The choice between different review types will have to be made on a case-by-case basis, depending not just on the nature of the material found and the preferences of the target journal(s), but also on the time available to write the review and the number of coauthors [15] .

Rule 5: Keep the Review Focused, but Make It of Broad Interest

Whether your plan is to write a mini- or a full review, it is good advice to keep it focused 16 , 17 . Including material just for the sake of it can easily lead to reviews that are trying to do too many things at once. The need to keep a review focused can be problematic for interdisciplinary reviews, where the aim is to bridge the gap between fields [18] . If you are writing a review on, for example, how epidemiological approaches are used in modelling the spread of ideas, you may be inclined to include material from both parent fields, epidemiology and the study of cultural diffusion. This may be necessary to some extent, but in this case a focused review would only deal in detail with those studies at the interface between epidemiology and the spread of ideas.

While focus is an important feature of a successful review, this requirement has to be balanced with the need to make the review relevant to a broad audience. This square may be circled by discussing the wider implications of the reviewed topic for other disciplines.

Rule 6: Be Critical and Consistent

Reviewing the literature is not stamp collecting. A good review does not just summarize the literature, but discusses it critically, identifies methodological problems, and points out research gaps [19] . After having read a review of the literature, a reader should have a rough idea of:

• the major achievements in the reviewed field,
• the main areas of debate, and
• the outstanding research questions.

It is challenging to achieve a successful review on all these fronts. A solution can be to involve a set of complementary coauthors: some people are excellent at mapping what has been achieved, some others are very good at identifying dark clouds on the horizon, and some have instead a knack at predicting where solutions are going to come from. If your journal club has exactly this sort of team, then you should definitely write a review of the literature! In addition to critical thinking, a literature review needs consistency, for example in the choice of passive vs. active voice and present vs. past tense.

Rule 7: Find a Logical Structure

Like a well-baked cake, a good review has a number of telling features: it is worth the reader's time, timely, systematic, well written, focused, and critical. It also needs a good structure. With reviews, the usual subdivision of research papers into introduction, methods, results, and discussion does not work or is rarely used. However, a general introduction of the context and, toward the end, a recapitulation of the main points covered and take-home messages make sense also in the case of reviews. For systematic reviews, there is a trend towards including information about how the literature was searched (database, keywords, time limits) [20] .

How can you organize the flow of the main body of the review so that the reader will be drawn into and guided through it? It is generally helpful to draw a conceptual scheme of the review, e.g., with mind-mapping techniques. Such diagrams can help recognize a logical way to order and link the various sections of a review [21] . This is the case not just at the writing stage, but also for readers if the diagram is included in the review as a figure. A careful selection of diagrams and figures relevant to the reviewed topic can be very helpful to structure the text too [22] .

Rule 8: Make Use of Feedback

Reviews of the literature are normally peer-reviewed in the same way as research papers, and rightly so [23] . As a rule, incorporating feedback from reviewers greatly helps improve a review draft. Having read the review with a fresh mind, reviewers may spot inaccuracies, inconsistencies, and ambiguities that had not been noticed by the writers due to rereading the typescript too many times. It is however advisable to reread the draft one more time before submission, as a last-minute correction of typos, leaps, and muddled sentences may enable the reviewers to focus on providing advice on the content rather than the form.

Feedback is vital to writing a good review, and should be sought from a variety of colleagues, so as to obtain a diversity of views on the draft. This may lead in some cases to conflicting views on the merits of the paper, and on how to improve it, but such a situation is better than the absence of feedback. A diversity of feedback perspectives on a literature review can help identify where the consensus view stands in the landscape of the current scientific understanding of an issue [24] .

Rule 9: Include Your Own Relevant Research, but Be Objective

In many cases, reviewers of the literature will have published studies relevant to the review they are writing. This could create a conflict of interest: how can reviewers report objectively on their own work [25] ? Some scientists may be overly enthusiastic about what they have published, and thus risk giving too much importance to their own findings in the review. However, bias could also occur in the other direction: some scientists may be unduly dismissive of their own achievements, so that they will tend to downplay their contribution (if any) to a field when reviewing it.

In general, a review of the literature should neither be a public relations brochure nor an exercise in competitive self-denial. If a reviewer is up to the job of producing a well-organized and methodical review, which flows well and provides a service to the readership, then it should be possible to be objective in reviewing one's own relevant findings. In reviews written by multiple authors, this may be achieved by assigning the review of the results of a coauthor to different coauthors.

Rule 10: Be Up-to-Date, but Do Not Forget Older Studies

Given the progressive acceleration in the publication of scientific papers, today's reviews of the literature need awareness not just of the overall direction and achievements of a field of inquiry, but also of the latest studies, so as not to become out-of-date before they have been published. Ideally, a literature review should not identify as a major research gap an issue that has just been addressed in a series of papers in press (the same applies, of course, to older, overlooked studies (“sleeping beauties” [26] )). This implies that literature reviewers would do well to keep an eye on electronic lists of papers in press, given that it can take months before these appear in scientific databases. Some reviews declare that they have scanned the literature up to a certain point in time, but given that peer review can be a rather lengthy process, a full search for newly appeared literature at the revision stage may be worthwhile. Assessing the contribution of papers that have just appeared is particularly challenging, because there is little perspective with which to gauge their significance and impact on further research and society.

Inevitably, new papers on the reviewed topic (including independently written literature reviews) will appear from all quarters after the review has been published, so that there may soon be the need for an updated review. But this is the nature of science [27] – [32] . I wish everybody good luck with writing a review of the literature.

Acknowledgments

Many thanks to M. Barbosa, K. Dehnen-Schmutz, T. Döring, D. Fontaneto, M. Garbelotto, O. Holdenrieder, M. Jeger, D. Lonsdale, A. MacLeod, P. Mills, M. Moslonka-Lefebvre, G. Stancanelli, P. Weisberg, and X. Xu for insights and discussions, and to P. Bourne, T. Matoni, and D. Smith for helpful comments on a previous draft.

Funding Statement

This work was funded by the French Foundation for Research on Biodiversity (FRB) through its Centre for Synthesis and Analysis of Biodiversity data (CESAB), as part of the NETSEED research project. The funders had no role in the preparation of the manuscript.

Want to create or adapt books like this? Learn more about how Pressbooks supports open publishing practices.

2.3 Reviewing the Research Literature

Learning objectives.

• Define the research literature in psychology and give examples of sources that are part of the research literature and sources that are not.
• Describe and use several methods for finding previous research on a particular research idea or question.

Reviewing the research literature means finding, reading, and summarizing the published research relevant to your question. An empirical research report written in American Psychological Association (APA) style always includes a written literature review, but it is important to review the literature early in the research process for several reasons.

• It can help you turn a research idea into an interesting research question.
• It can tell you if a research question has already been answered.
• It can help you evaluate the interestingness of a research question.
• It can give you ideas for how to conduct your own study.
• It can tell you how your study fits into the research literature.

What Is the Research Literature?

The research literature in any field is all the published research in that field. The research literature in psychology is enormous—including millions of scholarly articles and books dating to the beginning of the field—and it continues to grow. Although its boundaries are somewhat fuzzy, the research literature definitely does not include self-help and other pop psychology books, dictionary and encyclopedia entries, websites, and similar sources that are intended mainly for the general public. These are considered unreliable because they are not reviewed by other researchers and are often based on little more than common sense or personal experience. Wikipedia contains much valuable information, but the fact that its authors are anonymous and its content continually changes makes it unsuitable as a basis of sound scientific research. For our purposes, it helps to define the research literature as consisting almost entirely of two types of sources: articles in professional journals, and scholarly books in psychology and related fields.

Professional Journals

Professional journals are periodicals that publish original research articles. There are thousands of professional journals that publish research in psychology and related fields. They are usually published monthly or quarterly in individual issues, each of which contains several articles. The issues are organized into volumes, which usually consist of all the issues for a calendar year. Some journals are published in hard copy only, others in both hard copy and electronic form, and still others in electronic form only.

Most articles in professional journals are one of two basic types: empirical research reports and review articles. Empirical research reports describe one or more new empirical studies conducted by the authors. They introduce a research question, explain why it is interesting, review previous research, describe their method and results, and draw their conclusions. Review articles summarize previously published research on a topic and usually present new ways to organize or explain the results. When a review article is devoted primarily to presenting a new theory, it is often referred to as a theoretical article .

Figure 2.6 Small Sample of the Thousands of Professional Journals That Publish Research in Psychology and Related Fields

Most professional journals in psychology undergo a process of peer review . Researchers who want to publish their work in the journal submit a manuscript to the editor—who is generally an established researcher too—who in turn sends it to two or three experts on the topic. Each reviewer reads the manuscript, writes a critical review, and sends the review back to the editor along with his or her recommendations. The editor then decides whether to accept the article for publication, ask the authors to make changes and resubmit it for further consideration, or reject it outright. In any case, the editor forwards the reviewers’ written comments to the researchers so that they can revise their manuscript accordingly. Peer review is important because it ensures that the work meets basic standards of the field before it can enter the research literature.

Scholarly Books

Scholarly books are books written by researchers and practitioners mainly for use by other researchers and practitioners. A monograph is written by a single author or a small group of authors and usually gives a coherent presentation of a topic much like an extended review article. Edited volumes have an editor or a small group of editors who recruit many authors to write separate chapters on different aspects of the same topic. Although edited volumes can also give a coherent presentation of the topic, it is not unusual for each chapter to take a different perspective or even for the authors of different chapters to openly disagree with each other. In general, scholarly books undergo a peer review process similar to that used by professional journals.

Literature Search Strategies

Using psycinfo and other databases.

The primary method used to search the research literature involves using one or more electronic databases. These include Academic Search Premier, JSTOR, and ProQuest for all academic disciplines, ERIC for education, and PubMed for medicine and related fields. The most important for our purposes, however, is PsycINFO , which is produced by the APA. PsycINFO is so comprehensive—covering thousands of professional journals and scholarly books going back more than 100 years—that for most purposes its content is synonymous with the research literature in psychology. Like most such databases, PsycINFO is usually available through your college or university library.

PsycINFO consists of individual records for each article, book chapter, or book in the database. Each record includes basic publication information, an abstract or summary of the work, and a list of other works cited by that work. A computer interface allows entering one or more search terms and returns any records that contain those search terms. (These interfaces are provided by different vendors and therefore can look somewhat different depending on the library you use.) Each record also contains lists of keywords that describe the content of the work and also a list of index terms. The index terms are especially helpful because they are standardized. Research on differences between women and men, for example, is always indexed under “Human Sex Differences.” Research on touching is always indexed under the term “Physical Contact.” If you do not know the appropriate index terms, PsycINFO includes a thesaurus that can help you find them.

Given that there are nearly three million records in PsycINFO, you may have to try a variety of search terms in different combinations and at different levels of specificity before you find what you are looking for. Imagine, for example, that you are interested in the question of whether women and men differ in terms of their ability to recall experiences from when they were very young. If you were to enter “memory for early experiences” as your search term, PsycINFO would return only six records, most of which are not particularly relevant to your question. However, if you were to enter the search term “memory,” it would return 149,777 records—far too many to look through individually. This is where the thesaurus helps. Entering “memory” into the thesaurus provides several more specific index terms—one of which is “early memories.” While searching for “early memories” among the index terms returns 1,446 records—still too many too look through individually—combining it with “human sex differences” as a second search term returns 37 articles, many of which are highly relevant to the topic.

Depending on the vendor that provides the interface to PsycINFO, you may be able to save, print, or e-mail the relevant PsycINFO records. The records might even contain links to full-text copies of the works themselves. (PsycARTICLES is a database that provides full-text access to articles in all journals published by the APA.) If not, and you want a copy of the work, you will have to find out if your library carries the journal or has the book and the hard copy on the library shelves. Be sure to ask a librarian if you need help.

Using Other Search Techniques

In addition to entering search terms into PsycINFO and other databases, there are several other techniques you can use to search the research literature. First, if you have one good article or book chapter on your topic—a recent review article is best—you can look through the reference list of that article for other relevant articles, books, and book chapters. In fact, you should do this with any relevant article or book chapter you find. You can also start with a classic article or book chapter on your topic, find its record in PsycINFO (by entering the author’s name or article’s title as a search term), and link from there to a list of other works in PsycINFO that cite that classic article. This works because other researchers working on your topic are likely to be aware of the classic article and cite it in their own work. You can also do a general Internet search using search terms related to your topic or the name of a researcher who conducts research on your topic. This might lead you directly to works that are part of the research literature (e.g., articles in open-access journals or posted on researchers’ own websites). The search engine Google Scholar is especially useful for this purpose. A general Internet search might also lead you to websites that are not part of the research literature but might provide references to works that are. Finally, you can talk to people (e.g., your instructor or other faculty members in psychology) who know something about your topic and can suggest relevant articles and book chapters.

What to Search For

When you do a literature review, you need to be selective. Not every article, book chapter, and book that relates to your research idea or question will be worth obtaining, reading, and integrating into your review. Instead, you want to focus on sources that help you do four basic things: (a) refine your research question, (b) identify appropriate research methods, (c) place your research in the context of previous research, and (d) write an effective research report. Several basic principles can help you find the most useful sources.

First, it is best to focus on recent research, keeping in mind that what counts as recent depends on the topic. For newer topics that are actively being studied, “recent” might mean published in the past year or two. For older topics that are receiving less attention right now, “recent” might mean within the past 10 years. You will get a feel for what counts as recent for your topic when you start your literature search. A good general rule, however, is to start with sources published in the past five years. The main exception to this rule would be classic articles that turn up in the reference list of nearly every other source. If other researchers think that this work is important, even though it is old, then by all means you should include it in your review.

Second, you should look for review articles on your topic because they will provide a useful overview of it—often discussing important definitions, results, theories, trends, and controversies—giving you a good sense of where your own research fits into the literature. You should also look for empirical research reports addressing your question or similar questions, which can give you ideas about how to operationally define your variables and collect your data. As a general rule, it is good to use methods that others have already used successfully unless you have good reasons not to. Finally, you should look for sources that provide information that can help you argue for the interestingness of your research question. For a study on the effects of cell phone use on driving ability, for example, you might look for information about how widespread cell phone use is, how frequent and costly motor vehicle crashes are, and so on.

How many sources are enough for your literature review? This is a difficult question because it depends on how extensively your topic has been studied and also on your own goals. One study found that across a variety of professional journals in psychology, the average number of sources cited per article was about 50 (Adair & Vohra, 2003). This gives a rough idea of what professional researchers consider to be adequate. As a student, you might be assigned a much lower minimum number of references to use, but the principles for selecting the most useful ones remain the same.

Key Takeaways

• The research literature in psychology is all the published research in psychology, consisting primarily of articles in professional journals and scholarly books.
• Early in the research process, it is important to conduct a review of the research literature on your topic to refine your research question, identify appropriate research methods, place your question in the context of other research, and prepare to write an effective research report.
• There are several strategies for finding previous research on your topic. Among the best is using PsycINFO, a computer database that catalogs millions of articles, books, and book chapters in psychology and related fields.
• Practice: Use the techniques discussed in this section to find 10 journal articles and book chapters on one of the following research ideas: memory for smells, aggressive driving, the causes of narcissistic personality disorder, the functions of the intraparietal sulcus, or prejudice against the physically handicapped.

Adair, J. G., & Vohra, N. (2003). The explosion of knowledge, references, and citations: Psychology’s unique response to a crisis. American Psychologist, 58 , 15–23.

Research Methods in Psychology Copyright © 2016 by University of Minnesota is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License , except where otherwise noted.

Advertisement

Chaos and Confusion: Tech Outage Causes Disruptions Worldwide

Airlines, hospitals and people’s computers were affected after CrowdStrike, a cybersecurity company, sent out a flawed software update.

• Share full article

By Adam Satariano Paul Mozur Kate Conger and Sheera Frenkel

• July 19, 2024

Airlines grounded flights. Operators of 911 lines could not respond to emergencies. Hospitals canceled surgeries. Retailers closed for the day. And the actions all traced back to a batch of bad computer code.

A flawed software update sent out by a little-known cybersecurity company caused chaos and disruption around the world on Friday. The company, CrowdStrike , based in Austin, Texas, makes software used by multinational corporations, government agencies and scores of other organizations to protect against hackers and online intruders.

But when CrowdStrike sent its update on Thursday to its customers that run Microsoft Windows software, computers began to crash.

The fallout, which was immediate and inescapable, highlighted the brittleness of global technology infrastructure. The world has become reliant on Microsoft and a handful of cybersecurity firms like CrowdStrike. So when a single flawed piece of software is released over the internet, it can almost instantly damage countless companies and organizations that depend on the technology as part of everyday business.

“This is a very, very uncomfortable illustration of the fragility of the world’s core internet infrastructure,” said Ciaran Martin, the former chief executive of Britain’s National Cyber Security Center and a professor at the Blavatnik School of Government at Oxford University.

A cyberattack did not cause the widespread outage, but the effects on Friday showed how devastating the damage can be when a main artery of the global technology system is disrupted. It raised broader questions about CrowdStrike’s testing processes and what repercussions such software firms should face when flaws in their code cause major disruptions.

How a Software Update Crashed Computers Around the World

Here’s a visual explanation for how a faulty software update crippled machines.

How the airline cancellations rippled around the world (and across time zones)

Share of canceled flights at 25 airports on Friday

50% of flights

Ai r po r t

Bengalu r u K empeg o wda

Dhaka Shahjalal

Minneapolis-Saint P aul

Stuttga r t

Melbou r ne

Be r lin B r anden b urg

London City

Amsterdam Schiphol

Chicago O'Hare

Raleigh−Durham

B r adl e y

Cha r lotte

Reagan National

Philadelphia

1:20 a.m. ET

CrowdStrike’s stock price so far this year

We are having trouble retrieving the article content.

Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.

Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and  log into  your Times account, or  subscribe  for all of The Times.

Thank you for your patience while we verify access.

Already a subscriber?  Log in .

Want all of The Times?  Subscribe .