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Conducting a Narrative Literature Review

Basics on writing a scholarly literature review.

How is a literature review organized?

  • Usually moves from general to specific

    • Start by establishing context, then more to content more closely related to your topic

  • Group by subtopics in a method of your choice

    • Break up into paragraphs or sections- introduction, body, conclusion

    • Discuss the relation between articles

    • Choose how to group your analysis:

      • Thematic, Methodological, Chronological, Argument based, Theory based

    • Use topic sentences to introduce content

  • Avoid:

    • Focusing a whole paragraph on a single article

    • Introducing articles and simply giving summaries

    • Simply writing the equivalent of an annotated bibliography in paragraph form

Citation Managers

Any citation management software is essentially a database custom-built to manage your citations.

If you have a lot of citations (such as when you are writing a literature review), your time will be much saved by learning to use one of these software options.