the literature reviewed must be

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• Literature Review: The What, Why and How-to Guide
• Introduction

Literature Review: The What, Why and How-to Guide — Introduction

• Getting Started
• How to Pick a Topic
• Strategies to Find Sources
• Evaluating Sources & Lit. Reviews
• Tips for Writing Literature Reviews
• Writing Literature Review: Useful Sites
• Citation Resources
• Other Academic Writings

What are Literature Reviews?

So, what is a literature review? "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 a topic, and what their strengths and weaknesses are. As a piece of writing, the literature review must be defined by a guiding concept (e.g., your research objective, the problem or issue you are discussing, or your argumentative thesis). It is not just a descriptive list of the material available, or a set of summaries." Taylor, D.  The literature review: A few tips on conducting it . University of Toronto Health Sciences Writing Centre.

Goals of Literature Reviews

What are the goals of creating a Literature Review?  A literature could be written to accomplish different aims:

• To develop a theory or evaluate an existing theory
• To summarize the historical or existing state of a research topic
• Identify a problem in a field of research 

Baumeister, R. F., & Leary, M. R. (1997). Writing narrative literature reviews .  Review of General Psychology , 1 (3), 311-320.

What kinds of sources require a Literature Review?

• A research paper assigned in a course
• A thesis or dissertation
• A grant proposal
• An article intended for publication in a journal

All these instances require you to collect what has been written about your research topic so that you can demonstrate how your own research sheds new light on the topic.

Types of Literature Reviews

What kinds of literature reviews are written?

Narrative review: The purpose of this type of review is to describe the current state of the research on a specific topic/research and to offer a critical analysis of the literature reviewed. Studies are grouped by research/theoretical categories, and themes and trends, strengths and weakness, and gaps are identified. The review ends with a conclusion section which summarizes the findings regarding the state of the research of the specific study, the gaps identify and if applicable, explains how the author's research will address gaps identify in the review and expand the knowledge on the topic reviewed.

• Example : Predictors and Outcomes of U.S. Quality Maternity Leave: A Review and Conceptual Framework:  10.1177/08948453211037398  

Systematic review : "The authors of a systematic review use a specific procedure to search the research literature, select the studies to include in their review, and critically evaluate the studies they find." (p. 139). Nelson, L. K. (2013). Research in Communication Sciences and Disorders . Plural Publishing.

• Example : The effect of leave policies on increasing fertility: a systematic review:  10.1057/s41599-022-01270-w

Meta-analysis : "Meta-analysis is a method of reviewing research findings in a quantitative fashion by transforming the data from individual studies into what is called an effect size and then pooling and analyzing this information. The basic goal in meta-analysis is to explain why different outcomes have occurred in different studies." (p. 197). Roberts, M. C., & Ilardi, S. S. (2003). Handbook of Research Methods in Clinical Psychology . Blackwell Publishing.

• Example : Employment Instability and Fertility in Europe: A Meta-Analysis:  10.1215/00703370-9164737

Meta-synthesis : "Qualitative meta-synthesis is a type of qualitative study that uses as data the findings from other qualitative studies linked by the same or related topic." (p.312). Zimmer, L. (2006). Qualitative meta-synthesis: A question of dialoguing with texts .  Journal of Advanced Nursing , 53 (3), 311-318.

• Example : Women’s perspectives on career successes and barriers: A qualitative meta-synthesis:  10.1177/05390184221113735

Literature Reviews in the Health Sciences

• UConn Health subject guide on systematic reviews Explanation of the different review types used in health sciences literature as well as tools to help you find the right review type
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Organizing Your Social Sciences Research Paper

• 5. The Literature Review
• Purpose of Guide
• Design Flaws to Avoid
• Independent and Dependent Variables
• Glossary of Research Terms
• Reading Research Effectively
• Narrowing a Topic Idea
• Broadening a Topic Idea
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• Primary Sources
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• Scholarly vs. Popular Publications
• Qualitative Methods
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• Bibliography

A literature review surveys prior research published in books, scholarly articles, and any other sources relevant to a particular issue, area of research, or theory, and by so doing, provides a description, summary, and critical evaluation of these works in relation to the research problem being investigated. Literature reviews are designed to provide an overview of sources you have used in researching a particular topic and to demonstrate to your readers how your research fits within existing scholarship about the topic.

Fink, Arlene. Conducting Research Literature Reviews: From the Internet to Paper . Fourth edition. Thousand Oaks, CA: SAGE, 2014.

Importance of a Good Literature Review

A literature review may consist of simply a summary of key sources, but in the social sciences, a literature review usually has an organizational pattern and combines both summary and synthesis, often within specific conceptual categories . A summary is a recap of the important information of the source, but a synthesis is a re-organization, or a reshuffling, of that information in a way that informs how you are planning to investigate a research problem. The analytical features of a literature review might:

• Give a new interpretation of old material or combine new with old interpretations,
• Trace the intellectual progression of the field, including major debates,
• Depending on the situation, evaluate the sources and advise the reader on the most pertinent or relevant research, or
• Usually in the conclusion of a literature review, identify where gaps exist in how a problem has been researched to date.

Given this, the purpose of a literature review is to:

• Place each work in the context of its contribution to understanding the research problem being studied.
• Describe the relationship of each work to the others under consideration.
• Identify new ways to interpret prior research.
• Reveal any gaps that exist in the literature.
• Resolve conflicts amongst seemingly contradictory previous studies.
• Identify areas of prior scholarship to prevent duplication of effort.
• Point the way in fulfilling a need for additional research.
• Locate your own research within the context of existing literature [very important].

Fink, Arlene. Conducting Research Literature Reviews: From the Internet to Paper. 2nd ed. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage, 2005; Hart, Chris. Doing a Literature Review: Releasing the Social Science Research Imagination . Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage Publications, 1998; Jesson, Jill. Doing Your Literature Review: Traditional and Systematic Techniques . Los Angeles, CA: SAGE, 2011; Knopf, Jeffrey W. "Doing a Literature Review." PS: Political Science and Politics 39 (January 2006): 127-132; Ridley, Diana. The Literature Review: A Step-by-Step Guide for Students . 2nd ed. Los Angeles, CA: SAGE, 2012.

Types of Literature Reviews

It is important to think of knowledge in a given field as consisting of three layers. First, there are the primary studies that researchers conduct and publish. Second are the reviews of those studies that summarize and offer new interpretations built from and often extending beyond the primary studies. Third, there are the perceptions, conclusions, opinion, and interpretations that are shared informally among scholars that become part of the body of epistemological traditions within the field.

In composing a literature review, it is important to note that it is often this third layer of knowledge that is cited as "true" even though it often has only a loose relationship to the primary studies and secondary literature reviews. Given this, while literature reviews are designed to provide an overview and synthesis of pertinent sources you have explored, there are a number of approaches you could adopt depending upon the type of analysis underpinning your study.

Argumentative Review This form examines literature selectively in order to support or refute an argument, deeply embedded assumption, or philosophical problem already established in the literature. The purpose is to develop a body of literature that establishes a contrarian viewpoint. Given the value-laden nature of some social science research [e.g., educational reform; immigration control], argumentative approaches to analyzing the literature can be a legitimate and important form of discourse. However, note that they can also introduce problems of bias when they are used to make summary claims of the sort found in systematic reviews [see below].

Integrative Review Considered a form of research that reviews, critiques, and synthesizes representative literature on a topic in an integrated way such that new frameworks and perspectives on the topic are generated. The body of literature includes all studies that address related or identical hypotheses or research problems. A well-done integrative review meets the same standards as primary research in regard to clarity, rigor, and replication. This is the most common form of review in the social sciences.

Historical Review Few things rest in isolation from historical precedent. Historical literature reviews focus on examining research throughout a period of time, often starting with the first time an issue, concept, theory, phenomena emerged in the literature, then tracing its evolution within the scholarship of a discipline. The purpose is to place research in a historical context to show familiarity with state-of-the-art developments and to identify the likely directions for future research.

Methodological Review A review does not always focus on what someone said [findings], but how they came about saying what they say [method of analysis]. Reviewing methods of analysis provides a framework of understanding at different levels [i.e. those of theory, substantive fields, research approaches, and data collection and analysis techniques], how researchers draw upon a wide variety of knowledge ranging from the conceptual level to practical documents for use in fieldwork in the areas of ontological and epistemological consideration, quantitative and qualitative integration, sampling, interviewing, data collection, and data analysis. This approach helps highlight ethical issues which you should be aware of and consider as you go through your own study.

Systematic Review This form consists of an overview of existing evidence pertinent to a clearly formulated research question, which uses pre-specified and standardized methods to identify and critically appraise relevant research, and to collect, report, and analyze data from the studies that are included in the review. The goal is to deliberately document, critically evaluate, and summarize scientifically all of the research about a clearly defined research problem . Typically it focuses on a very specific empirical question, often posed in a cause-and-effect form, such as "To what extent does A contribute to B?" This type of literature review is primarily applied to examining prior research studies in clinical medicine and allied health fields, but it is increasingly being used in the social sciences.

Theoretical Review The purpose of this form is to examine the corpus of theory that has accumulated in regard to an issue, concept, theory, phenomena. The theoretical literature review helps to establish what theories already exist, the relationships between them, to what degree the existing theories have been investigated, and to develop new hypotheses to be tested. Often this form is used to help establish a lack of appropriate theories or reveal that current theories are inadequate for explaining new or emerging research problems. The unit of analysis can focus on a theoretical concept or a whole theory or framework.

NOTE: Most often the literature review will incorporate some combination of types. For example, a review that examines literature supporting or refuting an argument, assumption, or philosophical problem related to the research problem will also need to include writing supported by sources that establish the history of these arguments in the literature.

Baumeister, Roy F. and Mark R. Leary. "Writing Narrative Literature Reviews."  Review of General Psychology 1 (September 1997): 311-320; Mark R. Fink, Arlene. Conducting Research Literature Reviews: From the Internet to Paper . 2nd ed. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage, 2005; Hart, Chris. Doing a Literature Review: Releasing the Social Science Research Imagination . Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage Publications, 1998; Kennedy, Mary M. "Defining a Literature." Educational Researcher 36 (April 2007): 139-147; Petticrew, Mark and Helen Roberts. Systematic Reviews in the Social Sciences: A Practical Guide . Malden, MA: Blackwell Publishers, 2006; Torracro, Richard. "Writing Integrative Literature Reviews: Guidelines and Examples." Human Resource Development Review 4 (September 2005): 356-367; Rocco, Tonette S. and Maria S. Plakhotnik. "Literature Reviews, Conceptual Frameworks, and Theoretical Frameworks: Terms, Functions, and Distinctions." Human Ressource Development Review 8 (March 2008): 120-130; Sutton, Anthea. Systematic Approaches to a Successful Literature Review . Los Angeles, CA: Sage Publications, 2016.

Structure and Writing Style

I.  Thinking About Your Literature Review

The structure of a literature review should include the following in support of understanding the research problem :

• An overview of the subject, issue, or theory under consideration, along with the objectives of the literature review,
• Division of works under review into themes or categories [e.g. works that support a particular position, those against, and those offering alternative approaches entirely],
• An explanation of how each work is similar to and how it varies from the others,
• Conclusions as to which pieces are best considered in their argument, are most convincing of their opinions, and make the greatest contribution to the understanding and development of their area of research.

The critical evaluation of each work should consider :

• Provenance -- what are the author's credentials? Are the author's arguments supported by evidence [e.g. primary historical material, case studies, narratives, statistics, recent scientific findings]?
• Methodology -- were the techniques used to identify, gather, and analyze the data appropriate to addressing the research problem? Was the sample size appropriate? Were the results effectively interpreted and reported?
• Objectivity -- is the author's perspective even-handed or prejudicial? Is contrary data considered or is certain pertinent information ignored to prove the author's point?
• Persuasiveness -- which of the author's theses are most convincing or least convincing?
• Validity -- are the author's arguments and conclusions convincing? Does the work ultimately contribute in any significant way to an understanding of the subject?

II.  Development of the Literature Review

Four Basic Stages of Writing 1.  Problem formulation -- which topic or field is being examined and what are its component issues? 2.  Literature search -- finding materials relevant to the subject being explored. 3.  Data evaluation -- determining which literature makes a significant contribution to the understanding of the topic. 4.  Analysis and interpretation -- discussing the findings and conclusions of pertinent literature.

Consider the following issues before writing the literature review: Clarify If your assignment is not specific about what form your literature review should take, seek clarification from your professor by asking these questions: 1.  Roughly how many sources would be appropriate to include? 2.  What types of sources should I review (books, journal articles, websites; scholarly versus popular sources)? 3.  Should I summarize, synthesize, or critique sources by discussing a common theme or issue? 4.  Should I evaluate the sources in any way beyond evaluating how they relate to understanding the research problem? 5.  Should I provide subheadings and other background information, such as definitions and/or a history? Find Models Use the exercise of reviewing the literature to examine how authors in your discipline or area of interest have composed their literature review sections. Read them to get a sense of the types of themes you might want to look for in your own research or to identify ways to organize your final review. The bibliography or reference section of sources you've already read, such as required readings in the course syllabus, are also excellent entry points into your own research. Narrow the Topic The narrower your topic, the easier it will be to limit the number of sources you need to read in order to obtain a good survey of relevant resources. Your professor will probably not expect you to read everything that's available about the topic, but you'll make the act of reviewing easier if you first limit scope of the research problem. A good strategy is to begin by searching the USC Libraries Catalog for recent books about the topic and review the table of contents for chapters that focuses on specific issues. You can also review the indexes of books to find references to specific issues that can serve as the focus of your research. For example, a book surveying the history of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict may include a chapter on the role Egypt has played in mediating the conflict, or look in the index for the pages where Egypt is mentioned in the text. Consider Whether Your Sources are Current Some disciplines require that you use information that is as current as possible. This is particularly true in disciplines in medicine and the sciences where research conducted becomes obsolete very quickly as new discoveries are made. However, when writing a review in the social sciences, a survey of the history of the literature may be required. In other words, a complete understanding the research problem requires you to deliberately examine how knowledge and perspectives have changed over time. Sort through other current bibliographies or literature reviews in the field to get a sense of what your discipline expects. You can also use this method to explore what is considered by scholars to be a "hot topic" and what is not.

III.  Ways to Organize Your Literature Review

Chronology of Events If your review follows the chronological method, you could write about the materials according to when they were published. This approach should only be followed if a clear path of research building on previous research can be identified and that these trends follow a clear chronological order of development. For example, a literature review that focuses on continuing research about the emergence of German economic power after the fall of the Soviet Union. By Publication Order your sources by publication chronology, then, only if the order demonstrates a more important trend. For instance, you could order a review of literature on environmental studies of brown fields if the progression revealed, for example, a change in the soil collection practices of the researchers who wrote and/or conducted the studies. Thematic [“conceptual categories”] A thematic literature review is the most common approach to summarizing prior research in the social and behavioral sciences. Thematic reviews are organized around a topic or issue, rather than the progression of time, although the progression of time may still be incorporated into a thematic review. For example, a review of the Internet’s impact on American presidential politics could focus on the development of online political satire. While the study focuses on one topic, the Internet’s impact on American presidential politics, it would still be organized chronologically reflecting technological developments in media. The difference in this example between a "chronological" and a "thematic" approach is what is emphasized the most: themes related to the role of the Internet in presidential politics. Note that more authentic thematic reviews tend to break away from chronological order. A review organized in this manner would shift between time periods within each section according to the point being made. Methodological A methodological approach focuses on the methods utilized by the researcher. For the Internet in American presidential politics project, one methodological approach would be to look at cultural differences between the portrayal of American presidents on American, British, and French websites. Or the review might focus on the fundraising impact of the Internet on a particular political party. A methodological scope will influence either the types of documents in the review or the way in which these documents are discussed.

Other Sections of Your Literature Review Once you've decided on the organizational method for your literature review, the sections you need to include in the paper should be easy to figure out because they arise from your organizational strategy. In other words, a chronological review would have subsections for each vital time period; a thematic review would have subtopics based upon factors that relate to the theme or issue. However, sometimes you may need to add additional sections that are necessary for your study, but do not fit in the organizational strategy of the body. What other sections you include in the body is up to you. However, only include what is necessary for the reader to locate your study within the larger scholarship about the research problem.

Here are examples of other sections, usually in the form of a single paragraph, you may need to include depending on the type of review you write:

• Current Situation : Information necessary to understand the current topic or focus of the literature review.
• Sources Used : Describes the methods and resources [e.g., databases] you used to identify the literature you reviewed.
• History : The chronological progression of the field, the research literature, or an idea that is necessary to understand the literature review, if the body of the literature review is not already a chronology.
• Selection Methods : Criteria you used to select (and perhaps exclude) sources in your literature review. For instance, you might explain that your review includes only peer-reviewed [i.e., scholarly] sources.
• Standards : Description of the way in which you present your information.
• Questions for Further Research : What questions about the field has the review sparked? How will you further your research as a result of the review?

IV.  Writing Your Literature Review

Once you've settled on how to organize your literature review, you're ready to write each section. When writing your review, keep in mind these issues.

Use Evidence A literature review section is, in this sense, just like any other academic research paper. Your interpretation of the available sources must be backed up with evidence [citations] that demonstrates that what you are saying is valid. Be Selective Select only the most important points in each source to highlight in the review. The type of information you choose to mention should relate directly to the research problem, whether it is thematic, methodological, or chronological. Related items that provide additional information, but that are not key to understanding the research problem, can be included in a list of further readings . Use Quotes Sparingly Some short quotes are appropriate if you want to emphasize a point, or if what an author stated cannot be easily paraphrased. Sometimes you may need to quote certain terminology that was coined by the author, is not common knowledge, or taken directly from the study. Do not use extensive quotes as a substitute for using your own words in reviewing the literature. Summarize and Synthesize Remember to summarize and synthesize your sources within each thematic paragraph as well as throughout the review. Recapitulate important features of a research study, but then synthesize it by rephrasing the study's significance and relating it to your own work and the work of others. Keep Your Own Voice While the literature review presents others' ideas, your voice [the writer's] should remain front and center. For example, weave references to other sources into what you are writing but maintain your own voice by starting and ending the paragraph with your own ideas and wording. Use Caution When Paraphrasing When paraphrasing a source that is not your own, be sure to represent the author's information or opinions accurately and in your own words. Even when paraphrasing an author’s work, you still must provide a citation to that work.

V.  Common Mistakes to Avoid

These are the most common mistakes made in reviewing social science research literature.

• Sources in your literature review do not clearly relate to the research problem;
• You do not take sufficient time to define and identify the most relevant sources to use in the literature review related to the research problem;
• Relies exclusively on secondary analytical sources rather than including relevant primary research studies or data;
• Uncritically accepts another researcher's findings and interpretations as valid, rather than examining critically all aspects of the research design and analysis;
• Does not describe the search procedures that were used in identifying the literature to review;
• Reports isolated statistical results rather than synthesizing them in chi-squared or meta-analytic methods; and,
• Only includes research that validates assumptions and does not consider contrary findings and alternative interpretations found in the literature.

Cook, Kathleen E. and Elise Murowchick. “Do Literature Review Skills Transfer from One Course to Another?” Psychology Learning and Teaching 13 (March 2014): 3-11; Fink, Arlene. Conducting Research Literature Reviews: From the Internet to Paper . 2nd ed. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage, 2005; Hart, Chris. Doing a Literature Review: Releasing the Social Science Research Imagination . Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage Publications, 1998; Jesson, Jill. Doing Your Literature Review: Traditional and Systematic Techniques . London: SAGE, 2011; Literature Review Handout. Online Writing Center. Liberty University; Literature Reviews. The Writing Center. University of North Carolina; Onwuegbuzie, Anthony J. and Rebecca Frels. Seven Steps to a Comprehensive Literature Review: A Multimodal and Cultural Approach . Los Angeles, CA: SAGE, 2016; Ridley, Diana. The Literature Review: A Step-by-Step Guide for Students . 2nd ed. Los Angeles, CA: SAGE, 2012; Randolph, Justus J. “A Guide to Writing the Dissertation Literature Review." Practical Assessment, Research, and Evaluation. vol. 14, June 2009; Sutton, Anthea. Systematic Approaches to a Successful Literature Review . Los Angeles, CA: Sage Publications, 2016; Taylor, Dena. The Literature Review: A Few Tips On Conducting It. University College Writing Centre. University of Toronto; Writing a Literature Review. Academic Skills Centre. University of Canberra.

Writing Tip

Break Out of Your Disciplinary Box!

Thinking interdisciplinarily about a research problem can be a rewarding exercise in applying new ideas, theories, or concepts to an old problem. For example, what might cultural anthropologists say about the continuing conflict in the Middle East? In what ways might geographers view the need for better distribution of social service agencies in large cities than how social workers might study the issue? You don’t want to substitute a thorough review of core research literature in your discipline for studies conducted in other fields of study. However, particularly in the social sciences, thinking about research problems from multiple vectors is a key strategy for finding new solutions to a problem or gaining a new perspective. Consult with a librarian about identifying research databases in other disciplines; almost every field of study has at least one comprehensive database devoted to indexing its research literature.

Frodeman, Robert. The Oxford Handbook of Interdisciplinarity . New York: Oxford University Press, 2010.

Another Writing Tip

Don't Just Review for Content!

While conducting a review of the literature, maximize the time you devote to writing this part of your paper by thinking broadly about what you should be looking for and evaluating. Review not just what scholars are saying, but how are they saying it. Some questions to ask:

• How are they organizing their ideas?
• What methods have they used to study the problem?
• What theories have been used to explain, predict, or understand their research problem?
• What sources have they cited to support their conclusions?
• How have they used non-textual elements [e.g., charts, graphs, figures, etc.] to illustrate key points?

When you begin to write your literature review section, you'll be glad you dug deeper into how the research was designed and constructed because it establishes a means for developing more substantial analysis and interpretation of the research problem.

Hart, Chris. Doing a Literature Review: Releasing the Social Science Research Imagination . Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage Publications, 1 998.

Yet Another Writing Tip

When Do I Know I Can Stop Looking and Move On?

Here are several strategies you can utilize to assess whether you've thoroughly reviewed the literature:

• Look for repeating patterns in the research findings . If the same thing is being said, just by different people, then this likely demonstrates that the research problem has hit a conceptual dead end. At this point consider: Does your study extend current research?  Does it forge a new path? Or, does is merely add more of the same thing being said?
• Look at sources the authors cite to in their work . If you begin to see the same researchers cited again and again, then this is often an indication that no new ideas have been generated to address the research problem.
• Search Google Scholar to identify who has subsequently cited leading scholars already identified in your literature review [see next sub-tab]. This is called citation tracking and there are a number of sources that can help you identify who has cited whom, particularly scholars from outside of your discipline. Here again, if the same authors are being cited again and again, this may indicate no new literature has been written on the topic.

Onwuegbuzie, Anthony J. and Rebecca Frels. Seven Steps to a Comprehensive Literature Review: A Multimodal and Cultural Approach . Los Angeles, CA: Sage, 2016; Sutton, Anthea. Systematic Approaches to a Successful Literature Review . Los Angeles, CA: Sage Publications, 2016.

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What is a Literature Review?

So, what is a literature review .

"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 a topic, and what their strengths and weaknesses are. As a piece of writing, the literature review must be defined by a guiding concept (e.g., your research objective, the problem or issue you are discussing, or your argumentative thesis). It is not just a descriptive list of the material available or a set of summaries." - Quote from Taylor, D. (n.d)."The Literature Review: A Few Tips on Conducting it".

• Citation: "The Literature Review: A Few Tips on Conducting it"

What kinds of literature reviews are written?

Each field has a particular way to do reviews for academic research literature. In the social sciences and humanities the most common are:

• Narrative Reviews: The purpose of this type of review is to describe the current state of the research on a specific research topic and to offer a critical analysis of the literature reviewed. Studies are grouped by research/theoretical categories, and themes and trends, strengths and weaknesses, and gaps are identified. The review ends with a conclusion section that summarizes the findings regarding the state of the research of the specific study, the gaps identify and if applicable, explains how the author's research will address gaps identify in the review and expand the knowledge on the topic reviewed.
• Book review essays/ Historiographical review essays : A type of literature review typical in History and related fields, e.g., Latin American studies. For example, the Latin American Research Review explains that the purpose of this type of review is to “(1) to familiarize readers with the subject, approach, arguments, and conclusions found in a group of books whose common focus is a historical period; a country or region within Latin America; or a practice, development, or issue of interest to specialists and others; (2) to locate these books within current scholarship, critical methodologies, and approaches; and (3) to probe the relation of these new books to previous work on the subject, especially canonical texts. Unlike individual book reviews, the cluster reviews found in LARR seek to address the state of the field or discipline and not solely the works at issue.” - LARR

What are the Goals of Creating a Literature Review?

• To develop a theory or evaluate an existing theory
• To summarize the historical or existing state of a research topic
• Identify a problem in a field of research 
• Baumeister, R.F. & Leary, M.R. (1997). "Writing narrative literature reviews," Review of General Psychology , 1(3), 311-320.

When do you need to write a Literature Review?

• When writing a prospectus or a thesis/dissertation
• When writing a research paper
• When writing a grant proposal

In all these cases you need to dedicate a chapter in these works to showcase what has been written about your research topic and to point out how your own research will shed new light into a body of scholarship.

Where I can find examples of Literature Reviews?

Note:  In the humanities, even if they don't use the term "literature review", they may have a dedicated  chapter that reviewed the "critical bibliography" or they incorporated that review in the introduction or first chapter of the dissertation, book, or article.

• UCSB electronic theses and dissertations In partnership with the Graduate Division, the UC Santa Barbara Library is making available theses and dissertations produced by UCSB students. Currently included in ADRL are theses and dissertations that were originally filed electronically, starting in 2011. In future phases of ADRL, all theses and dissertations created by UCSB students may be digitized and made available.

Where to Find Standalone Literature Reviews

Literature reviews are also written as standalone articles as a way to survey a particular research topic in-depth. This type of literature review looks at a topic from a historical perspective to see how the understanding of the topic has changed over time. 

• Find e-Journals for Standalone Literature Reviews The best way to get familiar with and to learn how to write literature reviews is by reading them. You can use our Journal Search option to find journals that specialize in publishing literature reviews from major disciplines like anthropology, sociology, etc. Usually these titles are called, "Annual Review of [discipline name] OR [Discipline name] Review. This option works best if you know the title of the publication you are looking for. Below are some examples of these journals! more... less... Journal Search can be found by hovering over the link for Research on the library website.

Social Sciences

• Annual Review of Anthropology
• Annual Review of Political Science
• Annual Review of Sociology
• Ethnic Studies Review

Hard science and health sciences:

• Annual Review of Biomedical Data Science
• Annual Review of Materials Science
• Systematic Review From journal site: "The journal Systematic Reviews encompasses all aspects of the design, conduct, and reporting of systematic reviews" in the health sciences.
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Conducting a literature review: why do a literature review, why do a literature review.

• How To Find "The Literature"
• Found it -- Now What?

Besides the obvious reason for students -- because it is assigned! -- a literature review helps you explore the research that has come before you, to see how your research question has (or has not) already been addressed.

You identify:

• core research in the field
• experts in the subject area
• methodology you may want to use (or avoid)
• gaps in knowledge -- or where your research would fit in

It Also Helps You:

• Publish and share your findings
• Justify requests for grants and other funding
• Identify best practices to inform practice
• Set wider context for a program evaluation
• Compile information to support community organizing

Great brief overview, from NCSU

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Literature Reviews

• What is a literature review?
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• Define your research question
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• Choose databases and search
• Review Results
• Synthesize Results
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What is a Literature Review?

A literature or narrative review is a comprehensive review and analysis of the published literature on a specific topic or research question. The literature that is reviewed contains: books, articles, academic articles, conference proceedings, association papers, and dissertations. It contains the most pertinent studies and points to important past and current research and practices. It provides background and context, and shows how your research will contribute to the field. 

A literature review should: 

• Provide a comprehensive and updated review of the literature;
• Explain why this review has taken place;
• Articulate a position or hypothesis;
• Acknowledge and account for conflicting and corroborating points of view

From  S age Research Methods

Purpose of a Literature Review

A literature review can be written as an introduction to a study to:

• Demonstrate how a study fills a gap in research
• Compare a study with other research that's been done

Or it can be a separate work (a research article on its own) which:

• Organizes or describes a topic
• Describes variables within a particular issue/problem

Limitations of a Literature Review

Some of the limitations of a literature review are:

• It's a snapshot in time. Unlike other reviews, this one has beginning, a middle and an end. There may be future developments that could make your work less relevant.
• It may be too focused. Some niche studies may miss the bigger picture.
• It can be difficult to be comprehensive. There is no way to make sure all the literature on a topic was considered.
• It is easy to be biased if you stick to top tier journals. There may be other places where people are publishing exemplary research. Look to open access publications and conferences to reflect a more inclusive collection. Also, make sure to include opposing views (and not just supporting evidence).

Source: Grant, Maria J., and Andrew Booth. “A Typology of Reviews: An Analysis of 14 Review Types and Associated Methodologies.” Health Information & Libraries Journal, vol. 26, no. 2, June 2009, pp. 91–108. Wiley Online Library, doi:10.1111/j.1471-1842.2009.00848.x.

Meryl Brodsky : Communication and Information Studies

Hannah Chapman Tripp : Biology, Neuroscience

Carolyn Cunningham : Human Development & Family Sciences, Psychology, Sociology

Larayne Dallas : Engineering

Janelle Hedstrom : Special Education, Curriculum & Instruction, Ed Leadership & Policy ​

Susan Macicak : Linguistics

Imelda Vetter : Dell Medical School

For help in other subject areas, please see the guide to library specialists by subject .

Periodically, UT Libraries runs a workshop covering the basics and library support for literature reviews. While we try to offer these once per academic year, we find providing the recording to be helpful to community members who have missed the session. Following is the most recent recording of the workshop, Conducting a Literature Review. To view the recording, a UT login is required.

• October 26, 2022 recording
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Writing a Literature Review

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A literature review is a document or section of a document that collects key sources on a topic and discusses those sources in conversation with each other (also called synthesis ). The lit review is an important genre in many disciplines, not just literature (i.e., the study of works of literature such as novels and plays). When we say “literature review” or refer to “the literature,” we are talking about the research ( scholarship ) in a given field. You will often see the terms “the research,” “the scholarship,” and “the literature” used mostly interchangeably.

Where, when, and why would I write a lit review?

There are a number of different situations where you might write a literature review, each with slightly different expectations; different disciplines, too, have field-specific expectations for what a literature review is and does. For instance, in the humanities, authors might include more overt argumentation and interpretation of source material in their literature reviews, whereas in the sciences, authors are more likely to report study designs and results in their literature reviews; these differences reflect these disciplines’ purposes and conventions in scholarship. You should always look at examples from your own discipline and talk to professors or mentors in your field to be sure you understand your discipline’s conventions, for literature reviews as well as for any other genre.

A literature review can be a part of a research paper or scholarly article, usually falling after the introduction and before the research methods sections. In these cases, the lit review just needs to cover scholarship that is important to the issue you are writing about; sometimes it will also cover key sources that informed your research methodology.

Lit reviews can also be standalone pieces, either as assignments in a class or as publications. In a class, a lit review may be assigned to help students familiarize themselves with a topic and with scholarship in their field, get an idea of the other researchers working on the topic they’re interested in, find gaps in existing research in order to propose new projects, and/or develop a theoretical framework and methodology for later research. As a publication, a lit review usually is meant to help make other scholars’ lives easier by collecting and summarizing, synthesizing, and analyzing existing research on a topic. This can be especially helpful for students or scholars getting into a new research area, or for directing an entire community of scholars toward questions that have not yet been answered.

What are the parts of a lit review?

Most lit reviews use a basic introduction-body-conclusion structure; if your lit review is part of a larger paper, the introduction and conclusion pieces may be just a few sentences while you focus most of your attention on the body. If your lit review is a standalone piece, the introduction and conclusion take up more space and give you a place to discuss your goals, research methods, and conclusions separately from where you discuss the literature itself.

Introduction:

• An introductory paragraph that explains what your working topic and thesis is
• A forecast of key topics or texts that will appear in the review
• Potentially, a description of how you found sources and how you analyzed them for inclusion and discussion in the review (more often found in published, standalone literature reviews than in lit review sections in an article or research paper)
• Summarize and synthesize: Give an overview of the main points of each source and combine them into a coherent whole
• Analyze and interpret: Don’t just paraphrase other researchers – add your own interpretations where possible, discussing the significance of findings in relation to the literature as a whole
• Critically Evaluate: Mention the strengths and weaknesses of your sources
• Write in well-structured paragraphs: Use transition words and topic sentence to draw connections, comparisons, and contrasts.

Conclusion:

• Summarize the key findings you have taken from the literature and emphasize their significance
• Connect it back to your primary research question

How should I organize my lit review?

Lit reviews can take many different organizational patterns depending on what you are trying to accomplish with the review. Here are some examples:

• Chronological : The simplest approach is to trace the development of the topic over time, which helps familiarize the audience with the topic (for instance if you are introducing something that is not commonly known in your field). If you choose this strategy, be careful to avoid simply listing and summarizing sources in order. Try to analyze the patterns, turning points, and key debates that have shaped the direction of the field. Give your interpretation of how and why certain developments occurred (as mentioned previously, this may not be appropriate in your discipline — check with a teacher or mentor if you’re unsure).
• Thematic : If you have found some recurring central themes that you will continue working with throughout your piece, you can organize your literature review into subsections that address different aspects of the topic. For example, if you are reviewing literature about women and religion, key themes can include the role of women in churches and the religious attitude towards women.
• Qualitative versus quantitative research
• Empirical versus theoretical scholarship
• Divide the research by sociological, historical, or cultural sources
• Theoretical : In many humanities articles, the literature review is the foundation for the theoretical framework. You can use it to discuss various theories, models, and definitions of key concepts. You can argue for the relevance of a specific theoretical approach or combine various theorical concepts to create a framework for your research.

What are some strategies or tips I can use while writing my lit review?

Any lit review is only as good as the research it discusses; make sure your sources are well-chosen and your research is thorough. Don’t be afraid to do more research if you discover a new thread as you’re writing. More info on the research process is available in our "Conducting Research" resources .

As you’re doing your research, create an annotated bibliography ( see our page on the this type of document ). Much of the information used in an annotated bibliography can be used also in a literature review, so you’ll be not only partially drafting your lit review as you research, but also developing your sense of the larger conversation going on among scholars, professionals, and any other stakeholders in your topic.

Usually you will need to synthesize research rather than just summarizing it. This means drawing connections between sources to create a picture of the scholarly conversation on a topic over time. Many student writers struggle to synthesize because they feel they don’t have anything to add to the scholars they are citing; here are some strategies to help you:

• It often helps to remember that the point of these kinds of syntheses is to show your readers how you understand your research, to help them read the rest of your paper.
• Writing teachers often say synthesis is like hosting a dinner party: imagine all your sources are together in a room, discussing your topic. What are they saying to each other?
• Look at the in-text citations in each paragraph. Are you citing just one source for each paragraph? This usually indicates summary only. When you have multiple sources cited in a paragraph, you are more likely to be synthesizing them (not always, but often
• Read more about synthesis here.

The most interesting literature reviews are often written as arguments (again, as mentioned at the beginning of the page, this is discipline-specific and doesn’t work for all situations). Often, the literature review is where you can establish your research as filling a particular gap or as relevant in a particular way. You have some chance to do this in your introduction in an article, but the literature review section gives a more extended opportunity to establish the conversation in the way you would like your readers to see it. You can choose the intellectual lineage you would like to be part of and whose definitions matter most to your thinking (mostly humanities-specific, but this goes for sciences as well). In addressing these points, you argue for your place in the conversation, which tends to make the lit review more compelling than a simple reporting of other sources.

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What is a literature review?

A literature review is an integrated analysis -- not just a summary-- of scholarly writings and other relevant evidence related directly to your research question.  That is, it represents a synthesis of the evidence that provides background information on your topic and shows a association between the evidence and your research question.

A literature review may be a stand alone work or the introduction to a larger research paper, depending on the assignment.  Rely heavily on the guidelines your instructor has given you.

Why is it important?

A literature review is important because it:

• Explains the background of research on a topic.
• Demonstrates why a topic is significant to a subject area.
• Discovers relationships between research studies/ideas.
• Identifies major themes, concepts, and researchers on a topic.
• Identifies critical gaps and points of disagreement.
• Discusses further research questions that logically come out of the previous studies.

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1. Choose a topic. Define your research question.

Your literature review should be guided by your central research question.  The literature represents background and research developments related to a specific research question, interpreted and analyzed by you in a synthesized way.

• Make sure your research question is not too broad or too narrow.  Is it manageable?
• Begin writing down terms that are related to your question. These will be useful for searches later.
• If you have the opportunity, discuss your topic with your professor and your class mates.

2. Decide on the scope of your review

How many studies do you need to look at? How comprehensive should it be? How many years should it cover? 

• This may depend on your assignment.  How many sources does the assignment require?

3. Select the databases you will use to conduct your searches.

Make a list of the databases you will search. 

Where to find databases:

• use the tabs on this guide
• Find other databases in the Nursing Information Resources web page
• More on the Medical Library web page
• ... and more on the Yale University Library web page

4. Conduct your searches to find the evidence. Keep track of your searches.

• Use the key words in your question, as well as synonyms for those words, as terms in your search. Use the database tutorials for help.
• Save the searches in the databases. This saves time when you want to redo, or modify, the searches. It is also helpful to use as a guide is the searches are not finding any useful results.
• Review the abstracts of research studies carefully. This will save you time.
• Use the bibliographies and references of research studies you find to locate others.
• Check with your professor, or a subject expert in the field, if you are missing any key works in the field.
• Ask your librarian for help at any time.
• Use a citation manager, such as EndNote as the repository for your citations. See the EndNote tutorials for help.

Review the literature

Some questions to help you analyze the research:

• What was the research question of the study you are reviewing? What were the authors trying to discover?
• Was the research funded by a source that could influence the findings?
• What were the research methodologies? Analyze its literature review, the samples and variables used, the results, and the conclusions.
• Does the research seem to be complete? Could it have been conducted more soundly? What further questions does it raise?
• If there are conflicting studies, why do you think that is?
• How are the authors viewed in the field? Has this study been cited? If so, how has it been analyzed?

Tips: 

• Review the abstracts carefully.  
• Keep careful notes so that you may track your thought processes during the research process.
• Create a matrix of the studies for easy analysis, and synthesis, across all of the studies.
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 What is a literature review? "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 a topic, and what their strengths and weaknesses are. As a piece of writing, the literature review must be defined by a guiding concept (e.g., your research objective, the problem or issue you are discussing, or your argumentative thesis). It is not just a descriptive list of the material available, or a set of summaries. " - Quote from Taylor, D. (n.d) "The literature review: A few tips on conducting it"

Source NC State University Libraries. This video is published under a Creative Commons 3.0 BY-NC-SA US license.

What are the goals of creating a Literature Review?

• To develop a theory or evaluate an existing theory
• To summarize the historical or existing state of a research topic
• Identify a problem in a field of research 

- Baumeister, R.F. & Leary, M.R. (1997). "Writing narrative literature reviews," Review of General Psychology , 1(3), 311-320.

When do you need to write a Literature Review?

• When writing a prospectus or a thesis/dissertation
• When writing a research paper
• When writing a grant proposal

In all these cases you need to dedicate a chapter in these works to showcase what have been written about your research topic and to point out how your own research will shed a new light into these body of scholarship.

Literature reviews are also written as standalone articles as a way to survey a particular research topic in-depth. This type of literature reviews look at a topic from a historical perspective to see how the understanding of the topic have change through time.

What kinds of literature reviews are written?

• Narrative Review: The purpose of this type of review is to describe the current state of the research on a specific topic/research and to offer a critical analysis of the literature reviewed. Studies are grouped by research/theoretical categories, and themes and trends, strengths and weakness, and gaps are identified. The review ends with a conclusion section which summarizes the findings regarding the state of the research of the specific study, the gaps identify and if applicable, explains how the author's research will address gaps identify in the review and expand the knowledge on the topic reviewed.
• Book review essays/ Historiographical review essays : This is a type of review that focus on a small set of research books on a particular topic " to locate these books within current scholarship, critical methodologies, and approaches" in the field. - LARR
• Systematic review : "The authors of a systematic review use a specific procedure to search the research literature, select the studies to include in their review, and critically evaluate the studies they find." (p. 139). Nelson, L.K. (2013). Research in Communication Sciences and Disorders . San Diego, CA: Plural Publishing.
• Meta-analysis : "Meta-analysis is a method of reviewing research findings in a quantitative fashion by transforming the data from individual studies into what is called an effect size and then pooling and analyzing this information. The basic goal in meta-analysis is to explain why different outcomes have occurred in different studies." (p. 197). Roberts, M.C. & Ilardi, S.S. (2003). Handbook of Research Methods in Clinical Psychology . Malden, MA: Blackwell Pub.
• Meta-synthesis : "Qualitative meta-synthesis is a type of qualitative study that uses as data the findings from other qualitative studies linked by the same or related topic." (p.312). Zimmer, L. (2006). "Qualitative meta-synthesis: A question of dialoguing with texts," Journal of Advanced Nursing , 53(3), 311-318.

Guide adapted from "Literature Review" , a guide developed by Marisol Ramos used under CC BY 4.0 /modified from original.

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Literature Reviews

What this handout is about.

This handout will explain what literature reviews are and offer insights into the form and construction of literature reviews in the humanities, social sciences, and sciences.

Introduction

OK. You’ve got to write a literature review. You dust off a novel and a book of poetry, settle down in your chair, and get ready to issue a “thumbs up” or “thumbs down” as you leaf through the pages. “Literature review” done. Right?

Wrong! The “literature” of a literature review refers to any collection of materials on a topic, not necessarily the great literary texts of the world. “Literature” could be anything from a set of government pamphlets on British colonial methods in Africa to scholarly articles on the treatment of a torn ACL. And a review does not necessarily mean that your reader wants you to give your personal opinion on whether or not you liked these sources.

What is a literature review, then?

A literature review discusses published information in a particular subject area, and sometimes information in a particular subject area within a certain time period.

A literature review can be just a simple summary of the sources, but it usually has an organizational pattern and combines both summary and synthesis. A summary is a recap of the important information of the source, but a synthesis is a re-organization, or a reshuffling, of that information. It might give a new interpretation of old material or combine new with old interpretations. Or it might trace the intellectual progression of the field, including major debates. And depending on the situation, the literature review may evaluate the sources and advise the reader on the most pertinent or relevant.

But how is a literature review different from an academic research paper?

The main focus of an academic research paper is to develop a new argument, and a research paper is likely to contain a literature review as one of its parts. In a research paper, you use the literature as a foundation and as support for a new insight that you contribute. The focus of a literature review, however, is to summarize and synthesize the arguments and ideas of others without adding new contributions.

Why do we write literature reviews?

Literature reviews provide you with a handy guide to a particular topic. If you have limited time to conduct research, literature reviews can give you an overview or act as a stepping stone. For professionals, they are useful reports that keep them up to date with what is current in the field. For scholars, the depth and breadth of the literature review emphasizes the credibility of the writer in his or her field. Literature reviews also provide a solid background for a research paper’s investigation. Comprehensive knowledge of the literature of the field is essential to most research papers.

Who writes these things, anyway?

Literature reviews are written occasionally in the humanities, but mostly in the sciences and social sciences; in experiment and lab reports, they constitute a section of the paper. Sometimes a literature review is written as a paper in itself.

Let’s get to it! What should I do before writing the literature review?

If your assignment is not very specific, seek clarification from your instructor:

• Roughly how many sources should you include?
• What types of sources (books, journal articles, websites)?
• Should you summarize, synthesize, or critique your sources by discussing a common theme or issue?
• Should you evaluate your sources?
• Should you provide subheadings and other background information, such as definitions and/or a history?

Find models

Look for other literature reviews in your area of interest or in the discipline and read them to get a sense of the types of themes you might want to look for in your own research or ways to organize your final review. You can simply put the word “review” in your search engine along with your other topic terms to find articles of this type on the Internet or in an electronic database. The bibliography or reference section of sources you’ve already read are also excellent entry points into your own research.

Narrow your topic

There are hundreds or even thousands of articles and books on most areas of study. The narrower your topic, the easier it will be to limit the number of sources you need to read in order to get a good survey of the material. Your instructor will probably not expect you to read everything that’s out there on the topic, but you’ll make your job easier if you first limit your scope.

Keep in mind that UNC Libraries have research guides and to databases relevant to many fields of study. You can reach out to the subject librarian for a consultation: https://library.unc.edu/support/consultations/ .

And don’t forget to tap into your professor’s (or other professors’) knowledge in the field. Ask your professor questions such as: “If you had to read only one book from the 90’s on topic X, what would it be?” Questions such as this help you to find and determine quickly the most seminal pieces in the field.

Consider whether your sources are current

Some disciplines require that you use information that is as current as possible. In the sciences, for instance, treatments for medical problems are constantly changing according to the latest studies. Information even two years old could be obsolete. However, if you are writing a review in the humanities, history, or social sciences, a survey of the history of the literature may be what is needed, because what is important is how perspectives have changed through the years or within a certain time period. Try sorting through some other current bibliographies or literature reviews in the field to get a sense of what your discipline expects. You can also use this method to consider what is currently of interest to scholars in this field and what is not.

Strategies for writing the literature review

Find a focus.

A literature review, like a term paper, is usually organized around ideas, not the sources themselves as an annotated bibliography would be organized. This means that you will not just simply list your sources and go into detail about each one of them, one at a time. No. As you read widely but selectively in your topic area, consider instead what themes or issues connect your sources together. Do they present one or different solutions? Is there an aspect of the field that is missing? How well do they present the material and do they portray it according to an appropriate theory? Do they reveal a trend in the field? A raging debate? Pick one of these themes to focus the organization of your review.

Convey it to your reader

A literature review may not have a traditional thesis statement (one that makes an argument), but you do need to tell readers what to expect. Try writing a simple statement that lets the reader know what is your main organizing principle. Here are a couple of examples:

The current trend in treatment for congestive heart failure combines surgery and medicine. More and more cultural studies scholars are accepting popular media as a subject worthy of academic consideration.

Consider organization

You’ve got a focus, and you’ve stated it clearly and directly. Now what is the most effective way of presenting the information? What are the most important topics, subtopics, etc., that your review needs to include? And in what order should you present them? Develop an organization for your review at both a global and local level:

First, cover the basic categories

Just like most academic papers, literature reviews also must contain at least three basic elements: an introduction or background information section; the body of the review containing the discussion of sources; and, finally, a conclusion and/or recommendations section to end the paper. The following provides a brief description of the content of each:

• Introduction: Gives a quick idea of the topic of the literature review, such as the central theme or organizational pattern.
• Body: Contains your discussion of sources and is organized either chronologically, thematically, or methodologically (see below for more information on each).
• Conclusions/Recommendations: Discuss what you have drawn from reviewing literature so far. Where might the discussion proceed?

Organizing the body

Once you have the basic categories in place, then you must consider how you will present the sources themselves within the body of your paper. Create an organizational method to focus this section even further.

To help you come up with an overall organizational framework for your review, consider the following scenario:

You’ve decided to focus your literature review on materials dealing with sperm whales. This is because you’ve just finished reading Moby Dick, and you wonder if that whale’s portrayal is really real. You start with some articles about the physiology of sperm whales in biology journals written in the 1980’s. But these articles refer to some British biological studies performed on whales in the early 18th century. So you check those out. Then you look up a book written in 1968 with information on how sperm whales have been portrayed in other forms of art, such as in Alaskan poetry, in French painting, or on whale bone, as the whale hunters in the late 19th century used to do. This makes you wonder about American whaling methods during the time portrayed in Moby Dick, so you find some academic articles published in the last five years on how accurately Herman Melville portrayed the whaling scene in his novel.

Now consider some typical ways of organizing the sources into a review:

• Chronological: If your review follows the chronological method, you could write about the materials above according to when they were published. For instance, first you would talk about the British biological studies of the 18th century, then about Moby Dick, published in 1851, then the book on sperm whales in other art (1968), and finally the biology articles (1980s) and the recent articles on American whaling of the 19th century. But there is relatively no continuity among subjects here. And notice that even though the sources on sperm whales in other art and on American whaling are written recently, they are about other subjects/objects that were created much earlier. Thus, the review loses its chronological focus.
• By publication: Order your sources by publication chronology, then, only if the order demonstrates a more important trend. For instance, you could order a review of literature on biological studies of sperm whales if the progression revealed a change in dissection practices of the researchers who wrote and/or conducted the studies.
• By trend: A better way to organize the above sources chronologically is to examine the sources under another trend, such as the history of whaling. Then your review would have subsections according to eras within this period. For instance, the review might examine whaling from pre-1600-1699, 1700-1799, and 1800-1899. Under this method, you would combine the recent studies on American whaling in the 19th century with Moby Dick itself in the 1800-1899 category, even though the authors wrote a century apart.
• Thematic: Thematic reviews of literature are organized around a topic or issue, rather than the progression of time. However, progression of time may still be an important factor in a thematic review. For instance, the sperm whale review could focus on the development of the harpoon for whale hunting. While the study focuses on one topic, harpoon technology, it will still be organized chronologically. The only difference here between a “chronological” and a “thematic” approach is what is emphasized the most: the development of the harpoon or the harpoon technology.But more authentic thematic reviews tend to break away from chronological order. For instance, a thematic review of material on sperm whales might examine how they are portrayed as “evil” in cultural documents. The subsections might include how they are personified, how their proportions are exaggerated, and their behaviors misunderstood. A review organized in this manner would shift between time periods within each section according to the point made.
• Methodological: A methodological approach differs from the two above in that the focusing factor usually does not have to do with the content of the material. Instead, it focuses on the “methods” of the researcher or writer. For the sperm whale project, one methodological approach would be to look at cultural differences between the portrayal of whales in American, British, and French art work. Or the review might focus on the economic impact of whaling on a community. A methodological scope will influence either the types of documents in the review or the way in which these documents are discussed. Once you’ve decided on the organizational method for the body of the review, the sections you need to include in the paper should be easy to figure out. They should arise out of your organizational strategy. In other words, a chronological review would have subsections for each vital time period. A thematic review would have subtopics based upon factors that relate to the theme or issue.

Sometimes, though, you might need to add additional sections that are necessary for your study, but do not fit in the organizational strategy of the body. What other sections you include in the body is up to you. Put in only what is necessary. Here are a few other sections you might want to consider:

• Current Situation: Information necessary to understand the topic or focus of the literature review.
• History: The chronological progression of the field, the literature, or an idea that is necessary to understand the literature review, if the body of the literature review is not already a chronology.
• Methods and/or Standards: The criteria you used to select the sources in your literature review or the way in which you present your information. For instance, you might explain that your review includes only peer-reviewed articles and journals.

Questions for Further Research: What questions about the field has the review sparked? How will you further your research as a result of the review?

Begin composing

Once you’ve settled on a general pattern of organization, you’re ready to write each section. There are a few guidelines you should follow during the writing stage as well. Here is a sample paragraph from a literature review about sexism and language to illuminate the following discussion:

However, other studies have shown that even gender-neutral antecedents are more likely to produce masculine images than feminine ones (Gastil, 1990). Hamilton (1988) asked students to complete sentences that required them to fill in pronouns that agreed with gender-neutral antecedents such as “writer,” “pedestrian,” and “persons.” The students were asked to describe any image they had when writing the sentence. Hamilton found that people imagined 3.3 men to each woman in the masculine “generic” condition and 1.5 men per woman in the unbiased condition. Thus, while ambient sexism accounted for some of the masculine bias, sexist language amplified the effect. (Source: Erika Falk and Jordan Mills, “Why Sexist Language Affects Persuasion: The Role of Homophily, Intended Audience, and Offense,” Women and Language19:2).

Use evidence

In the example above, the writers refer to several other sources when making their point. A literature review in this sense is just like any other academic research paper. Your interpretation of the available sources must be backed up with evidence to show that what you are saying is valid.

Be selective

Select only the most important points in each source to highlight in the review. The type of information you choose to mention should relate directly to the review’s focus, whether it is thematic, methodological, or chronological.

Use quotes sparingly

Falk and Mills do not use any direct quotes. That is because the survey nature of the literature review does not allow for in-depth discussion or detailed quotes from the text. Some short quotes here and there are okay, though, if you want to emphasize a point, or if what the author said just cannot be rewritten in your own words. Notice that Falk and Mills do quote certain terms that were coined by the author, not common knowledge, or taken directly from the study. But if you find yourself wanting to put in more quotes, check with your instructor.

Summarize and synthesize

Remember to summarize and synthesize your sources within each paragraph as well as throughout the review. The authors here recapitulate important features of Hamilton’s study, but then synthesize it by rephrasing the study’s significance and relating it to their own work.

Keep your own voice

While the literature review presents others’ ideas, your voice (the writer’s) should remain front and center. Notice that Falk and Mills weave references to other sources into their own text, but they still maintain their own voice by starting and ending the paragraph with their own ideas and their own words. The sources support what Falk and Mills are saying.

Use caution when paraphrasing

When paraphrasing a source that is not your own, be sure to represent the author’s information or opinions accurately and in your own words. In the preceding example, Falk and Mills either directly refer in the text to the author of their source, such as Hamilton, or they provide ample notation in the text when the ideas they are mentioning are not their own, for example, Gastil’s. For more information, please see our handout on plagiarism .

Revise, revise, revise

Draft in hand? Now you’re ready to revise. Spending a lot of time revising is a wise idea, because your main objective is to present the material, not the argument. So check over your review again to make sure it follows the assignment and/or your outline. Then, just as you would for most other academic forms of writing, rewrite or rework the language of your review so that you’ve presented your information in the most concise manner possible. Be sure to use terminology familiar to your audience; get rid of unnecessary jargon or slang. Finally, double check that you’ve documented your sources and formatted the review appropriately for your discipline. For tips on the revising and editing process, see our handout on revising drafts .

Works consulted

We consulted these works while writing this handout. This is not a comprehensive list of resources on the handout’s topic, and we encourage you to do your own research to find additional publications. Please do not use this list as a model for the format of your own reference list, as it may not match the citation style you are using. For guidance on formatting citations, please see the UNC Libraries citation tutorial . We revise these tips periodically and welcome feedback.

Anson, Chris M., and Robert A. Schwegler. 2010. The Longman Handbook for Writers and Readers , 6th ed. New York: Longman.

Jones, Robert, Patrick Bizzaro, and Cynthia Selfe. 1997. The Harcourt Brace Guide to Writing in the Disciplines . New York: Harcourt Brace.

Lamb, Sandra E. 1998. How to Write It: A Complete Guide to Everything You’ll Ever Write . Berkeley: Ten Speed Press.

Rosen, Leonard J., and Laurence Behrens. 2003. The Allyn & Bacon Handbook , 5th ed. New York: Longman.

Troyka, Lynn Quittman, and Doug Hesse. 2016. Simon and Schuster Handbook for Writers , 11th ed. London: Pearson.

You may reproduce it for non-commercial use if you use the entire handout and attribute the source: The Writing Center, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill

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Ten Simple Rules for Writing a Literature Review

* E-mail: [email protected]

Affiliations Centre for Functional and Evolutionary Ecology (CEFE), CNRS, Montpellier, France, Centre for Biodiversity Synthesis and Analysis (CESAB), FRB, Aix-en-Provence, France

• Marco Pautasso

Published: July 18, 2013

• https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pcbi.1003149
• Reader Comments

Citation: Pautasso M (2013) Ten Simple Rules for Writing a Literature Review. PLoS Comput Biol 9(7): e1003149. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pcbi.1003149

Editor: Philip E. Bourne, University of California San Diego, United States of America

Copyright: © 2013 Marco Pautasso. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.

Funding: This work was funded by the French Foundation for Research on Biodiversity (FRB) through its Centre for Synthesis and Analysis of Biodiversity data (CESAB), as part of the NETSEED research project. The funders had no role in the preparation of the manuscript.

Competing interests: The author has declared that no competing interests exist.

Literature reviews are in great demand in most scientific fields. Their need stems from the ever-increasing output of scientific publications [1] . For example, compared to 1991, in 2008 three, eight, and forty times more papers were indexed in Web of Science on malaria, obesity, and biodiversity, respectively [2] . Given such mountains of papers, scientists cannot be expected to examine in detail every single new paper relevant to their interests [3] . Thus, it is both advantageous and necessary to rely on regular summaries of the recent literature. Although recognition for scientists mainly comes from primary research, timely literature reviews can lead to new synthetic insights and are often widely read [4] . For such summaries to be useful, however, they need to be compiled in a professional way [5] .

When starting from scratch, reviewing the literature can require a titanic amount of work. That is why researchers who have spent their career working on a certain research issue are in a perfect position to review that literature. Some graduate schools are now offering courses in reviewing the literature, given that most research students start their project by producing an overview of what has already been done on their research issue [6] . However, it is likely that most scientists have not thought in detail about how to approach and carry out a literature review.

Reviewing the literature requires the ability to juggle multiple tasks, from finding and evaluating relevant material to synthesising information from various sources, from critical thinking to paraphrasing, evaluating, and citation skills [7] . In this contribution, I share ten simple rules I learned working on about 25 literature reviews as a PhD and postdoctoral student. Ideas and insights also come from discussions with coauthors and colleagues, as well as feedback from reviewers and editors.

Rule 1: Define a Topic and Audience

How to choose which topic to review? There are so many issues in contemporary science that you could spend a lifetime of attending conferences and reading the literature just pondering what to review. On the one hand, if you take several years to choose, several other people may have had the same idea in the meantime. On the other hand, only a well-considered topic is likely to lead to a brilliant literature review [8] . The topic must at least be:

• interesting to you (ideally, you should have come across a series of recent papers related to your line of work that call for a critical summary),
• an important aspect of the field (so that many readers will be interested in the review and there will be enough material to write it), and
• a well-defined issue (otherwise you could potentially include thousands of publications, which would make the review unhelpful).

Ideas for potential reviews may come from papers providing lists of key research questions to be answered [9] , but also from serendipitous moments during desultory reading and discussions. In addition to choosing your topic, you should also select a target audience. In many cases, the topic (e.g., web services in computational biology) will automatically define an audience (e.g., computational biologists), but that same topic may also be of interest to neighbouring fields (e.g., computer science, biology, etc.).

Rule 2: Search and Re-search the Literature

After having chosen your topic and audience, start by checking the literature and downloading relevant papers. Five pieces of advice here:

• keep track of the search items you use (so that your search can be replicated [10] ),
• keep a list of papers whose pdfs you cannot access immediately (so as to retrieve them later with alternative strategies),
• use a paper management system (e.g., Mendeley, Papers, Qiqqa, Sente),
• define early in the process some criteria for exclusion of irrelevant papers (these criteria can then be described in the review to help define its scope), and
• do not just look for research papers in the area you wish to review, but also seek previous reviews.

The chances are high that someone will already have published a literature review ( Figure 1 ), if not exactly on the issue you are planning to tackle, at least on a related topic. If there are already a few or several reviews of the literature on your issue, my advice is not to give up, but to carry on with your own literature review,

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The bottom-right situation (many literature reviews but few research papers) is not just a theoretical situation; it applies, for example, to the study of the impacts of climate change on plant diseases, where there appear to be more literature reviews than research studies [33] .

https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pcbi.1003149.g001

• discussing in your review the approaches, limitations, and conclusions of past reviews,
• trying to find a new angle that has not been covered adequately in the previous reviews, and
• incorporating new material that has inevitably accumulated since their appearance.

When searching the literature for pertinent papers and reviews, the usual rules apply:

• be thorough,
• use different keywords and database sources (e.g., DBLP, Google Scholar, ISI Proceedings, JSTOR Search, Medline, Scopus, Web of Science), and
• look at who has cited past relevant papers and book chapters.

Rule 3: Take Notes While Reading

If you read the papers first, and only afterwards start writing the review, you will need a very good memory to remember who wrote what, and what your impressions and associations were while reading each single paper. My advice is, while reading, to start writing down interesting pieces of information, insights about how to organize the review, and thoughts on what to write. This way, by the time you have read the literature you selected, you will already have a rough draft of the review.

Of course, this draft will still need much rewriting, restructuring, and rethinking to obtain a text with a coherent argument [11] , but you will have avoided the danger posed by staring at a blank document. Be careful when taking notes to use quotation marks if you are provisionally copying verbatim from the literature. It is advisable then to reformulate such quotes with your own words in the final draft. It is important to be careful in noting the references already at this stage, so as to avoid misattributions. Using referencing software from the very beginning of your endeavour will save you time.

Rule 4: Choose the Type of Review You Wish to Write

After having taken notes while reading the literature, you will have a rough idea of the amount of material available for the review. This is probably a good time to decide whether to go for a mini- or a full review. Some journals are now favouring the publication of rather short reviews focusing on the last few years, with a limit on the number of words and citations. A mini-review is not necessarily a minor review: it may well attract more attention from busy readers, although it will inevitably simplify some issues and leave out some relevant material due to space limitations. A full review will have the advantage of more freedom to cover in detail the complexities of a particular scientific development, but may then be left in the pile of the very important papers “to be read” by readers with little time to spare for major monographs.

There is probably a continuum between mini- and full reviews. The same point applies to the dichotomy of descriptive vs. integrative reviews. While descriptive reviews focus on the methodology, findings, and interpretation of each reviewed study, integrative reviews attempt to find common ideas and concepts from the reviewed material [12] . A similar distinction exists between narrative and systematic reviews: while narrative reviews are qualitative, systematic reviews attempt to test a hypothesis based on the published evidence, which is gathered using a predefined protocol to reduce bias [13] , [14] . When systematic reviews analyse quantitative results in a quantitative way, they become meta-analyses. The choice between different review types will have to be made on a case-by-case basis, depending not just on the nature of the material found and the preferences of the target journal(s), but also on the time available to write the review and the number of coauthors [15] .

Rule 5: Keep the Review Focused, but Make It of Broad Interest

Whether your plan is to write a mini- or a full review, it is good advice to keep it focused 16 , 17 . Including material just for the sake of it can easily lead to reviews that are trying to do too many things at once. The need to keep a review focused can be problematic for interdisciplinary reviews, where the aim is to bridge the gap between fields [18] . If you are writing a review on, for example, how epidemiological approaches are used in modelling the spread of ideas, you may be inclined to include material from both parent fields, epidemiology and the study of cultural diffusion. This may be necessary to some extent, but in this case a focused review would only deal in detail with those studies at the interface between epidemiology and the spread of ideas.

While focus is an important feature of a successful review, this requirement has to be balanced with the need to make the review relevant to a broad audience. This square may be circled by discussing the wider implications of the reviewed topic for other disciplines.

Rule 6: Be Critical and Consistent

Reviewing the literature is not stamp collecting. A good review does not just summarize the literature, but discusses it critically, identifies methodological problems, and points out research gaps [19] . After having read a review of the literature, a reader should have a rough idea of:

• the major achievements in the reviewed field,
• the main areas of debate, and
• the outstanding research questions.

It is challenging to achieve a successful review on all these fronts. A solution can be to involve a set of complementary coauthors: some people are excellent at mapping what has been achieved, some others are very good at identifying dark clouds on the horizon, and some have instead a knack at predicting where solutions are going to come from. If your journal club has exactly this sort of team, then you should definitely write a review of the literature! In addition to critical thinking, a literature review needs consistency, for example in the choice of passive vs. active voice and present vs. past tense.

Rule 7: Find a Logical Structure

Like a well-baked cake, a good review has a number of telling features: it is worth the reader's time, timely, systematic, well written, focused, and critical. It also needs a good structure. With reviews, the usual subdivision of research papers into introduction, methods, results, and discussion does not work or is rarely used. However, a general introduction of the context and, toward the end, a recapitulation of the main points covered and take-home messages make sense also in the case of reviews. For systematic reviews, there is a trend towards including information about how the literature was searched (database, keywords, time limits) [20] .

How can you organize the flow of the main body of the review so that the reader will be drawn into and guided through it? It is generally helpful to draw a conceptual scheme of the review, e.g., with mind-mapping techniques. Such diagrams can help recognize a logical way to order and link the various sections of a review [21] . This is the case not just at the writing stage, but also for readers if the diagram is included in the review as a figure. A careful selection of diagrams and figures relevant to the reviewed topic can be very helpful to structure the text too [22] .

Rule 8: Make Use of Feedback

Reviews of the literature are normally peer-reviewed in the same way as research papers, and rightly so [23] . As a rule, incorporating feedback from reviewers greatly helps improve a review draft. Having read the review with a fresh mind, reviewers may spot inaccuracies, inconsistencies, and ambiguities that had not been noticed by the writers due to rereading the typescript too many times. It is however advisable to reread the draft one more time before submission, as a last-minute correction of typos, leaps, and muddled sentences may enable the reviewers to focus on providing advice on the content rather than the form.

Feedback is vital to writing a good review, and should be sought from a variety of colleagues, so as to obtain a diversity of views on the draft. This may lead in some cases to conflicting views on the merits of the paper, and on how to improve it, but such a situation is better than the absence of feedback. A diversity of feedback perspectives on a literature review can help identify where the consensus view stands in the landscape of the current scientific understanding of an issue [24] .

Rule 9: Include Your Own Relevant Research, but Be Objective

In many cases, reviewers of the literature will have published studies relevant to the review they are writing. This could create a conflict of interest: how can reviewers report objectively on their own work [25] ? Some scientists may be overly enthusiastic about what they have published, and thus risk giving too much importance to their own findings in the review. However, bias could also occur in the other direction: some scientists may be unduly dismissive of their own achievements, so that they will tend to downplay their contribution (if any) to a field when reviewing it.

In general, a review of the literature should neither be a public relations brochure nor an exercise in competitive self-denial. If a reviewer is up to the job of producing a well-organized and methodical review, which flows well and provides a service to the readership, then it should be possible to be objective in reviewing one's own relevant findings. In reviews written by multiple authors, this may be achieved by assigning the review of the results of a coauthor to different coauthors.

Rule 10: Be Up-to-Date, but Do Not Forget Older Studies

Given the progressive acceleration in the publication of scientific papers, today's reviews of the literature need awareness not just of the overall direction and achievements of a field of inquiry, but also of the latest studies, so as not to become out-of-date before they have been published. Ideally, a literature review should not identify as a major research gap an issue that has just been addressed in a series of papers in press (the same applies, of course, to older, overlooked studies (“sleeping beauties” [26] )). This implies that literature reviewers would do well to keep an eye on electronic lists of papers in press, given that it can take months before these appear in scientific databases. Some reviews declare that they have scanned the literature up to a certain point in time, but given that peer review can be a rather lengthy process, a full search for newly appeared literature at the revision stage may be worthwhile. Assessing the contribution of papers that have just appeared is particularly challenging, because there is little perspective with which to gauge their significance and impact on further research and society.

Inevitably, new papers on the reviewed topic (including independently written literature reviews) will appear from all quarters after the review has been published, so that there may soon be the need for an updated review. But this is the nature of science [27] – [32] . I wish everybody good luck with writing a review of the literature.

Acknowledgments

Many thanks to M. Barbosa, K. Dehnen-Schmutz, T. Döring, D. Fontaneto, M. Garbelotto, O. Holdenrieder, M. Jeger, D. Lonsdale, A. MacLeod, P. Mills, M. Moslonka-Lefebvre, G. Stancanelli, P. Weisberg, and X. Xu for insights and discussions, and to P. Bourne, T. Matoni, and D. Smith for helpful comments on a previous draft.

• 1. Rapple C (2011) The role of the critical review article in alleviating information overload. Annual Reviews White Paper. Available: http://www.annualreviews.org/userimages/ContentEditor/1300384004941/Annual_Reviews_WhitePaper_Web_2011.pdf . Accessed May 2013.
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• 7. Budgen D, Brereton P (2006) Performing systematic literature reviews in software engineering. Proc 28th Int Conf Software Engineering, ACM New York, NY, USA, pp. 1051–1052. doi: https://doi.org/10.1145/1134285.1134500 .
• 16. Eco U (1977) Come si fa una tesi di laurea. Milan: Bompiani.
• 17. Hart C (1998) Doing a literature review: releasing the social science research imagination. London: SAGE.
• 21. Ridley D (2008) The literature review: a step-by-step guide for students. London: SAGE.

Literature Reviews

• "How To" Books
• Examples of Literature Reviews
• Collecting Resources for a Literature Review
• Organizing the Literature Review
• Writing the Literature Review
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Organization

Organization of your Literature Review

What is the most effective way of presenting the information? What are the most important topics, subtopics, etc., that your review needs to include? What order should you present them?

Just like most academic papers, literature reviews must contain at least three basic elements: an introduction or background information section; the body of the review containing the discussion of sources; and, finally, a conclusion and/or recommendations section to end the paper.

Introduction: Gives a quick idea of the topic of the literature review, such as the central theme or organizational pattern.

Body: Contains your discussion of sources and is organized either chronologically, thematically, or methodologically (see below for more information on each).

Conclusions/Recommendations: Discuss what you have drawn from reviewing the literature so far. Where might the discussion proceed?

Once you have the basic categories in place, then you must consider how you will present the sources themselves within the body of your paper. Create an organizational method to focus this section even further.

To help you come up with an overall organizational framework for your review, consider the following scenario and then three typical ways of organizing the sources into a review:

You've decided to focus your literature review on materials dealing with sperm whales. This is because you've just finished reading Moby Dick, and you wonder if that whale's portrayal is really real. You start with some articles about the physiology of sperm whales in biology journals written in the 1980's. But these articles refer to some British biological studies performed on whales in the early 18th century. So you check those out. Then you look up a book written in 1968 with information on how sperm whales have been portrayed in other forms of art, such as in Alaskan poetry, in French painting, or on whale bone, as the whale hunters in the late 19th century used to do. This makes you wonder about American whaling methods during the time portrayed in Moby Dick, so you find some academic articles published in the last five years on how accurately Herman Melville portrayed the whaling scene in his novel.

Chronological

If your review follows the chronological method, you could write about the materials above according to when they were published. For instance, first you would talk about the British biological studies of the 18th century, then about Moby Dick, published in 1851, then the book on sperm whales in other art (1968), and finally the biology articles (1980s) and the recent articles on American whaling of the 19th century. But there is relatively no continuity among subjects here. And notice that even though the sources on sperm whales in other art and on American whaling are written recently, they are about other subjects/objects that were created much earlier. Thus, the review loses its chronological focus.

By publication

Order your sources chronologically by publication if the order demonstrates a more important trend. For instance, you could order a review of literature on biological studies of sperm whales if the progression revealed a change in dissection practices of the researchers who wrote and/or conducted the studies.

Another way to organize sources chronologically is to examine the sources under a trend, such as the history of whaling. Then your review would have subsections according to eras within this period. For instance, the review might examine whaling from pre-1600-1699, 1700-1799, and 1800-1899. Using this method, you would combine the recent studies on American whaling in the 19th century with Moby Dick itself in the 1800-1899 category, even though the authors wrote a century apart.

Thematic reviews of literature are organized around a topic or issue, rather than the progression of time. However, progression of time may still be an important factor in a thematic review. For instance, the sperm whale review could focus on the development of the harpoon for whale hunting. While the study focuses on one topic, harpoon technology, it will still be organized chronologically. The only difference here between a "chronological" and a "thematic" approach is what is emphasized the most: the development of the harpoon or the harpoon technology.

More authentic thematic reviews tend to break away from chronological order. For instance, a thematic review of material on sperm whales might examine how they are portrayed as "evil" in cultural documents. The subsections might include how they are personified, how their proportions are exaggerated, and their behaviors misunderstood. A review organized in this manner would shift between time periods within each section according to the point made.

Methodological

A methodological approach differs from the two above in that the focusing factor usually does not have to do with the content of the material. Instead, it focuses on the "methods" of the researcher or writer. For the sperm whale project, one methodological approach would be to look at cultural differences between the portrayal of whales in American, British, and French art work. Or the review might focus on the economic impact of whaling on a community. A methodological scope will influence either the types of documents in the review or the way in which these documents are discussed.

Once you've decided on the organizational method for the body of the review, the sections you need to include in the paper should be easy to figure out. They should arise out of your organizational strategy. In other words, a chronological review would have subsections for each vital time period. A thematic review would have subtopics based upon factors that relate to the theme or issue.

Sometimes, though, you might need to add additional sections that are necessary for your study, but do not fit in the organizational strategy of the body. What other sections you include in the body is up to you. Put in only what is necessary. Here are a few other sections you might want to consider:

Current Situation: Information necessary to understand the topic or focus of the literature review.

History: The chronological progression of the field, the literature, or an idea that is necessary to understand the literature review, if the body of the literature review is not already a chronology.

Methods and/or Standards: The criteria you used to select the sources in your literature review or the way in which you present your information. For instance, you might explain that your review includes only peer-reviewed articles and journals.

Questions for Further Research: What questions about the field has the review sparked? How will you further your research as a result of the review?

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The Best Books of the Year (So Far)

The nonfiction and novels we can’t stop thinking about.

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By The New York Times Books Staff

• May 24, 2024

Fiction | Nonfiction

We’re almost halfway through 2024 and we at The Book Review have already written about hundreds of books. Some of those titles are good. Some are very good. And then there are the following.

We suspect that some (though certainly not all) will be top of mind when we publish our end-of-year, best-of lists. For more thoughts on what to read next, head to our book recommendation page .

James , by Percival Everett

In this reworking of the “Adventures of Huckleberry Finn,” Jim, the enslaved man who accompanies Huck down the Mississippi River, is the narrator, and he recounts the classic tale in a language that is his own, with surprising details that reveal a far more resourceful, cunning and powerful character than we knew.

Local bookstores | Barnes and Noble | Amazon

Good Material , by Dolly Alderton

Alderton’s novel, about a 35-year-old struggling to make sense of a breakup, delivers the most delightful aspects of romantic comedy — snappy dialogue, realistic relationship dynamics, funny meet-cutes and misunderstandings — and leaves behind clichéd gender roles and the traditional marriage plot.

Martyr! , by Kaveh Akbar

A young Iranian American aspiring poet and recovering addict grieves his parents’ deaths while fantasizing about his own in Akbar’s remarkable first novel, which, haunted by death, also teems with life — in the inventive beauty of its sentences, the vividness of its characters and the surprising twists of its plot.

The Hunter , by Tana French

For Tana French fans, every one of the thriller writer’s twisty, ingenious books is an event. This one, a sequel to “The Searcher,” once again sees the retired Chicago cop Cal Hooper, a perennial outsider in the Irish west-country hamlet of Ardnakelty, caught up in the crimes — seen and unseen — that eat at the seemingly picturesque village.

Wandering Stars , by Tommy Orange

This follow-up to Orange’s debut, “There There,” is part prequel and part sequel; it trails the young survivor of a 19th-century massacre of Native Americans, chronicling not just his harsh fate but those of his descendants. In its second half, the novel enters 21st-century Oakland, following the family in the aftermath of a shooting.

Headshot , by Rita Bullwinkel

Set at a women’s boxing tournament in Reno, Nev., this novel centers on eight contestants, and the fights — physical and emotional — they bring to the ring. As our critic wrote: This story’s impact “lasts a long time, like a sharp fist to your shoulder.”

Beautyland , by Marie-Helene Bertino

In 1970s Philadelphia, an alien girl sent to Earth before she’s born communicates with her fellow life-forms via fax as she helps gather intel about whether our planet is habitable. This funny-sad novel follows the girl and her single mother as they find the means to persevere.

Knife: Meditations After an Attempted Murder , by Salman Rushdie

In his candid, plain-spoken and gripping new memoir, Rushdie recalls the attempted assassination he survived in 2022 during a presentation about keeping the world’s writers safe from harm. His attacker had piranhic energy. He also had a knife. Rushdie lost an eye, but he has slowly recovered thanks to the attentive care of doctors and the wife he celebrates here.

Everyone Who Is Gone Is Here: The United States, Central America, and the Making of a Crisis , by Jonathan Blitzer

This urgent and propulsive account of Latin American politics and immigration makes a persuasive case for a direct line from U.S. foreign policy in Central America to the current migrant crisis.

The Wide Wide Sea: Imperial Ambition, First Contact and the Fateful Final Voyage of Captain James Cook , by Hampton Sides

By the time he made his third Pacific voyage, the British explorer James Cook had maybe begun to lose it a little. The scientific aims of his first two trips had shifted into something darker. According to our reviewer, the historian Hampton Sides “isn’t just interested in retelling an adventure tale. He also wants to present it from a 21st-century point of view. ‘The Wide Wide Sea’ fits neatly into a growing genre that includes David Grann’s ‘ The Wager ’ and Candice Millard’s ‘ River of the Gods ,’ in which famous expeditions, once told as swashbuckling stories of adventure, are recast within the tragic history of colonialism .”

The Rebel’s Clinic: The Revolutionary Lives of Frantz Fanon , by Adam Shatz

This absorbing biography of the Black psychiatrist, writer and revolutionary Frantz Fanon highlights a side of him that’s often eclipsed by his image as a zealous partisan — that of the caring doctor, who ran a secret clinic for Algerian rebels.

Fi: A Memoir , by Alexandra Fuller

In her fifth memoir, Fuller describes the sudden death of her 21-year-old son. Devastating as this elegant and honest account may be — it’s certainly not for the faint of heart — it also leaves the reader with a sense of having known a lovely and lively young man.

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An assault led to Chanel Miller’s best seller, “Know My Name,” but she had wanted to write children’s books since the second grade. She’s done that now  with “Magnolia Wu Unfolds It All.”

When Reese Witherspoon is making selections for her book club , she wants books by women, with women at the center of the action who save themselves.

The Nobel Prize-winning author Alice Munro, who died on May 14 , specialized in exacting short stories that were novelistic in scope , spanning decades with intimacy and precision.

“The Light Eaters,” a new book by Zoë Schlanger, looks at how plants sense the world  and the agency they have in their own lives.

Each week, top authors and critics join the Book Review’s podcast to talk about the latest news in the literary world. Listen here .

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Independent Book Review

A Celebration of Indie Press and Self-Published Books

The Must-Read Books from the First Half of 2024

We've already reviewed hundreds of titles this year. Find out which ones are the must-read books of the first half of this year.

Chosen by the IBR Staff

What constitutes a must-read book?

Book recommendations are undeniably personal. Each reader is different and comes to each book with their own set of experiences and reading histories. One person could think a book is the best thing they’ve ever read, and their best friend could say, “Meh.”

So there’s got to be a way to differentiate, right? This isn’t just a good book. This is a YOU-HAVE-TO-READ-THIS-RIGHT-NOW book. This is a must-read book.

These things can be thrillers, thought-provoking literary tomes, escapist fantasy adventures, time-travel romances, self-help books, you name it. What matters most is that someone you trust read this thing, loved it, and thinks (if you like books similar to this), you HAVE to check it out.

Replete with genres all over the map, this collaborative list from the experts at IBR is populated by brand new indie books that so many readers are going to love. Some may call it some of the best books from the first half of 2024. We wouldn’t disagree.

Here are our 15 must-read books from the first half of 2024.

1. Mother Doll

A brilliantly layered novel of connection and disconnection, of life and afterlife

Author: Katya Apekina

Genre: Literary Fiction / Family Life

Print Length: 320 pages

Publisher: Harry N. Abrams

Recommended by : Toni Woodruff

What it’s about:

Enter, the novel’s opening line: “It was ironic that Zhenia and Ben would come home from spending time with people who had kids and be so giddy with relief and self-righteousness over their decision not to have any that it would make them want to fuck.”

And then Zhenia gets pregnant. Mother Doll is a breathtaking dual-timeline story of motherhood, daughterhood, grandmotherhood, and the links of past and future. It’s a funny and deeply moving story about generations and the things we do that shape us and our bloodlines.

Is this her grandmother reincarnated in her womb? Is it the prospect of a future with this child the thing she’s been missing, or is it the past that she couldn’t do without? Something has made her like this. It couldn’t just be her.

Paul, a journalist medium who receives a message from Zhenia’s great-grandmother, is the one who breaks this story open. The ghost of Irina (her great-grandmother, who abandoned her beloved grandmother) needs to tell Zhenia the story of her surprising, wild, revolutionary life. Mother Doll intricately weaves three stories into one funny, unforgettable novel.

Why you should read it:

How do you follow up a novel as good as The Deeper the Water the Uglier the Fish ? That novel broke me, stitched me up, left me in satisfied pieces. So I had high hopes for Mother Doll . And usually that spells a fumble.

But not for Katya Apekina.

Mother Doll is so spectacularly different from her first novel, and yet it’s just as memorable, textured, and surprising. I didn’t know Apekina had such humor in her repertoire! But here comes one of the funniest books I’ve read this year. And in such a tragic package.

Irina and Zhenia make Mother Doll the hit it is, but it’s the connection of the past, present, and future that brings its deepest satisfaction. Irina’s story of Russian revolution is unpredictable and vast, while Zhenia’s story is unpredictable and slight. I loved them both.

This is a masterclass of a sophomore novel.

– Toni Woodruff

2. Marco Polo Mother & Son

Exceptional writing [steeped in] missed opportunities

Author: Thoreau Lovell

Print Length: 232 pages

Publisher: Wet Cement Press

Recommended by: Lauren Hayataka

Thoreau Lovell’s  Marco Polo Mother & Son  is a poignant exploration of the intricate relationship between the recently deceased Georgiana and her grieving son George.

On the surface, Georgiana and George appear as different as chalk and cheese and have a distant relationship. Georgiana is a realist—pragmatic, proud, and private—who acknowledges that she is dying from congestive heart failure. Georgiana’s dream is to pass peacefully away in her sleep in her home in Fresno. In contrast, George is a dreamer whose mind is perpetually occupied with thoughts of abandoning his partner Paula and their daughter Lily to focus on his writing. Only the one that understands George the most is the one that he thinks understands him the least: his mother. 

Lovell crafts a masterful portrayal of an intimate yet distant relationship between mother and son, one filled with unspoken words and unshared memories. Georgiana and George resemble trains on parallel tracks, journeying together yet never intersecting, despite the reader’s yearning for their connection. 

His exploration of grief is raw, realistic, and simultaneously ugly, shameful, and beautiful. The portrayal exudes a profound sense of understanding. Every scene and every word serve a purpose, and as the reader experiences the loss alongside George, who surrounds himself with his mother’s belongings, the realization dawns that he never truly knew her at all.

Only an exceptional writer could immerse readers in such profound pain, leaving them reluctant to accept the conclusion of the story. Lovell’s novel adds layers of authenticity and devastation that are undeniably worth cherishing. In creating  Marco Polo Mother & Son , Lovell has crafted something extraordinary.

– Lauren Hayataka ( Full Review )

3. Bad Foundations

A working-class  White Noise , a story about family, crap jobs, paranoia, and an uncertain future  

Author: Brian Allen Carr

Genre: Literary Fiction / Absurdism

Print Length: 256 pages

Publisher: Clash Books

Recommended by: Nick Rees Gardner

Cook works in crawl spaces, inspecting them for rot, but even when he emerges from the claustrophobic confines, driving across Indiana to the next client, the crawl follows him. The damp basement smell of his coveralls permeates his Prius as his daughter argues that his sales slump is due to a curse. And basement walls crumble around him, a metaphor for his depression and his predicament-prone misadventures in Ohio, Indiana, and beyond. 

However, as Cook’s family life, work-life, and mental health erode, rather than turning to Jack Gladney’s preference for academia and, eventually, revenge, Cook fries his brain on legal weed and finds his answers in strange and surprising working class strangers. While the petty arguments and slightly askew realities Cook faces are reminiscent of  White Noise , Carr’s characters turn away from academia, from teachers and students. With all of its banter, wit, and pure, unabashed heart,  Bad Foundations  is a hilarious and fresh drama about the crumbling crawlspaces Cook has built his life on and how he can scramble out of the rubble.

The writer of  Motherfucking Sharks ,  Opioid Indiana , and several other surreal and unabashed books, Carr is at his best in  Bad Foundations.  The dialogue, often occurring as petty arguments that span subjects from Taylor Swift, to telepathy, to the earth being a computer program, is vibrant and often revealing of the contemporary worlds’ real life predicaments.

Carr’s characters are self-acknowledged “white trash,” day-drinking and discussing flat-earth theories with over-educated coworkers, trying to drum up a living in an inhospitable corporate social structure. While the ideas discussed in the book are intelligent, there is nothing too high-brow about  Bad Foundations . The immaculate prose is fortified with excerpts from text message threads, drawings, and illustrations. While  Bad Foundations  reaches for depth and clarity in the midst of personal and social collapse, the prose is easily accessible for readers of all backgrounds and reading levels. It is a book that even a nonreader would enjoy.

From the canon of working-class literature and literary family stories comes  Bad Foundations , an unputdownable dive into the crawlspace sludge of a working man’s life and the inevitable rebirth that comes when he emerges to see his family in a not-so-blindingly-fluorescent light.

-Nick Rees Gardner ( Full Review )

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4. No Good Deed

One man’s act of kindness triggers an explosive sequence of events that threatens everything and everyone he loves.

Author: Jack Wallace

Genre: Mystery, Thriller & Suspense / Crime

Print Length: 268 pages

Publisher: Atmosphere Press

Recommended by: Peggy Kurkowski

Inspired by true events, Wallace’s impressive sophomore novel  No Good Deed  examines the seedy criminal underworld of sex trafficking in the American South. It’s a compulsive story of everyday people selflessly sacrificing to help those in need among us. 

Christopher Jones is a divorced father working two jobs to make ends meet in Nashville, Tennessee, when his headlights shine across the huddled frame of a young Korean woman in a darkened business doorway along his morning newspaper route. Offering her a ride, he soon realizes that the woman, Kim, is running from trouble. Big trouble. Little does he know his “one good deed” to help a stranger will soon ripple into concentric rings of violence for himself, Kim, and those they care about.

Wallace thoughtfully transitions between Christopher’s and Kim’s backstories—both marked by loss, betrayal, loneliness, but also a stubborn hope for a better future.

Wallace’s pacing is pitch perfect as Christopher begins to take back his power in protecting Kim…The thrills are explosive and the cat-and-mouse game increasingly personal. 

Wallace effectively teases out the moral complexities of fighting fire with fire. His protagonists are good people facing unspeakable brutality and evil; they are ordinary people thrust into becoming the heroes they never knew they were. 

No Good Deed  is a superbly written and propulsive story with an unforgettable climax, a novel with a soul that entertains as it educates about sex trafficking and the individuals sucked into its diabolical orbit. Do not miss this one.

-Peggy Kurkowski ( Full Review )

5. Still Alive

The mesmerizing life journey of a woman just trying to find peace

Author: L.J. Pemberton

Genre: Literary Fiction / LGBTQ

Print Length: 290 pages

Publisher: Malarkey Books

Recommended by: Erica Ball

Always reckoning with the consequences of her formative years, V experiments with different ways of living: trying out different buildings, neighborhoods, and even cities. She falls in love with different partners, some men, some women, and, ultimately, with her beloved Lex, and they try multiple times to see if now is the time they can make it work. 

Because of her many moves, and, because she has so much to work through, V consistently flashes back to her family’s dysfunction and how that was passed along to her. As such, the narrative jumps from the Portland of her childhood in the 1980s to New York City in the 2010s to the beaches of Los Angeles and onward. 

V is actively rejecting the life so many others seem to want with a wry and sarcastic take on the hypocrisies and phoniness she sees around her. Instead, she is seeking the real, the gritty, and the true. She looks for novel and especially sensory experiences, whether through underground punk shows, time spent in the depths of the woods, or falling head-over-heels in love at first sight. 

Poetic and philosophical, she dips into and out of these different lived experiences, at times throwing herself into them, and other times watching society from a distance. 

V is a fascinating and complex character who doesn’t seek to overly define her relationships or sexuality. With its beautiful prose and applicable commentary,  Still Alive  has broad appeal. It will be especially effective for fans of coming-of-age stories, underground culture and art communities, bisexual or pan-sexual relationships, and lesbian or sapphic fiction. 

It’s a coming of age story, and there’s some love in there as well, but in the end, it’s really a story of self-love, a story of craving freedom and finding it within instead of without, and a story of coming home to yourself.

-Erica Ball ( Full Review )

6. Changes In the Land

An enthralling piece of fiction that seamlessly blends horror and mystery in an enigmatic, earthy New Hampshire setting

Author: Matthew Cheney

Genre: Horror / Dark Fantasy

Print Length: 90 pages

Publisher: Lethe Press

Recommended by: Melissa Suggitt

What it’s about :

Adams Park: one family’s curse, another family’s burden. 

Elias Thornton, along with his children Josiah and Drusilla, carry the weight of responsibility for their family’s purpose. Passed down from generation to generation, they are the caretakers and the protectors of the nature preserve known as Adams Park. Its thousands of acres of land, its animals, its estate’s human inhabitant (Valeria Adams), and its secrets. 

The heiress of the estate, Valeria, is somehow ageless, and she believes she knows all the secrets of her family’s curse; it has been bestowed upon her decades ago when she came across a strange cave and it changed her life forever. She is a viper in sheep’s clothing. The further we delve into her history, the more vile she becomes, however justified she believes she is in the actions of her past.

Dr. Steven A. Baird is a history professor, collecting research on the history of Adams Park and of its owners’ genealogy. As he’s drawn closer to the heart of the mystery and begins to unravel the truth of his connection to Valeria, the greater the peril he faces.

As these three characters, their families, and their destinies intertwine, a gruesome and wholly terrifying prophecy is set in motion.

Author Matthew Cheney delivers a hauntingly powerful tale with  Changes in the Land . This book offers a potent lesson in karma and a stark reminder of the importance of respecting our land and each other.

The background of Adams Park and the heinous events that took place on its land over generations is an aspect of the narrative that helps create an atmosphere of palpable tension building tantalizingly through the story. Cheney weaves a compelling supernatural element and adeptly explores the way our actions leave an imprint on the earth—whether ethereal or concrete. You’ll find yourself almost rooting for the land to take its revenge on the Adams family by the end of this.

Cheney has crafted a succinct and efficient plot in a short amount of pages, leaving just enough room for mystery and well-rounded character development. Who knew nature could be so terrifying? Horror fans with a healthy respect for our environment are going to love this novella.

– Melissa Suggitt ( Full Review )

7. Time Is Heartless

A profound adventure exploring the limits of AI and the possibilities of post-climate-collapse technology

Author: Sarah Lahey

Genre: Science Fiction / Romance

Print Length: 348 pages

Recommended by: Andrea Marks-Joseph

Readers are placed on a ship with Quinn, who is not happy to be there. She feels trapped at sea, where she is parenting her toddler without her husband Tig. Quinn loves Tig, but he keeps disappearing on secret missions for much longer than he ever stays.  

Quinn is lonely: unheard and unfulfilled. She’s married to a cyborg who won’t take his mood-regulating medication, and she’s missing her friend who disappeared from her cryo-sleeping tank.

There is so much at stake at all times in this novel; action, plot-twists, and reveals come from every angle. But there is also so much joy in the way Lahey tells this story. These characters feel so real. The novel captures the stress, the   worry, and the pain of being human—but also the ridiculousness of everyday life.

Author Sarah Lahey and her eclectic ensemble of characters found their way into my heart, keeping me spellbound and energized with a constantly surprising narrative—In fact, I read this book in one sitting, twice.

Readers who follow the advancements of future tech and are confronting the ethics of artificial intelligence in our everyday lives (but who also love a great love story and mystery) should run, not walk, to pick up this near-future sci-fi novel.

If the topic of what the world will look like post-climate-collapse—biologically, reproductively, technologically, politically, and even fashionably—intrigues you, know that what this book delivers is nothing you expect and everything you want. 

Equal parts thought-provoking and riotously joyful,  Time is Heartless  is a book I’ll be thinking about for months—maybe years. 

– Andrea Marks-Joseph ( Full Review )

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8. Fire Exit

A quiet and original novel about an outcast, a loner, who clings to hope even when the world is pitted against him

Author: Morgan Talty

Genre: Literary Fiction / Native American & Aboriginal

Publisher: Tin House Books

Lamosway’s is a story about blood quantum, the controversial measure of how much “Indian blood” a body contains as a way to determine whether or not someone belongs as a member of their tribe. Because of blood quantum, Lamosway is booted off the Penobscot Reservation when he turns 18, and now, as a middle-aged man, he watches his estranged daughter Elizabeth who is being raised by a Penobscot stepfather and her mother across the river.

Charles observes the life he almost had unfolding across the river, wondering which parts of himself flow through his daughter’s veins, knowing what she doesn’t: that his blood is not legally native, that according to blood quantum, she doesn’t belong. When, as an adult, Elizabeth returns to her parents’ reservation home, Charles considers whether now is the right time to tell her the truth.

Lamosway, as a protagonist, isn’t necessarily driven by anything. He feels the need to tell his biological daughter the truth but is prohibited from doing so by his daughter’s mother. He wants to belong to the tribal community but is prohibited by arbitrary laws. He wants to drink, but he knows his tendency toward alcoholism and refrains. While Lamosway holds down a job “clearing the land,” all of his drive has been tempered by forces outside of his control. But as the family and community he surrounds himself with struggles and falls apart, he does his best to hold the world around him together. 

Creating quiet stories requires exceptional talent. In order to pull a novel like this off, the writer needs a memorable protagonist too: a Jay Gatsby or Anna Karenina or Ignatious J. Reily type who lodges in the reader’s mind like an old friend. Think Dennis Johnson’s “Fuckhead,” from  Jesus’ Son,  a character who readers would recognize from any Iowa dive bar, but whose depth, whose insights about life, ask the reader to reconsider what they know.

Now we can add Charles Lamosway to this list. 

Lamosway’s character growth, though minimal, is depicted quite brilliantly; each shift in personality, each flash of irrational anger sloshes out of a deep well. And Talty uses this backstory of injustice as a rising tension; to read  Fire Exit  is to wait either for Lamosway to get a break or for him to be broken.

While Talty’s narrative is already irresistible, especially for readers who enjoyed  Night of the Living Rez , it is also filled with Charles Lamosway’s wisdom, a philosophical depth that lingers beyond the page… Fire Exit  is one of those books that will become more meaningful with the days, weeks, and months after closing the cover.

– Nick Rees Gardner ( Full Review )

9. Next Time

 A time-travel novel exceptionally worthy of a binge-read

Author: Randy Brown

Genre: Time Travel / Romance

Print Length: 332 pages

Recommended by: Kristine Eckart

 When William extends a helping hand to Miriam, who seems to have appeared from nowhere, he gets more than he bargained for. But Miriam’s ignorance of the current date, modern culture, and her surroundings raise some red flags. That’s when she reveals her secret: she can travel through time. Working on his master’s degree in history, William is intrigued and offers to be a resource for the next time Miriam appears. But as William continues his life, studying and spending time with his girlfriend, he still can’t get Miriam out of his mind. 

Miriam appears more in William’s life over the years, and their relationship turns from friendship to romance. They must navigate the complexities of dating while existing in different dimensions of time. However, as the police start to take a particular interest in tracking down and questioning Miriam and William’s struggles with Miriam’s absence, complications arise. They must figure out how to deal with the investigations and how far they’re willing to go to save their relationship. 

Of the many time-travel novels I’ve read, this is undeniably among my favorites. The novel’s pacing is spot-on, never spending too much time in between Miriam’s appearances and always keeping the plot moving with action sequences of police interrogations and disagreements between family and friends. These scenes keep the reader invested, especially when one of the main characters is missing. Traversing through its spot-on pacing and the scenes that don’t miss, you too will be fervently flipping pages to find the answer of Miriam and William’s fate. 

I also appreciated the balance of realism and escapism present throughout the novel. Time-travel books can often feel like they create a world that’s completely different from our own, which provides plenty of entertainment and an escape from the worries we face on a daily basis. 

If you love time-travel stories complete with action and romance, Next Time would be the best choice you’ve made in a while.

– Kristine Eckart

10. Everywhere I Look

A riveting look at the impact of dark family secrets

Author: Ona Gritz

Genre: Memoir / Family

Print Length: 250 pages

Publisher: Apprentice House Press

Recommended by: Elizabeth Reiser

When Ona’s adopted older sister Angie disappears during Ona’s visit to San Francisco, she finds herself conflicted between being concerned and feeling indifferent. Ona is no stranger to Angie’s disappearing acts, so she is hesitant to worry. 

This all changes when her brother-in-law’s body is discovered, shot execution-style. Soon after, a pregnant Angie and her infant son are found murdered as well. Ona finds herself struggling with grief, but in some ways Angie’s terrible end is not ultimately shocking. As Ona explores her feelings surrounding the loss of her sister, she realizes how many aspects of Angie’s life she misunderstood and is led on a long journey of uncovering secrets she chose to ignore. 

There are a number of fascinating twists and turns in this story, but nothing is salacious. At its core, this is more of a reflection on a misunderstood life than a true crime story, and it is clear how important it is to Ona that she respects her sister’s memory.

Ona is also refreshingly honest about herself and does not sugarcoat her actions growing up. Rather than falling into the trap of portraying herself as the put-upon “good” sister, she instead shows how her flaws were simply more easily forgiven by her family. The guilt she feels over being the favored and nurtured child is palpable; it’s a heartbreaking realization the author goes through as she comes to terms with her culpability in Angie’s feelings of being unwanted. 

At its core , Everywhere I Look  is a gut-wrenching, heartbreaking, and wildly fascinating story about families and the secrets that destroy them. It is sure to stick with you.

-Elizabeth Reiser ( Full Review )

11. Overthink

 Successfully transform your overwhelming thoughts with this valuable self-help book.

Author: Lyndsey Getty

Genre: Self-Help

Print Length: 150 pages

Recommended by : Lisa Parker Hayreh, PhD

This book asks the reader to identify their thinking difficulties and to apply the most effective techniques to consistently improve them. It walks you through the basics of becoming more aware of your thoughts and how to accurately label unhelpful thinking as it occurs. 

The author’s detailed and well-articulated guidance helps us distinguish between unproductive and productive thoughts. The principles of productive thinking are discussed in detail for readers to try in real time, and detailed worksheets are given to help each person track their progress and build success. Additional references are provided to support continued growth moving forward.

But with persistence over time, she eventually identified an assortment of techniques that transformed her suffering. Moved to help others find relief quicker than she did, she’s shared this vital and practical manual that blends psychological wisdom, proven strategies, and personal triumph.

Part memoir, part straight-talking guidebook, this resource can help create lasting positive change. Overthink is like having a highly trained expert by your side, guiding you to stop negative self-talk and think productively.

Overthink shines the way forward out of mental torment. Lyndsey Getty maintains a compassionate understanding of the daunting anguish connected to unproductive thinking. She encourages us to become our best selves and shares her own truths & agonies to show us it’s okay to have them.

I have been geeking out a bit in response to Lyndsey Getty’s Overthink . It is utterly remarkable that a lay person wrote such a technically sound and effective self-help book while also appropriately sharing her own struggles and successes. I hold a really high standard for self-help books so my praise in this area is hard won. Overthink sidesteps the technical jargon dominating the mental health/self-help fields. She has created an impeccably streamlined guide that can be applied broadly to a whole host of unproductive thinking difficulties.

– Lisa Parker Hayreh, PhD ( Full Review )

12. Tap Dancing on Everest

 A riveting memoir about the travails of growing up, the trauma of mountain climbing, and the elation of being in the great outdoors

Author: Mimi Zieman

Genre: Memoir / Adventure

Print Length: 244 pages

Recommended by: Warren Maxwell

Beginning at the dramatic climax of a years-in-the-making expedition to climb Everest’s east face without oxygen for the first time, Zieman’s memoir doubles back to trace the bumpy path that led her to become the team medical officer as a twenty-five year old medical school student. 

What materializes is a deep portrait of Mimi’s youth and milieu in New York as the ambitious daughter of two Holocaust survivors. Her father’s entire family was killed in Latvia while her maternal grandmother fled Germany for Palestine with her young daughter, Mimi’s mother. Living with the legacy of such a brutal and incomprehensible past reverberates in Zieman, triggering eating disorders, an unrequited love of dance, and an ultimate turn toward medicine. 

While plagued by her family’s expectations and rules, mountains and trekking become an early source of independence. Through a series of split decisions and journeys, Zieman ends up alone in the Nepali Himalayas, hiking for weeks on end and forging relationships with fellow hikers that take her all the way to the feet of Everest.

The overall quality of the writing in this book is exceptional. The memoir’s many large and small vignettes, its minor characters and central ones all leap into focus. Whether Zieman’s haunted, psychotherapist father or a braggadocios boy that she rescues in a climbing accident, personality and life abound. 

One of the things that’s wonderful about this uncommon approach to writing the mountain climbing narrative—the very fact that Zieman is present as a doctor, not a climber, and doesn’t herself climb Everest—is that we see a different side to the climbing story…This is a tale about the experience of living on mountains, beside mountains, under mountains, and hoping that the people climbing them will survive. The depth of psychology and detail that go into Zieman’s descriptions are mesmerizing. 

In short, this memoir travels widely. It brings a large swath of territory into its purview that, while seemingly diffuse, builds to a triumphant peak. It is a beautiful, wrenching story about the trials that we endure and the rewards we reap.

– Warren Maxwell

13. Nola Face

 A memoir that explores the contradictions of language with boldness, nuance, and playfulness.

Author: Brooke Champagne

Genre: Memoir / Essays

Print Length: 192 pages

Publisher: University of Georgia Press

The essays in Nola Face recount Brooke Champagne’s upbringing in an Ecuadorian family in New Orleans, her marriage and motherhood, and her path as a writer. But narrating a memory is, we soon learn, never as easy as putting facts on the page. 

Instead, the essays in the collection play cleverly with the fallibility of writing itself, never letting the reader forget the way language mediates the relationship between the author penning each essay and the author who lives as a character on the page. 

A memoir as thoughtful as it is creative, Nola Face would be an excellent choice for readers in love with the craft of writing. 

These essays let the reader behind the curtain, reflecting explicitly on the impossibility of describing an event precisely as it happened without the distorting force of language. 

Champagne is a master of the art of the opening sentence…These deft opening lines draw the reader in to each new essay, in search of elaboration, explanation, and another thrilling turn of phrase. 

It’s not only the opening lines that delight in this collection. Long, complex sentences stuffed with recollections and reconsiderations abound in Nola Face …. At their best, they read like pirouettes, swinging the reader through a remarkable range of images, ideas, and linguistic moves to land with grace. 

– Elena Bellaart

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14. Secrets Ever Green

The exquisite, emotional adventure of a young woman pushing through grief to uncover magical secrets

Author: Sara Knightly

Genre: Young Adult / Fantasy

Ivy Rune is not the natural Arborist talent everyone believes she is. Every year, in the town of Windermere, students are allocated a career and, in Ivy’s case, permanent accommodation, depending on their results in the final practical exam. 

If Ivy fails her final exams, she will not have a job in the industry she’s trained for, and most importantly, she won’t be able to live in her childhood home, which holds her final memories of her father and has been left empty waiting for her in the decade since his presumed death. 

A mysterious man approaches Ivy with instructions (ostensibly from her father, ten years ago, specifically for Ivy) that lead her to discover a magic underworld hiding in plain sight, unlocking the secrets to where her father spent his time before he disappeared. Suddenly, in the middle of the most crucial week of her life, where studying in the library will secure her future, Ivy is exploring the forest, following handwritten clues from her dead father. 

Author Sara Knightly has created a wondrous and charming hometown for Ivy. Windermere is filled with lore and whispered, near-forgotten myths so naturally woven into the story that it felt as though I had grown up in the community with Ivy and her best friend York, understanding their fears, ambitions, and curiosity on a cellular level. 

This natural, almost effortless sense of being surrounded by  Secrets Ever Green ’s world applies to its characters, too: I felt the complexity of Ivy wanting guidance and support from the adults in her life, and I felt in my veins the betrayal and shame she experienced when they treated her in a way that made it clear, through unintentional twists in their phrasing, that she was not loved unconditionally, nor was she theirs to care for indefinitely.

The way grief is written into Ivy’s story is remarkable. Often it’s just one line that hits at the heart of her pain, and then the story continues. Knightly has mastered the art of pulling back the protagonist’s layers to their most vulnerable truth and then moving the story along in light of that knowledge. Ivy has tangled herself up in grief, moving forward because it’s all she knows, but the story is weighed down by her   heartache. In fact, even in Ivy’s darkest moments, though we are barely holding back tears in sympathy, we feel the story surge forward because what could possibly happen next?! 

15. Terra Solaris (Gods & Monsters)

A formidable tale of power and creation

Author: Jaiden Baynes

Genre: Young Adult / Fantasy / Myth

Print Length: 374 pages

Publisher: BayMar Publishing

Recommended by: Audrey Davis

 In a very distant past, but a universe quite similar to our own, Gods, Titans, and Monsters roam the planets amongst the humans. 

When the human Typhon’s greed and desire for power overtakes him, he aims to conquer the Kosmos and all its inhabitants, leaving a scarred, torn world in his wake. The goddess Terra, in an effort to restore stability, agrees to help her brother Jupiter rise to power to defeat Typhon and re-unite the planets. 

Unfortunately, it does not last. As Jupiter is swept into his own corruption, Terra is left to grapple with her own thoughts and feelings while finding the strength to do so and seeks to restore a balance to the universe once more. 

Jaiden Baynes’ newest young adult fantasy series Gods and Monsters gives a fresh face to creationism and ancient Greek mythos as we commonly know them. The same names remain, but their bearers and stories are very different. This story captivates as Baynes gives readers a new set of rules to play with for these characters, including new beasts and horrible foes, miraculous unseen powers, gods and new universes, and even a little bit of romance. 

If you enjoyed the Percy Jackson and the Olympians series, this story would be great for you. I would happily recommend this series to fellow action/adventure and fantasy fans. Readers will appreciate the dry humor and well-paced action as they follow new and powerful characters through their trials in saving the universe from capture and ruin. 

– Audrey Davis ( Full Review )

What are your must read books of 2024 so far? Let us know in the comments!

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Rapid literature review: definition and methodology

Beata smela.

a Assignity, Cracow, Poland

Mondher Toumi

b Public Health Department, Aix-Marseille University, Marseille, France

Karolina Świerk

Clement francois, małgorzata biernikiewicz.

c Studio Slowa, Wroclaw, Poland

Emilie Clay

d Clever-Access, Paris, France

Laurent Boyer

Introduction: A rapid literature review (RLR) is an alternative to systematic literature review (SLR) that can speed up the analysis of newly published data. The objective was to identify and summarize available information regarding different approaches to defining RLR and the methodology applied to the conduct of such reviews.

Methods: The Medline and EMBASE databases, as well as the grey literature, were searched using the set of keywords and their combination related to the targeted and rapid review, as well as design, approach, and methodology. Of the 3,898 records retrieved, 12 articles were included.

Results: Specific definition of RLRs has only been developed in 2021. In terms of methodology, the RLR should be completed within shorter timeframes using simplified procedures in comparison to SLRs, while maintaining a similar level of transparency and minimizing bias. Inherent components of the RLR process should be a clear research question, search protocol, simplified process of study selection, data extraction, and quality assurance.

Conclusions: There is a lack of consensus on the formal definition of the RLR and the best approaches to perform it. The evidence-based supporting methods are evolving, and more work is needed to define the most robust approaches.

Introduction

A systematic literature review (SLR) summarizes the results of all available studies on a specific topic and provides a high level of evidence. Authors of the SLR have to follow an advanced plan that covers defining a priori information regarding the research question, sources they are going to search, inclusion criteria applied to choose studies answering the research question, and information regarding how they are going to summarize findings [ 1 ].

The rigor and transparency of SLRs make them the most reliable form of literature review [ 2 ], providing a comprehensive, objective summary of the evidence for a given topic [ 3 , 4 ]. On the other hand, the SLR process is usually very time-consuming and requires a lot of human resources. Taking into account a high increase of newly published data and a growing need to analyze information in the fastest possible way, rapid literature reviews (RLRs) often replace standard SLRs.

There are several guidelines on the methodology of RLRs [ 5–11 ]; however, only recently, one publication from 2021 attempted to construct a unified definition [ 11 ]. Generally, by RLRs, researchers understand evidence synthesis during which some of the components of the systematic approach are being used to facilitate answering a focused research question; however, scope restrictions and a narrower search strategy help to make the project manageable in a shorter time and to get the key conclusions faster [ 4 ].

The objective of this research was to collect and summarize available information on different approaches to the definition and methodology of RLRs. An RLR has been run to capture publications providing data that fit the project objective.

To find publications reporting information on the methodology of RLRs, searches were run in the Medline and EMBASE databases in November 2022. The following keywords were searched for in titles and abstracts: ‘targeted adj2 review’ OR ‘focused adj2 review’ OR ‘rapid adj2 review’, and ‘methodology’ OR ‘design’ OR ‘scheme’ OR ‘approach’. The grey literature was identified using Google Scholar with keywords including ‘targeted review methodology’ OR ‘focused review methodology’ OR ‘rapid review methodology’. Only publications in English were included, and the date of publication was restricted to year 2016 onward in order to identify the most up-to-date literature. The reference lists of each included article were searched manually to obtain the potentially eligible articles. Titles and abstracts of the retrieved records were first screened to exclude articles that were evidently irrelevant. The full texts of potentially relevant papers were further reviewed to examine their eligibility.

A pre-defined Excel grid was developed to extract the following information related to the methodology of RLR from guidelines:

• Definition,
• Research question and searches,
• Studies selection,
• Data extraction and quality assessment,
• Additional information.

There was no restriction on the study types to be analyzed; any study reporting on the methodology of RLRs could be included: reviews, practice guidelines, commentaries, and expert opinions on RLR relevant to healthcare policymakers or practitioners. The data extraction and evidence summary were conducted by one analyst and further examined by a senior analyst to ensure that relevant information was not omitted. Disagreements were resolved by discussion and consensus.

Studies selection

A total of 3,898 records (3,864 articles from a database search and 34 grey literature from Google Scholar) were retrieved. After removing duplicates, titles and abstracts of 3,813 articles were uploaded and screened. The full texts of 43 articles were analyzed resulting in 12 articles selected for this review, including 7 guidelines [ 5–11 ] on the methodology of RLRs, together with 2 papers summarizing the results of the Delphi consensus on the topic [ 12 , 13 ], and 3 publications analyzing and assessing different approaches to RLRs [ 4 , 14 , 15 ].

Overall, seven guidelines were identified: from the World Health Organization (WHO) [ 5 ], National Collaborating Centre for Methods and Tools (NCCMT) [ 7 ], the UK government [ 8 ], the Oxford Centre for Evidence Based Medicine [ 9 ], the Cochrane group [ 6 , 11 ], and one multi-national review [ 10 ]. Among the papers that did not describe the guidelines, Gordon et al. [ 4 ] proposed 12 tips for conducting a rapid review in the right settings and discussed why these reviews may be more beneficial in some circumstances. The objective of work conducted by Tricco et al. [ 13 ] and Pandor et al. [ 12 ] was to collect and compare perceptions of rapid reviews from stakeholders, including researchers, policymakers, industry, journal editors, and healthcare providers, and to reach a consensus outlining the domains to consider when deciding on approaches for RLRs. Haby et al. [ 14 ] run a rapid review of systematic reviews and primary studies to find out the best way to conduct an RLR in health policy and practice. In Tricco et al. (2022) [ 15 ], JBI position statement for RLRs is presented.

From all the seven identified guidelines information regarding definitions the authors used for RLRs, approach to the PICOS criteria and search strategy development, studies selection, data extractions, quality assessment, and reporting were extracted.

Cochrane Rapid Reviews Methods Group developed methods guidance based on scoping review of the underlying evidence, primary methods studies conducted, as well as surveys sent to Cochrane representative and discussion among those with expertise [ 11 ]. They analyzed over 300 RLRs or RLR method papers and based on the methodology of those studies, constructed a broad definition RLR, one that meets a minimum set of requirements identified in the thematic analysis: ‘ A rapid review is a form of knowledge synthesis that accelerates the process of conducting a traditional systematic review through streamlining or omitting a variety of methods to produce evidence in a resource-efficient manner .’ This interpretation aligns with more than 50% of RLRs identified in this study. The authors additionally provided several other definitions, depending on specific situations or requirements (e.g., when RLR is produced on stakeholder’s request). It was additionally underlined that RLRs should be driven by the need of timely evidence for decision-making purposes [ 11 ].

Rapid reviews vary in their objective, format, and methods used for evidence synthesis. This is a quite new area, and still no agreement on optimal methods can be found [ 5 ]. All of the definitions are highlighting that RLRs are completed within shorter timeframes than SLRs, and also lack of time is one of the main reasons they are conducted. It has been suggested that most rapid reviews are conducted within 12 weeks; however, some of the resources suggest time between a few weeks to no more than 6 months [ 5 , 6 ]. Some of the definitions are highlighting that RLRs follow the SLR process, but certain phases of the process are simplified or omitted to retrieve information in a time-saving way [ 6 , 7 ]. Different mechanisms are used to enhance the timeliness of reviews. They can be used independently or concurrently: increasing the intensity of work by intensifying the efforts of multiple analysts by parallelization of tasks, using review shortcuts whereby one or more systematic review steps may be reduced, automatizing review steps by using new technologies [ 5 ]. The UK government report [ 8 ] referred to two different RLRs: in the form of quick scoping reviews (QSR) or rapid evidence assessments (REA). While being less resource and time-consuming compared to standard SLRs, QSRs and REAs are designed to be similarly transparent and to minimize bias. QSRs can be applied to rather open-ended questions, e.g., ‘what do we know about something’ but both, QSRs and REAs, provide an understanding of the volume and characteristics of evidence on a specific topic, allowing answering questions by maximizing the use of existing data, and providing a clear picture of the adequacy of existing evidence [ 8 ].

Research questions and searches

The guidelines suggest creating a clear research question and search protocol at the beginning of the project. Additionally, to not duplicate RLRs, the Cochrane Rapid Reviews Methods Group encourages all people working on RLRs to consider registering their search protocol with PROSPERO, the international prospective register of reviews; however, so far they are not formally registered in most cases [ 5 , 6 ]. They also recommend involving key stakeholders (review users) to set and refine the review question, criteria, and outcomes, as well as consulting them through the entire process [ 11 ].

Regarding research questions, it is better to structure them in a neutral way rather than focus on a specific direction for the outcome. By doing so, the researcher is in a better position to identify all the relevant evidence [ 7 ]. Authors can add a second, supportive research question when needed [ 8 ]. It is encouraged to limit the number of interventions, comparators and outcomes, to focus on the ones that are most important for decision-making [ 11 ]. Useful could be also reviewing additional materials, e.g., SLRs on the topic, as well as conducting a quick literature search to better understand the topic before starting with RLRs [ 7 ]. In SLRs researchers usually do not need to care a lot about time spent on creating PICOS, they need to make sure that the scope is broad enough, and they cannot use many restrictions. When working on RLRs, a reviewer may spend more or less time defining each of the components of the study question, and the main step is making sure that PICOS addresses the needs of those who requested the rapid review, and at the same time, it is feasible within the required time frame [ 7 ]. Search protocol should contain an outline of how the following review steps are to be carried out, including selected search keywords and a full strategy, a list of data sources, precise inclusion and exclusion criteria, a strategy for data extraction and critical appraisal, and a plan of how the information will be synthesized [ 8 ].

In terms of searches running, in most cases, an exhaustive process will not be feasible. Researchers should make sure that the search is effective and efficient to produce results in a timely manner. Cochrane Rapid Reviews Methods Group recommends involving an information specialist and conducting peer review of at least one search strategy [ 11 ]. According to the rapid review guidebook by McMaster University [ 7 ], it is important that RLRs, especially those that support policy and program decisions, are being fed by the results of a body of literature, rather than single studies, when possible. It would result in more generalizable findings applied at the level of a population and serve more realistic findings for program decisions [ 7 ]. It is important to document the search strategy, together with a record of the date and any date limits of the search, so that it can easily be run again, modified, or updated. Furthermore, the information on the individual databases included in platform services should always be reported, as this depends on organizations’ subscriptions and must be included for transparency and repeatability [ 7 , 8 ]. Good solution for RLRs is narrowing the scope or searching a limited number of databases and other sources [ 7 ]. Often, the authors use the PubMed/MEDLINE, Cochrane Library, and Embase databases. In most reviews, two or more databases are searched, and common limits are language (usually restricted to English), date, study design, and geographical area. Some RLRs include searching of grey literature; however, contact with authors is rather uncommon [ 5 , 8 ]. According to the flexible framework for restricted systematic review published by the University of Oxford, the search should be run in at least one major scientific database such as PubMed, and one other source, e.g., Google Scholar [ 9 ]. Grey literature and unpublished evidence may be particularly needed and important for intervention questions. It is related to the fact that studies that do not report the effects of interventions are less likely to be published [ 8 ]. If there is any type of evidence that will not be considered by the RLRs, e.g., reviews or theoretical and conceptual studies, it should also be stated in the protocol together with justification [ 8 ]. Additionally, authors of a practical guide published by WHO suggest using a staged search to identify existing SLRs at the beginning, and then focusing on studies with other designs [ 5 ]. If a low number of citations have been retrieved, it is acceptable to expand searches, remove some of the limits, and add additional databases and sources [ 7 ].

Searching for RLRs is an iterative process, and revising the approach is usually needed [ 7 ]. Changes should be confirmed with stakeholders and should be tracked and reflected in the final report [ 5 ].

The next step in the rapid review is the selection of studies consisting of two phases: screening of titles and abstracts, and analysis of full texts. Prior to screening initiation, it is recommended to conduct a pilot exercise using the same 30–50 abstracts and 5–10 full-texts for the entire screening team in order to calibrate and test the review form [ 11 ]. In contrast to SLRs, it can be done by one reviewer with or without verification by a second one. If verification is performed, usually the second reviewer checks only a subset of records and compares them. Cochrane Group, in contrast, recommends a stricter approach: at least 20% of references should be double-screened at titles and abstracts stage, and while the rest of the references may be screened by one reviewer, the excluded items need to be re-examined by second reviewer; similar approach is used in full-text screening [ 11 ]. This helps to ensure that bias was reduced and that the PICOS criteria are applied in a relevant way [ 5 , 8 , 9 , 11 ]. During the analysis of titles and abstracts, there is no need to report reasons for exclusion; however, they should be tracked for all excluded full texts [ 7 ].

Data extraction and quality assessment

According to the WHO guide, the most common method for data extraction in RLRs is extraction done by a single reviewer with or without partial verification. The authors point out that a reasonable approach is to use a second reviewer to check a random sample of at least 10% of the extractions for accuracy. Dual performance is more necessary for the extraction of quantitative results than for descriptive study information. In contrast, Cochrane group recommends that second reviewer should check the correctness and completeness of all data [ 11 ]. When possible, extractions should be limited to key characteristics and outcomes of the study. The same approach to data extraction is also suggested for a quality assessment process within rapid reviews [ 5 , 9 , 11 ]. Authors of the guidebook from McMaster University highlight that data extraction should be done ideally by two reviewers independently and consensus on the discrepancies should always be reached [ 7 ]. The final decision on the approach to this important step of review should depend on the available time and should also reflect the complexity of the research question [ 9 ].

For screening, analysis of full texts, extractions, and quality assessments, researchers can use information technologies to support them by making these review steps more efficient [ 5 ].

Before data reporting, a reviewer should prepare a document with key message headings, executive summary, background related to the topic and status of the current knowledge, project question, synthesis of findings, conclusions, and recommendations. According to the McMaster University guidebook, a report should be structured in a 1:2:20 format, that is, one page for key messages, two pages for an executive summary, and a full report of up to 20 pages [ 7 ]. All the limitations of the RLRs should be analyzed, and conclusions should be drawn with caution [ 5 ]. The quality of the accumulated evidence and the strength of recommendations can be assessed using, e.g., the GRADE system [ 5 ]. When working on references quoting, researchers should remember to use a primary source, not secondary references [ 7 ]. It would be worth considering the support of some software tools to automate reporting steps. Additionally, any standardization of the process and the usage of templates can support report development and enhance the transparency of the review [ 5 ].

Ideally, all the review steps should be completed during RLRs; however, often some steps may need skipping or will not be completed as thoroughly as should because of time constraints. It is always crucial to decide which steps may be skipped, and which are the key ones, depending on the project [ 7 ]. Guidelines suggest that it may be helpful to invite researchers with experience in the operations of SLRs to participate in the rapid review development [ 5 , 9 ]. As some of the steps will be completed by one reviewer only, it is important to provide them with relevant training at the beginning of the process, as well as during the review, to minimize the risk of mistakes [ 5 ].

Additional information

Depending on the policy goal and available resources and deadlines, methodology of the RLRs may be modified. Wilson et al. [ 10 ] provided extensive guidelines for performing RLR within days (e.g., to inform urgent internal policy discussions and/or management decisions), weeks (e.g., to inform public debates), or months (e.g., to inform policy development cycles that have a longer timeline, but that cannot wait for a traditional full systematic review). These approaches vary in terms of data synthesis, types of considered evidence and project management considerations.

In shortest timeframes, focused questions and subquestions should be formulated, typically to conduct a policy analysis; the report should consist of tables along with a brief narrative summary. Evidence from SLRs is often considered, as well as key informant interviews may be conducted to identify additional literature and insights about the topic, while primary studies and other types of evidence are not typically feasible due to time restrictions. The review would be best conducted with 1–2 reviewers sharing the work, enabling rapid iterations of the review. As for RLRs with longer timeline (weeks), these may use a mix of policy, systems and political analysis. Structure of the review would be similar to shorter RLRs – tabular with short narrative summary, as the timeline does not allow for comprehensive synthesis of data. Besides SLRs, primary studies and other evidence may be feasible in this timeframe, if obtained using the targeted searches in the most relevant databases. The review team should be larger, and standardized procedures for reviewing of the results and data extraction should be applied. In contrast to previous timeframe, merit review process may be feasible. For both timeframes, brief consultations with small transdisciplinary team should be conducted at the beginning and in the final stage of the review to discuss important matters.

For RLRs spanning several months, more comprehensive methodology may be adapted in terms of data synthesis and types of evidence. However, authors advise that review may be best conducted with a small review team in order to allow for more in-depth interpretation and iteration.

Studies analyzing methodology

There have been two interesting publications summarizing the results of Delphi consensus on the RLR methodology identified and included in this review [ 12 , 13 ].

Tricco et al. [ 13 ] first conducted an international survey and scoping review to collect information on the possible approaches to the running of rapid reviews, based on which, they employed a modified Delphi method that included inputs from 113 stakeholders to explore the most optimized approach. Among the six most frequent rapid review approaches (not all detailed here) being evaluated, the approach that combines inclusion of published literature only, a search of more than one database and limitations by date and language, study selection by one analyst, data extraction, and quality assessment by one analyst and one verifier, was perceived as the most feasible approach (72%, 81/113 responses) with the potentially lowest risk of bias (12%, 12/103). The approach ranked as the first one when considering timelines assumes updating of the search from a previously published review, no additional limits on search, studies selection and data extraction done by one reviewer, and no quality assessment. Finally, based on the publication, the most comprehensive RLRs can be made by moving on with the following rules: searching more than one database and grey literature and using date restriction, and assigning one reviewer working on screening, data extraction, and risk of bias assessment ( Table 1 ). Pandor et al. [ 12 ] introduced a decision tool for SelecTing Approaches for Rapid Reviews (STARR) that were produced through the Delphi consensus of international experts through an iterative and rigorous process. Participants were asked to assess the importance of predefined items in four domains related to the rapid review process: interaction with commissioners, understanding the evidence base, data extraction and synthesis methods, and reporting of rapid review methods. All items assigned to four domains achieved > 70% of consensus, and in that way, the first consensus-driven tool has been created that supports authors of RLRs in planning and deciding on approaches.

Six most frequent approaches to RLRs (adapted from Tricco et al. [ 13 ]).

Haby et al. [ 14 ] run searches of 11 databases and two websites and developed a comprehensive overview of the methodology of RLRs. With five SLRs and one RCT being finally included, they identified the following approaches used in RLRs to make them faster than full SLRs: limiting the number and scope of questions, searching fewer databases, limited searching of grey literature, restrictions on language and date (e.g., English only, most recent publications), updating the existing SLRs, eliminating or limiting hand searches of reference lists, noniterative search strategies, eliminating consultation with experts, limiting dual study selection, data extraction and quality assessment, minimal data synthesis with short concise conclusions or recommendations. All the SLRs included in this review were consistent in stating that no agreed definition of rapid reviews is available, and there is still no final agreement on the best methodological rules to be followed.

Gordon et al. [ 4 ] explained the advantages of performing a focused review and provided 12 tips for its conduction. They define focused reviews as ‘a form of knowledge synthesis in which the components of the systematic process are applied to facilitate the analysis of a focused research question’. The first tip presented by the authors is related to deciding if a focused review is a right solution for the considered project. RLRs will suit emerging topics, approaches, or assessments where early synthesis can support doctors, policymakers, etc., but also can direct future research. The second, third, and fourth tips highlight the importance of running preliminary searches and considering narrowing the results by using reasonable constraints taking into account the local context, problems, efficiency perspectives, and available time. Further tips include creating a team of experienced reviewers working on the RLRs, thinking about the target journal from the beginning of work on the rapid review, registering the search protocol on the PROSPERO registry, and the need for contacting authors of papers when data available in publications are missing or incongruent. The last three tips are related to the choice of evidence synthesis method, using the visual presentation of data, and considering and describing all the limitations of the focused review.

Finally, a new publication by Tricco et al. from 2022, describing JBI position statement [ 15 ] underlined that for the time being, there is no specific tool for critical appraisal of the RLR’s methodological quality. Instead, reviewers may use available tools to assess the risk of bias or quality of SLRs, like ROBIS, the JBI critical appraisal tools, or the assessment of multiple systematic reviews (AMSTAR).

Inconsistency in the definitions and methodologies of RLR

Although RLR was broadly perceived as an approach to quicken the conduct of conventional SLR, there is a lack of consensus on the formal definition of the RLR, so as to the best approaches to perform it. Only in 2021, a study proposing unified definition was published; however, it is important to note that the most accurate definition was only matching slightly over 50% of papers analysed by the authors, which underlines the lack of homogeneity in the field [ 11 ]. The evidence-based supporting methods are evolving, and more evidence is needed to define the most robust approaches [ 5 ].

Diverse terms are used to describe the RLR, including ‘rapid review’, focused systematic review’, ‘quick scoping reviews’, and ‘rapid evidence assessments’. Although the general principles of conducting RLR are to accelerate the whole process, complexity was seen in the methodologies used for RLRs, as reflected in this study. Also, inconsistencies related to the scope of the questions, search strategies, inclusion criteria, study screening, full-text review, quality assessment, and evidence presentation were implied. All these factors may hamper decision-making about optimal methodologies for conducting rapid reviews, and as a result, the efficiency of RLR might be decreased. Additionally, researchers may tend to report the methodology of their reviews without a sufficient level of detail, making it difficult to appraise the quality and robustness of their work.

Advantages and weaknesses of RLR

Although RLR used simplified approaches for evidence synthesis compared with SLR, the methodologies for RLR should be replicable, rigorous, and transparent to the greatest extent [ 16 ]. When time and resources are limited, RLR could be a practical and efficient tool to provide the summary of evidence that is critical for making rapid clinical or policy-related decisions [ 5 ]. Focusing on specific questions that are of controversy or special interest could be powerful in reaffirming whether the existing recommendation statements are still appropriate [ 17 ].

The weakness of RLR should also be borne in mind, and the trade-off of using RLR should be carefully considered regarding the thoroughness of the search, breadth of a research question, and depth of analysis [ 18 ]. If allowed, SLR is preferred over RLR considering that some relevant studies might be omitted with narrowed search strategies and simplified screening process [ 14 ]. Additionally, omitting the quality assessment of included studies could result in an increased risk of bias, making the comprehensiveness of RLR compromised [ 13 ]. Furthermore, in situations that require high accuracy, for example, where a small relative difference in an intervention has great impacts, for the purpose of drafting clinical guidelines, or making licensing decisions, a comprehensive SLR may remain the priority [ 19 ]. Therefore, clear communications with policymakers are recommended to reach an agreement on whether an RLR is justified and whether the methodologies of RLR are acceptable to address the unanswered questions [ 18 ].

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).