Writing a Literature Review: Getting Started
A literature review is an essay or section of an essay that reviews a range of published material on a particular topic. Basically, it compares and contrasts a lot of academic sources that are all discussing the same topic.
If you want to write a literature review of world-systems theory, which is primarily used in political science and sociology, you might look at Thompson's 1983 collection Contending Approaches to World System Analysis, Chase-Dunn's 1984 article "The World-System Since 1950: What Has Really Changed?", Frank and Gills's 1993 collection The World System: Five Hundred or Five Thousand Years?, and Tausch's 2007 article "Global terrorism and world political cycles," among others.
First, you'll want to read the sources, know what they're about, and make sure you can easily explain what they're about to someone else.
From there, you'll want to look for similarities and differences between the sources.
Are the authors in Thompson's 1983 collection defining "world-systems theory" differently than Tausch in 2007? Are all the authors using world-systems theory for the same purpose? Some could be using it to primarily analyze "first world" countries, while others might be using it to bring attention to the poor economic conditions in "developing" nations.
Writing a Literature Review: Organization
Once you have analyzed your sources, you need to decide how to organize your literature review. There are three common organizational structures:
1. Chronological. Your chronological literature review might start with Thompson, then talk about Chase-Dunn, then Frank and Gills, and finally Tausch. You might also group your sources together, first looking at research from the 1980s, then research from the '90s, and finally research from the 2000's til today.
2. Thematic. Your thematic literature review would divide your sources into categories based on common themes.
Thompson's and Chase-Dunn's sources focus on recent research about world-systems theory, Chase-Dunn's source looks at the history of world-systems theory, and Tausch's source looks at applying world-systems theory to global terrorism.
So you could have a paragraph (or so) on sources that provide a history of world-systems theory, a paragraph (or so) on sources that review current world-systems research, and a paragraph (or so) on sources that apply world-systems theory to current political and social issues.
3. Methodological. Your methodological literature review will focus on the research methodologies used in the sources you review.
That could mean figuring out, for example, whether each author's research uses qualitative or quantitative data or whether s/he uses case studies or statistical surveys. It could also mean looking out how long the authors' studies took place, what populations they studied, how they selected their study participants, etc.
Unless otherwise specified, your instructors will probably only be expected to write either chronological (which I've seen used most in engineering papers) or thematic literature reviews (which I've seen used most in nursing papers).
It never hurts to double-check with your instructor, though. After getting the literature review assignment prompt, you will sound super knowledgeable if you ask, "Would you like me to organize the review chronologically, by theme, or by methodology?"
Writing a Literature Review: Putting Words on the Page
Figuring out the organization of your literature review means that you've already figured out how to write most of the body of your paper. However, you still need to introduce and conclude it.
A good way to introduce your literature review is simply to explain what topic you're looking at and summarize the research on it. So you might begin your essay like this:
World-systems theory, first developed by Immanuel Wallerstein in his 1974 work The Modern World-System, proposes that the world is primarily organized by economic, rather than national or ethnic, categories. In addition, this theory posits that countries can be defined as core, peripheral, or semi-peripheral: core countries have strong, capitalist economics, peripheral countries depend on the economies of core countries, and semi-peripheral countries possess characteristics of both core and peripheral countries. While early research on world-systems theory has been criticized for discounting the importance of culture, studies published since the late 1990s have sought to address both economic and cultural factors.
If you start your literature review by describing what research has been done in the past, it makes sense to conclude your literature review by suggesting what research should be done in the future.
Your sources will probably suggest ways to improve the current research on world-systems theory, but you can always add your own ideas. For example, you might write:
While contemporary scholars analyzing or applying a world-systems approach have enriched this theory by expanding its focus on culture and ethnicity, further revisions can still be made to improve the theory's usefulness. The vast majority of studies on world-systems theory have been conducted from a qualitative perspective. More quantitative research could demonstrate the materiality of the theory, thereby suggesting applications to real-world social and political issues.
Writing a Social and/or Behavioral Sciences Literature Review
Literature reviews are more commonly used in the sciences (social, behavioral, natural, medical, etc.) than in the humanities. Literature reviews within the sciences are usually pretty similar, but if you're going into the social and behavioral sciences there are some things you might want to know.
At the undergraduate level, your literature reviews will mainly be organized thematically (by topic). Your teachers might require you to find a certain number of sources to review or require that you find sources within a specific date range (e.g., 2000-2016).
For more tips on writing a good social science literature review at the undergraduate level, you can access a short PDF (by logging in through Google+ or Facebook) of an article titled "Writing a Literature Review in the Social Sciences."
At the Master's degree level, you will probably be asked to write methodological literature reviews, in which you analyze sources according to how they organized and conducted their research studies. You will probably have to choose how many sources you review and may have to explain your selection criteria in your literature review (e.g., "I have chosen research on assessing children with OCD published between 1990 and 2016 because [reasons]").
At the doctoral level, you'll have to do everything you did at the Master's level, but more so. You basically have to cover ALL the research on a given topic, sometimes including research in other languages.
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