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LITERATURE REVIEW SOFTWARE FOR BETTER RESEARCH
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Mastering Literature Reviews with Litmaps
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Creating a Comprehensive Literature Review Map: A Step-by-Step Example
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- Writing Articles & Reviews
- October 16, 2023
A literature review is an essential component of any academic research paper or thesis. IT involves examining existing literature, scholarly articles, books, and other sources related to your research topic. A literature review map acts as a visual representation of the concepts, studies, and theories that have been covered in the literature. In this article, we will guide you through the process of creating a comprehensive literature review map, step-by-step, to help you structure and organize your literature review effectively.
Step 1: Define Your Research Topic
The first step in creating a literature review map is to clearly define your research topic. Be specific and narrow down your focus to ensure that you have a manageable scope for your literature review. Take into consideration the research objectives or guiding questions that will shape your review.
Step 2: Identify Relevant Keywords
Once you have defined your research topic, identify the keywords and search terms that are most relevant to your study. Brainstorm a list of potential keywords that are commonly used in the literature related to your topic. These keywords will help you locate relevant sources during your literature search.
Step 3: Conduct a Thorough Literature Search
Using databases and search engines specific to your field of study, begin conducting a thorough literature search using the identified keywords. Take note of the key articles, books, and studies that are relevant to your research topic. In this step, IT is important to evaluate the credibility and quality of the sources to ensure that you are referring to reputable and reliable information.
Step 4: Read and Analyze the Literature
After collecting a substantial number of sources, carefully read and analyze each one. Highlight key concepts, methodologies, and findings that are relevant to your research. As you progress, make notes or annotations to help you remember important details and connections between different sources.
Step 5: Organize the Literature
Now that you have read and analyzed the literature, IT ‘s time to organize the information into a coherent structure. One effective way to do this is by using a literature review map. Start by creating categories or themes based on the concepts or theories that emerge from the literature. Group together similar ideas or findings to create a visual representation of the interconnectedness of the sources.
Step 6: Create the Literature Review Map
With your categorized information, you can now create the literature review map. This can be done using software such as Microsoft Word, PowerPoint, or dedicated mind mapping tools. Start with your main research topic in the center and branch out with subcategories based on the themes or concepts identified earlier. Connect relevant sources to each subcategory, illustrating how they contribute to the overall understanding of your research topic.
Step 7: Revise and Refine
Review your literature review map for coherence and completeness. Ensure that all the key sources are accurately placed within the appropriate category or subcategory. Check for any gaps in your coverage and make sure that the map represents a comprehensive overview of the literature on your research topic.
Q: How many sources should I include in my literature review map?
A: The number of sources you include will depend on the requirements of your research and the depth of analysis you aim to achieve. However, IT is generally recommended to thoroughly examine a range of sources, including both seminal texts and recent publications, to ensure a well-rounded and comprehensive literature review.
Q: How do I determine the credibility of the sources for my literature review?
A: Evaluating the credibility of your sources is crucial to ensure that you are basing your review on reputable information. Consider the author’s qualifications, the credibility and reputation of the publishing outlet, the presence of citations within the article, and the overall coherence and consistency of the research findings.
Q: Can I use a literature review map for disciplines outside of the humanities and social sciences?
A: Absolutely! While literature reviews are commonly associated with humanities and social sciences, they are applicable to any academic field. Whether you are conducting research in the sciences, engineering, or any other discipline, a literature review map will help you organize and present the relevant scholarly literature specific to your research topic.
By following these step-by-step guidelines, you can create a comprehensive literature review map that will serve as a valuable tool throughout your research. Remember to regularly update and refine your map as you progress in your studies. A well-organized literature review will not only demonstrate your knowledge and understanding of the field, but also provide a solid foundation for your own research and contribute to the wider scholarly conversation.
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How to Master at Literature Mapping: 5 Most Recommended Tools to Use
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After putting in a lot of thought, time, and effort, you’ve finally selected a research topic . As the first step towards conducting a successful and impactful research is completed, what follows it is the gruesome process of literature review . Despite the brainstorming, the struggle of understanding how much literature is enough for your research paper or thesis is very much real. Unlike the old days of flipping through pages for hours in a library, literature has come easy to us due to its availability on the internet through Open Access journals and other publishing platforms. This ubiquity has made it even more difficult to cover only significant data! Nevertheless, an ultimate solution to this problem of conglomerating relevant data is literature mapping .
Table of Contents
What is Literature Mapping?
Literature mapping is one of the key strategies when searching literature for your research. Since writing a literature review requires following a systematic method to identify, evaluate, and interpret the work of other researchers, academics, and practitioners from the same research field, creating a literature map proves beneficial. Mapping ideas, arguments, and concepts in a literature is an imperative part of literature review. Additionally, it is stated as an established method for externalizing knowledge and thinking processes. A map of literature is a “graphical plan”, “diagrammatic representation”, or a “geographical metaphor” of the research topic.
Researchers are often overwhelmed by the large amount of information they encounter and have difficulty identifying and organizing information in the context of their research. It is recommended that experts in their fields develop knowledge structures that are richer not only in terms of knowledge, but also in terms of the links between this knowledge. This knowledge linking process is termed as literature mapping .
How Literature Mapping Helps Researchers?
Literature mapping helps researchers in following ways:
- It provides concrete evidence of a student’s understanding and interpretation of the research field to share with both peers and professors.
- Switching to another modality helps researchers form patterns to see what might otherwise be hidden in the research area.
- Furthermore, it helps in identifying gaps in pertinent research.
- Finally, t lets researchers identify potential original areas of study and parameters of their work.
How to Make a Literature Map?
Literature mapping is not only an organizational tool, but also a reflexive tool. Furthermore, it distinguishes between declarative knowledge shown by identifying key concepts, ideas and methods, and procedural knowledge shown through classifying these key concepts and establishing links or relationships between them. The literature review conceptualizes research structures as a “knowledge production domain” that defines a productive and ongoing constructive element. Thus, the approaches emphasize the identity of different scientific institutions from different fields, which can be mapped theoretically, methodologically, or fundamentally.
The two literature mapping approaches are:
- Mapping with key ideas or descriptors: This is developed from keywords in research topics.
- Author mapping: This is also termed as citation matching that identifies key experts in the field and may include the use of citations to interlink them.
Generally, literature maps can be subdivided by categorization processes based on theories, definitions, or chronology, and cross-reference between the two types of mapping. Furthermore, researchers use mind maps as a deductive process, general concept-specific mapping (results in a right triangle), or an inductive process mapping to specific concepts (results in an inverted triangle).
What are Different Literature Mapping Methods?
The different types of literature mapping and representations are as follows:
1. Feature Mapping:
Argument structures developed from summary registration pages.
2. Topic Tree Mapping:
Summary maps showing the development of the topic in sub-themes up to any number of levels.
3. Content Mapping:
Linear structure of organization of content through hierarchical classification.
4. Taxonomic Mapping:
Classification through standardized taxonomies.
5. Concept Mapping:
Linking concepts and processes allows procedural knowledge from declarative information. With a basic principle of cause and effect and problem solving, concept maps can show the relationship between theory and practice.
6. Rhetorical Mapping:
The use of rhetoric communication to discuss, influence, or persuade is particularly important in social policy and political science and can be considered a linking strategy. A number of rhetorical tools have been identified that can be used to present a case, including ethos, metaphor, trope, and irony.
7. Citation Mapping:
Citation mapping or matching is a research process established to specifically establish links between authors by citing their articles. Traditional manual citation indexes have been replaced by automated databases that allow visual mapping methods (e.g. ISI Web of Science). In conclusion, citation matching in a subject area can be effective in determining the frequency of authors and specific articles.
5 Most Useful Literature Mapping Tools
Technology has made the literature mapping process easier now. However, with numerous options available online, it does get difficult for researchers to select one tool that is efficient. These tools are built behind explicit metadata and citations when coupled with some new machine learning techniques. Here are the most recommended literature mapping tools to choose from:
1. Connected Papers
a. Connected Papers is a simple, yet powerful, one-stop visualization tool that uses a single starter article.
b. It is easy to use tool that quickly identifies similar papers with just one “Seed paper” (a relevant paper).
c. Furthermore, it helps to detect seminal papers as well as review papers.
d. It creates a similarity graph not a citation graph and connecting lines (based on the similarity metric).
e. Does not necessarily show direct citation relationships.
f. The identified papers can then be exported into most reference managers like Zotero, EndNote, Mendeley, etc.
2. Inciteful
a. Inciteful is a customizable tool that can be used with multiple starter articles in an iterative process.
b. Results from multiple seed papers can be imported in a batch with a BibTex file.
c. Inciteful produces the following lists of papers by default:
- Similar papers (uses Adamic/Adar index)
- “Most Important Papers in the Graph” (based on PageRank)
- Recent Papers by the Top 100 Authors
- The Most Important Recent Papers
d. It allows filtration of results by keywords.
e. Importantly, seed papers can also be directly added by title or DOI.
a. Litmaps follows an iterative process and creates visualizations for found papers.
b. It allows importing of papers using BibTex format which can be exported from most reference managers like Zotero, EndNote, Mendeley. In addition, it allows paper imports from an ORCID profile.
c. Keywords search method is used to find Litmaps indexed papers.
d. Additionally, it allows setting up email updates of “emergent literature”.
e. Its unique feature that allows overlay of different maps helps to look for overlaps of papers.
f. Lastly, its explore function allows finding related papers to add to the map.
4. Citation-based Sites
a. CoCites is a citation-based method for researching scientific literature.
b. Citation Gecko is a tool for visualizing links between articles.
c. VOSviewer is a software tool for creating and visualizing bibliometric networks. These networks are for example journals, may include researchers or individual publications, which can be generated based on citation, bibliographic matching , co-citation, or co-authorship relationships. VOSviewer also offers text mining functionality that can be used to create and visualize networks of important terms extracted from a scientific literature.
5. Citation Context Tools
a. Scite allow users to see how a publication has been cited by providing the context of the citation and a classification describing whether it provides supporting or contrasting evidence for the cited claim.
b. Semantic Scholar is a freely available, AI-powered research tool for scientific literature.
Have you ever mapped your literature? Did you use any of these tools before? Lastly, what are the strategies and methods you use for literature mapping ? Let us know how this article helped you in creating a hassle-free and comprehensive literature map.
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Literature Review: A Self-Guided Tutorial
Using concept maps.
- Literature Reviews: A Recap
- Peer Review
- Reading the Literature
- Developing Research Questions
- Considering Strong Opinions
- 2. Review discipline styles
- Super Searching
- Finding the Full Text
- Citation Searching This link opens in a new window
- When to stop searching
- Citation Management
- Annotating Articles Tip
- 5. Critically analyze and evaluate
- How to Review the Literature
- Using a Synthesis Matrix
- 7. Write literature review
Concept maps or mind maps visually represent relationships of different concepts. In research, they can help you make connections between ideas. You can use them as you are formulating your research question, as you are reading a complex text, and when you are creating a literature review. See the video and examples below.
How to Create a Concept Map
Credit: Penn State Libraries ( CC-BY ) Run Time: 3:13
- Bubbl.us Free version allows 3 mind maps, image export, and sharing.
- MindMeister Free version allows 3 mind maps, sharing, collaborating, and importing. No image-based exporting.
Mind Map of a Text Example
Credit: Austin Kleon. A map I drew of John Berger’s Ways of Seeing in 2008. Tumblr post. April 14, 2016. http://tumblr.austinkleon.com/post/142802684061#notes
Literature Review Mind Map Example
This example shows the different aspects of the author's literature review with citations to scholars who have written about those aspects.
Credit: Clancy Ratliff, Dissertation: Literature Review. Culturecat: Rhetoric and Feminism [blog]. 2 October 2005. http://culturecat.net/node/955 .
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Literature Reviews: A Working Definition
A literature review is a methodical or organized review of the published literature on a specific topic or research question designed to analyze--not just summarize--scholarly writings that are related directly to your research question. That is, it represents the literature that provides the context for your research and shows a correspondence between those writings and your own work.
Before you get started...
The past few years have seen an explosion of online tools designed to automate the process of doing literature reviews. These tools generally work by asking you to identify a relevant article (often called a "seed article") and use the metadata attached to articles (such as authors and keywords), or citations and reference lists to find related articles. Most tools offer some type of visualization feature to trace the connections between papers, and increasingly, tools offer summaries of the research content. These tools provide researchers with an option to at least partially automate some of their literature review work which can save a lot of time.
Things to keep in mind:
- Very little independent research has been done to test the reliability, scope, and accuracy of these tools
- In our own testing of tools that provide summaries of articles, we have sometimes found that summaries do not reflect the same key take-aways that we have identified
- Reproducibility of searches is questionable so they may not be the best choice for things like systematic reviews
- Because of the reliance on citation chaining, there is a built in bias towards heavily cited works which ends up creating a feedback loop that may cause you to miss relevant and/or newer materials
- Not everything is indexed in the data sets used by a given tool; this is particularly the case in the arts and humanities which are more oriented towards books
- Both the tools themselves, many of which are open access projects, and the indices they rely on may stop being updated/maintained, or go offline for a variety of reasons
- You still need to use a library to access full text in a majority of cases
NOTE: This is a rapidly evolving field and we will be updating this guide on a regular basis.
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- Last Updated: Feb 23, 2024 1:40 PM
- URL: https://guides.lib.udel.edu/litmap
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- How to Write a Literature Review | Guide, Examples, & Templates
How to Write a Literature Review | Guide, Examples, & Templates
Published on January 2, 2023 by Shona McCombes . 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.
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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.
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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.
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To begin organizing your literature review’s argument and structure, be sure you understand the connections and relationships between the sources you’ve read. Based on your reading and notes, you can look for:
- Trends and patterns (in theory, method or results): do certain approaches become more or less popular over time?
- Themes: what questions or concepts recur across the literature?
- Debates, conflicts and contradictions: where do sources disagree?
- Pivotal publications: are there any influential theories or studies that changed the direction of the field?
- Gaps: what is missing from the literature? Are there weaknesses that need to be addressed?
This step will help you work out the structure of your literature review and (if applicable) show how your own research will contribute to existing knowledge.
- Most research has focused on young women.
- There is an increasing interest in the visual aspects of social media.
- But there is still a lack of robust research on highly visual platforms like Instagram and Snapchat—this is a gap that you could address in your own research.
There are various approaches to organizing the body of a literature review. Depending on the length of your literature review, you can combine several of these strategies (for example, your overall structure might be thematic, but each theme is discussed chronologically).
Chronological
The simplest approach is to trace the development of the topic over time. However, if you choose this strategy, be careful to avoid simply listing and summarizing sources in order.
Try to analyze patterns, turning points and key debates that have shaped the direction of the field. Give your interpretation of how and why certain developments occurred.
If you have found some recurring central themes, you can organize your literature review into subsections that address different aspects of the topic.
For example, if you are reviewing literature about inequalities in migrant health outcomes, key themes might include healthcare policy, language barriers, cultural attitudes, legal status, and economic access.
Methodological
If you draw your sources from different disciplines or fields that use a variety of research methods , you might want to compare the results and conclusions that emerge from different approaches. For example:
- Look at what results have emerged in qualitative versus quantitative research
- Discuss how the topic has been approached by empirical versus theoretical scholarship
- Divide the literature into sociological, historical, and cultural sources
Theoretical
A literature review is often the foundation for a theoretical framework . You can use it to discuss various theories, models, and definitions of key concepts.
You might argue for the relevance of a specific theoretical approach, or combine various theoretical concepts to create a framework for your research.
Like any other academic text , your literature review should have an introduction , a main body, and a conclusion . What you include in each depends on the objective of your literature review.
The introduction should clearly establish the focus and purpose of the literature review.
Depending on the length of your literature review, you might want to divide the body into subsections. You can use a subheading for each theme, time period, or methodological approach.
As you write, you can follow these tips:
- Summarize and synthesize: give an overview of the main points of each source and combine them into a coherent whole
- Analyze and interpret: don’t just paraphrase other researchers — add your own interpretations where possible, discussing the significance of findings in relation to the literature as a whole
- Critically evaluate: mention the strengths and weaknesses of your sources
- Write in well-structured paragraphs: use transition words and topic sentences to draw connections, comparisons and contrasts
In the conclusion, you should summarize the key findings you have taken from the literature and emphasize their significance.
When you’ve finished writing and revising your literature review, don’t forget to proofread thoroughly before submitting. Not a language expert? Check out Scribbr’s professional proofreading services !
This article has been adapted into lecture slides that you can use to teach your students about writing a literature review.
Scribbr slides are free to use, customize, and distribute for educational purposes.
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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.
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A literature review is a survey of scholarly sources (such as books, journal articles, and theses) related to a specific topic or research question .
It is often written as part of a thesis, dissertation , or research paper , in order to situate your work in relation to existing knowledge.
There are several reasons to conduct a literature review at the beginning of a research project:
- To familiarize yourself with the current state of knowledge on your topic
- To ensure that you’re not just repeating what others have already done
- To identify gaps in knowledge and unresolved problems that your research can address
- To develop your theoretical framework and methodology
- To provide an overview of the key findings and debates on the topic
Writing the literature review shows your reader how your work relates to existing research and what new insights it will contribute.
The literature review usually comes near the beginning of your thesis or dissertation . After the introduction , it grounds your research in a scholarly field and leads directly to your theoretical framework or methodology .
A literature review is a survey of credible sources on a topic, often used in dissertations , theses, and research papers . Literature reviews give an overview of knowledge on a subject, helping you identify relevant theories and methods, as well as gaps in existing research. Literature reviews are set up similarly to other academic texts , with an introduction , a main body, and a conclusion .
An annotated bibliography is a list of source references that has a short description (called an annotation ) for each of the sources. It is often assigned as part of the research process for a paper .
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Literature Mapping in Scientific Research: A Comprehensive Review
Accelerate scientific research with Literature Mapping: a comprehensive tool for knowledge discovery and data-driven insights.
Literature mapping is a process that involves analyzing and visualizing the scientific literature on a particular topic to identify research gaps, improve collaboration, and inform decision-making.
In this article, we list five benefits of literature mapping for scientists and researchers and show you types and tools to save your time and help you find better evidence.
What is Literature Mapping?
Literature mapping is a process that involves analyzing and visualizing the scientific literature on a particular topic. It includes systematically searching, collecting, and reviewing relevant studies, articles, and books published in a specific field or discipline.
The purpose of literature mapping is to provide a comprehensive overview of the current state of knowledge on a topic, identify gaps in the literature, and potential areas for future research. It can be useful for those who seek to conduct a systematic review, develop a research proposal, or explore new research areas.
Benefits of Literature Mapping
Here are five benefits of literature mapping for scientists and researchers:
- Identify research gaps : Literature mapping helps researchers to identify gaps in the existing research and to determine areas that require further investigation.
- Visualize the research landscape : By creating visualizations of the scientific literature, researchers can see the relationships between different research topics.
- Save time : Literature mapping can help researchers save time by providing an overview of the literature on a particular topic, including relevant studies and duplicated work.
- Improve collaboration : Literature mapping can help researchers to collaborate more effectively by providing a shared understanding of the research landscape. This improves communication, and facilitates the workflow between different disciplines.
- Inform decision-making : Literature mapping can help researchers to make assertive decisions. This can be especially useful for policymakers and other decision-makers who need to make decisions based on scientific evidence.
Types of Literature Mapping
Feature mapping.
Feature mapping is a technique used primarily in data analysis and machine learning to identify patterns and relationships between features of a dataset. It involves analyzing the data and plotting the relationships between different features of the dataset on a map or chart.
Some of the main features include:
- Identification of relationships : Feature mapping can help identify the relationships between different features or variables in a dataset. This can allow for better modeling and prediction of outcomes.
- Pattern recognition : By plotting the relationships between features of a dataset, feature mapping can help identify patterns and anomalies that may not be immediately apparent in the raw data.
- Visualization : Feature mapping often involves creating visual representations of the relationships between features of a dataset. This can help make the data easier to understand and interpret.
- Dimension reduction : When dealing with large datasets with many features, feature mapping can help reduce the dimensionality of the data. This can help simplify the data and make it easier to analyze.
- Data clustering : Feature mapping can also help identify groups or clusters of data points that share similar features. This can allow for more targeted analysis and modeling of specific groups within the dataset.
- Feature selection : Feature mapping can aid in the selection of the most important features from a dataset. By identifying the relationships between features, researchers can determine which features are most relevant to the outcomes they are trying to predict.
Topic Tree Mapping
Topic tree mapping is a technique used to visualize and organize the relationships between different topics or themes within a larger subject area. It involves creating a hierarchical structure of topics, with more general topics at the top and more specific subtopics branching out below.
Content Mapping
Content mapping is the process of creating a visual representation or map of the content of a document, website, or other information source. It involves breaking down the content into its constituent parts, organizing it according to a logical structure, and presenting it in a user-friendly and easily accessible way.
Taxonomic Mapping
Taxonomic mapping is the process of assigning different taxonomic categories to specific objects or organisms based on their characteristics, traits, and other distinguishing features. This mapping enables the organization and identification of different species and helps researchers and scientists to conduct various studies and experiments related to their classification, evolution, and diversity.
Concept Mapping
Concept Mapping is a visual representation of the relationships between concepts and ideas in a particular field. It involves identifying key concepts, and organizing them into a hierarchical structure. It can help to identify gaps in knowledge and aid in the development of new theories.
Rhetorical Mapping
Rhetorical mapping is a process used in communication studies and critical discourse analysis to analyze the structure and content of discourse. It involves creating a visual representation or diagram of a text or speech that identifies its various components, such as arguments, claims, evidence, and rhetorical strategies used to persuade the audience. Rhetorical mapping allows researchers to understand how the speaker or writer uses language and persuasion techniques to influence the audience’s beliefs and attitudes.
Citation Mapping
Citation Mapping involves tracing the citation history of a particular article, and identifying the articles that have cited it. This can help to identify the impact of the article on the field, and identify related research.
Tools for Literature Mapping
- Citation Gecko : Citation Gecko is a web-based tool that allows users to quickly and easily search for and download citation data from various academic databases. It streamlines and simplifies the process of finding and organizing citations for research projects.
- Inciteful : Inciteful is a literature-mapping tool that visualizes citation networks and identifies key authors and articles within a particular field of research. It can be used to explore the literature on a specific topic, as well as to identify gaps in current research.
- OpenKnowledge : OpenKnowledge is an online platform for sharing and discovering research papers and other scholarly materials. It enables users to search for and download documents, as well as to connect with other researchers who are working in the same field.
- ConnectedPapers : ConnectedPapers is a search engine that allows users to explore citation networks and discover the most influential papers and authors in a particular field. It uses citation information to uncover relationships between different papers and to suggest potentially relevant articles to read.
- LitMaps : LitMaps is a mapping tool that allows users to explore the relationships between different articles and concepts within a particular field of study. It visualizes the connections between different scholarly articles and helps users to develop a deeper understanding of the underlying themes and concepts within a particular field.
- Local Citation Network : Local Citation Network is a tool for mapping the relationships between different articles and authors within a particular geographic area. It allows users to explore the research in progress in a particular region and to identify potential collaborators and sources of funding.
- CoCites : CoCites is a literature-mapping tool that identifies the most frequently cited articles and authors within a particular field. It allows users to explore the relationships between different papers and to identify key areas of research.
- VOSviewer : VOSviewer is a tool for visualizing citation networks and identifying key authors, papers, and concepts within a particular field of research. It allows users to explore the relationships between different papers and to identify areas of overlap and potential collaboration.
- ResearchRabbit : ResearchRabbit is a web-based research tool that allows users to search for and collect scholarly articles and other research materials. It streamlines the research process by helping users to find relevant articles and to organize and annotate their findings.
Professional and custom designs for your publications
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With Mind the Graph , researchers can easily create custom illustrations, graphs, charts, and diagrams that clearly present their research findings. The platform provides a vast library of scientific illustrations that are scientifically accurate and visually appealing.
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Systematic reviews need to comply with stringent guidelines. We outline how Litmaps should be used for systematic review.
The process of gathering literature for a systematic review is expected to follow certain, stringent guidelines, which often rule out the use of modern literature tools like Litmaps.
However, no tool or method should be overlooked that can help find relevant papers! Here, we cover how you can use Litmaps for your systematic review while still following the formal best practices for reproducibility and transparency.
What is a systematic review?
A systematic review effectively summarizes the state of research on a particular topic using reproducible techniques. These reviews often relate various studies to one another, correcting for biases between them in order to draw conclusions about their combined results.
Due to the high volume of publications, it's nigh impossible for any single researcher to keep abreast of all developments. For this reason, systematic reviews exist to coalesce and efficiently summarize the state of research. These reviews exist across all domains, and they are particularly important in the health and medical spaces where they impact clinical decisions.
Policymakers rely on systematic reviews to make important decisions. Given the significant impact of these reviews, certain guidelines exist by which to evaluate their quality and reliability. AMSTAR (A Measurement Tool to Assess Systematic Reviews) developed in 2007 and since updated, provides clear guidelines to assess the methodological quality of systematic reviews. The evidence within reviews can be further evaluated for quality using other tools, like GRADE (Grading of Recommendations Assessment, Development and Evaluation).
Systematic review vs literature review
Systematic reviews differ from basic literature reviews in that they are reproducible in how they collect and interpret studies. They also tend to focus on a more precise question than a literature review which generally covers several aspects of a topic. For example, this systematic review focuses on whether Kava, a medicinal plant, is an effective treatment for anxiety. This literature review on Kava, on the other hand, summarizes our current understandings of kava in the range of therapeutic applications it has.
According to AMSTAR, and as is implied in the name, systematic reviews should rely on a methodical and reproducible literature search. For example, reviewers should record what databases, search parameters and filters were used to discover relevant publications.
Collecting literature for a systematic review
One of the key characteristics of a systematic review is that the method of searching for and collecting papers is as important as the findings themselves. The method should be reproducible, meaning that researchers in the future may re-discover the same set of papers using original methods. Replication may be necessary to clarify methods used in the original review, especially those that were subjective choices. For example, future researchers may question what was originally used as inclusion criteria in the search.
According to best practices (AMSTAR guidelines), a comprehensive literature search should be performed. This means:
At least two electronic sources (or databases) are searched
Metadata about the search is recorded (database type and years)
Search parameters are recorded (keywords, or in the case of medical literature, MESH terms)
Search strategy is recorded
Search is supplemented by consulting a range of sources including experts in the field, textbooks, reviews, references of studies found, etc.
Notice that these guidelines imply that papers are predominantly collected directly from existing corpuses of literature by direct look-up. This will be important when we talk about how to use Litmaps to gather literature for your systematic review. Litmaps is a keyword-less search, meaning one can't report what keywords are used, because of the very nature of how Litmaps discovers papers.
However, it's also important to note that the underlying goals of these guidelines is not designed to limit or inhibit the researcher. Consult the last guideline, which recommends even consulting experts in the field. At its core, these guidelines insist on a comprehensive search, using the best resources available, while maintaining transparency and reproducibility of process.
How to use Litmaps for a systematic review?
Litmaps tools like Seed and Discover can in the collection of relevant papers for a systematic review, as well as finding any papers overlooked in traditional search.
The Litmaps Seed and Discover tools both provide means to discover relevant literature in a field of interest.
In order to use these tools for a systematic review it's important to 1) record collection methodology, and 2) consult a secondary set of electronic sources. These recommendations are not based on Litmaps-specific usage, but rather on the best practices for all systematic reviews.
1. Use Litmaps to discover papers
Use Litmaps to explore and collect papers for your review by using the Seed or Discover tools.
Be sure to record all relevant information and metadata about the look-up. This is based on the best practices to follow for systematic reviews. This includes the databases and date of search, as well as search parameters such as keywords and filters.
When using Litmaps, the search parameters to record are:
Input (seed paper used in Seed tool, or set of papers used in Discover tool)
Date of lookup
Filters used (for example, search depth and date filter for Discover tool)
However, keep in mind that Litmaps nor its source databases are static! Both evolve over time: databases may be updated with new entries, or lose entries. This is entirely normal – all traditional systematic review databases are be updated over time as well. A known issue exists with the reproduction of systematic reviews based on the natural evolution of software and data storage. Nonetheless, by recording the search metadata and relevant information, you can provide the most reliable information for future researchers to reproduce your search.
2. Use Litmaps to find gaps
Use Litmaps for your systematic review after you've collected all the relevant papers for your research topic. Input these, or a subset, as a collection in Discover . Discover will search related papers and recommend news ones. Cross-check the newly recommended papers against those in your existing collection to see if there are any relevant studies you may have missed.
This is one of the best ways to use Litmaps to help support your systematic review. It allows you to still follow traditional review techniques of relying on database lookups. But, it also enables you to verify your coverage and avoid missing relevant articles.
One of the key pitfalls of traditional literature searches is the reliance on keywords. By searching for connected papers without keywords, Litmaps can provide a more diverse set of paper suggestions. Litmaps Discover may suggest papers where the names of substances or topics are different from what you've been searching. In this example , Discover recommends a new paper on Shilajit, a resin with therapeutic properties, that was not included in the literature review being analyzed. This is likely because the paper used a different name for the substance, " Mumie".
Example of finding gap in research review. Using references from literature review as input, Litmaps Discover finds papers not originally cited in the literature review .
3. Cross-check Litmaps suggestions using our original sources
Litmaps' tools rely on a select set of databases . Depending on your research needs, you can conduct a secondary search on each of these original databases, to "re-discover" the papers in these host databases.
The video below shows a basic example of finding a relevant paper using Litmaps Discover, and searching for it using relevant keywords in one of our sourced databases, Semantic Scholar. However, the video also illustrates the fundamental advantage of non-lookup search: Litmaps Discover quickly reveals the most relevant and recent papers related to the topic at hand (in this case, the anti-anxiety activity of Kava, a medicinal plant). When searching for related keywords in Semantic Scholar, a significant portion of the results are unrelated to our topic.
This example shows how a paper suggested by Litmaps Discover can be re-discovered in Semantic Scholar .
Why use Litmaps for a systematic review?
Systematic reviews are expected to comprehensively cover the literature on a certain topic. The key advantage of using Litmaps as a part of the discovery process is that it may reveal papers that wouldn't come up using traditional search techniques.
Because Litmaps uses keyword-less search, it’s able to find papers that wouldn’t necessarily show up under a direct keyword search. This provides an advantage, because otherwise these papers would go unreviewed, skewing the final results.
How not to use Litmaps for a systematic review
Although Litmaps can help discover papers and fill gaps in research, it shouldn’t be used alone to complete a systematic review. A systematic review involves methodically searching an entire domain for any relevant publications. Thus, any single database or tool is insufficient, and instead some combination should be used.
AMSTAR-defined best practices for systematic reviews involve using at least "two electronic sources". This means researchers are expected to pull from multiple large-scale databases. For example, in the medical and health space, certain databases are considered to be the most important sources to search for reports of clinical trials. According to The Cochrane Handbook for Systematic Reviews of Interventions these are CENTRAL , MEDLINE / PubMed and Embase .
Although a variety of tools may be used to conduct the search and discover papers, the reproducibility of systematic search comes from using databases directly. So, remember to follow best practices when searching these databases. Record metadata about your search such as filters and dates of retrieval.
Am I allowed to use Litmaps for systematic review?
If you're unsure whether your research organisation will allow a tool like Litmaps to feature in your systematic review, make sure to double-check with someone else. Systematic review is one of several academic processes that is slowly adapting to new technology, so you may find varying degrees of accceptance.
However, even if Litmaps isn't formally accepted by your institution, it can still play a critical role in ensuring the comprehensiveness of your search process: if Litmaps finds gaps in your formal search results, you'll be simply be able to adjust your search method until the gaps are covered.
Literature Reviews
- Getting Started
- Choosing a Type of Review
- Developing a Research Question
- Searching the Literature
- Searching Tips
- ChatGPT [beta]
- Documenting your Search
- Using Citation Managers
- Concept Mapping
- Concept Map Definition
MindMeister
- Writing the Review
- Further Resources
Additional Tools
Google slides.
GSlides can create concept maps using their Diagram feature. Insert > Diagram > Hierarchy will give you some editable templates to use.
Tutorial on diagrams in GSlides .
MICROSOFT WORD
MS Word can create concept maps using Insert > SmartArt Graphic. Select Process, Cycle, Hierarchy, or Relationship to see templates.
NVivo is software for qualitative analysis that has a concept map feature. Zotero libraries can be uploaded using ris files. NVivo Concept Map information.
A concept map or mind map is a visual representation of knowledge that illustrates relationships between concepts or ideas. It is a tool for organizing and representing information in a hierarchical and interconnected manner. At its core, a concept map consists of nodes, which represent individual concepts or ideas, and links, which depict the relationships between these concepts .
Below is a non-exhaustive list of tools that can facilitate the creation of concept maps.
www.canva.com
Canva is a user-friendly graphic design platform that enables individuals to create visual content quickly and easily. It offers a diverse array of customizable templates, design elements, and tools, making it accessible to users with varying levels of design experience.
Pros: comes with many pre-made concept map templates to get you started
Cons : not all features are available in the free version
Explore Canva concept map templates here .
Note: Although Canva advertises an "education" option, this is for K-12 only and does not apply to university users.
www.lucidchart.com
Lucid has two tools that can create mind maps (what they're called inside Lucid): Lucidchart is the place to build, document, and diagram, and Lucidspark is the place to ideate, connect, and plan.
Lucidchart is a collaborative online diagramming and visualization tool that allows users to create a wide range of diagrams, including flowcharts, org charts, wireframes, and mind maps. Its mind-mapping feature provides a structured framework for brainstorming ideas, organizing thoughts, and visualizing relationships between concepts.
Lucidspark , works as a virtual whiteboard. Here, you can add sticky notes, develop ideas through freehand drawing, and collaborate with your teammates. Has only one template for mind mapping.
Explore Lucid mind map creation here .
How to create mind maps using LucidSpark:
Note: U-M students have access to Lucid through ITS. [ info here ] Choose the "Login w Google" option, use your @umich.edu account, and access should happen automatically.
www.figma.com
Figma is a cloud-based design tool that enables collaborative interface design and prototyping. It's widely used by UI/UX designers to create, prototype, and iterate on digital designs. Figma is the main design tool, and FigJam is their virtual whiteboard:
Figma is a comprehensive design tool that enables designers to create and prototype high-fidelity designs
FigJam focuses on collaboration and brainstorming, providing a virtual whiteboard-like experience, best for concept maps
Explore FigJam concept maps here .
Note: There is a " Figma for Education " version for students that will provide access. Choose the "Login w Google" option, use your @umich.edu account, and access should happen automatically.
www.mindmeister.com
MindMeister is an online mind mapping tool that allows users to visually organize their thoughts, ideas, and information in a structured and hierarchical format. It provides a digital canvas where users can create and manipulate nodes representing concepts or topics, and connect them with lines to show relationships and associations.
Features : collaborative, permits multiple co-authors, and multiple export formats. The free version allows up to 3 mind maps.
Explore MindMeister templates here .
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- Last Updated: Feb 29, 2024 10:31 AM
- URL: https://guides.lib.umich.edu/litreview
How To Structure Your Literature Review
3 options to help structure your chapter.
By: Amy Rommelspacher (PhD) | Reviewer: Dr Eunice Rautenbach | November 2020 (Updated May 2023)
Writing the literature review chapter can seem pretty daunting when you’re piecing together your dissertation or thesis. As we’ve discussed before , a good literature review needs to achieve a few very important objectives – it should:
- Demonstrate your knowledge of the research topic
- Identify the gaps in the literature and show how your research links to these
- Provide the foundation for your conceptual framework (if you have one)
- Inform your own methodology and research design
To achieve this, your literature review needs a well-thought-out structure . Get the structure of your literature review chapter wrong and you’ll struggle to achieve these objectives. Don’t worry though – in this post, we’ll look at how to structure your literature review for maximum impact (and marks!).
But wait – is this the right time?
Deciding on the structure of your literature review should come towards the end of the literature review process – after you have collected and digested the literature, but before you start writing the chapter.
In other words, you need to first develop a rich understanding of the literature before you even attempt to map out a structure. There’s no use trying to develop a structure before you’ve fully wrapped your head around the existing research.
Equally importantly, you need to have a structure in place before you start writing , or your literature review will most likely end up a rambling, disjointed mess.
Importantly, don’t feel that once you’ve defined a structure you can’t iterate on it. It’s perfectly natural to adjust as you engage in the writing process. As we’ve discussed before , writing is a way of developing your thinking, so it’s quite common for your thinking to change – and therefore, for your chapter structure to change – as you write.
Need a helping hand?
Like any other chapter in your thesis or dissertation, your literature review needs to have a clear, logical structure. At a minimum, it should have three essential components – an introduction , a body and a conclusion .
Let’s take a closer look at each of these.
1: The Introduction Section
Just like any good introduction, the introduction section of your literature review should introduce the purpose and layout (organisation) of the chapter. In other words, your introduction needs to give the reader a taste of what’s to come, and how you’re going to lay that out. Essentially, you should provide the reader with a high-level roadmap of your chapter to give them a taste of the journey that lies ahead.
Here’s an example of the layout visualised in a literature review introduction:
Your introduction should also outline your topic (including any tricky terminology or jargon) and provide an explanation of the scope of your literature review – in other words, what you will and won’t be covering (the delimitations ). This helps ringfence your review and achieve a clear focus . The clearer and narrower your focus, the deeper you can dive into the topic (which is typically where the magic lies).
Depending on the nature of your project, you could also present your stance or point of view at this stage. In other words, after grappling with the literature you’ll have an opinion about what the trends and concerns are in the field as well as what’s lacking. The introduction section can then present these ideas so that it is clear to examiners that you’re aware of how your research connects with existing knowledge .
2: The Body Section
The body of your literature review is the centre of your work. This is where you’ll present, analyse, evaluate and synthesise the existing research. In other words, this is where you’re going to earn (or lose) the most marks. Therefore, it’s important to carefully think about how you will organise your discussion to present it in a clear way.
The body of your literature review should do just as the description of this chapter suggests. It should “review” the literature – in other words, identify, analyse, and synthesise it. So, when thinking about structuring your literature review, you need to think about which structural approach will provide the best “review” for your specific type of research and objectives (we’ll get to this shortly).
There are (broadly speaking) three options for organising your literature review.
Option 1: Chronological (according to date)
Organising the literature chronologically is one of the simplest ways to structure your literature review. You start with what was published first and work your way through the literature until you reach the work published most recently. Pretty straightforward.
The benefit of this option is that it makes it easy to discuss the developments and debates in the field as they emerged over time. Organising your literature chronologically also allows you to highlight how specific articles or pieces of work might have changed the course of the field – in other words, which research has had the most impact . Therefore, this approach is very useful when your research is aimed at understanding how the topic has unfolded over time and is often used by scholars in the field of history. That said, this approach can be utilised by anyone that wants to explore change over time .
For example , if a student of politics is investigating how the understanding of democracy has evolved over time, they could use the chronological approach to provide a narrative that demonstrates how this understanding has changed through the ages.
Here are some questions you can ask yourself to help you structure your literature review chronologically.
- What is the earliest literature published relating to this topic?
- How has the field changed over time? Why?
- What are the most recent discoveries/theories?
In some ways, chronology plays a part whichever way you decide to structure your literature review, because you will always, to a certain extent, be analysing how the literature has developed. However, with the chronological approach, the emphasis is very firmly on how the discussion has evolved over time , as opposed to how all the literature links together (which we’ll discuss next ).
Option 2: Thematic (grouped by theme)
The thematic approach to structuring a literature review means organising your literature by theme or category – for example, by independent variables (i.e. factors that have an impact on a specific outcome).
As you’ve been collecting and synthesising literature , you’ll likely have started seeing some themes or patterns emerging. You can then use these themes or patterns as a structure for your body discussion. The thematic approach is the most common approach and is useful for structuring literature reviews in most fields.
For example, if you were researching which factors contributed towards people trusting an organisation, you might find themes such as consumers’ perceptions of an organisation’s competence, benevolence and integrity. Structuring your literature review thematically would mean structuring your literature review’s body section to discuss each of these themes, one section at a time.
Here are some questions to ask yourself when structuring your literature review by themes:
- Are there any patterns that have come to light in the literature?
- What are the central themes and categories used by the researchers?
- Do I have enough evidence of these themes?
PS – you can see an example of a thematically structured literature review in our literature review sample walkthrough video here.
Option 3: Methodological
The methodological option is a way of structuring your literature review by the research methodologies used . In other words, organising your discussion based on the angle from which each piece of research was approached – for example, qualitative , quantitative or mixed methodologies.
Structuring your literature review by methodology can be useful if you are drawing research from a variety of disciplines and are critiquing different methodologies. The point of this approach is to question how existing research has been conducted, as opposed to what the conclusions and/or findings the research were.
For example, a sociologist might centre their research around critiquing specific fieldwork practices. Their literature review will then be a summary of the fieldwork methodologies used by different studies.
Here are some questions you can ask yourself when structuring your literature review according to methodology:
- Which methodologies have been utilised in this field?
- Which methodology is the most popular (and why)?
- What are the strengths and weaknesses of the various methodologies?
- How can the existing methodologies inform my own methodology?
3: The Conclusion Section
Once you’ve completed the body section of your literature review using one of the structural approaches we discussed above, you’ll need to “wrap up” your literature review and pull all the pieces together to set the direction for the rest of your dissertation or thesis.
The conclusion is where you’ll present the key findings of your literature review. In this section, you should emphasise the research that is especially important to your research questions and highlight the gaps that exist in the literature. Based on this, you need to make it clear what you will add to the literature – in other words, justify your own research by showing how it will help fill one or more of the gaps you just identified.
Last but not least, if it’s your intention to develop a conceptual framework for your dissertation or thesis, the conclusion section is a good place to present this.
Example: Thematically Structured Review
In the video below, we unpack a literature review chapter so that you can see an example of a thematically structure review in practice.
Let’s Recap
In this article, we’ve discussed how to structure your literature review for maximum impact. Here’s a quick recap of what you need to keep in mind when deciding on your literature review structure:
- Just like other chapters, your literature review needs a clear introduction , body and conclusion .
- The introduction section should provide an overview of what you will discuss in your literature review.
- The body section of your literature review can be organised by chronology , theme or methodology . The right structural approach depends on what you’re trying to achieve with your research.
- The conclusion section should draw together the key findings of your literature review and link them to your research questions.
If you’re ready to get started, be sure to download our free literature review template to fast-track your chapter outline.
Psst… there’s more!
This post is an extract from our bestselling Udemy Course, Literature Review Bootcamp . If you want to work smart, you don't want to miss this .
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27 Comments
Great work. This is exactly what I was looking for and helps a lot together with your previous post on literature review. One last thing is missing: a link to a great literature chapter of an journal article (maybe with comments of the different sections in this review chapter). Do you know any great literature review chapters?
I agree with you Marin… A great piece
I agree with Marin. This would be quite helpful if you annotate a nicely structured literature from previously published research articles.
Awesome article for my research.
I thank you immensely for this wonderful guide
It is indeed thought and supportive work for the futurist researcher and students
Very educative and good time to get guide. Thank you
Great work, very insightful. Thank you.
Thanks for this wonderful presentation. My question is that do I put all the variables into a single conceptual framework or each hypothesis will have it own conceptual framework?
Thank you very much, very helpful
This is very educative and precise . Thank you very much for dropping this kind of write up .
Pheeww, so damn helpful, thank you for this informative piece.
I’m doing a research project topic ; stool analysis for parasitic worm (enteric) worm, how do I structure it, thanks.
comprehensive explanation. Help us by pasting the URL of some good “literature review” for better understanding.
great piece. thanks for the awesome explanation. it is really worth sharing. I have a little question, if anyone can help me out, which of the options in the body of literature can be best fit if you are writing an architectural thesis that deals with design?
I am doing a research on nanofluids how can l structure it?
Beautifully clear.nThank you!
Lucid! Thankyou!
Brilliant work, well understood, many thanks
I like how this was so clear with simple language 😊😊 thank you so much 😊 for these information 😊
Insightful. I was struggling to come up with a sensible literature review but this has been really helpful. Thank you!
You have given thought-provoking information about the review of the literature.
Thank you. It has made my own research better and to impart your work to students I teach
I learnt a lot from this teaching. It’s a great piece.
I am doing research on EFL teacher motivation for his/her job. How Can I structure it? Is there any detailed template, additional to this?
You are so cool! I do not think I’ve read through something like this before. So nice to find somebody with some genuine thoughts on this issue. Seriously.. thank you for starting this up. This site is one thing that is required on the internet, someone with a little originality!
I’m asked to do conceptual, theoretical and empirical literature, and i just don’t know how to structure it
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Literature Reviews
- What is a Literature Review?
- Concept Mapping
- Writing a Proposal
- For Faculty
Need help? Ask a librarian
Concept map example: Chocolate Purchasing Factors
What is concept mapping.
Concept Maps are a way to graphically represent ideas and how they relate to each other.
Concept maps may be simple designs illustrating a central theme and a few associated topics or complex structures that delineate hierarchical or multiple relationships.
J.D. Novak developed concept maps in the 1970's to help facilitate the research process for his students. Novak found that visually representing thoughts helped students freely associate ideas without being blocked or intimidated by recording them in a traditional written format.
Concept mapping involves defining a topic; adding related topics; and linking related ideas
Use Bubbl.us or search for more free mind-mapping tools on the web.
More Examples of Concept Maps
- Govt Factors in Consumer Choice
- Mental Health
- Social Psychology
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- Next: Writing a Proposal >>
- Last Updated: Mar 25, 2024 8:48 AM
- URL: https://researchguides.njit.edu/literaturereview
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Literature mapping.
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What is Literature Mapping?
Literature mapping is a way of discovering scholarly articles by exploring connections between publications.
Similar articles are often linked by citations, authors, funders, keywords, and other metadata. These connections can be explored manually in a database such as Scopus or by the use of free browser-based tools such as Connected Papers , L itMaps , and Open Knowledge Maps .
The following is an introduction to these four methods.
Video Tutorial (24min)
Literature mapping in 30 minutes (slides).
- Literature Mapping in 30 Minutes Fall 2023 (slides)
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- Last Updated: Dec 15, 2023 3:29 PM
- URL: https://libguides.princeton.edu/litmapping
- Sun. Mar 31st, 2024
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How to Create a Literature Map
How to create a literature map. The Literature Map helps researchers review literature for gaps and points of impact. They are useful in both academic and industry related research projects to help gain traction and market interest.
Book a seat for our upcoming Literature Mapping Webinar Workshop
Learn More about Literature Mapping
Research projects usually start with a Literature Review which involves using tools such as search engines ( e.g. google scholar) and document management and reference systems (e.g. Endnote and Mandalay).
The literature review will attempt to create a space for the research project that has not been covered or is yet to be developed.
Literature Mapping uses graphical methods to plot your literature in a graphical format. There are many types of graphical method from mind mapping to infographic formats.
See our Research Gate Forum where leading experts have discussed the various graphical literature tools from Mind Maps through to Quiqqa and other methods.
Dr Jonathan Drane has developed a unique but simple literature mapping method which streamlines your literature review and helps you refine your topic and its place in the literature universe.
‘In our method we prefer to use a ‘cards on desktop’ graphical logic. It uses cards (like the icons on your desktop) and allocates identifiers to the cards including different colours as well as other key information points. Think of each card as if it was a library card which is also linked back to the actual publication it refers to’. Dr Jonathan Drane
In the method there is also an X-Y axis to allow for key concept themes to be pinned to the axis. From there each card is positioned based on its alignment to the theme. In the chart below this method is applied to City Growth Dynamics themes from Dr Drane’s doctorate.
‘ As I spent weeks in the literature mapping phase of my doctorate I realised that it was made clearer by using graphical representation of the various themes and concepts.’ Dr Jonathan Drane
An example of his literature map system is shown above which is extracted from Dr Drane’s Doctorate .
Impact and Strategic Importance
Research occurs in a huge range of endeavours from academic research to competitive analysis, market and corporate strategy. A central activity in these is to make sure you know what the current literature, articles and books are in the relevant strategic arena.
The use of literature review is essential to maintaining a strategic advantage and identifying the gaps in the theory or in corporate offerings.
We recommed that you take some time out and attend our upcoming webinar on this topic . Whether you are an academic or a business person or government researcher, this is important.
We look forward to seeing you at this webinar.
Dr Jonathan Drane
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Other readings and links:
Link to Jonathan’s Research Gate page page on Literature Mapping
Link to Jonathan’s Doctorate
JDSLAB Podcast Episode 9: A Self-publishing Journey- Interview Kate Slatter
Jdslab episode 7- listening to books- the rise of audiobooks, jdslab podcast episode 8 – learning my authentic journey through missy higgin’s story, podcast training internships for creative arts students/mentors.
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Writing a Literature Review
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A literature review is a document or section of a document that collects key sources on a topic and discusses those sources in conversation with each other (also called synthesis ). The lit review is an important genre in many disciplines, not just literature (i.e., the study of works of literature such as novels and plays). When we say “literature review” or refer to “the literature,” we are talking about the research ( scholarship ) in a given field. You will often see the terms “the research,” “the scholarship,” and “the literature” used mostly interchangeably.
Where, when, and why would I write a lit review?
There are a number of different situations where you might write a literature review, each with slightly different expectations; different disciplines, too, have field-specific expectations for what a literature review is and does. For instance, in the humanities, authors might include more overt argumentation and interpretation of source material in their literature reviews, whereas in the sciences, authors are more likely to report study designs and results in their literature reviews; these differences reflect these disciplines’ purposes and conventions in scholarship. You should always look at examples from your own discipline and talk to professors or mentors in your field to be sure you understand your discipline’s conventions, for literature reviews as well as for any other genre.
A literature review can be a part of a research paper or scholarly article, usually falling after the introduction and before the research methods sections. In these cases, the lit review just needs to cover scholarship that is important to the issue you are writing about; sometimes it will also cover key sources that informed your research methodology.
Lit reviews can also be standalone pieces, either as assignments in a class or as publications. In a class, a lit review may be assigned to help students familiarize themselves with a topic and with scholarship in their field, get an idea of the other researchers working on the topic they’re interested in, find gaps in existing research in order to propose new projects, and/or develop a theoretical framework and methodology for later research. As a publication, a lit review usually is meant to help make other scholars’ lives easier by collecting and summarizing, synthesizing, and analyzing existing research on a topic. This can be especially helpful for students or scholars getting into a new research area, or for directing an entire community of scholars toward questions that have not yet been answered.
What are the parts of a lit review?
Most lit reviews use a basic introduction-body-conclusion structure; if your lit review is part of a larger paper, the introduction and conclusion pieces may be just a few sentences while you focus most of your attention on the body. If your lit review is a standalone piece, the introduction and conclusion take up more space and give you a place to discuss your goals, research methods, and conclusions separately from where you discuss the literature itself.
Introduction:
- An introductory paragraph that explains what your working topic and thesis is
- A forecast of key topics or texts that will appear in the review
- Potentially, a description of how you found sources and how you analyzed them for inclusion and discussion in the review (more often found in published, standalone literature reviews than in lit review sections in an article or research paper)
- 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 sentence to draw connections, comparisons, and contrasts.
Conclusion:
- Summarize the key findings you have taken from the literature and emphasize their significance
- Connect it back to your primary research question
How should I organize my lit review?
Lit reviews can take many different organizational patterns depending on what you are trying to accomplish with the review. Here are some examples:
- Chronological : The simplest approach is to trace the development of the topic over time, which helps familiarize the audience with the topic (for instance if you are introducing something that is not commonly known in your field). If you choose this strategy, be careful to avoid simply listing and summarizing sources in order. Try to analyze the patterns, turning points, and key debates that have shaped the direction of the field. Give your interpretation of how and why certain developments occurred (as mentioned previously, this may not be appropriate in your discipline — check with a teacher or mentor if you’re unsure).
- Thematic : If you have found some recurring central themes that you will continue working with throughout your piece, you can organize your literature review into subsections that address different aspects of the topic. For example, if you are reviewing literature about women and religion, key themes can include the role of women in churches and the religious attitude towards women.
- Qualitative versus quantitative research
- Empirical versus theoretical scholarship
- Divide the research by sociological, historical, or cultural sources
- Theoretical : In many humanities articles, the literature review is the foundation for the theoretical framework. You can use it to discuss various theories, models, and definitions of key concepts. You can argue for the relevance of a specific theoretical approach or combine various theorical concepts to create a framework for your research.
What are some strategies or tips I can use while writing my lit review?
Any lit review is only as good as the research it discusses; make sure your sources are well-chosen and your research is thorough. Don’t be afraid to do more research if you discover a new thread as you’re writing. More info on the research process is available in our "Conducting Research" resources .
As you’re doing your research, create an annotated bibliography ( see our page on the this type of document ). Much of the information used in an annotated bibliography can be used also in a literature review, so you’ll be not only partially drafting your lit review as you research, but also developing your sense of the larger conversation going on among scholars, professionals, and any other stakeholders in your topic.
Usually you will need to synthesize research rather than just summarizing it. This means drawing connections between sources to create a picture of the scholarly conversation on a topic over time. Many student writers struggle to synthesize because they feel they don’t have anything to add to the scholars they are citing; here are some strategies to help you:
- It often helps to remember that the point of these kinds of syntheses is to show your readers how you understand your research, to help them read the rest of your paper.
- Writing teachers often say synthesis is like hosting a dinner party: imagine all your sources are together in a room, discussing your topic. What are they saying to each other?
- Look at the in-text citations in each paragraph. Are you citing just one source for each paragraph? This usually indicates summary only. When you have multiple sources cited in a paragraph, you are more likely to be synthesizing them (not always, but often
- Read more about synthesis here.
The most interesting literature reviews are often written as arguments (again, as mentioned at the beginning of the page, this is discipline-specific and doesn’t work for all situations). Often, the literature review is where you can establish your research as filling a particular gap or as relevant in a particular way. You have some chance to do this in your introduction in an article, but the literature review section gives a more extended opportunity to establish the conversation in the way you would like your readers to see it. You can choose the intellectual lineage you would like to be part of and whose definitions matter most to your thinking (mostly humanities-specific, but this goes for sciences as well). In addressing these points, you argue for your place in the conversation, which tends to make the lit review more compelling than a simple reporting of other sources.
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Literature review toolkit for policy studies: Concept mapping
Why create a concept map.
A concept map is a visualization of key idea in your research and the relationships between them. To create a concept map, pick out the main concepts of your topic and brainstorm everything you know about them, drawing shapes around your concepts and clustering the shapes in a way that's meaningful to you. How can this help?
- Helps you pull back to see the broader concepts at play.
- Can help identify the subject-based tool where literature can be found.
- Helps clarify both what you already know and where you have gaps in your knowledge.
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- Last Updated: Jan 26, 2024 11:12 AM
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Our newly released course, Mastering Literature Review with Litmaps, allows instructors to seamlessly bring Litmaps into the classroom to teach fundamental literature review and research concepts. Join the 250,000+ researchers, students, and professionals using Litmaps to accelerate their literature review. Find the right papers faster.
A literature review map acts as a visual representation of the concepts, studies, and theories that have been covered in the literature. In this article, we will guide you through the process of creating a comprehensive literature review map, step-by-step, to help you structure and organize your literature review effectively. Step 1: Define ...
Since writing a literature review requires following a systematic method to identify, evaluate, and interpret the work of other researchers, academics, and practitioners from the same research field, creating a literature map proves beneficial. Mapping ideas, arguments, and concepts in a literature is an imperative part of literature review.
Connected Papers generated map — using seed paper — Absorptive Capacity: A Review, Reconceptualization, and Extension. Connected Papers is a easy to use and powerful tool that promises to help you quickly identify similar papers with just one "Seed paper" (a relevant paper) and further on help to detect seminal papers as well as review papers.
Litmaps is an online research platform | Visualise, expand, and share your research
Concept maps or mind maps visually represent relationships of different concepts. In research, they can help you make connections between ideas. You can use them as you are formulating your research question, as you are reading a complex text, and when you are creating a literature review. See the video and examples below.
A literature review is a methodical or organized review of the published literature on a specific topic or research question designed to analyze--not just summarize--scholarly writings that are related directly to your research question. That is, it represents the literature that provides the context for your research and shows a correspondence ...
An overview of tools for mapping scholarly literature. Litmaps creates interactive literature maps: collections of articles that make up your different research topics. Create maps for your research by searching our literature database; linking your reference manager; or through automatic generation from seed articles.
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.
06/06/2023. Literature mapping is a process that involves analyzing and visualizing the scientific literature on a particular topic to identify research gaps, improve collaboration, and inform decision-making. In this article, we list five benefits of literature mapping for scientists and researchers and show you types and tools to save your ...
Using references from literature review as input, Litmaps Discover finds papers not originally cited in the literature review. 3. Cross-check Litmaps suggestions using our original sources. Litmaps' tools rely on a select set of databases. Depending on your research needs, you can conduct a secondary search on each of these original databases ...
The methods to be used include a systematic literature review (using a concept map [33] and clusters [34]) , a conceptual framework (transparency engineering methodology), and a case study design ...
Research Guides. Literature Reviews. A concept map or mind map is a visual representation of knowledge that illustrates relationships between concepts or ideas. It is a tool for organizing and representing information in a hierarchical and interconnected manner. At its core, a concept map consists of nodes, which represent individual concepts ...
Demonstrate your knowledge of the research topic. Identify the gaps in the literature and show how your research links to these. Provide the foundation for your conceptual framework (if you have one) Inform your own methodology and research design. To achieve this, your literature review needs a well-thought-out structure.
Concept Maps are a way to graphically represent ideas and how they relate to each other. Concept maps may be simple designs illustrating a central theme and a few associated topics or complex structures that delineate hierarchical or multiple relationships. J.D. Novak developed concept maps in the 1970's to help facilitate the research process ...
Literature mapping is a way of discovering scholarly articles by exploring connections between publications.. Similar articles are often linked by citations, authors, funders, keywords, and other metadata. These connections can be explored manually in a database such as Scopus or by the use of free browser-based tools such as Connected Papers, L itMaps, and Open Knowledge Maps.
The Literature Map helps researchers review literature for gaps and points of impact. They are useful in both academic and industry related research projects to help gain traction and market interest. Book a seat for our upcoming Literature Mapping Webinar Workshop.
Concepts are drawn inside circles or boxes, and the linking words are written on the line that joins the two concepts. For example, you could write the word "car" inside one box and write the word "fast" in the box below the first. The last step is to link them with a line that says "can be." Together, the two concepts and the linking words ...
A literature review is a document or section of a document that collects key sources on a topic and discusses those sources in conversation with each other (also called synthesis ). The lit review is an important genre in many disciplines, not just literature (i.e., the study of works of literature such as novels and plays).
Articles & Research Databases Literature on your research topic and direct access to articles online, when available at UW.; E-Journals Alphabetical list of electronic journal titles held at UW.; Encyclopedias & Dictionaries Resources for looking up quick facts and background information.; E-Newspapers, Media, Maps & More Recommendations for finding news, audio/video, images, government ...
Literature reviews are more than a summary of the literature. They synthesize the key studies and concepts in a particular area, show relationships between studies, and suggest patterns in the body of literature. Good literature reviews require thoughtful organization of the literature, which can be accomplished through mind-mapping techniques.
The aim of this scoping review is to map the evidence on the different nurses' roles in caring for older people in domiciliary settings. This review will include primary, secondary, and gray literature on nurses' roles in domiciliary settings for older people, sourced through comprehensive searches of various databases (MEDLINE, Embase ...