Reading and Reviewing Papers › Module 5: Writing a literature review
What a literature review does
Lesson 1 of 3 · 2 min
A literature review sums up and makes sense of what is already known about a topic. It can be a full paper on its own, a chapter in a thesis, or the "related work" section of a research paper.
Its jobs
- Show what is known, and how sure we are of it.
- Show how different studies relate: where they agree, disagree or use different methods.
- Show what is not known yet: the gap.
- Explain why your research question matters, and where it fits.
A review is not a list of summaries
The most common mistake is writing one paragraph per paper: "Smith (2020) did this. Kumar (2021) did that. Lee (2022) did something else." The reader learns what each paper did, but not what it all means. That is an annotated list, not a review.
A review synthesises: it combines what many papers say into a few clear points, with each point backed by several sources.
| List of summaries | Synthesis |
|---|---|
| Smith (2020) used model X and got 20% error. Kumar (2021) used model Y and got 15% error. | Larger pretrained models have cut error rates sharply, from about 20% to 15% between 2020 and 2021 (Smith, 2020; Kumar, 2021), but every study tested only on read speech. |
- Smith (2020) used model X and got 20% error. Kumar (2021) used model Y and got 15% error.
- Synthesis: Larger pretrained models have cut error rates sharply, from about 20% to 15% between 2020 and 2021 (Smith, 2020; Kumar, 2021), but every study tested only on read speech.
Kinds of review
- A narrative review gives an expert overview. Most student reviews and related-work sections are narrative.
- A systematic review follows a strict, pre-written plan for searching, choosing and judging studies, so it can be repeated. Medical research often uses the PRISMA guidelines for reporting them.
RememberYour review should leave the reader thinking: "Of course the next question is the one this author is asking."