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Timothy Collinson
What is a review of the literature?
• A literature review is an account of
what has been published on a topic by
accredited scholars and researchers.
• In writing the literature review, your
purpose is to convey to your reader
what knowledge and ideas have been
established on the topic you have
chosen, and what their strengths and
weaknesses are.
• Your literature review will enable you to
identify gaps in the existing knowledge
that you can build upon.
• As a piece of writing, the literature
review must be defined by a guiding
concept (i.e. your research aim and
objectives). It is not a descriptive list of
the material available, or a set of
summaries.
A good literature review is:
• Focused - The topic should be narrow. You
should only present ideas and report on
studies that are closely related to topic.
• Concise - Ideas should be presented
economically. Don’t take any more space
than you need to present your ideas.
• Logical - The flow within and among
paragraphs should be a smooth, logical
progression from one idea to the next
• Developed - Don’t leave the story half told.
• Integrative - Your paper should stress how
the ideas in the studies are related. Focus on
the big picture. What commonality do all
the studies share? How are some studies
different than others? Your paper should
stress how all the studies reviewed contribute
to your topic.
• Current - Your review should focus on work
being done on the cutting edge of your
topic.
A literature review must do
these things:
• Be organized around and
related directly to the thesis
or research question you are
developing
• Synthesize results into a
summary of what is and is not
known
• Identify areas of controversy
in the literature
• Formulate questions that
need further research
So what is a literature review?
• A literature review is a coherent essay,
not a list describing or summarizing
one piece of literature after another.
• The literature review should be
organized into sections that present
themes or identify trends, including
relevant theory. It's usually a bad sign
to see every paragraph beginning
with the name of a researcher.
• A literature review is not a list of all the
material published, but an evaluation
of research to date on the guiding
concept of your dissertation or
research questions.
Possible sources
Books
Academic Journals
Conference Papers
Reports
Government Publications
Magazine Articles
Newspaper Articles
Blogs
Reputable Web Sources
https://library.port.ac.uk/guides/docs/LG790.pdf
moving forwards in time
Marie’s article Citation Searching
2017
~~~~~~~~~~~
~~~~~~~~~~~ Timothy’s article
~~~~~~ 2010
References
~~~~~~~
~~~~~~~
~~~~~~~
~~~~~~~~~~~
Hawking’s article
*
~~~~~~~~~~~
~~~~~~ 2006
migrant workforce
foreign
building
culture labour / labor
migrant workforce
behavior foreign
building U.K.
United Kingdom
“construction industry”
“building industry”
GB / G.B. / Great Britain
challenges
culture labour / labor
Intervention
strategy
migrant workforce
behavior foreign
building U.K.
United Kingdom
“construction industry”
“building industry”
GB / G.B. / Great Britain
law
case studies
AND
narrows/focuses
sustain* environment*
OR
widens
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https://www.newcivilengineer.com/
http://www.building.co.uk
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org.uk
http://scholar.google.co.uk
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