How to Write a Literature Review for a Research Paper

Conduct a literature review by identifying sources, summarizing key findings, synthesizing themes, and highlighting gaps to contextualize your research.

Define Your Purpose

Define your purpose for the literature review: provide background, identify research gaps, or establish a theoretical framework to guide your source selection.

Conduct a Comprehensive Literature Search

Conduct a literature review by identifying relevant keywords and sourcing peer-reviewed articles, books, and seminal works from databases like Google Scholar.

Organize Your Sources

For your literature review, create an annotated bibliography summarizing key points and group sources by themes to highlight connections and structure your review.

Write the Review

In your literature review, introduce the topic, summarize key studies, analyze their contributions, and conclude by highlighting gaps and future research areas.

Learn to write a literature review: define your purpose, conduct a comprehensive search, organize sources, and analyze findings. Connect with us for help!