Research Tips for Literature Reviews
1. Choosing Your Topic
- make sure that you choose a topic that is not too narrow or too broad - you can always refine your topic as you learn more about it
- you may have to reevaluate your topic based on whether there is too much literature or too little
- define some selection criteria for exclusion of irrelevant papers to limit your scope (e.g. how many studies do you need to look at, how many years?)
2. Researching Your Topic
- create a research plan, including a list of different search words, synonyms, and phrases for your topic and experiment with these in your search (e.g. try adding/subtracting search words or swapping them out and see how the results differ)
- plan to use multiple databases and resources (e.g. ProQuest Central, CINAHL, Google Scholar)
- pay attention to bibliographies and reference pages
- focus on the most frequently cited literature about your topic and literature from the best known scholars in your field
- note the keywords that authors use and incorporate them into your search
- look for existing literature reviews on your topic (TIP: These can usually be found in Library databases by adding "literature review" as a keyword in your search
3. Tracking
- you will be reading a lot of different sources and you will want to keep track of them so your search can be replicated
- a citation manager like Refworks is an excellent tool (Find Refworks on the A-Z List of Databases)
- keep notes on papers that you can't access immediately so you may try retrieve them later
