Literature Reviews Using Only Scholarly Journals

Get a perfect example of the use of scholarly journals in a literature review.

The writers at Paper Masters spend countless hours:

• Finding, assessing, and using academic publications
• Identify quality academic peer-reviewed research.
• Analyzing the results of research
• What methodologies are used
• Which authors are respected by scholars in a given field
• What does, and does not, constitute a valid approach to a topic

What is a Literature Review?

A review of literature is an research paper in which the author identifies, relates, and evaluates the resources consulted for a research project. The review of literature is more than an annotated bibliography or individual summary of each article; it demonstrates the author’s awareness and understanding of the key resources in a particular field as well as his or her ability to evaluate the strengths and limitations of those resources.

It is important to understand the purpose of a literature review. What a literature review is not supposed to be is a random collection of books and articles that are only tangentially related to the subject under discussion. The materials covered should conform to the exact dimensions of the topic or problem with which the student proposes to deal. It goes without saying that this requires that the student should, before commencing the literature review, state carefully and concisely what his/her research is attempting to do. In addition to meeting the requirement of relevance, the University of Toronto’s publication that we have cited above lists three other things which a literature review should have. These are:

• A synthesis that informs the reader of the state of play respecting the topic, i.e., what is, and what is not, currently known about it
• Statements identifying points of scholarly contention concerning the topic
• Statements which point to areas in need of further research