Steps to a Lit Review
The Literature Review
Some upper level courses will require a lit review, which is “an in-depth critical analysis of published scholarly research related to a specific topic” (Getting Started). Lit reviews are organized around a research question; they synthesize your research into a summary of what is and is not known in the field about this topic.
The best way to start a literature review is with a robust annotated bibliography, which is much like a regular bibliography—just with brief summaries of each source. The process of creating your annotated bibliography will allow you to develop two other tools you’ll need for the literature review:
- Freewrites about every source
- A concept map
Freewriting
When we freewrite, we discover what we think. This can happen because we know what we’re writing won’t ever be seen by anyone else. We are free from the concerns of judgment or grade—all we’re doing is figuring out what we think about a text. It’s a critical process to any larger writing project, even if those words and sentences never appear in the final document.
Research and writing are not separate processes, but bound and tied together. As you read, freewrite about every source.
- If you’re still conducting research now, freewrite—without concern for style or syntax—for five-ten minutes about each source as soon as you’ve completed it.
- If you’re done with research, go through your bibliography now, scan each text again or review your notes, and freewrite for five-ten minutes about each one.
These freewrites will help you draft your annotated bibliography, and they will become a necessary tool in the final lit review you draft.
Concept Map
Now you’ll have an alphabetical list of sources, each of which with a page or two of freewriting/thoughts. Your next step is to build a concept map by separating the sources into categories. Ask yourself:
- Which sources are important because they support your argument?
- Which argue against your position?
- Are any of them out of scope or no longer relevant now that—through freewriting—you’ve honed your topic down and started to figure out what you want to say?
Once you’ve divided sources into ones that support your argument and ones that fight against it, look for major themes discussed in multiple sources, and group them together. You may now draw a giant Venn diagram, so your concept map indicates which sources fall into multiple categories.
Or if you prefer lists to maps, maybe you’ll want to make several differently organized bibliographies, one organized by theme or concept, one listing only sources that support your argument, one listing sources that oppose, etc.
You will naturally begin thinking conceptually as you organize your sources. Make sure to pay attention to what concepts are emerging—what ideas are you hitting on over and over again in your freewrites, what ideas are repeated again and again in different sources? Take notes and do freewrites as you make these connections, as this will all aid in your own writing down the line.
As you build the concept map, also ask yourself if you’re seeing any gaps in the literature, or places that important disagreements come to the surface. These are places your own writing can probe—you can think of the final lit review as staking claim to this gap or disagreement. You’re surveying the land to see what’s what, and deciding where your own work will go eventually—which is, ultimately, the reason you’re doing this project.
The main difference between an annotated bibliography and a lit review is that the former simply lists and summarizes each source. A literature review discusses the themes, trends, and theories in a prose format. Your job in writing a literature review is to evaluate and synthesize the literature in order to make connections among scholarly works and to find gaps in the literature that your research could address.
Your lit review should:
- Include only the most important points from each source. You want to summarize, not quote from, the sources.
- Include your own conclusions from analyzing, evaluating, and synthesizing what you learned from the sources.
- Accurately represent the scholars’ works in your own words.
Remember
Writing is thinking, and this means that it’s possible your research question may change over time. You have likely had the experience of writing a paper for a class and only discovering what you really want to say when you get to the end. Maybe you let it be a process of discovery for your professor, just as it was for you.
You can’t do that with a lit review. The process of writing the annotated bibliography and then cutting it up into a concept map or into several differently organized bibliographies—and, importantly, staying focused on your freewrites at every step—means that you may already know what you want to say by the time you sit down to start writing. But if not, and you discover as you write, that’s fine! As I said, writing is thinking.
But that means you need to go back and revise so your thesis is clear from the introduction. Lit reviews are more formulaic than other types of papers—think of it as the five-paragraph essay on steroids. This means revision, a process that every good writer knows intimately. As any good writer will attest: writing is re-writing. Writing is revision. So leave yourself time for it.
More Resources
Learn more about writing annotated bibliographies on Sawyer Library’s guide and prepare to write a literature review using their self-guided tutorial.