Literature review

A literature review is an overview of previously published works on a particular topic. It can be a full scholarly paper or a section of a scholarly work such as books or articles. Either way, it gives the researcher and readers general information about what is already known on that topic. A good literature review has a clear research question, a strong theoretical framework, and/or a chosen research method. It helps place the current study within the existing knowledge and gives context for the reader. Usually, the review comes before the methodology and results sections of a study.

Creating a literature review is often required for students at the graduate and post-graduate levels. It is part of preparing a thesis, dissertation, or a journal article. Literature reviews are also common in a research proposal or a document approved before a student starts a dissertation or thesis.

Sometimes, a literature review can be a type of review article. In this case, it is a scholarly paper that shows the current knowledge, including important findings and ideas, about a particular topic. These reviews are secondary sources because they do not report new experiments. They are most often found in academic journals and are different from book reviews, which may also appear in the same publication. Literature reviews are important for research in nearly every academic field.

Types

Since the 1970s, people have talked about two main kinds of reviews: narrative reviews and systematic reviews. Narrative reviews can be evaluative, exploratory, or instrumental.

A systematic review is a special type that looks at a specific question. It finds and puts together all the good research on that question. A meta-analysis is a way to use numbers to combine results from many studies and get a clearer answer.

An integrative literature review tries to create new ideas by looking closely at many studies on a topic. Some other types of reviews include:

1. Exploratory or scoping reviews look broadly at a topic.
2. Systematic or integrative reviews bring together studies on one subject.
3. Meta-narrative reviews compare different groups of research.
4. Problematizing or critical reviews offer new ways to think about a topic.
5. Meta-analyses and meta-regressions use numbers to find patterns in studies.
6. Mixed research syntheses mix different review styles in one paper.

Process and product

Shields and Rangarajan (2013) talk about two parts of looking at past studies: the process of checking what has already been written, and the finished work called a literature review. The process of looking at past studies is something that happens all the time and helps with many parts of a research project.

Looking at past studies needs many different kinds of work and ways of thinking. Shields and Rangarajan (2013) and Granello (2001) connect this work to ways of thinking such as remembering, understanding, using ideas, breaking things down, making decisions, and creating new things.

Use of artificial intelligence in a literature review

Artificial intelligence (AI) is changing how people look at past studies in many subjects. Tools such as ChatGPT are often used by students and teachers to help with reviews. Since 2023, many new tools using AI have been made to help create literature reviews. However, using ChatGPT can be tricky because it sometimes makes up information. People are working on ways to fix this problem. For example, Rad et al. (2023) used a tool called ScholarAI to help with reviews in cardiothoracic surgery.