relevant primary sources for the literature review

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The Literature Review

Primary and secondary sources, the literature review: primary and secondary sources.

• Searching the literature
• Grey literature
• Organising and analysing
• Systematic Reviews
• The Literature Review Toolbox

On this page

• Primary vs secondary sources: The differences explained 

Can something be both a primary and secondary source?

Research for your literature review can be categorised as either primary or secondary in nature. The simplest definition of primary sources is either original information (such as survey data) or a first person account of an event (such as an interview transcript). Whereas secondary sources are any publshed or unpublished works that describe, summarise, analyse, evaluate, interpret or review primary source materials. Secondary sources can incorporate primary sources to support their arguments.

Ideally, good research should use a combination of both primary and secondary sources. For example, if a researcher were to investigate the introduction of a law and the impacts it had on a community, he/she might look at the transcripts of the parliamentary debates as well as the parliamentary commentary and news reporting surrounding the laws at the time. 

Examples of primary and secondary sources

Primary vs secondary sources: The differences explained

Finding primary sources

• VU Special Collections  - The Special Collections at Victoria University Library are a valuable research resource. The Collections have strong threads of radical literature, particularly Australian Communist literature, much of which is rare or unique. Women and urban planning also feature across the Collections. There are collections that give you a picture of the people who donated them like Ray Verrills, John McLaren, Sir Zelman Cowen, and Ruth & Maurie Crow. Other collections focus on Australia's neighbours – PNG and Timor-Leste.
• POLICY - Sharing the latest in policy knowledge and evidence, this database supports enhanced learning, collaboration and contribution.
• Indigenous Australia  -  The Indigenous Australia database represents the collections of the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Commission Library.
• Australian Heritage Bibliography - Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Subset (AHB-ATSIS)  - AHB is a bibliographic database that indexes and abstracts articles from published and unpublished material on Australia's natural and cultural environment. The AHB-ATSIS subset contains records that specifically relate to the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples.include journal articles, unpublished reports, books, videos and conference proceedings from many different sources around Australia. Emphasis is placed on reports written or commissioned by government and non-government heritage agencies throughout the country.
• ATSIhealth  - The Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Health Bibliography (ATSIhealth), compiled by Neil Thomson and Natalie Weissofner at the School of Indigenous Australian Studies, Kurongkurl Katitjin, Edith Cowan University, is a bibliographic database that indexes published and unpublished material on Australian Indigenous health. Source documents include theses, unpublished articles, government reports, conference papers, abstracts, book chapters, books, discussion and working papers, and statistical documents. 
• National Archive of Australia  - The National Archives of Australia holds the memory of our nation and keeps vital Australian Government records safe. 
• National Library of Australia: Manuscripts  - Manuscripts collection that is wide ranging and provides rich evidence of the lives and activities of Australians who have shaped our society.
• National Library of Australia: Printed ephemera  - The National Library has been selectively collecting Australian printed ephemera since the early 1960s as a record of Australian life and social customs, popular culture, national events, and issues of national concern.
• National Library of Australia: Oral history and folklore - The Library’s Oral History and Folklore Collection dates back to the 1950’s and includes a rich and diverse collection of interviews and recordings with Australians from all walks of life.
• Historic Hansard - Commonwealth of Australia parliamentary debates presented in an easy-to-read format for historians and other lovers of political speech.
• The Old Bailey Online - A fully searchable edition of the largest body of texts detailing the lives of non-elite people ever published, containing 197,745 criminal trials held at London's central criminal court.

Whether or not a source can be considered both primary and  secondary, depends on the context. In some instances, material may act as a secondary source for one research area, and as a primary source for another. For example, Niccolò Machiavelli’s The Prince , published in 1513, is an important secondary source for any study of the various Renaissance princes in the Medici family; but the same book is also a primary source for the political thought that was characteristic of the sixteenth century because it reflects the attitudes of a person living in the 1500s.

Source: Craver, 1999, as cited in University of South Australia Library. (2021, Oct 6).  Can something be a primary and secondary source?.  University of South Australia Library. https://guides.library.unisa.edu.au/historycultural/sourcetypes

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• Last Updated: Mar 27, 2024 2:06 PM
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Methodology

• How to Write a Literature Review | Guide, Examples, & Templates

How to Write a Literature Review | Guide, Examples, & Templates

Published on January 2, 2023 by Shona McCombes . Revised on September 11, 2023.

What is a literature review? A literature review is a survey of scholarly sources on a specific topic. It provides an overview of current knowledge, allowing you to identify relevant theories, methods, and gaps in the existing research that you can later apply to your paper, thesis, or dissertation topic .

There are five key steps to writing a literature review:

• Search for relevant literature
• Evaluate sources
• Identify themes, debates, and gaps
• Outline the structure
• Write your literature review

A good literature review doesn’t just summarize sources—it analyzes, synthesizes , and critically evaluates to give a clear picture of the state of knowledge on the subject.

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Table of contents

What is the purpose of a literature review, examples of literature reviews, step 1 – search for relevant literature, step 2 – evaluate and select sources, step 3 – identify themes, debates, and gaps, step 4 – outline your literature review’s structure, step 5 – write your literature review, free lecture slides, other interesting articles, frequently asked questions, introduction.

• Quick Run-through
• Step 1 & 2

When you write a thesis , dissertation , or research paper , you will likely have to conduct a literature review to situate your research within existing knowledge. The literature review gives you a chance to:

• Demonstrate your familiarity with the topic and its scholarly context
• Develop a theoretical framework and methodology for your research
• Position your work in relation to other researchers and theorists
• Show how your research addresses a gap or contributes to a debate
• Evaluate the current state of research and demonstrate your knowledge of the scholarly debates around your topic.

Writing literature reviews is a particularly important skill if you want to apply for graduate school or pursue a career in research. We’ve written a step-by-step guide that you can follow below.

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Writing literature reviews can be quite challenging! A good starting point could be to look at some examples, depending on what kind of literature review you’d like to write.

• Example literature review #1: “Why Do People Migrate? A Review of the Theoretical Literature” ( Theoretical literature review about the development of economic migration theory from the 1950s to today.)
• Example literature review #2: “Literature review as a research methodology: An overview and guidelines” ( Methodological literature review about interdisciplinary knowledge acquisition and production.)
• Example literature review #3: “The Use of Technology in English Language Learning: A Literature Review” ( Thematic literature review about the effects of technology on language acquisition.)
• Example literature review #4: “Learners’ Listening Comprehension Difficulties in English Language Learning: A Literature Review” ( Chronological literature review about how the concept of listening skills has changed over time.)

You can also check out our templates with literature review examples and sample outlines at the links below.

Download Word doc Download Google doc

Before you begin searching for literature, you need a clearly defined topic .

If you are writing the literature review section of a dissertation or research paper, you will search for literature related to your research problem and questions .

Make a list of keywords

Start by creating a list of keywords related to your research question. Include each of the key concepts or variables you’re interested in, and list any synonyms and related terms. You can add to this list as you discover new keywords in the process of your literature search.

• Social media, Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, Snapchat, TikTok
• Body image, self-perception, self-esteem, mental health
• Generation Z, teenagers, adolescents, youth

Search for relevant sources

Use your keywords to begin searching for sources. Some useful databases to search for journals and articles include:

• Your university’s library catalogue
• Google Scholar
• Project Muse (humanities and social sciences)
• Medline (life sciences and biomedicine)
• EconLit (economics)
• Inspec (physics, engineering and computer science)

You can also use boolean operators to help narrow down your search.

Make sure to read the abstract to find out whether an article is relevant to your question. When you find a useful book or article, you can check the bibliography to find other relevant sources.

You likely won’t be able to read absolutely everything that has been written on your topic, so it will be necessary to evaluate which sources are most relevant to your research question.

For each publication, ask yourself:

• What question or problem is the author addressing?
• What are the key concepts and how are they defined?
• What are the key theories, models, and methods?
• Does the research use established frameworks or take an innovative approach?
• What are the results and conclusions of the study?
• How does the publication relate to other literature in the field? Does it confirm, add to, or challenge established knowledge?
• What are the strengths and weaknesses of the research?

Make sure the sources you use are credible , and make sure you read any landmark studies and major theories in your field of research.

You can use our template to summarize and evaluate sources you’re thinking about using. Click on either button below to download.

Take notes and cite your sources

As you read, you should also begin the writing process. Take notes that you can later incorporate into the text of your literature review.

It is important to keep track of your sources with citations to avoid plagiarism . It can be helpful to make an annotated bibliography , where you compile full citation information and write a paragraph of summary and analysis for each source. This helps you remember what you read and saves time later in the process.

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To begin organizing your literature review’s argument and structure, be sure you understand the connections and relationships between the sources you’ve read. Based on your reading and notes, you can look for:

• Trends and patterns (in theory, method or results): do certain approaches become more or less popular over time?
• Themes: what questions or concepts recur across the literature?
• Debates, conflicts and contradictions: where do sources disagree?
• Pivotal publications: are there any influential theories or studies that changed the direction of the field?
• Gaps: what is missing from the literature? Are there weaknesses that need to be addressed?

This step will help you work out the structure of your literature review and (if applicable) show how your own research will contribute to existing knowledge.

• Most research has focused on young women.
• There is an increasing interest in the visual aspects of social media.
• But there is still a lack of robust research on highly visual platforms like Instagram and Snapchat—this is a gap that you could address in your own research.

There are various approaches to organizing the body of a literature review. Depending on the length of your literature review, you can combine several of these strategies (for example, your overall structure might be thematic, but each theme is discussed chronologically).

Chronological

The simplest approach is to trace the development of the topic over time. However, if you choose this strategy, be careful to avoid simply listing and summarizing sources in order.

Try to analyze patterns, turning points and key debates that have shaped the direction of the field. Give your interpretation of how and why certain developments occurred.

If you have found some recurring central themes, you can organize your literature review into subsections that address different aspects of the topic.

For example, if you are reviewing literature about inequalities in migrant health outcomes, key themes might include healthcare policy, language barriers, cultural attitudes, legal status, and economic access.

Methodological

If you draw your sources from different disciplines or fields that use a variety of research methods , you might want to compare the results and conclusions that emerge from different approaches. For example:

• Look at what results have emerged in qualitative versus quantitative research
• Discuss how the topic has been approached by empirical versus theoretical scholarship
• Divide the literature into sociological, historical, and cultural sources

Theoretical

A literature review is often the foundation for a theoretical framework . You can use it to discuss various theories, models, and definitions of key concepts.

You might argue for the relevance of a specific theoretical approach, or combine various theoretical concepts to create a framework for your research.

Like any other academic text , your literature review should have an introduction , a main body, and a conclusion . What you include in each depends on the objective of your literature review.

The introduction should clearly establish the focus and purpose of the literature review.

Depending on the length of your literature review, you might want to divide the body into subsections. You can use a subheading for each theme, time period, or methodological approach.

As you write, you can follow these tips:

• 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 sentences to draw connections, comparisons and contrasts

In the conclusion, you should summarize the key findings you have taken from the literature and emphasize their significance.

When you’ve finished writing and revising your literature review, don’t forget to proofread thoroughly before submitting. Not a language expert? Check out Scribbr’s professional proofreading services !

This article has been adapted into lecture slides that you can use to teach your students about writing a literature review.

Scribbr slides are free to use, customize, and distribute for educational purposes.

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If you want to know more about the research process , methodology , research bias , or statistics , make sure to check out some of our other articles with explanations and examples.

• Sampling methods
• Simple random sampling
• Stratified sampling
• Cluster sampling
• Likert scales
• Reproducibility

 Statistics

• Null hypothesis
• Statistical power
• Probability distribution
• Effect size
• Poisson distribution

Research bias

• Optimism bias
• Cognitive bias
• Implicit bias
• Hawthorne effect
• Anchoring bias
• Explicit bias

A literature review is a survey of scholarly sources (such as books, journal articles, and theses) related to a specific topic or research question .

It is often written as part of a thesis, dissertation , or research paper , in order to situate your work in relation to existing knowledge.

There are several reasons to conduct a literature review at the beginning of a research project:

• To familiarize yourself with the current state of knowledge on your topic
• To ensure that you’re not just repeating what others have already done
• To identify gaps in knowledge and unresolved problems that your research can address
• To develop your theoretical framework and methodology
• To provide an overview of the key findings and debates on the topic

Writing the literature review shows your reader how your work relates to existing research and what new insights it will contribute.

The literature review usually comes near the beginning of your thesis or dissertation . After the introduction , it grounds your research in a scholarly field and leads directly to your theoretical framework or methodology .

A literature review is a survey of credible sources on a topic, often used in dissertations , theses, and research papers . Literature reviews give an overview of knowledge on a subject, helping you identify relevant theories and methods, as well as gaps in existing research. Literature reviews are set up similarly to other  academic texts , with an introduction , a main body, and a conclusion .

An  annotated bibliography is a list of  source references that has a short description (called an annotation ) for each of the sources. It is often assigned as part of the research process for a  paper .  

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• UConn Library
• Literature Review: The What, Why and How-to Guide
• Strategies to Find Sources

Literature Review: The What, Why and How-to Guide — Strategies to Find Sources

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

The Research Process

Planning : Before searching for articles or books, brainstorm to develop keywords that better describe your research question.

Searching : While searching, take note of what other keywords are used to describe your topic, and use them to conduct additional searches

     ♠ Most articles include a keyword section

     ♠ Key concepts may change names throughout time so make sure to check for variations

Organizing : Start organizing your results by categories/key concepts or any organizing principle that make sense for you . This will help you later when you are ready to analyze your findings

Analyzing : While reading, start making notes of key concepts and commonalities and disagreement among the research articles you find.

♠ Create a spreadsheet  to record what articles you are finding useful and why.

♠ Create fields to write summaries of articles or quotes for future citing and paraphrasing .

Writing : Synthesize your findings. Use your own voice to explain to your readers what you learned about the literature on your topic. What are its weaknesses and strengths? What is missing or ignored?

Repeat : At any given time of the process, you can go back to a previous step as necessary.

Advanced Searching

All databases have Help pages that explain the best way to search their product. When doing literature reviews, you will want to take advantage of these features since they can facilitate not only finding the articles that you really need but also controlling the number of results and how relevant they are for your search. The most common features available in the advanced search option of databases and library online catalogs are:

• Boolean Searching (AND, OR, NOT): Allows you to connect search terms in a way that can either limit or expand your search results 
• Proximity Searching (N/# or W/#): Allows you to search for two or more words that occur within a specified number of words (or fewer) of each other in the database
• Limiters/Filters : These are options that let you control what type of document you want to search: article type, date, language, publication, etc.
• Question mark (?) or a pound sign (#) for wildcard: Used for retrieving alternate spellings of a word: colo?r will retrieve both the American spelling "color" as well as the British spelling "colour." 
• Asterisk (*) for truncation: Used for retrieving multiple forms of a word: comput* retrieves computer, computers, computing, etc.

Want to keep track of updates to your searches? Create an account in the database to receive an alert when a new article is published that meets your search parameters!

• EBSCOhost Advanced Search Tutorial Tips for searching a platform that hosts many library databases
• Library's General Search Tips Check the Search tips to better used our library catalog and articles search system
• ProQuest Database Search Tips Tips for searching another platform that hosts library databases

There is no magic number regarding how many sources you are going to need for your literature review; it all depends on the topic and what type of the literature review you are doing:

► Are you working on an emerging topic? You are not likely to find many sources, which is good because you are trying to prove that this is a topic that needs more research. But, it is not enough to say that you found few or no articles on your topic in your field. You need to look broadly to other disciplines (also known as triangulation ) to see if your research topic has been studied from other perspectives as a way to validate the uniqueness of your research question.

► Are you working on something that has been studied extensively? Then you are going to find many sources and you will want to limit how far back you want to look. Use limiters to eliminate research that may be dated and opt to search for resources published within the last 5-10 years.

• << Previous: How to Pick a Topic
• Next: Evaluating Sources & Lit. Reviews >>
• Last Updated: Sep 21, 2022 2:16 PM
• URL: https://guides.lib.uconn.edu/literaturereview

Literature review sources

Sources for literature review can be divided into three categories as illustrated in table below. In your dissertation you will need to use all three categories of literature review sources:

Sources for literature review and examples

Generally, your literature review should integrate a wide range of sources such as:

• Books . Textbooks remain as the most important source to find models and theories related to the research area. Research the most respected authorities in your selected research area and find the latest editions of books authored by them. For example, in the area of marketing the most notable authors include Philip Kotler, Seth Godin, Malcolm Gladwell, Emanuel Rosen and others.
• Magazines . Industry-specific magazines are usually rich in scholarly articles and they can be effective source to learn about the latest trends and developments in the research area. Reading industry magazines can be the most enjoyable part of the literature review, assuming that your selected research area represents an area of your personal and professional interests, which should be the case anyways.
• Newspapers can be referred to as the main source of up-to-date news about the latest events related to the research area. However, the proportion of the use of newspapers in literature review is recommended to be less compared to alternative sources of secondary data such as books and magazines. This is due to the fact that newspaper articles mainly lack depth of analyses and discussions.
• Online articles . You can find online versions of all of the above sources. However, note that the levels of reliability of online articles can be highly compromised depending on the source due to the high levels of ease with which articles can be published online. Opinions offered in a wide range of online discussion blogs cannot be usually used in literature review. Similarly, dissertation assessors are not keen to appreciate references to a wide range of blogs, unless articles in these blogs are authored by respected authorities in the research area.

Your secondary data sources may comprise certain amount of grey literature as well. The term grey literature refers to type of literature produced by government, academics, business and industry in print and electronic formats, which is not controlled by commercial publishers. It is called ‘grey’ because the status of the information in grey literature is not certain. In other words, any publication that has not been peer reviewed for publication is grey literature.

The necessity to use grey literature arises when there is no enough peer reviewed publications are available for the subject of your study.

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Organizing Your Social Sciences Research Paper

• 5. The Literature Review
• Purpose of Guide
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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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Literature Review: The What, Why and How-to Guide: Strategies to Finding Sources

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Useful Tool to Develop your Topic

Watch this video about Concept Mapping to become a Research Pro!

• Mind Mapping (also known as Concept Mapping) A helpful handout to show step by step how to create a concept map to map out a topic.

The Research Process

Planning : Before searching for articles or books, brainstorm to develop keywords that best describe your research question.

Searching : While searching take note of what other keywords are used to describe your topic  and use them to do more searches

     ♠ Most articles include a keyword section

     ♠ Key concepts names may change through time so make sure to check for variations

Organizing : Start organizing your results by categories/key concepts or any organizing principle that make sense for you. This will help you later when you are ready to analyze your findings

Analyzing : While reading, start making notes of key concepts and commonalities and disagreement among the research articles you find.

♠ Create a spreadsheet document to record what articles you are finding useful and why.

♠ Create fields to write summaries of articles or quotes for future citing and paraphrasing .

Writing : Synthesize your findings. Use your own voice to explain to your readers what you learned about the literature your search; its weaknesses and strengths; what is missing or ignored

Repeat : at any given time of the process you can go back to a previous step as necessary

Advanced Searching

• Boolean Searching (AND, OR, NOT): Words that help you connect your terms in a logical way for the system understand you 
• Proximity Searching (N/# or W/#): It allows you to search for two or more words that occur within a specified number of words (or fewer) of each other in the databases.
• Limiters/Filters : These are options available on the advanced page to let you control what type of document you want to search (articles), dates, language, peer-review, etc...
• Question mark (?) or a pound sign (#) for wildcard: useful when you don't know how something is spelled out, e.g. if you are looking about articles about color, if you want to find articles with the spelling colour (British English), you can use colo?r to find either spelling.
• Asterisk (*) for truncation: useful for getting results with keywords with multiple endings, e.g. comput* for computer, computers, computing , etc.
• UC Library Search Explained! Check the Search tips to better used our library catalog and articles search system
• EBSCOhost Searching Tips An useful guide about how to best search EBSCOhost databases
• ProQuest Database Search Tips An useful guide about how to best search ProQuest databases
• Are you working on an emerging topic? You are not likely to find many sources, which is good because you are trying to prove that this is a topic that needs more research. But, it is not enough to say that you found few or no articles on your topic in your field. You need to look broadly to other disciplines (also known as triangulation ) to see if your research topic has been studied from other perspectives as a way to validate the uniqueness of your research question.
• Are you working on something that has been studied extensively? Then you are going to find many sources and you will want to limit how far you want to look back. Use limiters to eliminate research that may be dated and opt to search for resources published within the last 5-10 years.
• Want to keep track of your searches , send alerts to your email when new articles in your topic are available? Create an account in any of our databases!

Following the Citation Trail!

Many databases today have special featured that show you how many times an article was cited by and by who and offer you links to those articles.

See below some recommended resources:

The UC has partnered with Google Scholar to allow our users to click on the familiar "Get it at UC" button to reach full text of some items indexed. Use the "Scholar Preferences" link and select "University of California, Santa Barbara - Get it at UC" before saving your preferences.

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Primary Sources - Literature: Home

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Finding Primary Sources

Primary sources in literature are original, uninterpreted information (often, but not exclusively textual) relevant to a literary research topic. Examples include original works of fiction, art, or music; letters; diaries; interviews; or even works of criticism.

The key question to ask when trying to classify a source as primary versus secondary is how you intend to use it . If a work was written or created during the time period that you are researching, it can be used as a primary source.

For example:

A 1922 review of T. S. Eliot's The Waste Land would be considered a secondary source if your project is an analysis of Eliot's poem, but would be a primary source if your topic is the critical reception of Eliot's works, or the perception of modernism as a literary style in the 1920s.

Visit Special Collections to use original texts in print or manuscript.

Subject Librarian

Image via avrenim_acceber at Flickr , used under Creative Commons license.

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Literature Review: Lit Review Sources

• Lit Review Types
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• AI for Research This link opens in a new window

Where do I find information for a literature review?

Research is done by...

...by way of...

...communicated through...

...and organized in...

Types of sources for a review...

• Primary source: Usually a report by the original researchers of a study (unfiltered sources)
• Secondary source: Description or summary by somebody other than the original researcher, e.g. a review article (filtered sources)
• Conceptual/theoretical: Papers concerned with description or analysis of theories or concepts associated with the topic
• Anecdotal/opinion/clinical: Views or opinions about the subject that are not research, review or theoretical (case studies or reports from clinical settings)

A Heirarchy of research information:

Source: SUNY Downstate Medical Center. Medical Research Library of Brooklyn. Evidence Based Medicine Course. A Guide to Research Methods: The Evidence Pyramid: http://library.downstate.edu/EBM2/2100.htm

Life Cycle of Publication

Click image to enlarge

Scientific information has a ‘life cycle’ of its own… it is born as an idea, and then matures and becomes more available to the public. First it appears within the so-called ‘invisible college’ of experts in the field, discussed at conferences and symposia or posted as pre-prints for comments and corrections. Then it appears in the published literature (the primary literature), often as a journal article in a peer-reviewed journal.

Researchers can use the indexing and alerting services of the secondary literature to find out what has been published in a field. Depending on how much information is added by the indexer or abstracter, this may take a few months (though electronic publication has sped up this process). Finally, the information may appear in more popular or reference sources, sometimes called the tertiary literature.

The person beginning a literature search may take this process in reverse: using tertiary sources for general background, then going to the secondary literature to survey what has been published, following up by finding the original (primary) sources, and generating their own research Idea.

(Original content by Wade Lee-Smith)

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Ten Simple Rules for Writing a Literature Review

Marco pautasso.

1 Centre for Functional and Evolutionary Ecology (CEFE), CNRS, Montpellier, France

2 Centre for Biodiversity Synthesis and Analysis (CESAB), FRB, Aix-en-Provence, France

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,

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] .

• 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.

Funding Statement

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.

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Literature Review Basics

• Primary & Secondary Sources
• Literature Review Introduction
• Writing Literature Reviews
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The Literature

The Literature refers to the collection of scholarly writings on a topic. This includes peer-reviewed articles, books, dissertations and conference papers.

• When reviewing the literature, be sure to include major works as well as studies that respond to major works. You will want to focus on primary sources, though secondary sources can be valuable as well.

Primary Sources

The term primary source is used broadly to embody all sources that are original. P rimary sources provide first-hand information that is closest to the object of study. Primary sources vary by discipline.

• In the natural and social sciences, original reports of research found in academic journals detailing the methodology used in the research, in-depth descriptions, and discussions of the findings are considered primary sources of information.
• Other common examples of primary sources include speeches, letters, diaries, autobiographies, interviews, official reports, court records, artifacts, photographs, and drawings.  

Galvan, J. L. (2013). Writing literature reviews: A guide for students of the social and behavioral sciences . Glendale, CA: Pyrczak.

Secondary Sources

A secondary source is a source that provides non-original or secondhand data or information. 

• Secondary sources are written about primary sources.
• Research summaries reported in textbooks, magazines, and newspapers are considered secondary sources. They typically provide global descriptions of results with few details on the methodology. Other examples of secondary sources include biographies and critical studies of an author's work.

Secondary Source. (2005). In W. Paul Vogt (Ed.), Dictionary of Statistics & Methodology. (3 rd ed., p. 291). Thousand Oaks, CA: SAGE Publications, Inc.

Weidenborner, S., & Caruso, D. (1997). Writing research papers: A guide to the process . New York: St. Martin's Press.

More Examples of Primary and Secondary Sources

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How to Write a Literature Review: Primary and Secondary Sources

• Writing a Literature Review in APA Format
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• Primary and Secondary Sources
• Basic Research Strategies
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Primary versus Secondary Sources

Primary vs. secondary videos.

Primary, Secondary, & Tertiary Sources The content of research papers may come from different types of sources, such as:

• Your own opinion and analysis
• Primary sources
• Secondary sources
• Tertiary sources

It may not be necessary to include each of these types of sources in every paper you write, but your instructor may require you to include them. It is important to understand the characteristics of primary, secondary and tertiary sources–they each serve a different purpose throughout the research process, and can strengthen your assignment, too.

It can be difficult to figure out if a source is considered primary, secondary, or tertiary. We will explain the differences and provide examples of each in this tutorial. If you are still not sure if a source you would like to use is primary, secondary, or tertiary, ask a librarian or teacher.

What is a Primary Source? Primary sources are first-hand, authoritative accounts of an event, topic, or historical time period. They are typically produced at the time of the event by a person who experienced it, but can also be made later on in the form of personal memoirs or oral histories.

Anything that contains original information on a topic is considered a primary source. Usually, primary sources are the object discussed in your paper. For instance, if you are writing an analysis on Upton Sinclair’s The Jungle, the book would be a primary source. But, just because a source is old does not mean it is a primary source.

Some examples of original, first-hand, authoritative accounts include:

• Letters, diaries or journals (Personal thoughts)
• Original photographs
• First-hand newspaper reports
• Speeches, autobiographies
• Creative works like plays, paintings and songs
• Research data and surveys

What is a Secondary Source? Secondary sources interpret or critique primary sources. They often include an analysis of the event that was discussed or featured in the primary source.  They are second-hand accounts that interpret or draw conclusions from one or more primary sources.

Some examples of works that interpret or critique primary sources include:

• Textbooks (May also be considered tertiary)
• Essays or reviews
• Articles that analyze or discuss ideas and events
• Criticisms or commentaries

What is a Tertiary Source? Tertiary sources generally provide an overview or summary of a topic, and may contain both primary and secondary sources. The information is displayed as entirely factual, and does not include analysis or critique.  Tertiary sources can also be collections of primary and secondary sources, such as databases, bibliographies and directories.

Some examples of sources that provide a summary or collection of a topic include:

• Textbooks (May also be considered secondary)
• Bibliographies or abstracts
• Wikipedia articles
• Encyclopedias

Using Primary, secondary and Tertiary Sources in Research Let’s say you are writing a research paper on the Equal Rights Amendment (ERA) of 1972, but you are unfamiliar with it. A good place to gather a general idea or understanding of the ERA would be a tertiary source, such as Wikipedia or the Encyclopedia Britannica. There, you can read a summary of events on its history, key people involved, and legislation.

To find more in-depth analysis on the Equal Rights Amendment, you consult a secondary source: the nonfiction book Why We Lost the ERA by Jane Mansbridge and a newspaper article from the 1970’s that discuss and review the legislation. These provide a more focused analysis of the Equal Rights Amendment that you can include as sources in your paper (make sure you cite them!).  A primary source that could bolster your research would be a government document detailing the ERA legislation that initially passed in Congress, giving a first-hand account of the legislation that went through the House and Senate in 1972.

This video provides a great overview of primary and secondary sources: [ youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v= PgfQC4d3pKc &w=420&h=315]

Source:  http://content.easybib.com/students/research-guide/primary-secondary-tertiary-sources/

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Researching for your literature review: Literature reviews

• Literature sources
• Before you start
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All research, whatever the discipline, needs to be situated in relation to what has already been done in the field.

Reviewing the literature helps you:

• find out what is already known about a topic in order to locate gaps and justify the research being undertaken
• locate the work of important theorists whose ideas will inform the research
• identify useful methodologies, methods and documentary sources

Literature search process

For comprehensive literature searching it is important to be systematic in your approach. This includes developing a plan for your search (including the search terms you will use and the resources you will search), and keeping records of the searches you carry out. The process is listed in steps below, but much of it is iterative rather than linear.

Literature Review versus Systematic Review

You might have heard the term 'Systematic Review'. A systematic review goes further than a literature review in that it aims to locate and evaluate all studies, published and unpublished, relevant to a specific research question. 

Systematic reviews use explicit, systematic methods to minimise bias and enable verification and replication. Those produced by the Cochrane Library are often considered to be the 'gold standard'. For more information on systematic reviews please see the Library's Systematic Review guide.

A typology of reviews: an analysis of 14 review types and associated methodologies

Meeting the review family: exploring review types and associated information retrieval requirements

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Literature Reviews

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Director for Research & Instruction

Primary Sources are the Leading Edge

Primary sources are the leading edge of research-- the first discussion of what is going on in the field, in the sciences and sometimes in the social sciences. They will use other publications as support, but contribute new knowledge to the scholarly conversation. But historians and scholars of literature and art think of primary works differently-- see below.

What's a Primary Source? Information in the Various Disciplines

What is considered a primary source varies somewhat by discipline. In any case, think of a primary source as first-hand knowledge, eyewitness accounts, reports or testimony about (X topic).

In the fields commonly considered sciences, a primary source is the first report of research, published as a journal article, a research report or conference proceeding, or if extensive, a book or book chapter. They include methodology, data and results, and discussion.

In social sciences, such as anthropology, ethnography, psychology, sociology or social work, a primary source may be the first report of research, especially of empirical studies, or, since some areas of these fields depend on direct observation of behavior or analysis of interviews or personal narratives, the products of this analysis may still be considered a primary work. For history, and in some other disciplines, a primary source is a letter, a diary, speech, lecture, piece of legislation, document or manuscript-- an original source which forms the basis of secondary work. A narrative is a personal account, by a single individual, of a period of time or an event. In the arts, a primary source may be a piece of art, such as a painting or sculpture, a musical score, a poem, a book or chapter, or an essay--whatever is directly created by the artist, writer, photographer, etc.

A secondary source is based on other sources. It includes analysis, criticism, or other intellectual input. Review articles are based on analysis of the published 'literature' (books, articles and dissertations about the topic). Secondary sources can include books, book chapters, articles, especially literature reviews, and some book reviews.

A tertiary source is commonly a resource or tool that helps people find primary or secondary sources. Tertiary sources include most bibliographies, databases and indexes, and library catalogs.

What are Primary Sources?

Here's a great definition from the American Library Association:

"Primary sources are original records created at the time historical events occurred or well after events in the form of memoirs and oral histories. Primary sources may include letters, manuscripts, diaries, journals, newspapers, speeches, interviews, memoirs, documents produced by government agencies such as Congress or the Office of the President, photographs, audio recordings, moving pictures or video recordings, research data, and objects or artifacts such as works of art or ancient roads, buildings, tools, and weapons. These sources serve as the raw material to interpret the past, and when they are used along with previous interpretations by historians, they provide the resources necessary for historical research."

-- Using Primary Sources on the Web , rev. 2008.

Peer-reviewed/Scholarly?

Peer review is the process by which articles or other works are critiqued before they are published. Authors send articles to an editor, who decides whether the work should be forwarded to reviewers for the journal. The most stringent form is anonymous or blind review, where neither the author nor the reviewers know whose work is being examined by whom. This helps reduce bias.

Reviewers are usually well-published researchers and experts. They return the articles to the editor with remarks and recommendations-- usually publish as is (rare), publish if edited or changed in specific ways, or don't publish. Editors most often go with the recommendation of the majority of the reviewers.

The process is intended to improve the studies published-- more eyes on a project, and one's reputation on the line with peers, tends to improve the quality of what's published. There are cases where it hasn't worked, and critics of the peer review cycle (some claim that it limits innovative studies, among other issues), but it is the best system that has been developed to this point.

Peer-reviewed or referreed or scholarly are often descriptions used interchangably for reputable journals. Not all scholarly journals are peer-reviewed, but many are.

• A Retrospective Self-critique by One Scholar of His Own Studies--Food for Thought
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Organizing Your Social Sciences Research Paper: The Literature Review

• Purpose of Guide
• Writing a Research Proposal
• Design Flaws to Avoid
• Independent and Dependent Variables
• Narrowing a Topic Idea
• Broadening a Topic Idea
• The Research Problem/Question
• Academic Writing Style
• Choosing a Title
• Making an Outline
• Paragraph Development
• The C.A.R.S. Model
• Background Information
• Theoretical Framework
• Citation Tracking
• Evaluating Sources
• Reading Research Effectively
• Primary Sources
• Secondary Sources
• What Is Scholarly vs. Popular?
• Is it Peer-Reviewed?
• Qualitative Methods
• Quantitative Methods
• Common Grammar Mistakes
• Writing Concisely
• Avoiding Plagiarism [linked guide]
• Annotated Bibliography
• Grading Someone Else's Paper

A literature review surveys 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 explored while researching a particular topic and to demonstrate to your readers how your research fits within a larger field of study.

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.

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.

Integrative 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 that become part of the lore of 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.

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.

Structure and Writing Style

I.  Thinking About Your Literature Review

The structure of a literature review should include the following :

• 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?
• Value -- 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 Stages 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 very specific about what form your literature review should take, seek clarification from your professor by asking these questions: 1.  Roughly how many sources should I 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? 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 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 your job easier if you first limit scope of the research problem. A good strategy is to begin by searching the HOMER catalog for 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

Thematic [“conceptual categories”] 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 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 will still be organized chronologically reflecting technological developments in media. The only difference here between a "chronological" and a "thematic" approach is what is emphasized the most: the role of the Internet in presidential politics. Note however 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 made.

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 okay 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, not common knowledge, or taken directly from the study. Do not use extensive quotes as a substitute for your own summary and interpretation of 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. 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 relevent 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 the Web of Science [a.k.a., Web of Knowledge] Citation database and Google Scholar to identify who has subsequently cited leading scholars already identified in your literature review. 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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Finding Examples

It may be useful to look at other reviews to learn how researchers in the field "summarize and synthesize" the literature. Most research article or dissertation in the sciences will include a section which reviews the literature. Though the section may not be labeled as such, you will quickly recognize it by the number of citations and the discussion of the literature. Another option is to look for Review Articles, which are literature reviews as a stand alone article. Here are some resources where you can find Research Articles, Review Articles and Dissertations:

• Articles+ - Due to the interdisciplinary nature of gender & sexuality studies Articles+ can be a great place to start your research. Please make use of the filters on the left-hand side of the screen to help refine your searches. 
• Gender Studies Database  & LGBT Thought and Culture - Gender Studies Database & LGBT Though and Culture have a large corpus of reviews and research articles. As with Articles+ make sure to take advantage of the filters (type of publication, publication date) to help refine your searches. 
• Google Scholar   - Using the Cited By feature, hyperlinked below the search results, you can trace the scholarly conversation moving forward. 
• Dissertations @ Princeton - Provides access to many Princeton dissertations, full text is available for most published after 1996.
• Purdue OWL - The Purdue OWL site provides tips and examples of literature reviews and is a great source for reviewing citation styles 

*** Note about using Review Articles in your research - while they are useful in helping you to locate articles on your topic, remember that you must go to and use the original source if you intend to include a study mentioned in the review. The only time you would cite a review article is if they have made an original insight in their work that you talk about in your paper. Going to the original research paper allows you to verify the information about that study and determine whether the points made in the review are valid and accurate.

What is a literature review?

A literature review surveys scholarly articles, books and other sources relevant to a particular issue, area of research, or theory. The purpose is to offer an overview of significant literature published on a topic.

A literature review may constitute an essential chapter of a thesis or dissertation, or may be a self-contained review of writings on a subject. In either case, its purpose is to:

• Place each work in the context of its contribution to the understanding of the subject under review
• Describe the relationship of each work to the others under consideration
• Identify new ways to interpret, and shed light on any gaps in, previous research
• Resolve conflicts amongst seemingly contradictory previous studies
• Identify areas of prior scholarship to prevent duplication of effort
• Point the way forward for further research
• Place one's original work (in the case of theses or dissertations) in the context of existing literature

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.

Similar to primary research, development of the literature review requires four stages:

• Problem formulation—which topic or field is being examined and what are its component issues?
• Literature search—finding materials relevant to the subject being explored
• Data evaluation—determining which literature makes a significant contribution to the understanding of the topic
• Analysis and interpretation—discussing the findings and conclusions of pertinent literature

Remember, this is a process and not necessarily a linear one. As you search and evaluate the literature, you may refine your topic or head in a different direction which will take you back to the search stage. In fact, it is useful to evaluate as you go along so you don't spend hours researching one aspect of your topic only to find yourself more interested in another.

The main focus of an academic research paper is to develop a new argument, and a research paper will 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.

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Topic Guide - Developing Your Research Study

• Purpose of Guide
• Flaws to Avoid
• Independent and Dependent Variables
• Glossary of Research Terms
• Reading Research Effectively
• Narrowing a Topic Idea
• Broadening a Topic Idea
• Extending the Timeliness of a Topic Idea
• Academic Writing Style
• Choosing a Title
• Making an Outline
• Paragraph Development
• APA 7th Edition
• Executive Summary
• The C.A.R.S. Model
• Background Information
• The Research Problem/Question
• Theoretical Framework

Importance of a Good Literature Review

Types of Literature Reviews

Structure and Writing Style

Writing tip, another writing tip, yet another writing tip.

• Citation Tracking
• Content Alert Services
• Evaluating Sources
• Primary Sources
• Secondary Sources
• Tiertiary Sources
• What Is Scholarly vs. Popular?
• Qualitative Methods
• Quantitative Methods
• Using Non-Textual Elements
• Limitations of the Study
• 10. Proofreading Your Paper
• Writing Concisely
• Common Grammar Mistakes
• Avoiding Plagiarism
• Footnotes or Endnotes?
• Further Readings
• Annotated Bibliography
• Types of Structured Group Activities
• Group Project Survival Skills
• Multiple Book Review Essay
• Reviewing Collected Works
• Writing a Case Study
• Writing a Research Proposal
• Bibliography

A literature review surveys books, scholarly articles, and any other sources relevant to a particular issue, area of research, or theory; thereby, provides a description, summary, and critical evaluation of the works in relation to the research problem being investigated. Literature reviews are designed to provide an overview of sources you have explored while researching a particular topic and to demonstrate to your readers how your research fits within a larger field of study.

Some more thoroughly detailed sources to follow for developing a literature review would be  Conducting Research Literature Reviews  and/or Doing a Literature Review by Chris Hart — both of which are located in our Squires Library collection.

Fink, Arlene. Conducting Research Literature Reviews : From the Internet to Paper . Thousand Oaks, CA: SAGE, 1998.

Hart, Chris.  Doing a literature review : releasing the social science research imagination    London: SAGE, 2005

A literature review may consist of simply a summary of key sources, but in many disciplines, a literature review has an organizational pattern and combines both a summary and a synthesis, often within specific conceptual categories . A summary is a recap of the important information of the source, whereas 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.

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.
• Reveal 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. This is often directly related to the gap(s) revealed .
• Locate your own research idea(s) / intent 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, 2006 The Literature Review: Six Steps to Success . 3rd ed. Thousand Oaks, California : Corwin, 2016.

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 that become part of the lore of 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 imbedded 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.

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.

I.  Thinking About Your Literature Revie w

The structure of a literature review should include the following :

• 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?
• Value -- 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 Stages 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.

This video can be of assistance as it provides direction for literature review planning, processing, and writing -  Video Additionally, the speaker on the previous video, did one on   Literature Review Basics: 7 Major Mistakes To Avoid —  however, beware, this video is so thorough, that it is 1 hr in length.  Either plan an hour or split the time up to view the content in portions.

Address the following matters prior to writing the literature review: Clarify If your assignment is not very specific about what form your literature review should take, seek clarification from your professor by asking these questions:  

1.  Roughly how many sources should I 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?

5.  Should I provide subheadings and other background information, such as definitions and/or a history

6.   Should the literature review address the theoretical framework (theory applied to the intended study)?

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 attain a sense of the various themes you might want to look for in your own research or to identify ways to organize your final review. The reference section of sources you have already read are also excellent entry points into your own research. Narrow the Topic The narrower the topic of your study, the easier it will be to limit the source content types you need to read in order to develop a good survey of relevant resources. Your professor will probably not expect you to read everything that's available about the topic, This is often because a limitation placed on the years of publications referenced. You will make your job easier if you first limit the scope of the research problem. A good strategy is to begin by searching the general area pertaining to the topic and review the abstracts, which can provide direction. 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”] 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 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 will still be organized chronologically reflecting technological developments in media. The only difference here between a "chronological" and a "thematic" approach is what is emphasized the most: the role of the Internet in presidential politics. Note however 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 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 have 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 but include only what is necessary for the reader to locate your study within the larger scholarship framework.

Here are examples of other sections you may need to include depending on the type of review you write:

• 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.
• Selection Methods : the 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 articles and journals.
• Standards : 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, similar to other academic research papers. 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 often be included in a "further readings" section of the literature review. This should be within your instructor's guidelines, as not all want you to provide such as list. Use Quotes Sparingly Some short quotes are okay 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, not common knowledge, or taken directly from the study. Lastly, it isn't out of the ordinary to find that an author has stated something that you want to reiterate but in the perfect phasing and you can find that a paraphrase will simply not do it as well. When you do quote, always assure that you provide the complete citation [name(s), year, page# / para#] ( if you are not yet familiar, the "para#) is when you are using an online source that is without page numbers - you then list the paragraph the quote came from. ) Lastly, do not use extensive quotes as a substitute for your own summary and interpretation of 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. 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. [name, year]

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;
• Not a sufficient amount of time was taken to define and identify the most relevant sources to use in the literature review related to the research problem;
• The literature review relies exclusively on secondary analytical sources rather than including relevant primary research studies and/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.

Fink, Arlene. Conducting Research Literature Reviews : From the Internet to Paper . Thousand Oaks, CA: SAGE, 1998. Hart, Chris.  Doing a literature review : releasing the social science research imagination    London: SAGE, 2005 Video —  Literature Review Basics: 7 Major Mistakes To Avoid

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, 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.

Menken, S. B. J., (Ed.). An introduction to interdisciplinary research: Theory and practice . Amsterdam : Amsterdam University Press, 2016.

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.

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. 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.

Sutton, Anthea. Systematic Approaches to a Successful Literature Review . Los Angeles, CA: Sage Publications, 2016.

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Indigenous Studies

• Background Sources
• Scholarly Articles & Databases

Primary Sources

Subcollections in primary source databases, digital collections, modern news sources, leni-lenape primary sources: colonial narratives, leni-lenape primary sources: oral histories.

• Research and Writing Resources
• Lenni-Lenape Resources

In humanities disciplines like history and literature, a primary source is an item produced from the time you are researching (e.g., photographs, a letters, newspaper articles, government documents).  Looking at actual sources from a specific time helps you get a firsthand account of what was happening then.

In the sciences and social sciences, research data and original research studies are also considered primary sources.

Secondary sources provide analysis of primary sources (e.g., scholarly articles and books).

(Rowan login required)

• History Vault: American Indians and the American West, 1809-1971) (Primary Sources - Proquest) Collections from the U.S. National Archives and the Chicago History Museum, as well as first-hand accounts on Indian Wars and westward migration
• Indian Claims Insight (Primary Sources - Proquest) Legal histories and documents related to Indian claims and compiled histories for Indian Nation/Tribes
• Native Americans in History: Part I: Newspaper, 1728-1922 (Accessible Archives)
• Native Americans in History: Part II: Books, 1663-1928 (Accessible Archives)
• North American Indian Thought and Culture (Primary Sources - Proquest) Primary source materials representing historical moments as experienced by those who lived through them
• North American Indian Drama (Primary Sources - Proquest) Plays by 48 American Indian and First Nation playwrights from the twentieth century. Over half of these works are rare or previously unpublished.
• Indigenous Newspapers in North America (AM Explorer) Two centuries of indigenous print journalism from the US and Canada
• Indigenous Histories and Cultures in North America(AM Explorer) Primary source materials dating from the earliest contact with European settlers to the mid-twentieth century
• Empire Online This link opens in a new window Primary source materials in world history. more... less... This resource brings together manuscript, printed and visual primary source materials for the study of 'Empire' and its theories, practices and consequences. The materials span across the last five centuries and are accompanied by a host of secondary learning resources including scholarly essays, maps and an interactive chronology.
• Ethnic NewsWatch This link opens in a new window News, magazine, and journal articles from the ethnic, minority and native press. more... less... An interdisciplinary, bilingual (English and Spanish) comprehensive full text database of the newspapers, magazines and journals of the ethnic, minority and native press. Coverage begins in 1990.
• HeinOnline This link opens in a new window Comprehensive coverage of more than 2,000 journals and the Congressional Record. more... less... Complete coverage of the U.S. Reports back to 1754, constitutions for every country in the world, classic books from the 18th & 19th centuries, all United States Treaties, the Federal Register and CFR from inception.
• American Indians of the Pacific Northwest Collection Photographs, documents, and maps about the Northwest Coast and Plateau Indian cultures and related essays by anthropologists, histories, and teachers. From the University of Washington.
• Archives Library Information Center: Native Americans (National Archives) Includes digital collections, genealogical resources, laws and treaties, and more.
• Association on American Indian Affairs Records, 1851-2016 (mostly 1922-1995) Physical and digitized materials available from Princeton University. Select "Only show materials containing online content" to limit to digitized materials.
• Chief George Manuel Memorial Indigenous Library Contains documents, reports, and publications from indigenous nations in North America and the world. Established in 1979 as a document repository, in response to a resolution of the Conference of Tribal Governments.
• Chronicling America: Historic American Newspapers - Indians of North America A project of the National Endowmen for the Humanities and the Library of Congress.
• Duke Collection of American Indian Oral History Typescripts of interviews from 1967-1972 with Native Americans in Oklahoma
• Early Americas Digital Archive Texts written in or about the Americas from 1492 to 1820
• First Nations Collection, Southern Oregon Digital Archives Documents, books, and artilces on the indigenous people of the region.
• Images of North Americans Illustrations from rare books, magazines, newspapers, an ephemera; photographs; and other visual materials. Materials reflect European interpretations of Native Americans. From the University of California - Berkeley.
• Indigenous Studies Portal Research Tool (University of Saskatchewan) A database of full text primary and secondary sources focused primarily on Indigenous peoples of Canada and secondarily on North American materials.
• Library of Congress "American Indians" subject search
• Library of Congress: "Native Americans" subject search
• Native American and Indigenous History and Culture, Smithsonian Institute Selected collections.
• Native American Heritage Month: Exhilbitions and Collections Featured archival materials from the Library of Congress, the National Endowment for the Humanities, the Smithsonian Institute, and more.
• Native Voices: Native Peoples' Concepts of Health and Illness Includes exhibition materials, inteviews, and an historical timeline. From the U.S. National Library of Medicine.
• Oklahoma State University Library Digital Collections Many of OSU's digital collections concentrate on Native American history. Search the collections using terms like 'Native American.' (Note: Many of the Lenape people indigenous to New Jersey relocated to Oklahoma.)
• The Trail of Tears through Arkansas Eyewitness accounts, letters, removal claim documents, and background information about the Trail of Tears through Arkansas. From the University of Arkansas - Little Rock.
• Treaties between the United States and Native Americans (The Avalon Project) From Lillian Goldman Law Library, Yale Law School.
• Tribal Treaties Database (Oklahoma State Univeristy Libraries) Includes agreements between tribal nations and the United States (1778-1886). A project of Oklahoma State University Library, the U.S. Department of Agriculture, and the Department of the Interior.
• Tribal Writers Digital Library (Sequoyah National Research Center) Features out-of-print literary works of American Indians, Alaska natives, and First Nations people of Canada
• Indian Country Today An independent news source and public media broadcast serving Indigenous communities
• Indian Country (Al Jazeera)
• Native News Online

• Geographia Americae : with an account of the Delaware Indians : based on surveys and notes made in 1654-1656 by Peter Lindestrom Call Number: Special Collections F167 .L73 Publication Date: 1925

Oral histories are important sources of history and narrative in many Native American cultures and traditions. These examples bring to the forefront Indigenous perspectives and traditions.

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• Last Updated: Jun 28, 2024 8:42 AM
• URL: https://libguides.rowan.edu/indigenous_studies

• Open access
• Published: 22 June 2024

BETTER LIFE- guidelines for chronic disease preventive care for people aged 18–39 years: a literature review

• Nasheed Moqueet 1 ,
• Sylvie D. Cornacchi 2 ,
• Jesmin Antony 3 ,
• Ielaf Khalil 4 ,
• Donna Manca 5 ,
• Carolina Fernandes 5 ,
• Lawrence Paszat 6 ,
• Kris Aubrey-Bassler 7 ,
• Eva Grunfeld 8 , 13 ,
• Nicolette Sopcak 5 ,
• Andrew Pinto 9 ,
• Jill Konkin 5 ,
• Candace Nykiforuk 10 ,
• Linda Rabeneck 11 ,
• Peter Selby 12 , 13 ,
• Becky Wall 14 ,
• Mary Ann O’Brien 13   na1 &
• Aisha Lofters 3 , 13   na1  

BMC Primary Care volume  25 , Article number:  224 ( 2024 ) Cite this article

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The original ‘BETTER’ (Building on Existing Tools To Improve Chronic Disease Prevention and Screening in Primary Care) approach consisted of a prevention-focused visit between participants aged 40–65 years and a “Prevention Practitioner” (PP), who empowered the participant to set achievable prevention and screening goals for cancers and chronic diseases. BETTER was successfully adapted for economically deprived communities (BETTER HEALTH) in Canada. Our objective was to conduct a review of guidelines in preparation for adapting the ‘BETTER HEALTH’ approach for younger adults aged 18–39 years living with lower income, a group known to have earlier mortality due to a higher prevalence of preventable chronic diseases than their peers with higher income.

We searched multiple electronic databases and grey literature for clinical practice guidelines on prevention/screening and included those that met the following criteria: published in English from 2008–2020 in Canada or any of the following countries (Australia, Ireland, New Zealand, Scotland, United States and England); and addressed prevention or screening. We assessed quality using the Appraisal of Guidelines for Research and Evaluation (AGREE) II tool and extracted data (publication details, recommendations, and Quality/Level of evidence as reported by authors) from sources with overall scores of 5 or higher. Final recommendations were compiled after harmonization with input from diverse stakeholders (co-investigators, PPs, and the Community Advisory Committee).

We included a total of 85 guidelines, and developed a final list of 42 recommendations for 18–39 year-olds across 21 topics. Specific recommendations fell under the following topics: cancers, cardiovascular disease, diabetes, obesity, lifestyle (alcohol; healthy nutrition/physical activity); healthy relationships and healthy sexuality, immunization, oral health, social determinants of health, and substance use .

We identified evidence-based guidelines on individual-level prevention/screening actions for adults 18–39 years old and relevant for those living with lower income which will directly inform development and implementation of the BETTER LIFE intervention.

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Introduction

Despite the existence of strong evidence for lifestyle modifications and for screening and preventive actions to improve health outcomes, an implementation gap exists due to limited physician time [ 1 ], conflicting/unclear guidelines, and difficulties inherent to sustained behaviour change [ 2 ]. The original BETTER (Building on Existing Tools To Improve Chronic Disease Prevention and Screening in Primary Care) intervention was designed to address this gap by providing an integrated approach to increasing uptake of chronic disease prevention and screening (CDPS) actions using a framework of shared decision-making between patient and practitioner. In a pragmatic cluster randomised control trial (RCT), the BETTER approach improved the uptake of CDPS actions against heart disease, diabetes and several cancers (colorectal, breast and cervical cancers) by 32.5% in urban primary care settings in Alberta and Ontario, Canada [ 2 , 3 ]. The intervention consisted of an individual prevention-focussed visit between participants aged 40–65 years and a “Prevention Practitioner” (PP), who used principles of motivational interviewing to empower the participant to set achievable prevention and screening goals, based on the harmonization of evidence, which were then recorded in a goals sheet and a personalized ‘prevention prescription’.

There have been subsequent modifications of the BETTER approach with similar positive results. ‘BETTER 2’ targeted the same age group as the original BETTER but modified the approach for different populations due to equity concerns, including individuals from rural, lower income, or historically marginalized backgrounds in Newfoundland and Labrador and the Northwest Territories, Canada [ 4 ]. Subsequently, BETTER WISE (Building on Existing Tools to Improve Cancer and Chronic Disease Prevention and Screening in Primary Care for Wellness of Cancer Survivors and Patients) tailored the BETTER approach for cancer survivors (breast, colorectal, prostate) aged 40–65 and also included screening for poverty, as well as an updated literature review to recommend specific prevention and screening actions [ 5 ]. Another modified version, BETTER HEALTH: Durham used a public health-led model with public health nurses serving as PPs for 40–64 year-olds living with lower income in Durham, Ontario, and found a 53% increase in completed health actions (immediate intervention, n = 60 vs. wait-listed arm, n = 66) [ 6 , 7 ]. Although there were positive results for this age group, the community advisory group for BETTER HEALTH: Durham suggested that starting the intervention at 40 years of age was too late for people living with low income, where evidence shows an earlier onset of chronic diseases [ 8 ]. We aimed to adapt the BETTER HEALTH: Durham intervention to a new population of adults aged 18–39 years living with low income, a group known to have earlier mortality due to, and higher prevalence of, preventable chronic diseases than their peers with higher income.

To support the adaptation, we conducted a review of guidelines to identify and assess prevention and screening actions for health issues and risk factors amenable to individual change for the 18–39 year age group. This paper describes the methods and results of the literature review.

Overview of search strategy

First, we assessed the data sources (clinical practice guidelines) from the most recent BETTER WISE study [ 9 ], which had entailed a rigorous evidence review process to recommend specific prevention and screening actions, for applicability to adults aged 18–39 years.Then, we used a structured grey literature search of specific repositories and websites to find relevant clinical practice guidelines for new topics suggested by the research team. If guidelines were unavailable for these topics, we performed a systematic literature search in the databases Ovid Medline, CINAHL (Cumulated Index to Nursing and Allied Health Literature), and the Cochrane Database of Systematic Reviews to identify systematic reviews/meta-analyses. Thus, our search and eligibility criteria for new sources was restricted to clinical practice guidelines (i.e. excluding systematic reviews, meta-analyses, and review of reviews when guidelines were found) and expanded to allow systematic reviews and meta-analyses when guidelines were not available (See Fig.  1 ).

Search strategy for guidelines for BETTER LIFE

Search strategy for topics of interest

To create the overall search strategy, we consulted an experienced information specialist (CZ). We used different combinations of key words such as ‘guidelines’, ‘chronic disease prevention’, ‘prevention’, ‘clinical practice guidelines’, and ‘screening’ with terms from topics of interest from previous versions of BETTER ( cardiovascular disease, diabetes, cancer, obesity, diet and nutrition, physical activity, smoking/tobacco and alcohol use) and new topics suggested by the wider research team (co-investigators, PPs, Community Advisory Committee (CAC)) due to their importance for our target population (See Supp Table  1 ).

Search sources

We conducted a structured search in repositories of guidelines at the provincial level (Ontario, Alberta, Newfoundland & Labrador): Cancer Care Ontario; Cancer Control Alberta; Eastern Health Cancer Care Program; and national level: Health Canada; Public Health Agency of Canada (PHAC); and the Canadian Task Force on Preventive Health Care (CTFPHC). (Details in Fig.  1 ).

We did not find guidelines for four topics recommended by our study team for our target population ( speeding, texting & driving, seat belts, bullying & cyberbullying). Therefore, we then conducted a systematic search on select databases (Ovid Medline, CINAHL, Cochrane Database of Systematic Reviews) for systematic reviews and meta-analyses published from 2008-August 2020 on these topics.

Inclusion & exclusion criteria

When screening abstracts obtained from our searches, we included articles for full-text review if they met the following criteria: clinical practice guidelines in English only; published from 2008–2020; country of publication was Australia, Canada, England, Ireland, New Zealand, Scotland, or US; included at least one of the identified topics in title or abstract; and addressed prevention or screening.

At full-text screening, we excluded articles if they met any of the following: exclusively focused on management or treatment; exclusively targeted ages not 18–39 years old (i.e., under 18, 40 or older); lacked individual-level recommendations (i.e. contained only macro-level data (e.g. legal, policy)); or lacked evidence of synthesis. With the exception of the four topics covered during the systematic search, we also excluded full-texts if they were systematic reviews, review of reviews, or meta-analyses.

During full-text screening, if multiple eligible sources existed, we used a hierarchical approach to determine inclusion: preference for most recent Canadian guideline/ review and if not available, relevant guidelines from any of 6 aforementioned primarily English-speaking countries of interest. If there were discrepancies or disagreements among guidelines, we searched for and extracted information from primary or common references.

All abstracts and full-texts were uploaded and screened using Covidence [ 10 ].

Quality assessment

We chose AGREE-II for quality assessment since it was developed specifically for assessing quality of existing practice guidelines, unlike GRADE (Grading of Recommendations, Assessment, Development, and Evaluations), which is most suited for developing guidelines de novo and for rating primary sources of evidence for specific outcomes, which was outside the scope of our study. We used a two-step process to assess guideline quality. For the first step, two trained reviewers (NM and SC) independently used a shorter 2-item AGREE-II [ 11 ] rating system to assess the “Rigour of development” (items 7 and 12—‘ Systematic methods were used to search for evidence’ and ‘There is an explicit link between the recommendations and the supporting evidence’ , respectively) on all references. If methodological details were missing from guidelines, we emailed authors or guideline developers to request more information. Both reviewers had to assign a score of 4 or higher (out of 7) on both AGREE-II items for the article to move to full quality assessment with the 23-item AGREE-II tool.

Specifically, the reviewers examined the ‘ Methods ’ section of each guideline to assess the details of systematic methods (Item #7) that were used and consulted any methods papers that governed the overall initiative when available [ 12 , 13 , 14 , 15 , 16 , 17 , 18 , 19 , 20 ]. If the guideline developer did not report any evidence of an independent synthesis as per the first step in the AGREE–II screening process, the guideline was not assessed further. If no Canadian reference met the criteria for the 2-item AGREE-II screening tool on a given topic, the reviewers then assessed the quality of the non-Canadian documents. Disagreement over scores was discussed and a final decision was determined by consensus.

For step 2, two reviewers independently applied the full AGREE-II instrument on all guidelines that passed the 2-item screening. Overall scores of 5 and above (out of 7) by both reviewers were used to move to full data extraction phase. To ensure consistent interpretation of data quality, we pilot tested the full AGREE-II tool on 5 articles that had previously been included in BETTER WISE and that also met the eligibility criteria for BETTER LIFE.

Data extraction

Two reviewers also pilot tested the data extraction form on 5 articles and resolved differences by consensus. Each reviewer independently extracted data from half the included articles and then checked a subset from the other reviewer for consistency, resolving differences by discussion. Extracted data included publication details (issuing body/author, year and country of publication), participant characteristics (target population, age, ethnicity, socioeconomic metrics, identified risk factors, clinical context) and guideline details (individual-level recommendations, quality of supporting evidence, and whether conflict of interest was declared or not).

Harmonization and synthesis of extracted data

The extracted data were grouped by topics. Each article was assigned to two reviewers who independently either categorized recommendations for inclusion in BETTER LIFE or excluded them if they were duplicative, out of scope, or not actionable (See Fig.  2 ).

Harmonization process for BETTER LIFE

The reviewers met to discuss and assign a final primary categorization to each recommendation with the overall team meeting to resolve differences if there was no agreement between reviewers. The senior co-authors (AL and MAO) reviewed the categorizations, clarified unclear recommendations and identified specific recommendations for further review from content experts/co-investigators in the BETTER team.

Harmonization and synthesis

We followed a similar harmonization process to Campbell-Sherer et al [ 9 ] within an overarching ADAPT-ITT framework [ 21 ].

All the co-investigators and PPs in the BETTER team were invited to provide input on topics in which they had expertise and asked to rank the newly included recommendations in an online survey (Qualtrics, Provo, UT), with the goal of reaching consensus on the top ranked (most relevant) recommendations. Recommendations ranked with a mean of 90% or above were included, while those that were that consistently ranked low (mean of less than 75%) were removed. For topics with multiple individual recommendations with mean scores of 80–89%, we combined, summarized and simplified the multiple recommendations where it seemed appropriate to do so and included them.

After the harmonization process, we compiled the final list of recommendations and topics into a table and also grouped all related included topics into existing or new ‘domains’ for data visualization.

There were 864 abstracts, of which 762 were unique. Of these, 435 were moved to the full-text phase and assessed for inclusion. One hundred and eighty-five guidelines met the inclusion criteria for quality assessment (Fig.  3 a).

a  Summary flow from literature search to full-text review for quality assessment. b  Quality assessment of guidelines using the AGREE-II instrument to the data extraction stage

From the 150 guidelines included in BETTER WISE that were published in 2008 or later, 40 guidelines were applicable to the 18–39 year age group, of which 14 had been updated since inclusion in BETTER WISE. Newer versions were available for the following 8 topics: cancers (breast, cervical, colorectal), CVD, diabetes, obesity, lifestyle (alcohol; healthy nutrition/physical activity) .

From the search for topics for which there were no identified guidelines (speeding, texting and driving, seat belts, bullying and cyberbullying) , 213 papers were uploaded into Covidence after removing duplicates. However, all the papers on these topics were excluded at various stages.

One hundred and eighty-five guidelines were eligible for quality screening (Fig.  3 b). After exclusion at various stages, 93 guidelines were rated with the 2-item AGREE-II. Of these, 75 were rated with the full AGREE-II tool and 58 papers (77%, 58/75) were scored 5 or higher by both reviewers.

We extracted data from 85 guidelines (58 were new guidelines and 27 were from previous versions of BETTER). Of the 38 new topics (Supp Table  1 ), 22 were relevant to the 18–39 year age group (Supp Table 2).

Of the 19 colleagues invited, 9 responded, reporting expertise on atleast one of the topics on the list (between 1–8 respondents provided ranking on each of the various new recommendations). At the harmonization stage, the team removed the topic ‘ falls/injury prevention’ as the recommendation was deemed not in scope for the 18–39 age group.

Due to low ranking scores from Co-investigators, we removed 6 topics from inclusion in the final BETTER LIFE recommendations ( intimate partner violence, sexual health, skin cancer, sleep, violence, vitamins ). We also excluded hepatitis C as only one co-investigator provided a ranking for this recommendation, and the recommendation was to not screen for hepatitis C. On the advice of the research team, we also included screening for Adverse Childhood Experiences (ACE) [ 22 , 23 ].

Based on the results of the data extraction and harmonization, the final list of topics contained 42 recommendations for 18–39 year-olds across 21 total topics (Table  1 ). We grouped the final list of topics into existing or new domains (See Supp Fig.  1 ).

The CDPS recommendations for heart disease and colorectal and breast cancers were only targeted to those deemed ‘high-risk’ (based on various clinical criteria such as family history) in the 18–39 age group. For most of the new topics, we also identified specific maneuvers or screening questions/tools that could be incorporated into the BETTER visits or into BETTER tools.

We used a structured search of published and grey literature, and a systematic search of specific databases to compile recent evidence from clinical practice guidelines on risk factors and individual prevention and screening actions relevant to adults aged 18–39 years, particularly those living with low income, in Canada. We also obtained input from our co-investigators, a team of experts in primary care, public health, the social determinants of health, and the BETTER program. Through this process, we were able to identify 42 recommendations within 21 total topics that will be applied in the BETTER LIFE approach for younger adults living with low income.

Some topics and health recommendations from previous BETTER versions were updated or included, such as those addressing diabetes, cardiovascular disease, cancer, smoking, alcohol, nutrition, and exercise . Risk assessments for diabetes, cardiovascular disease and most cancers were similar for those aged 18–39 years old as with previous versions of BETTER, though routine screening was only recommended for those deemed high risk (with the exception of cervical cancer screening). We found evidence-based guidelines addressing new topics relevant specifically to 18–39 year olds grouped into the following new domains: healthy relationships and healthy sexuality, immunization, oral health, social determinants of health, and substance use . Some recommendations in BETTER LIFE were similar to those published by others [ 97 , 98 , 99 ], though the recency, diversity, and sources of our search; our harmonization and implementation process, as well as the definition of our target population were different. For example, Persaud et. al. developed 15 preventive care recommendations and 1 policy recommendation that promote health equity in Canada. Although their work and ours both prioritize health equity in primary care, Persaud et al. did not have any age restrictions on their target population nor a primary focus on uptake of individual-level preventive actions. They also utilized systematic reviews, primary research articles and randomized controlled trials to develop recommendations using a GRADE approach. Because we prioritized recommendations that were individually actionable, supported by evidence that met our criteria, and ranked highly by content experts, topics like vitamins and skin cancer prevention were eventually omitted. Although we ultimately excluded skin cancer , this topic is an important one in many countries such as Australia [ 100 ].

Taking specific contexts into account is important when determining how best to implement and support uptake of the recommendations. For some new topics, we found stronger evidence for resources and screening tools for PPs than for specific recommendations (e.g. the National Institute on Drug Abuse (NIDA) Quick Screen or the Alcohol, Smoking and Substance Involvement Screening Test (ASSIST) for substance use ). PPs identified local community resources for some new health topics ( parenting; substance use; oral health ) which could help to support participants achieve recommended actions. They also suggested considering social contexts as opportunities for engagement, e.g. by focusing conversations in BETTER LIFE visits on the concepts of health promotion or meaningful overall health and social well-being rather than explicit chronic disease prevention; by using different media for sharing health information (e.g. mobile apps, social media or online resources); by considering social contexts as barriers or enablers of behaviour change, especially regarding physical activity, alcohol, substance use ; or by taking life stage into account (single adult vs. parenting).

Our study had several strengths and limitations. Our strengths include a rigorous critical appraisal of the literature with a two-step quality assessment process and independent review that ensured that only guidelines that met high methodological rigour and transparency were included for data extraction and harmonization; focus on actionable recommendations (e.g. goal-setting, access/referral to community resources); and meaningful collaborations with diverse community, public health, and clinical experts. However, all the guidelines were published prior to the COVID-19 pandemic, so did not take pandemic-related disruptions and health impact into account. COVID-19 has exacerbated health and economic inequities and disproportionately affected racialized and low income groups with a higher risk of exposure due to living and working conditions; higher prevalence of co-morbidities; inequitable access to testing and treatment; and disruption of health services [ 101 , 102 ]. We also relied on consensus to resolve disagreements during the screening process and to formulate the final recommendations as well as on voluntary responses during harmonization which led to varied numbers of reviewers for each recommendation, and which may be subject to bias. However, we used AGREE-II to ensure transparency and careful documentation, and also consulted a wide and diverse range of experts (in primary care, public health, the social determinants of health, Prevention Practitioners, and the Community Advisory Committee) at many stages of the project. Finally, we may have missed guidelines because we targeted our search to specific criteria, repositories, and databases.

Adults living with low income are at increased risk of chronic disease. Through critical literature review and guideline harmonization, we have curated a list of individual-level actionable recommendations relevant to prevention and screening for people aged 18–39 living with low income in English-speaking countries.

Availability of data and materials

Data sharing is not applicable to this article as no datasets were generated or analysed during the current study.

Abbreviations

Adverse Childhood Experiences

Assessment, Decision, Adaptation, Production, Topical Experts, Integration, Training, Testing

Appraisal of Guidelines for Research & Evaluation II

Alcohol, Smoking and Substance Involvement Screening Test

Alcohol Use Disorders Identification Test

Building on Existing Tools To Improve Chronic Disease Prevention and Screening in Primary Care

Building on Existing Tools to Improve Cancer and Chronic Disease Prevention and Screening in Primary Care for Wellness of Cancer Survivors and Patients

Body mass index

Blood pressure

Community Advisory Committee

Chronic disease prevention and screening

Cumulated Index to Nursing and Allied Health Literature

Canadian Task Force on Preventive Health Care

Coronavirus disease 2019

Cardiovascular disease

Estimated glomerular filtration rate

Electronic nicotine delivery systems

Generalized Anxiety Disorder 2-item

Human papillomavirus

Manual office blood pressure device

National Institute on Drug Abuse

Public Health Agency of Canada

Primary care provider

Prevention Practitioner

Randomised control trial

Sexually transmitted infection

United States

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Acknowledgements

Carolyn Ziegler for the systematic search. Jane Ebreo for all administrative support. Kimberly Devotta for project management support. Tutsirai Makuwaza for feedback on the qualitative work on BETTER LIFE. Mary-Anne Pietrusiak for subject matter expertise. Ranya Mistry for Qualtrics survey development support.

This study was funded by a Canadian Institutes of Health Research Catalyst Grant: Disease Prevention and Risk Factor Modification – Non-Communicable Diseases (#428589).

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Mary Ann O’Brien and Aisha Lofters are co-senior authors.

Authors and Affiliations

Public Health Agency of Canada, Ottawa, ON, Canada

Nasheed Moqueet

McMaster University, Hamilton, ON, Canada

Sylvie D. Cornacchi

Women’s College Hospital, 76 Grenville St, Toronto, ON, M5S 1B2, Canada

Jesmin Antony & Aisha Lofters

Lunenfeld-Tanenbaum Research Institute, Sinai Health System, Toronto, ON, Canada

Ielaf Khalil

Department of Family Medicine, University of Alberta, Edmonton, AB, Canada

Donna Manca, Carolina Fernandes, Nicolette Sopcak & Jill Konkin

Sunnybrook Research Institute, Sunnybrook Health Sciences Centre, Toronto, ON, Canada

Lawrence Paszat

Primary Healthcare Research Unit, Memorial University of Newfoundland, St. John’s, NL, Canada

Kris Aubrey-Bassler

Ontario Institute for Cancer Research, Toronto, ON, Canada

Eva Grunfeld

Li Ka Shing Knowledge Institute, St. Michael’s Hospital, Toronto, ON, Canada

Andrew Pinto

School of Public Health, University of Alberta, Edmonton, AB, Canada

Candace Nykiforuk

Institute of Health Policy, Management and Evaluation, University of Toronto, Toronto, ON, Canada

Linda Rabeneck

Centre for Addiction and Mental Health, Toronto, ON, Canada

Peter Selby

Department of Family and Community Medicine, University of Toronto, Toronto, ON, Canada

Eva Grunfeld, Peter Selby, Mary Ann O’Brien & Aisha Lofters

Durham Region Health Department, Whitby, ON, Canada

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NM, SDC, JA, IK, MAO, AL provided substantial contributions to the conception and design of the work (review, data synthesis, data extraction, quality assessment, harmonization); NM, SDC, JA, IK, DM, CF, LP, PS, MAO, AL acquired, analyzed, and interpreted data; NM, SDC, IK, MAO, AL wrote the manuscript;NM, SDC, JA, IK, DM,  CF, LP, KAB, EG, NS, AP, JK, CN, LR, PS, BW, MAO, AL (i.e. all authors) reviewed the manuscript critically for important intellectual content; NM, SDC, JA, IK, DM,  CF, LP, KAB, EG, NS, AP, JK, CN, LR, PS, BW, MAO, AL (i.e. all authors) read and approved the final manuscript.

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Correspondence to Aisha Lofters .

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Moqueet, N., Cornacchi, S.D., Antony, J. et al. BETTER LIFE- guidelines for chronic disease preventive care for people aged 18–39 years: a literature review. BMC Prim. Care 25 , 224 (2024). https://doi.org/10.1186/s12875-024-02471-9

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DOI : https://doi.org/10.1186/s12875-024-02471-9

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Social support as a key factor in chronic pain management programs: a scoping review

• Published: 24 June 2024

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• Chan Gong 1 ,
• Hao Shan 2 ,
• Yuxue Sun 1 ,
• Jiewen Zheng 1 ,
• Chenchen Zhu 1 ,
• Weiquan Zhong 1 ,
• Jiabao Guo 1 &
• Binglin Chen   ORCID: orcid.org/0000-0002-7434-2551 1  

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Chronic pain is a debilitating condition that profoundly and persistently affects individuals’ lives. Managing chronic pain presents complex challenges, and a growing body of literature underscores the pivotal role of social support in its management and its implications for treatment and rehabilitation. Gaining an understanding of the multifaceted aspects of social support in chronic pain management can contribute to the development of more effective interventions and strategies to enhance the lives of those impacted by chronic pain. However, at present, systematic reviews that investigate the correlation between social support and chronic pain are lacking. This paper presents a scoping review of 56 relevant literature sources, with the aim of improving our comprehension of the relationship between chronic pain and social support. The review comprehensively examines common types of evidence, particularly on inconsistencies in research tools within this field of study and divergent concepts of social support related to chronic pain. The paper delves into the correlation model between social support and chronic pain, explores relevant mechanisms, and emphasizes the differences found among relevant studies. By synthesizing these findings, the review emphasizes potential areas for further research and exploration, facilitating future studies and the development of new approaches in this field.

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This work was supported by the Natural Science Foundation of Jiangsu Province (grant no. BK20210907), Medical Research Project of Jiangsu Commission of Health (grant. no. Z2022004) and Research Foundation for Talented Scholars of Xuzhou Medical University (grant no. D2020056).

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Analysis of funding landscape for health policy and systems research in the Eastern Mediterranean Region: A scoping review of the literature over the past decade

• Racha Fadlallah 1 , 2 , 3 ,
• Fadi El-Jardali   ORCID: orcid.org/0000-0002-4084-6524 1 , 3 , 4 ,
• Nesrin Chidiac 3 ,
• Najla Daher 3 &
• Aya Harb 3  

Health Research Policy and Systems volume  22 , Article number:  70 ( 2024 ) Cite this article

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Health policy and systems research (HPSR) can strengthen health systems and improve population health outcomes. In the Eastern Mediterranean Region (EMR), there is limited recognition of the importance of HPSR and funding remains the main challenge. This study seeks to: (1) assess the reporting of funding in HPSR papers published between 2010 and 2022 in the EMR, (2) examine the source of funding in the published HPSR papers in the EMR and (3) explore variables influencing funding sources, including any difference in funding sources for coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19)-related articles.

We conducted a rapid scoping review of HPSR papers published between 2010 and 2022 (inclusively) in the EMR, addressing the following areas: reporting of funding in HPSR papers, source of funding in the published HPSR papers, authors’ affiliations and country of focus. We followed the Joanna Briggs Institute (JBI) guidelines for conducting scoping reviews.

We also conducted univariate and bivariate analyses for all variables at 0.05 significance level.

Of 10,797 articles screened, 3408 were included (of which 9.3% were COVID-19-related). More than half of the included articles originated from three EMR countries: Iran ( n  = 1018, 29.9%), the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia ( n  = 595, 17.5%) and Pakistan ( n  = 360, 10.6%). Approximately 30% of the included articles did not report any details on study funding. Among articles that reported funding ( n  = 1346, 39.5%), analysis of funding sources across all country income groups revealed that the most prominent source was national (55.4%), followed by international (41.7%) and lastly regional sources (3%). Among the national funding sources, universities accounted for 76.8%, while governments accounted for 14.9%. Further analysis of funding sources by country income group showed that, in low-income and lower-middle-income countries, all or the majority of funding came from international sources, while in high-income and upper-middle-income countries, national funding sources, mainly universities, were the primary sources of funding. The majority of funded articles’ first authors were affiliated with academia/university, while a minority were affiliated with government, healthcare organizations or intergovernmental organizations. We identified the following characteristics to be significantly associated with the funding source: country income level, the focus of HPSR articles (within the EMR only, or extending beyond the EMR as part of international research consortia), and the first author’s affiliation. Similar funding patterns were observed for COVID-19-related HPSR articles, with national funding sources (78.95%), mainly universities, comprising the main source of funding. In contrast, international funding sources decreased to 15.8%.

This is the first study to address the reporting of funding and funding sources in published HPSR articles in the EMR. Approximately 30% of HPSR articles did not report on the funding source. Study findings revealed heavy reliance on universities and international funding sources with minimal role of national governments and regional entities in funding HPSR articles in the EMR. We provide implications for policy and practice to enhance the profile of HPSR in the region.

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Introduction

The coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic has demonstrated how vulnerabilities in health systems can have profound implications for health, economic progress, trust in governments and social cohesion [ 1 , 2 , 3 ]. Strengthening the capacity of health systems to respond swiftly and effectively has become a priority for governments worldwide as they emerge from the pandemic [ 4 ]. Health policy and systems research (HPSR) can provide context-relevant knowledge to strengthen health systems and improve population health outcomes [ 5 , 6 , 7 ]. In spite of international calls to increase investments in HPSR, studies suggest that less than 2% of global health funding is being spent on health systems strengthening and HPSR. This lack of adequate funding is especially an issue in low- and middle-income countries (LMIC), where funding remains largely dependent on external sources [ 8 ]. This is further challenged by the near invisibility of domestic funding flow for HPSR on a national level [ 9 ].

In the Eastern Mediterranean Region (EMR), while much of the policy priorities are related to health systems, there is poor recognition of the importance of HPSR [ 10 , 11 , 12 ], and funding limitations remain the main challenge facing HPSR in the region [ 11 , 13 ]. Given that the advancement of HPSR is greatly dependent on the availability of adequate and reliable funding [ 14 , 15 ], it would be important to gain a better understanding of HPSR funding in the EMR. Previous studies have assessed funding for HPSR at the level of national government and from international donor perspectives [ 11 , 14 ]. Rabbat et al. assessed funding for HSPR in the EMR on a national level and found that none of the EMR countries have explicit national funding or a budget line for HPSR [ 11 ]. Grepin et al. analysed donor funding for HPSR in LMICs, including EMR, and found that such funding is heavily concentrated, with more than 93% coming from just 10 donors, and only represents approximately 2% of all donor funding for health and population projects. Moreover, countries in the sub-Saharan African region were the major recipients of HPSR funding, while countries in the EMR were the least recipients of such funding [ 14 ].

The current study adds to existing literature by analysing the sources of funding for published HPSR studies in countries of the EMR. Analysis of HPSR publications in countries from the region can be used to monitor progress and trends in the production of policy-relevant research and is a core requirement for strengthening health research systems to generate and use knowledge to improve health systems [ 8 , 16 ]. The specific objectives are to: (1) assess the reporting of funding in HPSR papers published between 2010 and 2022 in the EMR, (2) examine the source of funding in the published HPSR papers in the EMR and (3) explore variables influencing funding sources, including any difference in funding sources for COVID-19-related articles. Findings will enable a better understanding of the HPSR funding landscape in the EMR.

We conducted a rapid scoping review of HPSR papers published between 2010 and 2022 in the EMR, addressing the following broad areas: reporting of funding in HPSR papers, source of funding in the published HPSR papers, authors’ affiliations and country of focus. Scoping reviews are an ideal tool to convey the breadth and depth of a body of literature on a given topic and give clear indication of the volume of literature and studies available as well as an overview of its focus [ 17 ]. We followed standard methodology and the Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Reviews and Meta-Analyses extension for Scoping Reviews (PRISMA-ScR) guidelines for reporting scoping reviews (Supplementary file 1) [ 18 ].

Eligibility criteria

Study design: All study designs were included except for letters, correspondence, commentaries, dissertations, technical papers, handbooks, protocols and editorials. We restricted the search date to studies published in the last decade (that is, 2010–2022, inclusive).

Setting: Eastern Mediterranean Region. We included all countries established within the WHO’s Eastern Mediterranean Regional Office, namely Afghanistan, Bahrain, Djibouti, Egypt, the Islamic Republic of Iran, Iraq, Jordan, Kuwait, Lebanon, Libya, Morocco, Oman, Pakistan, the Occupied Palestinian Territories, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, Somalia, South Sudan, Sudan, Syrian Arab Republic, Tunisia, the United Arab Emirates and Yemen.

Population: We did not limit the search to any specific type of population.

Dimensions of interest: We considered studies to be eligible if they met the criteria of health systems topics developed by the McMaster Health Forum, including governance, financial and delivery arrangements, and implementation strategies. The selected coding framework has been previously implemented for coding health policy and systems topics in countries from the region [ 19 , 20 ].

We did not restrict the search to any language.

Literature search

We searched the following electronic databases in December 2022: PubMed, Web of Science, The Index Medicus for the Eastern Mediterranean Region (IMEMR) and Google Scholar. We used both index terms and free text words for the following two concepts (and their variations): (1) EMR countries and (2) HPSR. The search strategy was validated with the guidance of an information specialist. For the Web of Science, we limited the search to 72 journals listed under the “Health Policy and Services” (HPS) category in Web of Science between 2010 and 2022. A similar approach was previously adopted in a study examining the reporting of funding in HPSR [ 19 ]. We also screened the reference lists of all included articles.

Study selection and data extraction

Prior to proceeding with the selection process, we conducted a calibration exercise to enhance validity of the selection process. Two reviewers used the above eligibility criteria to screen the identified citations for potential eligibility. Half of the included studies were screened in duplicate and independently by teams of two reviewers, while the remaining were screened independently by each reviewer. We obtained the full text for citations judged as potentially eligible by at least one of the reviewers. To enhance validity of the process, all excluded studies were validated by a senior reviewer (who is the senior author). Any disagreement was resolved by discussion, and when needed, with the help of a third reviewer.

We developed a data extraction form. Prior to proceeding with the selection process, we conducted a calibration exercise to enhance validity of the selection process. Each of four reviewers independently abstracted data from a subset of articles assigned to them (collectively covering the full dataset), using a standardized and pilot-tested form. Throughout the process, all team members were consulted to validate coding decisions. Any disagreement was resolved by discussion, and when needed, with the help of a third reviewer. We revisited and considered data in the context of any newly emergent decision. Additionally, the coding sections related to reported source of funding and first authors’ affiliations were independently validated by a second reviewer.

The following information was abstracted from all included studies:

Study ID (author last name, title of study).

Date of publication.

Type of article.

Country subject of the paper: This refers to the geographical scope of the article, specifically the country where the research was conducted. Articles encompassing more than one country were categorized into two distinct groups: those focusing solely on the EMR (referred to as “more than one within the region”), and those extending beyond the EMR (referred to as “more than one beyond the region”) – maintaining a distinction from individual country analyses.

Country income group classification (first country) as per World Bank classification data for 2021–2022.

Reported affiliation(s) by the first author.

Reported affiliation(s) by the corresponding author.

Country of the institution to which the first author is affiliated.

Country of the institution to which the corresponding author is affiliated.

Reporting of study funding (not reported, reported as funded or reported as not funded).

Reported source(s) of funding.

Whether the study was COVID-19-related.

Statistical analysis

We conducted univariate and bivariate analyses for all variables collected for the included papers using IBM Statistical Package for Social Sciences (SPSS) Statistics v.25. We used the chi-square test at 0.05 significance level to compare categorical data and investigate the associations between reporting of funding by papers, type of funding and income groups. We also used the chi-square test to examine whether significant associations exist between funding sources and the following variables: country income level, country focus of the HPSR articles (that is, within the EMR only, or beyond the EMR as part of international research consortia), the first author’s country of affiliation and COVID-19-related studies.

Characteristics of included articles

Figure  1 shows the PRISMA flowchart for study selection. Of 10,797 articles screened, 3408 were included.

PRISMA flowchart

Figure  2 illustrates the distribution of HPSR articles by country focus. The top country focus was Iran ( n  = 1018, 29.9%), followed by Saudi Arabia ( n  = 595, 17.5%), Pakistan ( n  = 360, 10.6%), Jordan ( n  = 208, 6.1%) and Lebanon ( n  = 150, 4.4%). Notably, more than half of the included articles originated from only three EMR countries: Iran, the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia (KSA) and Pakistan. Countries where the fewest number of articles were conducted were Libya ( n  = 10, 0.3%), Bahrain ( n  = 12, 0.4%), Somalia ( n  = 13, 0.4%), Syria ( n  = 18, 0.5%), and Yemen ( n  = 18, 0.5%). No articles were found focusing on Djibouti only. Approximately 10% of the included articles were conducted in more than one EMR country. Of these, 5% focused on multiple countries within the EMR, while an additional 5% included at least one country beyond the EMR region (along with at least one within the EMR).

Distribution of HPSR articles by country of focus ( N  = 3408)

COVID-19-related articles accounted for 9.3% of the total HPSR studies published. Of these, the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia produced the highest number of publications ( n  = 93, 29.3%), followed by Iran ( n  = 68, 21.5%).

Figure  3 illustrates the increase in the production of HPSR articles in the EMR from 2010 to 2022. The number of HPSR articles in 2010 was approximately 37, increasing to 598 by 2022. Furthermore, HPSR articles nearly doubled after 2020.

Annual production of HPSR articles from 2010 to 2022

Reporting of funding and funding sources for HPSR articles across country income groups

Table  1  presents the reporting of funding and sources of funding in the 3408 HPSR articles retrieved. Approximately 40% ( n  = 1346) of the articles reported being funded, while 29% (or 1001) did not report any details on study funding. It is worth noting that, while the number of funded articles is 1346, when taking into account all funding sources within an article, the total number of funding sources increases to 1635.

Among the 1346 funded articles (with 1635 funding sources) in the EMR, analysis of funding sources across all country income groups revealed that the most common source was national ( n  = 905, 55.4%) followed by international (682, 41.7%) and lastly regional sources (41, 3%). Among the national funding sources, universities accounted for 76.8%, while governments accounted for 14.9% of the sources. Further analysis of funding sources by country income group showed that, in low-income and lower-middle-income countries (as classified by the World Bank at the time of data collection), all or the majority of funding came from international sources, while in high-income and upper-middle-income countries, national funding sources, mainly universities, were the primary sources. The majority of funded articles’ first authors were affiliated with academia/university distributed into public university ( n  = 959, 71.2%) and private ( n  = 204, 15.2%) while a minority were affiliated with government, private for-profit or intergovernmental organizations.

Of the COVID-19-related HPSR articles, 95 (or 30%) were funded, while 69 (or 21.8%) did not report any detail on the study funding. The most notable funding source was national (75, 78.95%), mainly universities (61.05%), with governments contributing to 10.53% of funding. International funding sources accounted for 15 (or 15.79%) of publications. Regarding the first authors’ affiliations of funded COVID-19-related articles, almost all authors are from the EMR and affiliated to public academic universities (80%).

Source of funding and first-author affiliation for HPSR articles, by EMR country (2010–2020)

A breakdown of the source of funding by country is provided in Table  3 .

All of the articles conducted in Somalia, Syria and Yemen and the majority of articles conducted in Afghanistan (76.27%), Egypt (62.39%), Iraq (66.5%), Lebanon (70.5%), Morocco (82.54%), Pakistan (80%), Palestine (95.8%), Sudan (80.6%) and Tunisia (89%) were funded by international sources. Articles conducted in the remaining EMR countries were largely funded by national sources; among those conducted in Iran (92.96%), Jordan (55.5%), the KSA (89%), Qatar (99.8%) and the United Arab Emirates (UAE; 68.2%), the majority were funded by universities, whereas in Libya (100%) and Kuwait (75%), the government was the main source of funder. Regarding Oman (46%), funding was equally distributed between national and international sources.

Concerning the first author’s affiliations, the majority of articles conducted in Egypt (71.1%), Iran (95.3%), Jordan (73.8%), the KSA (79.3%), Kuwait (70%), Morocco (63.2%), Oman (55.6%), Palestine (83.3%), Qatar (56.3%), Tunisia (66.7%), Somalia (100%), Syria (57.1%), the UAE (58.3%), Iraq (40%), and Yemen (100%) were affiliated with public academic institutions. In Lebanon (65.3%), Sudan (32%), and Pakistan (41.1%), the majority of the papers’ first authors were affiliated with private academia/university. In Afghanistan (27.8%), the papers’ first authors were equally affiliated with private university/academia and not-for-profit organizations. In Libya (100%), the first author of the only funded study was affiliated with intergovernmental organizations.

Across all income groups, the majority of the papers’ first authors were affiliated with academia/university. A minority of papers’ first authors was affiliated with private for-profit and intergovernmental organizations (Table 2 ).

Associations between variables of interest and sources of funding for HPSR articles

There was significant association between country income level and source of funding ( P  < 0.001; Table  3 ). Countries in the high-income and upper-middle income groups were significantly more likely to be funded by national sources (78.7% versus 77.1%, respectively), more specifically universities, while countries in the low-income groups were significantly more likely to be funded by international sources (87.2%).

Studies that included at least one country beyond the EMR (for example, as part of international research consortia) were significantly more likely to be funded by international sources (80.2%), while studies focusing on one or more country within the EMR only were significantly more likely to be funded by national sources (65.3%), mainly universities (52%; Table  4 ).

Regarding the first author’s country of affiliation, articles with first authors from the EMR were more likely to be funded by national sources (73.9%), mainly universities (61.7%) while articles were the first authors were from non-EMR countries were more likely to be funded by international sources (79.8%) These differences are statistically significant, with a P -value < 0.001 (Table  5 ).

Similar funding patterns were observed for COVID-19-related HPSR articles (compared to non-COVID-19-related HPSR articles), with national sources, mainly universities, comprising the main source of funding (78.95% versus 59%). In contrast, international funding sources decreased for COVID-19-related HPSR articles (15.8% versus 37.7%). This difference was statistically significant at P  < 0.001 (Table 6 ).

Summary and interpretation of findings

This is the first study to address the reporting of funding and funding sources in published HPSR articles in the EMR. More than half of the included articles originated from only three out of the 22 EMR countries, namely Iran, the KSA and Pakistan. When it comes to funding, approximately 30% of HPSR papers in the EMR did not report any details on study funding. Among the articles that reported being funded, analysis of funding sources across all country income groups revealed that the most common source was national, followed by international and lastly regional sources. Among the national sources, universities accounted for the majority of funding. Further analysis of funding sources by country income group showed that in low-income and lower-middle-income countries (as classified by the World Bank at the time of data collection), all or the majority of funding came from international sources, while in high-income and upper-middle-income countries, national funding sources, mainly universities, were the primary sources of funding. However, exceptions to this trend included Kuwait, Oman and Libya, where government funding took precedence.

The majority of funded papers’ first authors were affiliated with academia/university while a minority were affiliated with government, healthcare organizations or intergovernmental organizations.

When articles conducted in Iran, which accounted for the highest number of included papers (30%), were excluded from the entire analysis (and not only those related to upper-middle-income countries), a different overall funding pattern emerged. In this scenario, international funding sources took precedence (457, 54.7%), followed by national (336, 40.2%) and regional (40, 4.8%) sources. This is not unexpected, given that, in Iran, the main source of funding is national funding (94%), specifically universities (82.80%). Furthermore, international sanctions have reduced the willingness of international scholars to cooperate with Iranians scholars and students, while also making it difficult for Iranian researchers to receive health-related grants from foreign regional or international organizations [ 21 ].

We found the following characteristics to be significantly associated with the funding source: income level, focus of HPSR article (that is, EMR or as part of international research consortia) and first-author affiliation. The latter may be partially explained by the limited expertise in the EMR to generate solid proposals to compete for these grants, restricting HPSR’s access to worldwide competitive funding options [ 11 ].

While the COVID-19 pandemic had drastic consequences on health systems, highlighting the importance of HPSR for evidence-informed decision-making, our findings suggest that funding from government did not increase for COVID-19-related HPSR, while universities/academia took the lead in funding COVID-19-related HPSR articles in the EMR. In contrast, international funding for HPSR in the EMR decreased during the pandemic. According to Becerra-Posada et al., given a higher need for funds for medical care and vaccines for COVID-19, research funding may be a lesser priority in countries suffering budgetary restrictions [ 22 ]. Thus, the international funding may have been diverted from HPSR to health systems reforms, testing centres, and more health-related and clinical research.

Some potential limitations of the study are worth noting. Firstly, despite our attempts to enhance the comprehensiveness of our search by utilizing several databases, including IMEMR, which is specific to the EMR, it should be acknowledged that some researchers in the region may publish their research papers on websites or journals not indexed in the databases we searched or these publications might not be available online. We attempted to partially overcome this by searching Google Scholar and screening the reference lists of included as well as relevant articles. Furthermore, our search date for articles extended up to 2022; hence, it does not encompass studies that could have been published after this date. Nevertheless, it is unlikely that such studies would change the findings in a significant way. At the same time, we believe the 12-year review we conducted provides a good analysis of the funding landscape for HPSR in the EMR. Secondly, for articles encompassing multiple countries, we categorized them into two groups: “More than one beyond the region” and “More than one within the region”, maintaining a distinction from individual country analyses. While this categorization may overlook specific contributions from individual countries within these broader categories, the lack of specificity regarding the countries involved made it challenging to merge them accurately with respective national totals. Indeed, several articles referenced broader regions such as “EMR” or “Middle East” without specifying the countries included, potentially leading to inaccuracies if merged without clear delineation. Also, it is worth noting that articles focusing on more than one country contributed to only 10% of the total included articles, suggesting limited implications for our findings. Finally, the income classification for two countries – Iran and Jordan – changed since the completion of the data collection period for this study. However, this is not expected to significantly alter the results, as both countries are still considered middle-income countries, with variations between upper-middle and lower-middle income levels.

Comparison to other studies and trends

Iran’s leading position in HPSR production has been re-iterated in previous publications [ 11 ]. When it comes to reporting of funding for HPSR papers, our findings align with a cross-sectional survey of 400 HPSR studies (200 systematic reviews and 200 primary studies), which revealed that a third of sampled HPSR papers did not provide any information about funding [ 19 ]. This is in contrast to clinical papers whereby 89% of clinical trial reports published in 2015 included funding statements [ 23 ]. This is a reflection of both a suboptimal compliance by authors with the funding policies and a deficient enforcement by the journals [ 19 ].

As for the sources of funding for published HPSR papers, our findings align with reported funding sources for HPSR in LMICs, indicating notably low government spending on HPSR, whereby governments tend to give more consideration to basic science and clinical research over HPSR [ 24 ]. In these settings, funding for HPSR primarily originates from international and multilateral aid as well as contracts with larger research consortia, with limited contributions from national governments [ 25 , 26 , 27 ]. This funding pattern was particularly evident in low-income and lower-middle income countries of the EMR. Additionally, international funding sources predominated when Iran was excluded from the analysis.

Existing research indicates that the strong dependence of countries on international funding generally comes at the expense of addressing community needs and health system priorities where research topics dictated by funders and donors are prioritized [ 14 , 28 , 29 ]. This concern is further reinforced by another study on HPSR funding in LMIC, which revealed that these countries depend on a narrow array of donors, which puts them at risk of losing funding if the donors’ priorities shift away from HPSR [ 14 ]. In addition to that, the reliance on international funding impedes the national authorities from developing local, sustainable capacity to perform HPSR [ 25 ].

A number of factors have been identified as influencing investment in or funding for health research in general and HPSR in particular in the EMR. Health research in this region is fragmented and insufficient because of the absence of national policies and strategic plans that promote investment in health systems research [ 11 , 28 ]. Moreover, in the conflict-affected countries of the region, health systems research is not a top priority of the national and international investments and initiatives [ 28 ]. Bureaucratic bottlenecks such as corruption and lack of accountability and unstable government regimes further hamper the establishment and improvement of domestic HPSR funding [ 29 ]. Additionally, the weak institutional and infrastructural capacity and the absence of a critical mass, that is, an abundant number of qualified researchers with a uniquely varied skill mix in research institutions hinders HPSR national as well as international funding [ 8 , 11 , 25 , 27 ].

Implications for policy and practice

Study findings indicate limited interest and commitment of governments to HPSR funding in the EMR. We provide key implications for policy and practice moving forward. First and foremost, governments are urged to outline a national vision with clearly defined goals, objectives, policies and strategies for HPSR [ 30 , 31 ]. The WHO Global Ministerial Forum suggests institutionalizing HPSR and forming a separate institute or department for HPSR, whether as part of ministry of health or not [ 29 , 32 ]. This would allow for better governance of research, improved management for resources and consequently enhanced credibility and integrity [ 29 , 32 ]. Also, these institutions and departments can hold national health programs and work on integrating them with those of the external donors [ 25 , 29 ].

Second, increasing domestic funding for HPSR is needed to reduce reliance on external donors while improving HPSR’s focus on national priorities. To this end, governments in the EMR should establish explicit national funding or a budget line item for HPSR with sustainable and transparent processes in place for mobilizing and allocating funds for HPSR [ 11 ]. Additional strategies for increasing domestic funding of HPSR include the formation of advocacy coalitions and continuous advocacy to both public- and private-sector stakeholders. Moreover, the engagement of local stakeholders in research priority-setting exercises, in organizational-level capacity-building to improve the use of research evidence, in assessing the gains of previous funding, and in assigning a portion of international funds to local research teams all enhance demand and funding for HPSR at the national level [ 31 , 33 ]. Given that funding from international sources will continue to play a role in the region, strong governance to ensure coordinated efforts and alignment to country priorities will be key to attaining maximum return on investment [ 11 ]. It is also important to ensure that at least some of this external funding is used to strengthen national researcher capacity as well as sensitize decision-makers to the potential of HPSR to inform improved national policy. Initiatives to promote donor alignment and harmonization such as the International Health Partnership are also a promising option for governments to align their HPSR vision with the funder’s interests [ 25 ].

Third, given that increases in domestic funding commitments for HPSR are likely to be difficult to achieve without stronger policy-maker demand for HPSR, it would be important for EMR countries to invest in capacity-building and awareness raising for HPSR to improve the prevailing culture for research and evidence-informed decision-making. Individual-level capacity should be complemented by institutional mandates for policy-makers to use research evidence as input into the decision-making process as well as institutional structures and mechanisms to hold decision-makers accountable for their decisions. Furthermore, given that generating appropriate, trustworthy evidence depends on the existence of good research organizations, building and strengthening academic programs (master’s and PHDs) and institutions for HPSR and knowledge translation would enhance the technical capacities of all HPSR stakeholders and improve the integration of research findings into policy-making. Incentive mechanisms to support knowledge translation work and interdisciplinary research can further incentivize researchers to engage in HPSR and evidence-informed policy-making.

Fourth, considerations could be given to establish a regional strategy for HPSR which articulates the vision and goal for HPSR in the EMR as well as guides resource mobilization and allocation decisions for HPSR, including priority-setting exercises to shape HPSR research agenda in the region. A regional advocacy coalition can also be considered to raise regional funds for HPSR, which can be allocated in an informed manner to support national HPSR initiatives [ 5 , 12 ]. Moreover, a regional forum or network can be established for raising awareness, building capacity and creating demand for HPSR.

Finally, given that our study identified suboptimal reporting of funding information in HPSR papers, journals need to better enforce their funding policies.

This is the first study to address the reporting of funding and funding sources in HPSR articles in the EMR. Despite the majority of journals publishing on HPSR requiring the reporting of funding, approximately 30% of HPSR papers did not report on the funding source. Moreover, study findings revealed heavy reliance on universities and international funding sources in funding HPSR articles in the EMR, with a minimal role of national governments and regional entities. Study findings can guide researchers, policy-makers and funders to strengthen and improve the profile of HPSR funding in the EMR.

Availability of data and materials

All data generated or analysed during this study are included in this published article (and its supplementary information files).

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Acknowledgements

The authors wish to extend their thanks to the Alliance for Health Policy and Systems Research at the World Health Organization for their support and guidance. We also wish to acknowledge the Health Systems Global Society (HSG) for their overall support. We would also like to acknowledge Ms. Diana Jamal for her support with data analysis and Ms. Mathilda Jabbour and Ms. Nour Hemadeh for their support in study screening.

This research was supported as part of the work of the Health Systems Global’s (HSG) Regional Networks – Eastern Mediterranean.

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R.F. conceived the idea. R.F. and F.E.J. designed the study and the methodology. R.F. developed and ran the search strategy. R.F., N.D. and A.H. conducted title and abstract screening. R.F., N.C., N.D. and A.H. conducted full text screening. R.F., N.C. and N.D. abstracted key variables from included studies. F.E.J., R.F. and N.C. analysed and interpreted the findings. R.F. wrote the initial draft of the manuscript with input from F.E.J. and N.C. All authors read and approved the submitted version. All authors have agreed both to be personally accountable for the author’s own contributions and to ensure that questions related to the accuracy or integrity of any part of the work, even ones in which the author was not personally involved, are appropriately investigated and resolved, and the resolution documented in the literature.

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Supplementary Material 1. Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic reviews and Meta-Analyses extension for Scoping Reviews (PRISMA-ScR) Checklist.

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Fadlallah, R., El-Jardali, F., Chidiac, N. et al. Analysis of funding landscape for health policy and systems research in the Eastern Mediterranean Region: A scoping review of the literature over the past decade. Health Res Policy Sys 22 , 70 (2024). https://doi.org/10.1186/s12961-024-01161-3

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DOI : https://doi.org/10.1186/s12961-024-01161-3

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