Table Of ContentHOW TO
WRITE YOUR
LITERATURE
REVIEW
BRYAN GREETHAM
How to Write Your Literature Review
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How to Write
Your Literature
Review
Bryan Greetham
© Bryan Greetham, under exclusive licence to Macmillan Education
Limited 2021
All rights reserved. No reproduction, copy or transmission of this
publication may be made without written permission.
No portion of this publication may be reproduced, copied or transmitted
save with written permission or in accordance with the provisions of the
Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988, or under the terms of any licence
permitting limited copying issued by the Copyright Licensing Agency,
Saffron House, 6–10 Kirby Street, London EC1N 8TS.
Any person who does any unauthorized act in relation to this publication
may be liable to criminal prosecution and civil claims for damages.
The author has asserted their right to be identified as the author of this work
in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.
First published 2021 by
RED GLOBE PRESS
Red Globe Press in the UK is an imprint of Macmillan Education Limited,
registered in England, company number 01755588, of 4 Crinan Street,
London, N1 9XW.
Red Globe Press® is a registered trademark in the United States, the United
Kingdom, Europe and other countries.
ISBN 978-1-352-01104-3 paperback
This book is printed on paper suitable for recycling and made from fully
managed and sustained forest sources. Logging, pulping and manufacturing
processes are expected to conform to the environmental regulations of the
country of origin.
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.
A catalog record for this book is available from the Library of Congress.
To all my students, whose passion for ideas and joy of discovery have
made my teaching so fulfilling. And to Pat for your undiminished
courage in accepting each new challenge.
It is a lesson which all history teaches wise men,
to put trust in ideas, and not in circumstances.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Conversation enriches the understanding,
but solitude is the school of genius.
Edward Gibbon
Contents
Acknowledgements ix
Introduction x
Part 1 Types of Literature Reviews
1 Stand-alone Literature Reviews 1: Non-systematic 3
2 Stand-alone Literature Reviews 2: Systematic 11
3 Literature Reviews for Dissertations and Theses 25
Part 2 Searching Your Sources
4 How to Generate Your Own Ideas 37
5 Finding a Research Question 47
6 How to Search 57
7 Searching the Internet 67
Part 3 Processing Ideas
8 Critically Evaluating Your Sources 1: The Arguments 77
9 Critically Evaluating Your Sources 2: The Evidence
and Language 87
10 Analysing Concepts 1: Finding Connections Between Ideas 99
11 Analysing Concepts 2: Adapting Structures of Ideas 111
12 Synthesis: Creating Patterns and Finding Gaps 123
Part 4 Organising Your Work
13 Managing Your Time 135
14 Managing Your Material 145
15 Reading 153
16 Note-Taking 161
Part 5 Planning Your Review
17 Deciding Which Sources to Use 175
18 Planning the Review 183
19 Integrating Your Review with Other Chapters 193
vii
viii Contents
Part 6 Writing Your Review
20 Discussing the Literature 205
21 The First Draft 217
22 Finding Your Own Voice 227
23 Style: Simplicity and Economy 235
24 Finding the Right Words 243
Part 7 Using Your Sources
25 Plagiarism 255
26 Citing Your Sources 263
Part 8 Editing
27 Revision 1: Structure 275
28 Revision 2: Content 283
Conclusion 291
Bibliography 293
Index 295
Acknowledgements
Writing a literature review is like finding yourself in a strange country with unfamiliar
terrain stretching out ahead of you. Making your way across it, mapping it out,
responding to the challenges it poses and exploring those areas that most intrigue you
is always an exciting experience. But, if this is the first time you have made such a
perilous journey, you will need the guidance of experienced supervisors as you take
your first tentative steps. I owe a considerable debt to all those who helped me take
these first few steps as a student.
By the same token, I am grateful to friends and colleagues with whom I have
worked over the years. Their knowledge and expertise have at times been invaluable in
guiding me through the literature on topics that were new to me. I owe a similar debt
to my reviewers whose kind and encouraging advice has helped me improve the text.
They brought their experience to bear on my work and made suggestions that have
helped me see things that I would not otherwise have seen. For this I am very grateful.
To my editors at Red Globe Press I owe a special debt. To Suzannah Burywood for
her friendship, advice and sound judgement over the years; to Helen Caunce for her
quiet patience and professionalism; and to Rosemary Maher, who has coped with every
problem with such tactful patience and understanding; to all of you I owe an enormous
debt for investing such confidence in me.
And, finally, to Pat Rowe, my lifelong companion, who has faced each new chal-
lenge with such courage and good humour, I owe the biggest debt of all. When
problems filled my mental space and a thoughtful silence descended, you have always
known just what to do. Without you, this would have been so much more difficult.
ix
Introduction
The most notable feature of literature reviews, in contrast with many other academic
assignments, is that they present us with an exciting challenge to carve out of the
literature an opportunity to do something truly original. Much of our education is
spent recycling the ideas of our authorities without analysing and critically evaluating
them in any depth to identify their weaknesses and omissions. Now, it is our opportu-
nity to address these shortcomings and discover something new and insightful.
However, the problem for many of us as we set about a literature review is that we
are told we must do things that are not only confusing, but also lack serious intellectual
challenge. We are told we must produce a synopsis of the literature, summarising
sources that provide the ‘background’ to our research. Not only does this take up too
much of our time while filling our review with irrelevant material that is never referred
to again, but it only draws on our lower cognitive abilities to describe one source after
another in an attempt to impress examiners with how much we’ve read and
understood.
This leaves many students so confused that they simply have no idea where to start.
It makes it difficult for them to decide what’s relevant, while encouraging them to
summarise all the findings of each article they read, when they only need comment on
those issues that throw light on what they plan to do.
Synovpsis
1 Takes up too much space and time.
2 Fills our review with a mass of irrelevant material.
3 Uses just the lower cognitive abilities.
4 Makes it difficult to decide where to start.
In fact, whether it’s a stand-alone review or it’s for a dissertation or thesis, a literature
review should present us with an opportunity to do really exciting work – to use and
demonstrate our higher cognitive abilities:
to critically evaluate the assumptions, methods and conclusions found in the
literature we read;
to analyse concepts and arguments;
to synthesise ideas from different sources to reveal new insights and new ways of
approaching a problem.
x
